Let’s just talk about food and weather

Since we’ve been back from New York, we’ve done a few cultural things, Chicago Symphony, Madison Symphony, oh, and we went to see The Devil wears Prada 2 on the day of the Met Gala, May 4th this year. So we had a whole day of watching fashion and wretched excess. And I did very much like the Amazon workers alternative red carpet outside the museum. And Amy Sherald, dressed as her own painting, outdid anyone else’s interpretation of the Costume as Art theme, even Heidi Klum’s marble statue.

We came home from the movie and had assorted leftovers for dinner, some photographed, some not. Roasted asparagus, roasted beets, hoppin’ John (frozen since New Year’s), ramp pesto pasta that Mark thought was too thick & gloppy, leftover breakfast pizza from the day Mark got bit by the dog (more on that in a minute), must’ve been April 26, the last Sunday in April. The leftover asparagus was leftover from a dinner of roasted chicken and the hoppin’ John, that was I think was last Saturday before the Madison Symphony.

Which brings us to last weekend’s cooking. The aforementioned beets, rhubarb scones, rhubarb tart. I updated my rhubarb scones recipe based on this new research. The tart was good the day it was made, but quickly thereafter, the rhubarb strips on top started to taste too tart and too stringy. It’s Nicola Lamb’s recipe, based on a French grandmere named Monique’s recipe. I loved how it went together and the crust was crisp, but the crust I used for the week before’s rhubarb slab tart was better. Flakier and sweeter. 

Here’s a pic of Nicola’s – not sure if you’ll be able to read her recipe on Substack. I will try this again with other fruits as summer progress. Cherries or peaches would be really nice, or apples.

We got back from our New York and NYC trip late on Wednesday the 22nd. The first thing I cooked was brown butter chocolate chip cookies, partly this NYT Cooking recipe from a recipe-a-day tear off calendar that Rach, and partly mine (the flour amount). I wanted to have something to give to the neighbors when I went to pay their kid for feeding the cats while we were away. And some for us. No pics. Scrolling all the way back to the weekend after that, the last weekend in April, I made breakfast pizza and salad for breakfast that Sunday.   

And Mark came home with a dog bite, a youngster pit bull on a leash bit him while he was walking on the bike path. Monday we went together to the Urgent Care to get his arm looked at and I got a blood test to tell the docs what the diuretic they’d put me on for high blood pressure was doing to my electrolytes. The diuretic, which oh by the way, I felt pretty good taking AND it actually lowered my blood pressure, caused my sodium to drop by 5 points after being on it three weeks, so they took me off that and prescribed a calcium channel blocker which I took for 6 days, and it made me feel terrible, AND raised my blood pressure. So I got to stop the calcium channel blocker late last week, another blood test next Tuesday. All of which is going to give me what I kind of wanted – a week or two on nothing to see what happens. So far I feel OK and am back to my normal, which is too high for the docs, only a few points into the danger zone, like 133/79. But we’re talking about food and weather, not ailments. 

And Mark’s arm. Since he went to the Urgent Care, the dog got reported to the city’s animal control office, but the owners had already let us know the dog was current on his rabies shots. And since Mark’s bite got reported the dog has been quarantined for rabies and that’s all done and it’s all OK.

On the Tuesday of that week, still April, we went to Milwaukee to see Waxahatchee & MJ Lenderman. Really nice seated acoustic show, Katie Crutchfield on guitar, vocals, and some percussion type things; MJ Lenderman on guitar and vocals; Colin Croom on lap steel, guitar, harmonica, and vocals; and Cole Berggren on keyboard and banjo.

And back to our designated food topic, dinner at Honeypie in Bay View. I had a tofu bahn mi, and Mark had a burger, and we split a piece of rhubarb pie.

Also during those last couple days of April, I tried out a recipe for quick sourdough discard bagels. Found online @healingslice. I think they might’ve had a better flavor if they fermented longer but no shade on Samantha – the recipe worked exactly as promised and I had nice bagels in only about two hours. And they kept pretty well in the fridge, too. 

And we ate them for brunch with scrambled eggs with asparagus and fingerling potatoes.

On May 1st, (the Friday before the Sunday brunch above) we went to Chicago for the symphony and had lunch at Bistro Monadnock before the show. French bistro food in a pretty cushy setting. It’s been there for a long time, but we’re usually going to places on the other side of the building, the Dearborn side, like Intelligensia or the departed Jacobs Brothers Bagels that got me into the building for the first times in the ’90s, and the Bistro is on the Federal St. side. 

Somewhere in there, I tried put making eggless egg salad. It was pretty good.

For the weather part of our discussion, here’re some photos of surviving spring flowers. It’s been so up and down, we’ve had least 3 frost warnings since the end of April. 

And back to food – I took Jasper to McDonalds. Old MacDonald’s he calls it. It was kind of a rainy cold day, and it had an indoor play place. If I ever take him there again, I’m not getting a Happy Meal. I’ll get hm fries and a chocolate milk. He just throws out the hamburger, and he was disappointed with the toy because he had one already. Some little star thing from the Mario movie. He took it pretty well – I guess Al has explained to him about how you just have to take your chances with Happy Meal toys.

A few last food photos:

Next up, Mother’s Day foods and flowers.