Four-Day Weekend

Since our Door County trip was kind of UN-relaxing I took Friday off, treating myself to a four-day labor day weekend. It went pretty OK.

I planned a party for Saturday evening - even my co-hostess Rachael was unable to attend ... so that was either a mistake, or pure genius, since it was a quiet, intimate gathering of about 10 people.

Friday I went for a walk with Rachael in the morning, and then did a combination of hiding out from the cleaners and running errands, and then came home and did a combination of using vegetables from my CSA box, recipe testing, and party prep. I made Romano green beans (the big flat ones) cooked with tomatoes, parsnip souffles & almond cookies (the recipe testing, so I feel not at liberty to discuss these too much; souffles were tasty, cookies less so, and finding parsnips in August in WI was not exactly seasonal eating), pickled beets & eggs, refried beans, focaccia from a King Arthur mix that I got free in an order, and set to rise a long rise, almost no-knead loaf with nuts & raisins, a King Arthur Flour variant on the Jim Lahey/Mark Bittman bread.

On Saturday, we slept late, went to the farmers' market, and then I drove to Milwaukee to pick up Al - he moved into the dorms at UW-Milwaukee on Wednesday, and wanted to come back for a party Saturday.

Saturday evening, party - full menu:

• layered dip: corn salsa, refried beans, cheese
• focaccia spread w/goat cheese-mascarpone blend, pesto & roast peppers
• breads, crackers, cheeses with fresh figs
• pickled beets & eggs
• carrots, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, radishes, & herb dip

sweets:

• almond cookies
• cheesecake squares with fresh raspberries
• brownies, garnished with strawberries
• musk melon, and red & yellow watermelon

I've been giving food away, so the main leftiver to deal with at the moment is veggies & dip. <grin>

On Sunday, I made a deal with Al & John - I drove Al as far as Waukesha, and John drove out to meet us - there is a giant Steinhafels furniture on one side of I-94, and an American TV on the other - so we could go furniture shopping for John, and then he could take Al the rest of the way to Beer Town, as well as using Al to help him get his purchase up the steps. We got John a coffee table and a TV stand - the Steinhafels was amusement park size.
Sunday night Mark and I ate quesadillas made with the corn salsa & refried beans and went to see Bourne Ultimatum

Monday was the day of no deadlines, but I didn't feel very good - I walked in the morning, but felt like I never ate the right things, had a headache, sweated a lot in the evening - hot flashes? or the 89 degree heat? I did transfer the settings from my old eMac to my newer iMac, that I bought over a year ago and never used, 'cuz it was up at Mark's. And we took the eMac and the super-duper Weber grill that Mark gave me for my birthday over to School Woods, so we can use both sides of the garage for cars now. I made almond topped peach-strawberry crisp and drank white wine, and we went to bed on the early side.

Our corner wine shop and grocery coop were also a disappointment - the $9 Pinot Grigio from the wine shop had a dry cork and was un-drinkable, and the ice cream from the grocery to go with the crisp was icey on top.

Probably the most satisfying thing is that I have summer bracketing images now:
rhubarb crisp from memorial day,

peach strawberry from labor day.