I guess it's been a busy week

I seem to have not written since last Sunday. And a quick review of the calendar looks like, yeah, there were a lot of meetings, Dr. appt.s & other miscellaneous time-taking activities this week -

John was in town for his spring break - I think he had some good days, in amidst the haircut, dentist and eye doc appointments that we scheduled for him. He brought along a large format camera from school - the thing was huge - with a bellows, and he even had to duck under a black cloth to slide the film in. He got some good shots - he thinks - of abandoned and run-down buildings and even took a picture of me in the driveway yesterday, right before I left for Chicago - more on that in a minute.

I had a dinner at the supper club house, with 16 eaters, plus 2 cute 4-year-old twin girls. I made beef stew, and vegetable stew, both delicious - the beef from an old Gourmet recipe; it's nothing but meat and pearl onions; I used fountain prairie chuck roast that I cubed up myself. The vegetable was adapted from a Deborah Madison - winter vegetable stew with sunchokes/Jerusalem artichokes - I don't like them so I left 'em out, the stew had taters, carrots, celery, turnips, parsnip, whole garlic cloves, a little tomato paste, and a persillade of garlic & parsley (tho Deborah did not call it that) tossed in at the last minute - I cut down on the wine in it, and used my good vegetable stock instead of water. The main downside was that all week, we were like the house of stew - I made the veggie broth Monday night, and the stew Tuesday night, so all of our clothes and towels still have an onion-y smell.

I made two kinds of slaw - regular creamy cole slaw, that I have been perfecting (recipe follows, Real Soon Now) and another Deborah Madison adaptation; purple cabbage stirfried with purple onions, and tossed with apples, sherry vinegar, feta, toasted walnuts, parsley & marjoram - I found that I do not care for marjoram, either. Rounded out the menu with Edna Lewis potato rolls - I think I had too much potato in them - so the dough did not have enough gluten & structure to rise rise right - they were a little flat, but still delicious. I also made Jame Beard via Marion Cunningham cream biscuits - they were perfect, except I had to run up and bake them in my renter's oven, since the downstairs one is not getting hot - good thing I have a dryer repair guy coming next week he can do the oven, too!

Clean out the freezer fruit crips, blueberries, peaches, and rhubarb, with a buttery, oat-y, nutmegy, brown sugary streusel, mixed and crumbled over while I was on the phone with one of my grad students, who was trying to figure out if she could transfer in 2 credits for a mentoring program that she has to do as a job requirement, to apply them to her M.A.

And what was that about Chicago - Friday I had to make sure John made his eye doc at 10:20, teach a class from noon to 2:30, and be in Chicago by 6:30 - I made it by 6:45, anyways, the traffic just crawled from DesPlaines on; I thought about ditching the interstate and taking one of my through town ways, like when I lived here, but I always seemed to be too far to the left when the exits came up ...

Now I gotta get out and see if the river's green - and I hear the St. Pat's parade is on Michigan Ave, as am I.