1. Diane, Bill, Bridgit and I jumped on the ZOOM machine this morning and had a lot to talk about. First of all, Diane's surgery was successful and she's recovering well. She has follow up appointments coming up, but the initial signs are that her overall condition looks good. Unfortunately, Bill discovered he has a broken bone in his foot (we saw the X-ray!). He'll see a podiatrist soon for further diagnosis and treatment, but, for now, his foot is stabilized in a lightweight boot and he can get around.
Bridgit told us great news about succeeding, after working at it for a year, at hiring a full team of employees on the staff she supervises. She insisted on filling these positions one at a time. It took longer than possibly her bosses wanted it, but the payoff is worth it. Bridgit has hired a team of stable, committed, compassionate, and empathetic staff and they are doing splendid work.
I went a little bonkers on ZOOM. All the joy I felt and much of the thinking I've been doing about Stop Making Sense and the Hal Hartley movies I've watched was bottled up, unexpressed inside me. I blabbed and blabbed about my long history with Stop Making Sense, my love for this movie's music, theatrics, and philosophical explorations and then blabbed and blabbed joyously about my discovery of Hal Hartley.
2. I had decided a few weeks ago that when it was our turn to host family dinner again, I would make a ragu. I had purchased Italian sausage ravioli at Costco and decided that a meatless ragu would be an excellent way to prepare a contrast between the ragu and what I poured it over.
The recipe I doubled emphatically stated that the vegetables should be finely chopped and I did just that, slowly and surely chopping carrots, celery, red bell peppers, and onions into small pieces which I then cooked, putting them all in a pot with rosemary, sage, thyme, and oregano into a combination of olive oil and melted butter. While I slow cooked the vegetables for about fifteen minutes or so, I made about four cups of hot vegetable stock using Better Than Bullion paste and water and soaked a couple handfuls of dried porcini mushrooms in the stock.
When the vegetables were softened, I added about six cloves of finely chopped garlic, let it sauté for a minute or so and then added in the mess of grape tomatoes I had halved along with dry vermouth. Once the liquid had reduced a bit, I scooped the now hydrated mushrooms out of the vegetable stock, chopped them, and added the mushrooms, vegetable stock, two bay leaves, and a couple dollops of tomato sauce to the pot.
I cooked all of this for about thirty minutes with the lid on the pot, removed the lid, and let the ragu simmer and thicken some more until it was time to serve it for dinner.
It took about five minutes, once the water boiled, to cook the ravioli. I put raviolis in everyone's bowl and covered them with the vegetable ragu.
It worked!
3. Before Carol, Paul, Christy, Molly, and Brian came over for dinner, Debbie and I split two cans of Ya Ya Brewing's Hazy IPA, Fluffy Puffy Sunshine. It's an almost buttery IPA, soft on the tongue, thanks to heavy doses of oat flakes. It's got a tropical flavor, is hardly bitter at all, and Debbie and I agreed: we ought to buy more of this beer, as I can find it.
Drinking this Northeast Style Hazy IPA moved Debbie and me to reminisce about all the fun we had drinking beer in Maryland, Washington DC, and New York. We paid our own humble tribute to the now shuttered Old Line Bistro, smiled and talked about our Sunday afternoon trips do DC Brau, and marveled at the great beers we enjoyed in Nyack, New York at District 96.
We can't have those places back again. That's all right. We have a great time sitting in our living room in Kellogg, cracking open beers, beers I've purchased, Debbie has bought, and beers that family members have picked up for us in their travels.
It's adventurous because we try beers we know nothing about.
So it's often a crapshoot.
It's blissful.
No matter if the beer is average or fantastic, it's a blast to sit, sip, and yak.
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