I think I’ll make a King Cake this weekend

This morning when I woke up I felt like it should be Saturday already, instead of only Friday. Somehow it’s just been a long week. Maybe the cold, maybe just everything.

I’ve had several conversations with friends where they’re feeling like it’s the end of days. People snowed in up north and a 100+ car pile up in the Fox River Valley. A work colleague, the husband of Mark’s former boss, died in his sleep on Sunday night, only 45 years old. And that’s not even getting into more Trumpian horrors, although there does seem to be a feeling that the orange one is getting so off kilter that the end of his presidency must be approaching. Colbert made a joke about it Monday night.

On Monday morning, it was too cold for me & Rach to walk, so I drove us to work. I was going to drive anyways, since after work I was going over to Goodman to prep the pantry meal. Terese was snowed in up North but my helper David & I prepped a strata, roasted potatoes, and a blueberry cake. I came home and reheated leftover pasta for dinner.

Tuesday it wasn’t quite as cold, but I had to drive again, because I was serving the breakfast, at the community center on the east side. Rach and I stopped at Whole Foods on the way home, and we just sorta snacked for dinner. I bought a bag of the veggie straws I liked when  was staying at my brothers, and ate a pile of those, and cheese and crackers, and dates and nuts, while I was getting set up for online class at 8:00.

Wednesday I was able to get home from work relatively early. I made the black rice salad from Fine Cooking, and roasted the beets that came in my last CSA box in November, the Thanksgiving box. I also roasted the carrots & half a red pepper that I had in the fridge. And heated up the bits of chicken left from meals earlier in the week. The beets didn’t get done in time, but Rach and I put together big bowls of salad with the other stuff. After dinner, I peeled and chunked the beets and pickled most of them with 2 hardboiled eggs, and tossed the rest, the 4 smallest ones, with walnut oil and balsamic vinegar.

Thursday I had to stay at work late to peer review somebody else’s class. I took lots of food with me, to get through the day. Cream of squash soup, slices of the milk bread I baked last weekend to toast, a kind of a salad with some of the oil & balsamic beets that finally got done the night before, and the last of the carrots, with a hard boiled egg and feta. I came home and baked cookies – chocolate chip, but with a few mini M&Ms and Heath bar chips. There were 60 on Thursday – they were gone by Saturday night.

Friday we had dinner out with Belinda & Stephen, at a place called Mint Mark – that I’d heard a lot about but never been. Casey Doyle-Olson was our waitress – the daughter of friends. I hadn’t seen her in a long time, so that was kinda fun. Showed her a pic of what Al looks like now, in case she sees him around town, since he’s back in Madison. Hanging with Belinda & Stephen was also fun. I took them a box of cookies, and that got us talking about the Culinary Ladies cookie sale for Planned Parenthood – they had bought a box. Stephen is a hotel assistant general manager, so knows a lot of chefs, so we were talking about all the cookie kinds.

Friday was fun, but I think I was the worse on Saturday for the cocktail and two beers I drank on Friday – all my projects seemed to go a little wrong. I couldn’t get the new Bernina threaded for the longest time, and then I sewed the bag wrong anyways. And I discovered I was out of powdered sugar at the moment I was going to glaze the King Cake, so I used the icing from cookie season that was still at the back of the fridge – I think it was a mix of ginger cream frosting and baby fruit cake glaze. It seemed way too goopy on Saturday night but the King Cake sliced – and ate – just fine on Sunday morning.

And I now have the manual for the new Bernina downloaded to my computer, for handy look up next time it baffles me.