Week 8

Theme of the week: BRRRR

It was so cold my toes still ache. My extremities don't handle extremes well, on either side of the thermometer. This was the first time in the almost four years we've had Luna that I let her out for her morning wee and didn't take her for a walk. It was too miserable for both of us. I'm thankful that my car started each morning and that our pipes didn't freeze. Now we're back to normal winter and dreaming of the trip we took exactly a year ago to Buenos Aires.

We bought the small bottle in BA last year because the formula there is slightly different. We did a taste test on Friday night.

It was a long work week. This day's word-of-the-day was especially true as it fell on the university's 24-hour giving event.

Friday also featured a fun night night out with my gal pals at Durkin's.

And on Saturday we got to celebrate a friend's 30th birthday in 1930's speakeasy style, and then finished out the night with three rounds of bowling at North Bowl.

Listening

I had a night at home to myself this week, and what did I do? I turned off the Olympics and turned up Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em. Total uninterrupted Hammer Time. MC Hammer transports me back to my friend Laura's family room, where we listened to "Pray" and talked about how MC was a Christian in case her parents got upset we were listening to secular music. It's funny how that was such a thing back in those days, to assess who was "a believer" as a way to affirm  our appreciation of the artist. I remember talking about singers and celebrities with friends and saying things like, "And did you know, she's a Christian?" (Probably information we inferred from watching award shows and athletic championships where they thanked God.) And because of that, mediocre artists were elevated because they sang about Jesus and because of that, had more to lose when they got caught in scandal (I remember this one well). What a weird world.

TV/Movies

Nothing but Olympics.

Reading

Back to Barbara Kingsolver I went this week with The Bean Trees. Again, the themes and social issues presented in her fiction feel timeless and timely, even though this was written in the 1980s. Immigration is central to this one.

Joel shared this article with me this week as we prepare for another vacation. We've figured some of this out over the years. I still struggle with the "don't take pictures" advice, and while I can't imagine coming back without any photos from my trip, I think I'm getting better in figuring out what makes for a more meaningful photo. I don't need to take a picture of the Trevi fountain, but I love looking back on the photo I did take of all the tourists taking that photo.  This next trip I want to do a better job at journaling the details throughout our time, rather than scribbling it all down on the plane ride home.


Recipes

It was an Instant Pot week. Seriously, if you have an Instant Pot and you don't have Melissa Clark's Dinner in an Instant, you need to remedy that in an instant. On Sunday Joel made her recipe for saffron risotto. On Tuesday I made the one for barbecue chicken, including the homemade barbecue sauce it cooks in, and dinner was shredded in about an hour. With jalapeno cornbread and roasted Brussels sprouts on the side and a Fat Tire. It was legit.

I only recently learned how amazing cornbread tastes with molasses

I also tried my hand at shakshuka on Sunday morning (eggs poached in a tomato sauce, sprinkled with herbs and cheese (usually feta...I had cotija). It was good!

COW

This week was crumb-topped apple bars. Okay, Dorie, do we really consider this a cookie? The bottom was a cookie crust, I suppose, but truly, it's a crumble or an open-face slab pie. But sure, call it a cookie. It's delicious.