The Eclectic Mix

I know, I know. Two days without blogging. Such is the way of the beast. Blogging, thou are a fickle mistress.

Thursday–well, no real excuses. I just needed to detach from the world for a while. All of the hubbub of the car, high school prep, Girl Scout cookies and everything else just had me in a mood to unplug and avoid any semblance of responsibility.

Friday after three turned busy. Doctor appointment, getting Jenni and the girls from Luther and bringing them home, then Patrick to church to start his weekend scout camping trip to Camp Confidence (where his troop does a service project to help clean, supply, and prep the place for other campers). Then off to a new Japanese restaurant in Roseville for a farewell dinner with mom and dad.

Farewell? Yes, they’re off to their annual sojourn to Gulf Shores, Alabama for the month of February. They’ll enjoy their time on the beach, in the (relative) warmth, lots of seafood, and just a nice relaxing getaway. It’s a little depressing to think the last time I was down there was seventeen years ago, but perhaps one of these years, we’ll join them for a week or something. But don’t worry for me too much–the upside to them leaving is that I get asked to clean out the perishables from the fridge after they leave. This time, it came with extra veggies! Good times.

Today was baking day for me. A loaf of bread, about 90 lemon poppy seed muffins and another 3 dozen brownie muffins all came out of the oven or bread machine today, with another loaf of bread planned for cooking overnight–I’m in the mood for some of the english muffin bread. Oh, but I did also clean out the fridge. Started to wonder why I’ve made so many mashed potatoes over the last month or so…Gotta just see about heating it up…

Tomorrow, almost certainly, will be standard Sunday fare: laundry, and general effort around the house. We’ll pursue the usual prep for the school/work week, which finally features a five-day week for all kids.

Okay. This will stand in for a real blog entry, and catch you all up on the doin’s around here. Maybe I’ll have something better tomorrow.

See you tomorrow.

It was good to be me today. Really. It’s shocking just how easy I am to please. Great cheese and good food. That’ll pretty much do it.

Spent two-and-a-half hours helping mom make spanakopita for the party later this month. Got through 15 dozen in that time, and she’s still got some to go, but the party is still a good three weeks away. Brought a batch home to test. Purely in the interest of quality control, mind you.

Tonight was our belated and delayed (through no fault of mom and dad, I might add) anniversary dinner. Two-and-a-half months late, but our schedules just did us in.

Dinner was at Red Stag. Great food, interesting recycled atmosphere (go there, and you’ll see what I mean), but in my old age, I’ll complain that it got very noisy toward the last half of our meal.

But the food was excellent, for the most part. We opened up with spelt fries (really just fried spelt served like fries in a paper cone). I had the pan roasted duck which came with thick-sliced potatoes and a poached egg. And the cheese tray for the dessert was excellent–it had a great local artisanal white cheddar. I’m a happy man when I can end a meal with great cheese…

May those exact words become my epitaph.

Home to the kids+2, as the Nielsen2 boys are here for the night. But such is life here in the commune.

Good day, minus much of the torture and bluster promised by the weather forecast. It appears to have stayed north, but I’ve steered clear of news and information today in favor of the gastronomic arts. So frankly, I don’t really care.

Tomorrow’s much of the same-old, same-old as the whole family returns to what passes for normal around here: the kids are back to school Monday. Jenni’s back to school Monday. With any luck, I’ll survive the anticipatory prep tomorrow evening and give you another fleeting glimpse into my little life.

Enjoy your day. I’m going to sleep, happy with the cheese that ended mine.

See you tomorrow.

Well, tonight was the dinner out with Mom, Dad and the kids to celebrate our birthdays. Mom and I settled on Loring Pasta Bar in Dinkytown–none of us had ever been there, so worth trying once.

Good dinner–the food was very good, or my swordfish and Greek salad was anyway, Jenni’s steak was colder than it should have been–The atmosphere was, well, a little chic in a Roman ruin kind of way. I’d been in that building a lot back in my youth (the building where Grey’s Drug was in Dinkytown, for those familiar with it), and it had three stories: drugstore on the first, then offices and apartments upstairs. The whole thing was gutted for the restaurant–all the way up, and a couple of balconies were attached to the edges of the building at opposite ends. Pretty, in an odd, urban kind of way, but just a little weird.

Otherwise, a good time to be out to dinner with my parents and the kids. Good food, good conversation, good celebration. And yes, I even had a beer (well, okay, an ale–Guiness, to be exact– but I need my beer to either be strong and thick, or light and sweet to make me interested in it). Haven’t had a Guiness in forever, so I think it probably was time.

All this comes at the end of a week where I started an honest-to-God, concerted diet. Bob and Judy did the Weight Watchers Points thing a few years ago, so still have the cookbooks and guides and stuff like that. Between that and Google, I’ve pretty much figured out the system, and set myself on a 33 point-per-day diet. I was seriously saving points all week to do dinner tonight. So it was worth it. Hopefully the diet will be worth it too–right now, I’m still at the point where I’m hungry almost all the time, but I’m sticking to it and doing OK. So wish me luck.

So there you go. Good day, more tomorrow.

See you then.