Park Silly

Today we went out to lunch. Jim had a rigatoni dish with brown butter, broccoli, Italian sausage and he thinks they were finely chopped nuts. I’d guess hazelnuts. It’s something for me to try out in our home kitchen. Then we attended the “Park Silly” market, for something I’ve been dreaming of for the past two weeks since we were last there.

I bought 1/2 lb. of gorgeous chanterelle mushrooms and plan to make risotto. The farmer/gatherer went into the cooler to get me larger specimens. He also has lobster mushrooms with which I’ve never cooked and he gave me an outline of a recipe with fresh corn, lobster mushrooms and heirloom tomatoes. Garlic and onion, of course. This market will close end of September/early October as will the other farmers’ markets but there is a year-round place being set up 1/4 mile away from us and fifteen vendors will be there, schedule to be determined.

The Wednesday market is not when I want to shop for produce, as I have milk and juice and fruits and veggies delivered at 3:00 every Wednesday morning. So Tuesdays I try to clean out the frig as well as possible and Wednesday morning I pack it in and am not about to go out searching for more!

If we stay here a while I wouldn’t mind some temporary garage storage. That’s where I could keep extra paper products and, in cooler weather, onions and potatoes. I certainly have no room for them in the frig. Yesterday we were downtown (a good one to 1 1/2 hour drive r/t) and on our way back we picked up two three-pound bags of frozen raw dog food. I’d like to get four, but there’s no room in the freezer and we have guests coming so I need to buckle down with recipes, shopping lists, cleaning chores et al.

Tonight I was going to have the second pizza I made from scratch Friday afternoon, dough and all, heated for dinner. Knowing how much Jim hates leftovers I ran out of all plastic goods (quart and gallon zip bags, and tall kitchen garbage bags) so picked up some ground beef and potato rolls and we had burgers for dinner, in the rain. It was supposed to hail this evening so Jim moved his car to a better place overnight. Hopefully it won’t be towed. Heaven knows we’ve spent enough time and energy on this construction debacle next door, costs us a lot of noise, dirt and mess, not to mention a tire punctured by two screws and a nail when I only drove a mile.

Jim’s folks arrive in ten days. Much to do before then. His mother has been called to jury duty tomorrow and hopefully it won’t ruin the vacation they’ve been planning to visit us here. I just found a wonderful activity. We’d love to take them to a baseball game, and hopefully that will work out. But I found a showcase of homes, 2,000 sf to 10,000 sf and it’s going on Labor Day weekend. The family land they farm now will be flooded by the government in a few years so it’s been sold and the timber harvested. They’ve bought 600 acres in an adjacent county and need to build a new house. Margie is always looking for ideas and they love the western style of construction so they should find ideas a-plenty. Hoping they’ll enjoy at least a day of it, it always warms my heart to find something I know they’ll talk about for a while, mansions and baseball games.

Two years ago it was Niagara Falls and Jim’s father being asked to open a lock on the Erie Canal. Those were my old stomping grounds. Here are the new ones and it’s always good to get the in-laws out of their home environment and into “vacation mode.” They’d really like to see a few other things but are open for the rest of the week.

So it’s paying next month’s bills, arranging lessons, planning menus, shopping and cleaning this week, including losing my beloved dining table as my desk so we can eat as humans do. Hope you enjoyed your weekend. If you have a great recipe that incorporates pasta, broccoli, Italian sausage and sauce let me know! I’ll probably do three versions of it and get back to you in a month or so with the winner. Cheers, Dee