Before the election I was so worried about it: what the outcome would be, working the polls, supervising a very large new staff, getting the polls open, keeping everything legit, would I get Covid from working?; that I had a hard time thinking about and scheduling things for the after. Then, after was the long almost a week of waiting, so I was easily distracted. And worrying that every sniffle is Covid.
Now the election is a week behind us. It’s been crazy warm even though we had snow back in late October.
Snow October 26
I haven’t been writing about what I’ve been cooking and I know I’m forgetting.
Some night in there I made the Autumn frost squash that Tipi sent me into creamy squash soup. If anything the one they sent me was even prettier than this one; it was a nicer shape.
On election day night, we had sandwiches for dinner – I was too distracted to make anything fancier, and I’d been waiting to see if I had to go back and help close the polls, although I was kind of expecting NOT – huge new staff, remember. I tried making a warm gin toddy to drink with dinner but it was too harshly gin-y. I drank hot cider with brandy instead.
Here are purple flowers in the neighbor’s yard and vines with crazy hot pink stems on a wall by the high school from a morning walk, I think Wednesday.
I think Wednesday, the day after election day, was the night I made the pasta casserole. Cheese-filled mini ravioli, a bit of bow-tie pasta, tomato sauce (some that Susan and Carl gave me – they grew unbelievable amounts of tomatoes this year), with a layer of ricotta in the middle, and cheese on top. We had garlic toast too.
Thursday I had the last English muffin (well, there’re still some in the freezer) with a lot of butter and pumpkin butter and a sliced apple for breakfast. I sort of forgot that I was picking up a big order from my apple CSA Thursday afternoon, and I bought these two giant yellow apples at Whole Foods. This is half of one.
Thursday I made a small batch of greens with peanut sauce – in my last CSA box, I got a bag of something called Amara kale, which I guess is actually a mustard. There was a brat in the freezer and I heated that up for Mark, and there were leftover cheesy hashbrowns, and a big salad. I had my greens in pita bread because I didn’t have time to make rice.
I also had my postponed-since-July dermatologist appointment. I had a melanoma on my leg in 2001, and ever since then I’ve gone once a year to get a full body scan. They shaved a funky looking mole off my back, that was benign, thank you, and nice that I could simply login to my electronic medical records on Saturday and see the results, and froze some skin tags that have shrunk but yet to fall all the way off. I had to pick the five I wanted gone the most of $93 extra.
Friday we had leftover squash soup and Laura’s potato leek pasties from the Great British Bakeoff – although I used bacon instead of pancetta, and the rest of puff pastry I’d made into turnovers the previous Sunday. (I ate the last turnover for breakfast at about 2:30 in the afternoon when I got home from the polls, after I had showered and changed.)
Saturday we had a big comfort food dinner, pork chops that I made with a dry rub, then browned in a pan and baked, mashed potatoes with apple and a caramelized onion gravy with cider and chicken broth, and sauteed Napa cabbage. Looking on Facebook, gravy was big last Saturday with my fellow liberal cooking friends.
For Sunday brunch we had leek quiche and salad and potato cake.
I made the rest of the leftover mashed potatoes into buns. I even sieved the potatoes so they wouldn’t be lumpy. I’m very proud of myself.
Potato buns – the rest are in the freezer in anticipation of turkey sandwiches at Thanksgiving. Or maybe to go with that bucket of pulled pork that’s also in the freezer.
One potato bun
I also made cranberry cake that was still good on Monday for breakfast. It was one of those recipes where they chose to use a picture of the variations to illustrate the recipe – cranberries, rather than mixed berries, like blueberries or raspberries, and the cake in round pan when the main recipe says to use square like I did (because I can bake in a square or rectangular pan lined with a sheet of parchment and not have to grease the pan).
Cranberry snack cake
Monday morning with a pear
And now mostly I feel pretty good, though every time I see another headline about Trump questioning the election results I get worried again.
And now Wisconsin is on lockdown, but like optional lockdown where the governor just asked us politely to please stay home and there’re no fines or mask mandates. We’ll see how well that works.