After Labor Day

I just ate my first and probably only Diane’s Dad’s summer sandwich of the summer of 2026 – last year looks like it was July. Made on slices of my most recent loaf of honey whole wheat that still did not rise as high as I thought it should but the taste and texture are good (evidently last year’s bread was better, too). This year’s sandwich was eaten on the day after Labor Day, and it was a late Labor Day, September 7. More evidence of what an F’ed summer this has been.

Somehow I thought I would finish this post yesterday, the Thursday after Labor Day, but of course most of my time was spent on cleaning out the 500 marketing emails I got over Labor Day and former Friends of the Libraries stuff. I won’t go into all that here but suffice it to say that the fun of opening up donated boxes of books has been eclipsed by administrivia and worry, since January when we got kicked out of the Library.

But we did do some fun stuff, kind of holiday-ish, for Labor Day weekend.

Friday night I made cherry tomato pasta with Mollie Katzen’s tofu balls that I hadn’t made for years, probably not since I had school woods. As I recall, I made the ‘fu balls to be the little meatballs in vegan Italian wedding soup. I baked them and they got much browner on one side. I think they look like eyeballs.

Saturday I volunteered at the Farmers Market info booth. I bought 10 pounds of San Marzano tomatoes and of course some got squashed in my panniers on the way home, so I decided I best process them right away. I also gt some nice red peppers so I roasted two of them and made pizza sauce with some of the tomatoes and peeled and froze the rest. I had some pizza crusts in the freezer from back in June, and I made two pizzas, one with the red sauce and mozzarella and fresh mozzarella and provolone, and the other with potatoes and mustard and caramelized onions and one brat, sliced thin. And topped with grated mozzarella and provolone. No pics of the pizza, but here’s the sauce simmering, and processed tomatoes. You can kind of see what I’ve been reading, Emma Straub’s American Fantasy. A good summer book about a cruise with a boy band. And, sounds like the movie is on the way, being developed by Elisabeth Moss. Now I’ve started Free Food for Millionaires, the first in Min Jin Lee’s trilogy. I was afraid it’d be a harder read and it is more serious, I guess, but still really readable.

On Labor Day itself, after Mark and I went for a walk, I started the day with a mom brekkie, finishing odds & ends nobody else wanted. A few fresh figs, the tops of the last two zucchini muffins (with fresh cream cheese), a handful of sungolds, and the last cubes of muskmelon and watermelon.  

Emma’s parents had a picnic. I made chocolate chip & mini M&M cookies that got inhaled even faster than I thought they would, and veggie burgers, a Justine Doiron recipe, tofu and zucchini and really pretty good, better be, I paid $3.50 for a month of her supper club to get it. And a classic potato salad that’s the only thing I took pictures of. Garnished with sliced egg and paprika.

Not sure if I like the arty one with shadows or the one with the blind down and diffused light, better.

Sunday I made two apple desserts: apple brown betty with bread crumbs, to try to use up some of the heavy, gummy sourdough I’ve been making; and Smitten Kitchen’s cider donut cake that also happens to be vegan.

 

The cider donut cake is a better keeper – still good today (Friday), cold from the fridge. The apple brown betty had a better apple-y taste, it’s just the bread crumbs weren’t as good as actual streusel. As a service to the world I picked out all the apples and composted the rest, late Labor Day night when we got back from the picnic.

Wednesday was a Jasper day, and started off rainy so we went to the expensive indoor play place by Rocky Rococo’s. We had lunch at Rocky’s where he ate exactly one slice of the pepperoni off his pizza and the juice box, and started the Teddy Grahams, and I brought the rest home. When Emma dropped him off he had a bag of Cheetos with him that he wanted to eat for breakfast but all of the adults were saying he had to eat some real food first. He had some corn flakes and we watched Minions and I put the Cheetos up on a shelf  and he forgot about them. Minions is long and he ate a big bowl of yogurt & rhubarb and seconds, so I guess he got some “healthy” food. When we got back from the play place, I tried to tempt him with the pizza for second lunch, but instead he had some chips, a slice of the honey wheat bread with butter and cream cheese, the Cheetos, and the  rest of the Teddy Grahams. Sometimes in the morning when he’s grumpy I think he’s actually hungry but doesn’t know it. Hangry maybe.

And now, it’s September 11th, 25 years since it happened. Everyone’s talking about where they were and what they remember of the day. I was driving to Neenah Public Library, because I was serving as a consultant to help them with a big photo collection they had; I think it’s now the Dresser History Room. Anyway, I was hearing about the planes hitting the Towers on the radio while I was driving, and did not realize the planes were hijacked passenger jets with people on them until I got to the library and everyone was talking about it. Things started feeling funny on the drive. I stopped for gas and the power was out at the gas station/convenience store where I stopped. It was just a coincidence, but the person working there had a transistor radio playing and was listening to reports from NYC. I didn’t see any pictures of the planes hitting until we went to lunch and the Chinese restaurant, a library staff favorite, had the TVs over the bar tuned in. We suddenly didn’t feel like lunch, and I headed home to be there before John & Al got home from school. John was trying to call their dad. He lived in San Francisco, but his cell phone was a New York number because he worked for Universal Records at the time, and that was the number they gave him, and as a lot of people remember, cell phone calls to NYC were all jammed up for several days.

I liked this remembrance about her dad from Bess Kalb.

And this was always my favorite tribute, the lights. I guess they did it with drones this year.

And oh, I almost forgot – another fun thing. Jasper got this new little camera, and is taking a lot of cool pictures with it (and Al & Emma are using it too). I bought one for myself to take to England. Mine’s yellow. We shall see what my little camera photos come out like.