Friday Randomness

Today’s post is one of those potpourri type posts, where I have some ideas, but haven’t gotten around to putting them in their own blog posts, so I am going to lump them all together.

Ted and Maya were away last week.  Ted’s aunt, who lives in Salt Lake City, had a stroke last year.  His mom wanted to go visit her, but of course she could not, due to COVID restrictions.  Earlier this year, his mom fell and fractured her foot.  It is mostly healed now, but Ted and his brother weren’t thrilled with the idea of her traveling alone.  She is nearing her mid-80s, and is extremely active, but still.  Their mom wanted to go for about 10 days, which was too long for Ted or his brother, Steve.  So Steve decided to fly to Salt Lake with her and stay for the first 5 days, and Ted would fly out and stay the next 5 days, and fly home with her.  They lived in Utah for 5 years when Ted was a child, and Maya has never been, so he decided to make a vacation out of it and take her along.  They had a good time, went to Park City and Sundance, saw his old houses and schools, visited family and met up with old friends.  Plans coming home went awry, though, as his Mom’s flight was full, so Ted and Maya were booked on a separate airline.  They were scheduled pretty close in time, so the plan was for them to all go to the airport together, and then meet up at the airport here and come home together on BART (our local transit, which goes directly from San Francisco airport to a station across the street from our house.  It’s not fast, well over an hour, but it gets the job done.)  Well, her flight was cancelled, so she had to book another one and flew home a good 6 hours before they did.  Airport was fine, but she had some trouble figuring out the new ticketing on BART, and she had to switch trains closer to her house, etc.  So the whole point of them going was wasted.  But it was nice for them to get away, and he was able to show Maya that beautiful state, and see family and friends and so on.   Anyway, my point is, they were gone.

So it was just me and Mulder for the week.  I had some friends over for dinner one night, and I made linguine and clams. Ted is low carb these days, and Maya hates linguine and clams.  It felt SO NICE to have people over, all of us fully vaccinated, no masks, just visiting and having a good time.  My linguine and clams recipe is pretty basic old school, no fresh clams or wine or anything fancy like that.  Maybe I’ll post the recipe sometime, though probably not because I sort of did about 14 years ago, here.  I say sort of because that was just my memory working, and the actual recipe is a little bit different. (Actually, looking at it, the only thing that is different is that the recipe does not call for oregano.  I have the cookbook now, as I ordered it when I wrote that post, way back in 2006.)

Another night I had a baked potato and green salad for dinner, which I loved, and is not something Ted and Maya would really enjoy.  I washed the dog (as you saw in the pictures).  I worked and walked the dog, like I always do.  I didn’t cook much or do much laundry.  One night, I picked Steve up from the train station (he decided to take the train home instead of fly, he loves trains) and we went to dinner.  Another night, I went to dinner downtown with my friend Neva.  I haven’t seen Neva since January or February of 2020.  I haven’t eaten in a restaurant since March of 2020.  So these were big things, and all of it felt REALLY GOOD.  Both dinners, we ate outside, I’m not sure about eating indoors yet.  It was great to see her and give her a big hug.  She and her family had COVID late last year, and she still has some symptoms and isn’t completely over it.  But she felt safe going out, and since I’m vaccinated, I decided to be brave and do it.  I’m glad I did.

New bloggy friend Jonathan wrote recently about perhaps going in to London with his daughter, for the first time in ages.  They were going to go to a comic book store, and I mentioned in my comment that I sometimes enjoy graphic novels, but haven’t read any lately.  He recommended a graphic novel I might enjoy, This One Summer by cousins Mariko and Jillian Tamaki.  Happily, my local library has a copy, so I was able to read it.  Here’s a blurb from the publisher’s website.

Every summer, Rose goes with her mom and dad to a lake house in Awago Beach. It’s their getaway, their refuge. Rosie’s friend Windy is always there, too, like the little sister she never had. But this summer is different. Rose’s mom and dad won’t stop fighting, and when Rose and Windy seek a distraction from the drama, they find themselves with a whole new set of problems. One of the local teens – just a couple of years older than Rose and Windy – is caught up in something bad… Something life threatening.

