Garden to Table

We were fortunate enough to do the tasting menu at the Dabney restaurant in Blagden Alley last night. One of DC's handful of Michelin-star restaurants, the place is known for its wood-burning cooking hearth and its tasting menu featuring mid-Atlantic cuisine and ingredients. 

My mom gave us a generous gift certificate for the restaurant as a Christmas gift back in 2018. Fortunately for us, it said right on the page that it would never expire, and so on the heels of all the ups and downs of the last 4 and a half years, I finally made a reservation for last night.

It was a fun experience, and our menu is featured below.

In the spirit of the place, tonight I made a trio of squash featuring early ingredients from our garden-- garlic, shallots, basil, zucchini, and squash blossoms, along with farmer's market cherry tomatoes, spaghetti squash, eggs, and cheese. And while the stuffed squash blossoms, zucchini noodles with fresh tomato, basil, preserved lemon, and olive ragu, and warm spaghetti squash terrain might not be as expertly prepared as the fine food we had last night, the portions will definitely be larger. 

(But, hey! No shade, Dabney! Ours is only 3 courses.)

Lucy's Morning Out

Our cleaning lady came this morning just a little after eight, but no worries-- Heidi had already walked Lucy and worked out with her trainer, and I had meditated, made breakfast, and picked up. We even had errands planned to fill the time when she was here, and since it was so cool and rainy we loaded Lucy into the station wagon and brought her along. 

She was able to come into the first couple of places, Home Depot and Pet Smart, and while she was moderately excited about the first stop, she was super enthusiastic at the second. She stood on her back legs to see a cheeky little Conure who was pecking the glass at her, and she got into a stare-down with some of the adoptable cats. In fact, she might still be standing there now if we hadn't dragged her away. 

Lucy had to stay in the car for the next two stops, a thrift shop to drop off donations, and a diner for breakfast, but she didn't mind at all when Heidi left her with a few of the treats we had purchased at Pet Smart. 

Within a couple of hours, we three were back to our clean house, feeling accomplished, and a couple of us were ready for a nap.

Final Duty

As my last official act of the school year, this morning I ordered the t-shirt prizes for the 13 students who successfully completed the 100-Day Writing Challenge. 

I'd been putting the chore off a bit because it's a nuisance to add all the addresses and verify the purchase on my Amazon account in order to have the shirts sent to the kids at home, but on this rainy Wednesday, when our pickleball and lunch plans were upset by the weather, I finally sat down with the bright orange order forms I had the Centurions fill out last week. 

Any irritation I may have felt at the extra clicking and tedious typing was erased by the opportunity to consider each young writer one more time and to see which of the thousands of shirts on the Woot site they opted for. Their choices are always a bit surprising: whimsical and often revealing of a side of them that, even after an entire school year and a hundred days of writing, I didn't know. So it was with a little bit of sadness that I clicked submit on the last order and bid farewell to a really great group of kids.

Transitions Are Hard

You would think that after thirty years I would have this summer break thing managed, and yet I do not. 

As much as I crave a break from the gogo gogo, once it arrives I find myself at loose ends. Oh, I have accomplished many of the things I planned to do-- I've played pickleball, gone to a baseball game, worked in the garden, baked bread, cleaned out my closet, organized the deck, and tackled a bunch of DIY projects, and still I've found myself literally spinning in my chair and solving word puzzles.

But never fear, dear reader, I am confident I will master this life of leisure, so much so that you can look for a companion post come August, lamenting all that is trying about going back to school.

Neither Quick Nor Easy

Ignoring the way that DIY projects are never quite as quick and easy or inexpensive as you think, I ordered a couple replacement poles for the cat structure in our living room. Tibby, in particular, loves to scratch the sisal fiber, and after 4 years, it looks like hell. 

Rather than rewrap the posts, which definitely would have been cheap, I spent almost what the structure cost to get new ones. When they arrived, I realized that swapping them out wouldn't be as quick as I thought, because I had to disassemble the whole thing. 

