And what about food?

Of course we’ve been eating, but I’ve been cheating a bit on cooking, meaning salads and sandwiches and leftovers, because of the heat. Let’s see if I can remember a few things, since I have to go back about 2 weeks.

I’ve managed to cook almost all the double-CSA-box veggies, except the cucumbers. I composted 2 1/2 slimy ones last Tuesday. Which was my mom’s 21st jahrzeit and Al & Emma’s 8th wedding anniversary.  Mark and I had sandwiches and crudités for dinner, how I discovered the slimy cucumbers, because I thought cuke slices would be part of our crudites, with ranch dip and peanut sauce, and a cheese & cracker plate with aged Gouda and Carr Valley Mobay and local white cheddar. And lit a candle and raised a glass to Ruth, mine full of local hard cider and Mark’s fizzy water. No pictures, though. Here’s one from last year. We lit the RBG candle (made by Jo Jensen) this year too.

I did use up all the zucchini and summer squash. Rach was here and there’re a number of things she doesn’t eat because they’re inflammatory, like onions, garlic, black pepper, tomatoes. I made a caramelized zucchini pasta with the last two zucchini and the 2nd fennel bulb, omitting onions and garlic, and it was delicious. I based it on the recipe below, which uses double the amount of zucchini to pasta. I used about 1 1/4 pounds of zucchini to a half pound of pasta, and I could’ve used more. I left the summer squash out and cooked it with onions and cheese and breadcrumbs a few days later, but it could’ve gone into the pasta. I also omitted the pasta cooking water because there was enough juice from the zucchini.

One of the best things I cooked while Rach was here was a corn and black bean salad. This is a pic of the leftovers, which I keep meaning to eat for lunch but there’s always something else I want instead. Tonight’s going to be a leftover night so I’ll haul the salad out and see if it’s edible or compost. (PS, it was still good and we ate it)

One of the days when Rach was here – I think it was probably Friday – our bananas got too ripe so I made muffins. I used a banana cake recipe, and threw in a little coconut and some lime zest. The coconut was good, but you couldn’t taste the lime. Mark liked them, but as you can see we had a lot so I took some with me when I went to the Farmers Market Saturday morning to give to the DCFM staff. And good thing too – possibly the the muffins were extra welcome because that was the farmers market that was rainy, but also there was lightening so the staff had to go tell all the vendors to take their tents down, and stop selling until there was an all-clear. Which happened maybe 30-45 minutes after I left and went to shop at the co-op instead.

I realize I also made some carrot cake scones one day in there, because Jasper likes them. They’re a King Arthur recipe that showed up on my oven display last year and I thought I’d try them. I think it was around the time that I tried Bronwen Wyatt’s carrot cake blondies and I liked those even better. Although Bronwen posted the blondies in late August and the scones seem to be from January. No pics of the current batch, but I’m sure they looked like these except I just put coarse sugar on the top instead of frosting.

Back when I was working, I used to bike past my neighbors sitting drinking coffee in their screen porch and think that’s  what I wanted to do when I retired. Hang out in the morning, drink coffee in my pajamas, putter around the kitchen. I don’t do it very often but last Thursday I didn’t have to be anywhere until 11:00, so I made these cherry muffins. Mark didn’t like them, so I think the pleasure of a show start to the morning was what my mom used to call NOT an unalloyed joy. I froze some of the muffins, and this morning (Tuesday) I composted the last two that had gone moldy. It has been really hot.  

Later on Thursday afternoon I met Maria at Giant Jones to look at Dan Slick’s art, and try the strawberry soda made with Tipi strawberries. It’s really good.

This morning was also one where I could putter around in the kitchen and made these maple blueberry muffins that we’ve had before.

Mark likes them. And the recipe’s for six jumbo muffins, so it only makes nine regular size. A smaller batch so hopefully we’ll eat them before they go moldy.

We have plenty of blueberries, because this week, I bought my annual box at the farmers market. Only a 5-pound box this year, or about 5 pints. I made blueberry compote (Mark’s not interested), but I like it in yogurt and I think Jasper will, too. We had blueberry pancakes for breakfast on Sunday, everybody likes those. The muffins today, and there’s a quart in the freezer, and we’re eating the rest.

It was our weekend of women singers.

Kiki did a nice intro, talking about working on the NYT Connections puzzle, with women singers last names as the category, including Swift which made Kiki think of Emma. Which set up Emma to tell a joke about how there was a period of time when she and Taylor both lived in Nashville and had British boyfriends and Scottish Fold cats.

Then Sunday night, after the pancakes, we went to Milwaukee to see Lucy Dacus.

We had dinner at DanDan before. Dumplings, noodles, and a chicken dish. All spicy, no pictures.

