Deb's Lunch … and dinner and breakfast too

I signed up for instgr.am – so I can post iPhone pictures online easier. The pictures come out of the iPhone 4 pretty big, tall and skinny like the iPhone – I just looked at one that was 2 MB, 2592 px × 1936 px, and sideways – too big to post on Word Press.  To get them up on Word Press, I have to to email them to myself, open them up in photoshop, adjust, crop, save, and finally post. It took me awhile to figure out where the instgram’s were going – I thought I set it to share them to Tumblr & Twitter – had one of those what’s the Tumblr password?, what’s the instgr.am? password, crises, this afternoon, but I think I got it working now. (Or, see sidebar link, DebsLunch Photo on Tumblr)

Breakfast for dinner

Here I am at work on the first day of spring break. I have a stack of applications to read, next year’s class of library school students, plus I have an assignment handed in in one of my online classes – applying subject headings to a record (description of an information resource) that the students are building through seven exercises; and there’s always email. Besides being spring break, today is the first work day after spring ahead, so it feels like 12:58 – almost 1:00 p.m., even though the clock says 1:58 – almost 2:00 p.m.

And I just don’t feel that good. I tried 10 minutes of yoga rest – Savasana – prone yoga, on the rug I keep next to my stand-up computer terminal, though I supported my head and kept my knees up – and I think that helped.

It’s tempting to sit down and read the apps, but I think I’ll try to stay upright and grade a bit before collapsing into my chair. Of course, I’d rather be writing about food, but as Tim at Lottie + Doof just pointed out, food writing seems a little superficial at the moment. And they’re with us in Wisconsin, too –

Messy desk with chair, applications, water, coffee cups, peanut butter

So the news is all bad: earthquakes and melting down nuclear reactors in Japan; tsunamis; unrest and insane dictators all over the middle east; union busting in Wisconsin.

On Tuesday I made a chicken & zucchini casserole, from my Pittsburgh community garden cookbook – the Great Tomato Patch cookbook that of course is on WorldCat because Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh cataloged it. It’s one of those recipes that I made-from-scratch-ified, using mushroom sauce in place of a can of cream of mushroom soup, and home made croutons in place of stuffing mix.

Chicken zucchini casserole that I ate for early dinner at 4:30 on the night I had to stay at work till 8:00 p.m.

On Wednesday I cooked the 1/2 pound Snug Haven spinach I’d bought at the previous Saturday market, in garlic butter and threw in some leftover gnocchi and a couple of mushrooms that didn’t go into the sauce for the casserole.

Spinach with gnocchi and mushrooms

Now I’m home on a break from the protests – I was downtown at 8:00 to help serve the farmers’ market breakfast. Mark came down to meet me, and we went up to the square in time for the tractorcade, then we massed with the librarians outside the central library, and marched around once. I gave all my cookies away, and then my foot started hurting, and I felt like I just had to take a break. So we brought the car home, and the spinach-gnocchi mix made a pretty good omelette. I’m starting to feel like I have the strength to look up bus times and head back down there. The crowd is supposed to peak at 3:00.

Or, as one of my librarian colleagues calls it, “my new second job.” The city of Madison is still pleased with our Midwestern polite behavior.

My protest rig - oatmeal carton drum & drum stick & sign

I made cookies again, oatmeal raison, and I added chocolate chips, using the recipe from under the lid of the box of Quaker Quick Oats that I inherited from Al when he moved apartments last fall. It’s the recipe their Grandma (dad’s mom) used to use, and I borrowed a trick from her, loaded all the cookies back into the empty oatmeal carton, and took it to the Capitol with me.  I grabbed a beat up drumstick from the basement (two kids played drums, plus even though John plays guitar, his band used to practice here), and after I gave away the cookies I had a drum. The cookies came out a little flat, especially the first two trays, baked before the oatmeal had a chance to soak up – note  to self – chill this dough before baking.

We missed the big name speakers, and the local disco band, but we saw a lot of musicians we know – it was International Fest at Overture, and they were all running back & forth from indoor gigs to outdoor protest.

I heard Michael Moore on the radio this morning, and he had a tailored-to-WI version of the three big lies, you know, the ones that usually start with “the check is in the mail” and include things like “you can’t get pregnant from this”.

Michael Moore’s three big lies for the WI protests:

1. Wisconsin is broke
2. Iraq has weapons of mass destruction
3. The Packers need Favre to win the superbowl

Yeah!!