Just a Familial Weekend

Nothing of great cosmic importance to write about. I had a nice weekend doing a lot of stuff with family.

Saturday morning I went on a hike - a good length in line with my prior (pre-operation) capabilities around 6 miles with 1,500 foot altitude gain. I'm feeling like I'm totally ready to get back into my serious hiking again. I went with a client of mine (the second time) so I'm expanding the number of people I hike with which is good.

Saturday night we went over to the Visigoths to make a birthday dinner for Goth Queen, Pulisha since I totally forgot her birthday earlier in the week (in spite of it being right in my calendar). Her daughter, C, was at our house doing a project with Wife since she hadn't made a present. I ended up taking an hour long nap as I was way short of sleep from the week. Wife was nice enough to do my ironing for me - she's such a sweetie.

I don't think my cooking on Saturday night was as good as it could have been but I did make all the things daughter loves and that she rarely gets so we had some halibut of a frisee salad up front - unfortunately the frisee was like eating small twigs :( but the fish was good. Then I made a saute with four types of mushrooms (chantarelles, blue chantarelle, opalla, and hens in the woods) - big hit with Pu. Then I had some rib lamb chops with a deglazing sauce and twice baked potatoes. The later were essentially butter and cream held together with a potato binder. King Goth, Tim de Buffalo sous-chefed for me and was a big, big help.

Made the cardinal error of drinking lots of wine after the dehydration of the mornings hike which always has serious reprecussions - why I can't get it through my head this going to happen is clearly a sign of my impending senility.

Early Sunday morning I was off to the airport (7 AM flight, yuch) going to Chicago so I could spend some extra time with Motherrocker et al. They picked my up and we went straight to Chinatown to try a dim sum restaurant. Unfortunately the one we wanted to got to had a 45 minute wait. We tried another but it was clearly more for tourists. The food was OK just not totally ready made. I tried duck feet - not as good as chicken feet. Like tepid pigs foot, something to be tried once and that's about it.

Then we were at the MR house. In the evening Lakeview Coffee came by and we had one of the classic MR/John the Armenian cookouts - bison steaks, corn over the grill, tomato salad (from MR's garden) with home made croûtons (my one part), and home made chocolate chip cookies - also many beers some of which were not Belgian or Belgian style. Great time - played a lot with Miss Dukes. Then Lakeview brought me back to his place as we have work to do this week.