Scattered

Two thoughts on aging:

1) My friend Susan started one conversation a few weeks ago by saying she thought she was ready for the old people’s home, because she had left a Le Creuset (enamel on cast iron) pot of tomatoes slow cooking for such a long time that the tomatoes permanently attached to the bottom of the pan. She has put her name on the list for vacancies at one of the better senior living joints in Madison, where her dad lived the last few years of his life, and several other friends had relatives there, as well. I haven’t done anything like that yet, although I do have a will, but I’ve had a will for twenty years, since I was 50.

2) Abraham Verghese, a doctor and author that we went to see speak at a luncheon that benefits the public library, said at his age, which is the same as mine, turning 70 this year (although he is slightly older; he’ll be 70 the end of May and I won’t be until mid-August), said he’s starting to be able to actually slow down and live in the moment. What you are told to do your whole life to feel happier, but he said he never was able to until now. I’m feeling a little like that, too, as I approach 70.

But I do feel like Susan, scattered and forgetful. When I’m doing my chores in the morning, I find myself getting distracted by adding something to my grocery list on my phone on the other side of the room, and of course there’s the thing that everyone does now, approach the phone to do one thing – like add an item to a grocery list – and get distracted by 3 other things – and then I look over and realize that there are still forks in the dish drainer, a cabinet door left open – halfway-done tasks littering the room.

And what’s really been bugging me on the aging front is that I feel like my metabolism has ground to a halt. My weight is up about 5 pounds and my belly is rounder than ever and I have less energy than I should. In response, I’ve been trying out mushroom coffee. I got a single cup packet from the co-op that was caffeine free, and it was OK, but the mushrooms were a little too evident for my taste. For the last week, I’ve been drinking a brand called Cuppa, that does have caffeine, and maybe I feel a bit better. But it’s hard to tell, there are too many variables. I often gain weight in this last part of the winter/early spring, after getting skinny during cookie season. And this year to complicate things I had the broken wrist right after cookie season – I broke it December 26 – and I know that has been slowing me down. Usually my weight drops as I get more active in the summer, but I just don’t trust that happening this year. And I might just feel better because I’ve upped my caffeine. Or maybe I am finally getting over this horrible cold.

Whatever is going on, it’s been long enough since my last post that I do have a ton of pictures, so lets get on with it.

We ended up a week ago Tuesday with Molly’s 50th birthday party cake. The next day was a Jasper day, but I didn’t take any pictures, nor can I remember what I made for dinner. The next day, Thursday, I biked over to the food pantry to volunteer in the morning, then I tried to watch a librarian colleague’s memorial service livestreamed from Santa Fe. Things started out promising; I set myself up at a coffee bar with my earbuds and my phone on the wifi. The church was very pretty and the music was good, but when the speaking started it broke up so much that I couldn’t really listen, when all I was getting was every 4th or 5th word. I packed up and biked to the library and worked on sorting books the rest of the afternoon. That night I re-heated the red beans we’d had for Mardi Gras, and made some fresh rice to go with (more on that in a minute). And I bacon wrapped a couple of hot dogs to eat with the beans and rice. No pics.

Friday we went to Chicago for an evening symphony.

I took pictures of trees in bloom from the train window on the way down.

And it’s bloomy in Madison now, too – see overleaf.

We decided to have a big lunch at Publican right after the train, then go see the Mary Reynolds and Frida Kahlo show at the Art Institute. The museum persists in calling it a Frida Kahlo show, but it’s a lot more Mary. Pics below. We had a little time before our reservation so we decided to walk around the west loop a bit, and that was our fatal error. It looked a little threatening but then when we were only about 14 minutes away from the restaurant, the heavens opened. Too close to call for a ride or take a bus, too far to walk without getting soaked, so we did the latter. They hung up our stuff, someplace where unfortunately it did not dry out much at all. And had a long lunch lingering over our food. I guess we were just trying to replicate the first time we went there probably at least 10 years ago now, when we arrived wet and cold with baggage and were relieved of what we were carrying and were miraculously whisked off to a table where it was warm and dry, and soon had food – the barbecue carrots! – even though it was a busy weeknight. 

After lunch we headed to the Art Institute and checked our still wet bags and saw the show. Mary Reynolds was a book binder and Marcel Duchamp’s partner for awhile. Frida Khalo spent a month with them in 1939. The Art Institute’s Ryerson & Burnham Library has Mary Reynolds’ archive and many of her books, and that’s what I liked best in the show. The show also mentioned that Mary Reynolds’ subsequent escape from Paris to come to the US was written about in the New Yorker in a series of three articles in 1943, where she was given an assumed name, “Mrs. Jeffries”, and when we finally got to the hotel and had the hair dryer stuck in our shoes to dry them out, I read the articles. I can get to them because I’m a subscriber, but if you’re not you might need to access them via your library.

Once we were dried out enough, we proceeded to the symphony concert, Mahler’s 3rd Symphony conducted by Klaus Mäkelä, the new CSO music director. It was a satisfying concert. I don’t think Mahler 3 is as difficult for a symphony to play as Mahler 7 that we saw the previous week, and I liked 3 better. Mark said he liked 7 better, as a piece of music, but I think something equivalent to his greater knowledge of classical music is required to like the more complex piece.

