Susan and I walked early on Wednesday, rescheduled from our usual Monday because she was on grandma childcare duty on Monday. We were going early because I was supposed to be downtown at 10:00 for a coffee date.
But, my 10:00 cancelled, so I went grocery shopping instead. And experienced some supply chain issue frustrations. I started at the co-op and then went on to the regular grocery store (Metacalfe’s). My current box of recycled kitchen trash bags, flap tie that I prefer, is defective. Almost every other bag – the ones that tear off on a straight edge rather than the curvy flap – end up with a hole in the bottom, or no bottom at all. The co-op only had more boxes of the same bags. I wanted another package of the recycled bags I’ve gotten at Metcalfe’s a few times that’s a big roll, but they only had drawstring recycled bags.
I bought a 12-roll pack of toilet paper at the co-op for about $9, and thought maybe I’d get another at the grocery store, but it was $13.99 there.
Then, on my continuing quest for kitchen string, plain white cotton string like you’d use to truss a chicken, that they don’t have at either the co-op or Metcalfe’s, I walked over to the gourmet store, Sur la Table, and bought a fancy roll that cost about $12. On a whim and because my current bottle of the stuff is getting empty, I also bought a bottle of vanilla bean paste, kind of thick vanilla with seed specks, that cost $14 the last time I bought it, now at $29.
Then I walked over to the hardware store, and they only had nylon string or fuzzy hairy twine, and no recycled trash bags at all.
Later, I checked on the cost of the vanilla bean paste at King Arthur Flour, and it was just a few bucks less.
Wednesday night I stayed up late making a pan of artichoke-spinach lasagna for Mark & Maja to eat while I was at the Midwest Archives Conference on Thursday. It was quite tasty but the instructions to soften the noodles in a shallow pan with boiled water poured over resulted in a bunch of stuck together noodles. I peeled them apart as best I could, and they seemed to soften up OK after getting baked.
I was only able to attend one session and the reception, which was pretty fun. It was a youngish crowd, good to see – early to mid-career archivists. I was talking to a special collections staff member, who said they’d just hired one of my students, an international student from Nigeria. Then we both mistook another conference attendee for that student, but they were actually not a student, instead a practicing archivist from Denver. They were masked, but really the only resemblance was that they were Black and the same height as the student. Oh, white people. As you can see I am still embarrassed.
Friday we went to Chicago for a nice lunch and the symphony, and Saturday was Carl’s memorial. I practiced my Ukrainian cookies to take to the memorial – and I will get the recipes posted, I think tonight – and also made a new batch of chocolate chunk cookies to go with some regular chocolate chip that I had in the freezer.
I’m going to have to tell you about the rest separately – now it’s already Monday and we had Mother’s Day and all kinds of other stuff.
Goose foot cookies