It’s a summer of secrets, and sorrow, and growing up, and it’s a good thing Rose and Windy have each other.

This One Summer is a tremendously exciting new teen graphic novel from two creators with true literary clout. Cousins Mariko and Jillian Tamaki, the team behind Skim, have collaborated on this gorgeous, heartbreaking, and ultimately hopeful story about a girl on the cusp of childhood – a story of renewal and revelation.

Thank you Jonathan for the recommendation, it was great to get back into this genre, and the story itself was quite moving.

One thing I enjoy around here is going to our local Famers’ Markets.  We have several, and they have different vendors.  One of the vendors on the Saturday morning market is a group of French nuns that sell pastries, and a few weeks ago I bought a delicious little cake called a Breton cake.  Some recipes I have seen online seem to confuse it with a Kouign Amann, which it most definitely is NOT.  The Breton cake I had was small and dense and buttery, not too sweet, with a hint of raspberry jam in the middle.  Like a cross between a shortbread and a cake.  It looked a lot like the picture above, though with a bit of jam inside, and no fresh strawberries on top.  Picture and recipe found here.

Kouign Amann (picture from our trip to France in 2018) is closer to a croissant or a puff pastry, and we saw some beautiful ones in Brittany when we were there.  I have only had one once, in San Francisco, and it was too sweet and rich for me.  Maybe it would have been better to get one in France, but I had just eaten a delicious savory crepe, and wasn’t really tempted.

(Looking at this picture, it occurs to me (not for the first time) that our everyday dishes are really dated. We got them as a wedding gift in 1993, and they really look like it. Someday I will replace them with something stark white, methinks.)

Another vendor at the Saturday market has pasta and sauces, and in planning my meals for when Ted and Maya were gone, I decided to buy myself some wild mushroom ravioli.  Again, Ted is low carb, and Maya hates mushrooms, so this would be something that only I would eat.  I considered making it with a lovely Alfredo sauce, or perhaps some pesto, but decided that I really just wanted to taste the mushrooms and pasta, so I made a simple sauce of my own.  While the ravioli were cooking, I sautéed some garlic in some butter and olive oil…then I added a handful of spinach, a couple of small diced tomatoes, a bit of white wine, and finished it with pine nuts and basil, and of course some grated Parmesan on top.  It was delicious with a Caesar salad on the side.

Also that week, our favorite handyman came by to install a new fan in our bathroom, and ceiling fans in our bedrooms.  He finished the bathroom fan, and was up in the attic working on the wiring for the ceiling fans, when he cut his hand, requiring him to stop work and go to urgent care to get 3 stitches in his thumb.  That was Thursday.  Thankfully he was feeling better a couple of days later and came back on Saturday to finish the job.  So now we have ceiling fans in our bedrooms, which we are really enjoying, especially since we’ve had some hot days this last weekend…98 one day, 94 or so the next.  We still needed the air conditioner, but the fans did make it easier to keep the upstairs cool.  Which led to a discussion of whether to leave them on upstairs when we were all downstairs, to circulate the air.  It made sense to both of us that circulating the air would be a good thing, but all of our reading online says no, don’t leave them on, it’s a waste of energy.  Fans don’t cool rooms, fans cool people.  Whatever.  So we are not leaving them on when we are downstairs, as tempting as that might be.

Last, regarding the picture of the flower at the top of this post, there are bushes of these poppies nearby, and one morning as Mulder and I were walking by, I saw them and thought…blouses. As in, the Dave Chappelle skit, which is based on a true story of a basketball game with Charlie Murphy (Eddie Murphy’s brother) and Prince. You can see the hilarious skit here, and read the true story, here. It’s worth your time. I posted on Facebook about ‘blouses’ popping into my head when I looked at that lovely flower, and someone said the flower reminded her of Jerry’s puffy shirt, which I also totally see.