Sunday afternoon before we left for Lucy Dacus, I stopped by a friend’s 70th birthday gathering at the Union Terrace, and they took a picture of me that is so unflattering, I look like a toad, I had to post a rebuttal Monday morning, wearing black, so of course I look slimmer. The camera does lie from time to time, you can decide which pic it’s doing it in.

Monday night we had this pasta I’d been wanting make, half/half red & green pasta. I had some mixed greens pesto in the fridge that I wanted to get used. I don’t think it had any basil in it, I’m pretty sure it was arugula and turnip greens and maybe spinach. I’d also wanted to try making a grated tomatoes pasta sauce. I’ve seen various versions of the recipe around, and there’s one in Hailee Catalano’s By Heart cookbook that I recently bought (and on her website) though I left out the anchovies and basil. I bought some heirloom tomatoes at the market, and I made it a 3-ingredient sauce: the grated tomatoes, olive oil, and garlic. It was a little seedy, but sweet and delicious.

On Saturday, after I bought the blueberries, I volunteered at the farmers market, and they let me take off a bit early to beat the rain. I brought my purchases home, and later after the rain stopped and it got hot, I biked to run a few errands. Including returning the slippery iPhone case – more on that in a minute. And then after all that, I met Beth from Tipi at Giant Jones and had another glass of that good strawberry soda. 

Saturday night there was a lot of stuff going on, but I didn’t do any of it because I was babysitting Jasper so Al & Emma could go out for their 8th anniversary. I think they had a good time, but they got home a good bit earlier than expected because none of the friends they thought might meet them for a drink after dinner wanted to come out. Mark was going to come over with sandwiches from Alimentari. I got Jasper to bed a little before 8:00 and called Mark and said, “OK, c’mon over”, but 5 minutes later Emma called and said they be home by 8:30. So we had our sandwiches at home.

Beth gave me a melon and a cucumber and I ate some of them for breakfast after yoga on Tuesday, along with a Tipi watermelon I got at the co-op.

Saturday’s ride when I returned the iPhone case was one of several I did the last couple of days in the heat. Thursday my bike ride was based on my day being turned around a bit, because a zoom meeting that was supposed to happen Wednesday for me to meet the new Associate Dean for Communications & Advancement at the UW-Libraries got messed up. The person who set up the zoom meeting and sent me a link was not onsite and the others in the meeting, who were at the library, created their own link. So when I, after leaving Jasper’s bug class early and rushing him home and getting him set up with playdough with Mark, logged in, my link worked fine, but I was the only one there. The associate dean is the boss of the Friends administrator, who’s basically my boss as the Friends book donations volunteer, so I kinda wanted to meet them. And, long story short, the Friends admin is retiring and the new one’s yet to be hired. So, Thursday morning was my big chance to meet with the retiring Friends admin and get caught up on what had happened in the meeting I missed. Afterwards, since the cleaners were at my house, I biked out to Hilldale and had my lunch in the seating area at the grocery store. Then I went to the Apple store to get a new iPhone case to replace my chipped one. Since my phone is a 14Plus and they’re pushing everyone to later models, there weren’t very many fun colors, so I opted for a clear lilac-colored case. Which turned out to be so slippery that I returned it on Saturday for a storm blue silicone case that’s less likely to slip off the book I’m carrying my phone on top of, or out from under my arm. I felt kind of dumb for going to the Apple store and paying $50 for a case, when I could’ve bought one online for like $17. But if it turned out to be a piece of crap it’d be way harder to return than Apple one was. Why Apple has everyone by the balls.

Friday’s bike ride was better. About 9 miles. I went on the bike path as far as the Beltline and checked out a little park maybe I can take Jasper to sometime. A good bike trailer destination because it’s all on bike path. Then to the library to return a book, and finally to Whole Foods for bananas & fruit. Google maps had a good route for me to get from Sequoya over to Whole Foods on back streets.

Monday afternoon, still hot, I biked to Whole Foods and Target and Walgreens and spent about $100 on all manner of crap like hair clips and Tylenol and batteries and more bananas and bandaids. It seems like they don’t make the kind of hair clips I like anymore, plain straight plastic tortoise-shell-colored clips that you can use as a regular pony tail or to hold a small knot or other twisted up-do, up. Below are the closest I could find at Walgreens.

And speaking of Jasper here’re a few iced tea party pics from Wednesday. He said tea party water is special yummy water.

And oh yea, it was moth day at bug class.

Written while it’s 90+ degrees outside and the Trump administration lacky appointed as head of EPA ais trying to overthrow the EPA’s air quality control standards. And the weather report is dangerous air quality the rest of the week.