The parts had been languishing for weeks when I decided on Saturday, that with school out, it was finally the day for the project. So I kicked Milo off the top platform and slid the enormous structure out of the corner. I had the top poles off and the middle platforms swiveled so I could reach the torn-up cylinders I was replacing when I saw that the connecting bolts were not the same size. The new ones were much narrower and would not fasten securely to the old posts. 

Disheartened, I reassembled the thing, keeping one top bolt out, and shoved it back into the corner. Then I headed off to a big box home improvement store with both bolts in my pocket. There I stood long in the hardware aisle, comparing bolts and nuts and considering how best to adapt the misfit pieces. The only valuable thing I left there with was information-- I used the measurement display to identify the sizes of my bolts: they were 8 and 10 mm. 

Not surprisingly, metric hardware is less common in US stores, which explained the dearth of options. At home, I searched the internet to see if there was some sort of adapter I could buy, and it was then I learned a new term, "step stud". Yes, friends, they actually make bolts that are one width on one side and another width on the other. I was able to order 4 from the world's largest online retailer, and I expect them to be delivered tomorrow. 

Will they do the job? Well that remains to be seen, but they did add another 12 bucks to the cost, and of course, the time spent will be more than double what I originally hoped. But that structure is going to stay out of the landfill for a long time.

Half the Price and Twice as Nice

We share season tickets to the Nats with a group of our neighbors, and today was our first game of the year. The group chose new seats this season, so we were anxious to check them out. Last year we were down the third-base line and maybe 8 rows back, and this year we were over in a corner at the end of the first-base line and just 5 seats from the field. 

It was a beautiful day here, sunny and breezy, and Heidi was wise enough to make us stop for sunscreen on our way to the park. We took our time walking through the concourse, checking out the concessions, and finally slipping into our seats in the middle of the second inning. They were amazing, but it was hot on the field with very little of the breeze reaching us down there. After the presidents raced by, so close that we could almost reach out and touch them, I found my eye drawn to the upper deck across from us. It was nearly empty up there and shady; plus they had a much better view of the jumbotron and scoreboard.

At the end of the fourth, I suggested to Heidi that we check out the nosebleeds, especially since we had never been to that part of the stadium. It was still crowded on the concourse; the fans meandering and lining up for ice cream, hot dogs, and beer. The crowd was mostly families; it was Father's Day, after all. We finally found our way around to the escalators and took them all the way to the top. 

Up there it was quiet; there were no lines at the concessions, and a cool breeze blew gently over the sparsely populated sections. We found a couple of open seats in the shade with a great view of the entire field, both bullpens, the hometeam dugout, and the scoreboard, and there we pleasantly passed the remaining innings of the game in complete comfort.

Choice Word

I woke up early this morning with nothing to make me shy away from the day: on summer vacation, there's all the time you need and nothing to avoid. So I hopped right out of bed and headed downstairs.

Baking bread was first on my wanna-do list; my sourdough starter has been languishing in the fridge for a few busy weeks now. When I fetched the big Corningware bowl from its top shelf in the cupboard, I noticed flakes of dried dough around the top inside rim, remnants of the last time I baked. I knew immediately that I was the culprit because I always wash that bowl myself.

I love the word culprit. It comes from the Latin culpa, meaning fault or blame. There is a legend that the noun form comes from a misinterpretation of a 17th-century Norman legal document with the abbreviation "cul prist" short for Culpable: prest d'averrer notre bille (You are guilty; we are ready to prove our case).

And culprit is so much gentler than its synonyms perp, villain, or offender. Once when my nephew, Treat, was very young, no older than 5 or 6, we overheard him admit to his older brother that he had cheated at a game. "Okay, you caught me," he said. "I'm the culprit." Until then I don't think I'd ever heard the word used in conversation, but after that? 

I was a fan.