In the morning we met John & Megan at Lula Cafe for brunch, where they don’t take reservations in the day time, only for dinner, so we had to wait like an hour and twenty minutes. That Saturday was Chicago Independent Bookstore Day, so we spent part of the wait time at City Lit Books, less than 5 minutes away. I felt like the food was worth the wait. I got a giant breakfast burrito that John finished for me, because his tofu scrambler was a little small for his tastes, only 6 pieces of tofu. Megan got a French omelet that had goat cheese or something else creamy in the middle, and the omelet was perfect though she did not like all the greens. Mark had trout and eggs, and like John thought the amount of protein, in his case the trout, was a little meager.

Then we walked to three more bookstores. Which was actually fun, but it was six miles with a fairly heavy pack on my back. I fell on the way to the last store (Quimby’s), but fortunately we were in a crowd and I fell pretty much on Megan who broke my fall, so I escaped with only a skinned knee. No damage to the wrist. And feeling a little beat up. We got cold drinks and rested, stopped in that last store, and then Mark and I got the blue line to Ogilvie and the train home. I think Open Books – Logan Square was my favorite – it had a lot of used books. I bought the Maisie Dobbs I hadn’t been able to finish as a ebook used for $6, so I could cancel the hold I had on the ebook, which freed me up to put a couple more new things I saw at City Lit on hold.

On Sunday I continued my experiments to make a pumpkin-caramel bundt cake. This one has a cinnamon date filling and no chocolate. It came out better than my fallen last try, but did not have as nice a texture as the with-chocolate version that adhered to Bronwen Wyatt’s original recipe, burnt caramel marble bundt cake, picture 3, more closely, and used reverse creaming.

Before the cake baking, I must’ve made Sunday brunch, but that’s another one I can’t remember what I made. I know I made some pumpkin scones, that neither of ate on Sunday. I put a glaze on them and they got a little melty and I stuck the last 4 in the compost yesterday. Oh wait, I think we had a big spinach and ham and cheese omelet and a few strips of bacon and lots of toast and some fruit. No pictures.

I’ve had several near misses the last week and a half. Like the fallen pumpkin bundt. And the melty scones. And there’s a turkey noodle casserole in the fridge (maybe that’s what I made last Wednesday – oh, it was …. using the sauce from the chicken thigh braise I had made a few days before that didn’t come out nearly as nice as the Ainsley Durose recipe I based it on). And some crispy cheese quesadillas from Monday. The quesadillas were just fine, but the peanut slaw that was supposed to have the crispy rice in it – remember the leftover rice from a week before? Here it is, in its burnt to a crisp format, so it did not go into the slaw, which was OK the first night with the quesadillas, but soggy and unpleasant after that. Maybe it would’ve been better with the rice.

Also on Monday, a really hot and windy day, I went to pick up mulch to spread on the sides of the driveway.

I got the mulch spread out on Tuesday afternoon, after we went to Lunch for Libraries, Madison Public Library’s big fundraiser. There were A LOT of people there – they said it was the biggest one yet, over 900 attendees. We were sitting at Emma’s sister Maggie’s table, but she wasn’t there, and neither was their dad, Steve. The featured author was Abraham Verghese, quoted in #2, above, and he was interviewed by, or in conversation with, as is the style now, another author I like, Rebecca Makkai. Steve actually got me to finish Verghese’s book, The Covenant of Water – I started it a few times before I really got into it, but Steve liked it so that inspired me to continue, and I did like it a lot by the end. One of the main characters, Mariama, who comes out later in the book, is a woman doctor who’s about the same age as Verghese, who’s the same age as me. The book also covers the time Mariama is in medical school, and my dad was a medical educator, as is Verghese, so of course I liked the latter parts of the book.

Then of course we got really heavy rain Thursday and I think the cleaners backed their van up over the the mulch, so it’s washed away and packed down now. I’ll have to go get more.

Jasper came two days this week, because Emma’s parents are away (why Steve wasn’t at Lunch for Libraries). Here’s a big gallery of both days, Wednesday and Friday.

Wednesday after Jasper left we had one of the prettier dinners in awhile, barbecue turkey sandwiches (more of the turkey I thawed for the turkey noodle casserole that is now languishing in the fridge) and a salad.

Wednesday night was also the last session of my cake baking class with Bronwen Wyatt. We made a nice plain chiffon cake, baked in a springform pan. I had never tried that, always used a tube pan for chiffon. It’s a really sturdy but tender cake that you could used for lots of things, trifle, split and filled with something (mine has strawberry filling), piled with fruit and whipped cream as Bronwen does, we even discussed using it as the base for tres leches cake. Bronwen made hers into this gorgeous still life cake with a small platter on top of the cake supported by straws – concealed by the whipped cream, and sugared fruit arranged artfully on top. 

I used a stabilized whipped cream for mine, stabilized with cream cheese, that I used on the 5oth birthday cake, and just threw the fruit on top – no suspended tray. Thursday afternoon we went to see Sinners, and ate cake when we got home. Best movie I’ve seen so far this year.

I think that has to be it for now. We’re going back to Chicago tomorrow, and I do still have pictures from today, when Al & Emma & Jasper came for brunch, our alternative Mothers Day, because we’ll be out of town next week.