YCGL - Saturday, April 15, 2023 - Catching Up Since the Las Vegas Trip

Just so you know, this was my first attempts and the later ones looked a lot better.

Wow!  It's been a while since I've talked to you last and there's a lot to catch up on.  

I got home from Vegas on Saturday, March 18 late.  I got to church and spent the day emptying and cleaning the trailer and doing laundry.  I had my Aggregate workshop that Monday-Wednesday and continued working on the trailer and truck and the house.  And my Chevy Sonic has been sitting at the dealership for two months now and no word on when the missing part may come in.   

Tuesday night, the Cowgirls played in the second round of the NIT Tournament and I had invited a Joe and Joe Jr, over for pizza, and Joe invited another friend of ours also.  The only problem was that the game started at 5:00 and I had a Aggregate Review Session at 6:30.  Sadly, the women must have hit the wall by then and didn't play well at all against a revved up Kansas State team.  I missed the last quarter of the game and when I finished, everyone had gone home.  Still, it was a great season and they are only losing two super "superseniors", so things look good for them next year.  On the other hand, men's team is finished the season with just three carry-over players from this year, the other either graduating or transferring out on the portal.  Our Center-Guard, who was picked as the Mountain West pre-season player of the year, who hurt his foot in an exhibition game before the season started and broke his ankle and didn't play a single game this year, transferred out in the portal and got a signing bonus of $300,000.  You wish there was some loyalty there, but you can't blame him either.  

Friday noon, we had the Laramie Engineers Club monthly luncheon.  And it started to hit on Friday afternoon.  

I was exhausted.  I went to bed early and slept until noon on Saturday.  I stayed in around the house the rest of that day, Woke up at 7:30(A.M.!)  on Sunday to get ready for church and fell back to sleep.   I had the alarm also set for 9:00 just in case I did, and I was able to watch church on my phone and went right back to sleep after it was over.  (That is significant, because there have been very few days in the past 35 years that I have missed church when I've been in town.)  We had a church dinner Sunday night and I slept through that and woke up on Monday morning starting to feel like a humanoid again.  Never sick, no temperature, no Covid, just tired.  At least I made it through the workshop the preceding week.  

I'm sure a lot happened the following week, because I was busy, but I don't remember.  

Which should get us to Holy Week, I hope.  Palm Sunday was different this year.  In the Lutheran Liturgical calendar, Palm Sunday has two topics, Jesus' entrance into Jerusalem where the crowd put palm branches on the road, and Good Friday (I think for those who won't make service on Friday night).  But apparently, there has been a trend in Lutheran congregations to separate those two by moving Palm Sunday a week earlier to Palm Sunday (Observed).  So, there weren't any palms on Palm Sunday, which seemed really strange.  Passover is on Maundy Thursday and that's when we give they younger kids the opportunity to receive communion.  I was talking to some friends after the service and one of them invited me for Easter dinner at 2:00.  I had found a good Italian bread recipe in February and I volunteered to bring a loaf of bread to go with the ham and fixings.  When I got home, I got a phone call from another church family who invited me to their place for grilled brisket on Saturday. "Great, what can I bring?"  Cornbread sounded like a good addition.  So, Saturday was Bread Day.

I wanted to make the Italian bread on Saturday just to be sure it was going to work.  The recipe actually makes 2 to 3 loaves, so I made two large ones and a small one for me.  And they came out just fine.  I'm getting better as I'm learning (and remembering) some of the tricks of bread making.  I remember dad's mom making four loaves on Monday's and Thursday's (I think), no recipe and so good.  Of course, she had done that for 50+ years by that point that I would remember, so yeah, she was good at it.  

This is not what I made for the dinner.  This was my first batch from February.  The later ones look a lot better.

I was going to use an old traditional recipe for the cornbread.   

I wanted to bake it later in the afternoon so that it would be warm when I got to their house.  So I read on the back of Marie Calendar Cornbread Mix bag that I could substitute 1-1/2 cups milk for 1-1/2 cups water.  I use skim milk, but I figured it would still add a little something to the mix.  It also said that you could add a small can of drained corn which I did also.  Mixed everything up, poured it into a 9"x9" Corning glass baking dish [that had been mom's that I retrieved from the kitchen (along with the good set of knives that we bought because I was sick and tired of using mom's old cheap, dull knives when I cooked at her house.)]  I put it into the oven at the right temperature and checked the package again to check the time, which I already knew was 30 minutes because of the wanting it to be warmed at 6:00.  But as I read the package, I saw it said to reduce the amount of water/milk by 1/2 a cup...which I didn't do.  The batter wasn't moist, it was wet.  30 minutes passed and the batter clung to the toothpick like it was superglue.  Add 5 more minutes.  The toothpick came out lumpy, but at least with some, kind of, texture.  Add 5 more minutes, Slight improvement, but still about to drip off the toothpick.  Add 5 more minutes.  A little bit of wood showed on the toothpick, surrounded by sloppy clumps.  Add 5 more minutes.  It's now 5:53 for a 6:00 show-up, it has baked 50 minutes (luckily without burning the edges) and the toothpick came out damp, but clean.  Good enough! Go!   The edge pieces were certainly moist, not really sticky, and if you were really careful, it held together.  The middle piece looked more like cream corn instead of cornbread, except it was skim milk corn and not cream....  

