I've had a quiet week this week and last, and I'm still relishing all the loveliness of my Milwaukee trip.
I made it there with very little fuss, peach pie nestled safely in my backpack, and I fully enjoyed waiting for the bus as there were fighter jets passing overhead every few minutes (courtesy of the Air&Water Show). It's about two hours with traffic from downtown Chicago to Milwaukee and I spent most of the time watching the fields go by, it looks so much like home! I love living in a city, but every few months I still get home sick for the country. Open skies. Big Trees. Soybeans. Bugs. Stuff like that.
Plus, I adore listening to music while on the road. Don't you?? Some songs just need open skies. I really wish I had found out about this band/dude, Tulsa/ Carter Tanton, before my trip! (Now I have to patiently wait until November for his new album. Not one of my virtues.) Excellent road trip tune-age. Instead it was mostly the Cold Mountain soundtrack, Avett Bros, and Gillian Welch. The way back was more Irish tunes heavy thanks to several hours at the Irish Fest and the local Irish bar afterwards.
Miss Lyndsey, my faux big sister, and I ate delicious things: cuban food, waffles with walnuts and strawberries, diner hamburgers, corned beef sammitches, the traveling peach pie, amazing tacos, and of course a local brew. We also got to spend a lovely afternoon with Mr Brandon, my big brother from college, it was a little family reunion. He fed me cantaloupe and told me how to make curried mashed cauliflower. Going to make that. Also going to make cider with black currant juice and try out Miss Lyndsey's favorite thing of putting oat bran into her baking for delicious heartiness. Mmmm.
It was a perfect trip, and I'm grateful I have such dear people only two hours away. I was in a much better head state when I left, soothed and centered. Plus, I really do like Milwaukee, it's a small town version of Chicago and I always have a great time! Of course I was welcomed back to my city by a traffic jam of epic proportions (a semi jack-knifed on the Dan Ryan Expressway blocking 3 out of 4 lanes of traffic ahahahha), but it gave me the extra two hours I needed to finish Cranford! Yay?
I held on to the pleasant calm of my mini-break with lots of hot baths, lit candles and quiet nights. Then I decided to have some serious fun and invited two friends over to cook dinner with me in my tiny-ass kitchen! Now that was an interesting experience!!
We hit up the local farmers market for tomatoes and basil, then picked up two bottles of red wine and some cavatelli pasta, which is now one of my favorite shapes! It's like a little cowry shell, more pasta thickness than penne but not a honkin' piece of dough like gnocchi. There was a lot of maneuvering, improvising, and wine consumed but three people managed to make sauce and pasta to feed themselves. In a very tiny space. Since we were hungry the sauce couldn't simmer and thicken as it really should so we, after some drunken deliberation, decided to roux it. Actually it really wasn't a deliberation, it was just my friend declaring "Oh! We need to make a...a...crap! I only know the word in Coatian!! Ummm flour thickener?!?" "A roux." "Yes! A roux! Give me your flour." "Ok." And I gave the crazy drunk Croatian in my kitchen the flour and slowly backed away.
The sauce was delicious. We ended up having massive amounts of left-over cavatelli so the rest of the weekend was pasta with fresh basil, lemon juice, olive oil and cheese. Delicious. I've also decided I need one more work surface in my kitchen to make it really functional, so I'm keeping my eyes out for a small counter height table/shelf/cart thing.
I had last Friday off and decided to make the most of the remaining summer and go to the park. Chicago has awesome parks, and the one near my house has a section that they've designated to be a prarie area. Wild flowers and local flora go nuts and it's really quite lovely.
I hunkered down with my current read, Fanny's Last Supper, sipped sweet tea, and watched squirrels frolic.
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