It’s the first day of classes at University of Wisconsin today, and I’m sitting at the kitchen counter still in pajamas, doing a little work email, drinking coffee, and listening to public radio which is full of stories about campus response to Covid, including liability waivers and a few words from a student at UW-Eau Claire, looking at 50 [sic] guys playing basketball, no masks, predicting that we’ll go all remote instruction in a week or two.
I also just put in for vacation on Friday (Labor Day weekend) and seems like I have over-done the furlough – taken more than the 40 hours I was supposed to take by October 15. Sigh. Another mess to clean up.
I’m going to go for a walk with Mark, and write more about food, later. See ya.
Later that day … er, uh that would be the next day, kinda in the afternoon.
Last Saturday we had Al & Emma, and Emma’s parents over for dinner for a belated birthday dinner for Emma. We had grilled pork shoulder steaks (because what I thought was pork shoulder roast from our last group pig purchase turned out to be steaks!) with corn salsa and coleslaw and sea salt & vinegar potato salad. And pinto beans – tried a new recipe and they were good so I put them out. Neither the corn salsa nor the coleslaw were the way I usually make them, or the beans for that matter. The corn salsa had feta and toasted pumpkin seeds in it; the coleslaw wasn’t wilted the way I usually do it, where the cabbage gets mixed with the salt & sugar and then drained before being dressed, and it had cumin in it; the beans weren’t soaked before cooking. The quickly cooked steaks were surprisingly tender. And I made hootie swirls, peanut butter brownies, for dessert, and it seems like the bar cookie jinx I’ve been under in pandemic, where I’ve had bar cookies come out soupy in the middle, has passed. No pictures, but here’s the corn salsa for Sunday brunch, on enfrijoladas, made with those unsoaked, slow-cooked, pinto beans.
Monday I simmered the pork and shredded it, and we ate it on buns with the coleslaw. And there’s a carton in the freezer.
Sunday I made some roasted vegetable sauce and Tuesday I used it to add to the couple of turkey meatballs in sauce from an earlier dinner and put it over pasta, and we had pasta, and salad and fresh bread for dinner. It was Mark’s favorite dinner of the week, I think.
Roasted vegetable sauce to be – I love this, it’s so easy. Chunk up tomatoes, peppers, garlic, and purple onion, toss with a bit of olive oil, and roast for an hour, then puree into all-purpose sauce
Here’s the bread.
And I made a plum and nectarine upside cake that was pretty good day one, but has so much fruit in relationship to the cake, I think I can pour it down the disposal today.
Wednesday we had taco casserole, with the corn salsa and pinto beans in it, and finished the coleslaw.
Today I get my CSA so I made veggie broth to clear out the vegetable bin.
Corm cob, tomato peels, herbs, pepper cores into the broth
And I’m getting 25 pounds of tomatoes, I will be processing those this weekend. I am taking Friday off, and Monday is the holiday so plenty of time. I will blanch and peel and dice some, and roast some, and we will have BLTs and tomato pie, too.
Best explanation of Black Lives Matter, and see overleaf for Black Flag|Lives Matter, that I got from Alejandro Escovedo’s facebook, (Credit to Amsal Jendridal for this image!) where it garnered a huge number of hateful comments. How can you hate Alejandro?! he’s so awesome.
And, trying for peace – coffee by an open window on Saturday morning when the heat wave broke. One of those pictures that got zillions of comments when I put it on insta/fb.