Sunday, as I'm scooping up the larger loaf of Italian bread to head out the door, I remembered that Sally had gotten a really nice woven reed breadbasket that would just fit the bread.  I looked in the usually place in the kitchen pantry and it wasn't there.  I hurriedly checked the cabinet above the refrigerator, laundry room pantry, the bedroom panty, Sally's music closet, and never found it. (But as I'm writing this, I've thought of two other places, unlikely, but possible.)  I cut the loaf and it was lovely.  Just a little dark on the crust, and a little doughy in the center, but both were within bounds, I've written a note on the recipe to lower the temperature 20 degrees and length the time by 5-8 minutes.  

We had a great meal, her mom and dad were a riot and their two teenage daughters were classic teenage daughters.  It was a lot of fun.  Afterward, we sat around and watch the end of Master's Golf Tournament.  If my dad were still alive, he'd have been shooing us away from the dinner table so he could go and watch the golf and get a good nap in.  

After dinner, I was helping to clear the table and Rochelle looks at me, looks at the ham bone, looks at me again and says, "Would you like this before I throw it away?"  "Well, yes! If you really don't want it."  That bone still had over a pound of meat on it.  I said, "Tell you what, I'll trade you my second loaf of bread for the ham bone."  "Deal!"  

I drove home, got the bread (which I had been worried about it sitting around anyway), got back home, sliced 9 or 10 good slices of sandwich meat, and plopped the rest of it into a pot and boiled away.  A quick trip to the grocery store with my shopping list and picked a bag of soup beans and vegetables.  I got a bag of 15 bean soup, got home, pulled the bone, threw the beans in the pot, pulled ham pieces off the bone and had a good four or five cups of ham pieces to throw back into the soup.  By 9:00 that evening, I had bean soup and ham for dinner with the little loaf of bread I had left for me.  And froze eight 1-1/4 cup blocks of soup (in my SuperCube trays).  And six cups of chicken broth.  I've had three ham sandwiches for lunch this week, along with some for snacking and I had a cup of soup for dinner tonight!  Man!  It's good stuff!

More cooking and opera adventures to write about tomorrow.  I've been having a lot of fun.  My young'uns are doing well and there is peace in the valley.  Blessings are flowing and life is good.  You know what?  It's good to be me!  (Oh, the Chevy dealership called on Friday, the part came in, the car is physically inside the shop and I should have it back tomorrow!  Whoo-Hoo!)  (Update:  I got it Tuesday at 5:30 and they want to check it again on Friday.)

More tomorrow.

So, after the Ham-extravaganza on Easter, I ate pretty light the next couple of days.  Tuesday, I planned to make some chicken enchiladas on Thursday, so pulled some chicken out of the freezer into the fridge (as part of my continual desire to reduce the volume of food in the freezer).   

Wednesday, I decided it was time to get the Bubble together for a dinner so I sent out the usual text message with evenings and potential restaurants.  Joe got back fairly quickly and was open to anything, but nothing from Mary or Susan.  Mary got back on Thursday saying she was sick with a cold and that Susan may be on her annual Rock and Roll cruise.  So Joe and I went to have Thai.  I checked with Mary if she wanted anything like soup, but no, thank you.  So, Joe and I feasted on appetizers - tempura shrimp and vegies and Thai wings.  And enough left over for lunch the next day.  

Friday, the weather was nice enough to go out on my bike and ride around and then came back for my walk.  And by the time I was ready to fix my chicken enchilada dinner, it was about 7:00.  I boiled up a couple of pounds of chicken thighs, made the enchilada sauce, shredded the meat and rolled and baked them.  I had been watching The News Hour and Washington Week during all of this, and continued watching the Marie Antoinette series while I ate.  While I was cleaning up, the next program rolled up and it was a program about Robert Schuman on Now Hear This.  It is part of the Great Performances series. It is investigating was Schuman bipolar, how would it affect his music and who else may have been bipolar, i.e., Van Gogh and Robert Burns. It was a fascinating program.  

But it also queued something else.  I remembered hearing that the Met Opera on Saturday was doing Der Rosenkavalier by Richard Strauss and doing it as Live at the Met, being shown in movie theaters.  And there is one theater in Laramie doing it.  And it is my favorite opera.  So I got on line and reserved a seat for 10:00 the next morning.  And I went. And it was glorious!  I wouldn't even begin to describe the opera, so maybe the Met will let me use theirs. The opera centers on three characters, the 30 year old Marschallin, her 16 year old lover Octavian, and the young girl to be engaged, Sophie.  Strauss's kink in all this is that Octavian is a "pants role", where you have a mezzo-soprano acting as a young man, who in turn is disguised as a chambermaid.  So, when all the main characters sing, you have a soprano trio, which Strauss excelled at in a number of his operas.  Genius.

It was an introduction to me of two sopranos, Lise Davidson from Norway (who is 6'2" and towers over the actors as the Marschallin) and Erin Morley as Sophie, who voice is like a butterfly, light and airy and right on in pitch in the higher upper register.  

And it was all such an upper that the rest of the weekend was just a joy!  Except the Sunday after Easter is always about Doubting Thomas!  At least the pastor tried to put a different spin on it by naming him Authenticating Thomas.  Other than that,  I'm having fun.