Oddly satisfying

This week, I've been using up party leftovers - starting with simply eating stuff like cocktail meatballs and wienies in poppin' dough for lunch - and proceeding to poppin' dough pizza topped with the canned pizza sauce I bought to go with the stromboli, that we ate on Sunday night, late for supper, after I packed cookie boxes all afternoon (and it was a different climate back then - rain).

Monday, I think it was, I made a pasta with broccoli sauteed in white wine (several open bottles of wine left, of course), some pureed butternut squash (for the Cafe Flora-style Quesadillas, I used the necks of the squash, cubed and roasted; I baked the bulbs of the squashes at the same time and got about 1 1/2 cups of good puree), a little cream, and lots of parmesan cheese.

On Thursday, when everyone in Madison was in crazed snow warning phase (kinda like what my brother experienced in Seattle a few days before), though the foot of snow did not actually start falling until about 1:00 a.m. Friday morning, I had a women's group meeting at the house, and they had a lovely spread: Heidi's onion dip with chips and crackers and carrots, beauty heart radishes and a handful of grape tomatoes; hot artichoke dip with toasted pita triangles (both dips left from the party, but I added a little onto the volume of each); a torta, made from the last of the marinated goat cheese, ricotta, pesto and what was left in the jar of juliened sun-dried tomatoes; banana bread sandwiches with cream cheese; a fruit platter with the pomeganate I never put out; and of course, a cookie platter. Oh, yeah and a little baked Brie with cranberry chutney inside that puffed up quite nicely even after being stored in the fridge for almost a week, and looking dried out - I brushed it with water all over, to soften up the puff paste so it could really puff. I took most of the food over Wednesday night, so I could bus on Thursday - and cleaned up when I went over to shovel on Friday.

Friday I made peanut noodles with a topping of crispy tofu with finely sliced leeks, radishes, celery and peppers, polishing off the last of the peanut dip, and the last of the dip veggies.

And somehow, I have also been able to construct platter after platter of cookies to take to events like the two tough meetings I had, the one Tuesday night that went way late, and I had to drive home in snow, and Wednesday, midday. On Saturday, I even sent off one last cookie box to John & Al's dad, so the kids don't have to cram cookies into their luggage when they head for California tomorrow.