needs another weekend

It was an interesting and packed weekend.

I have class on Saturday afternoon this quarter, from noon to 5pm, so that cuts a large swath from in the middle of the day. At least I don’t have to be there at 8am and it doesn’t infringe on our evenings. As the kids have (or will soon) departed it’s only the two of us in the house; she can come in with me if need be and do some work at her office. My Saturday (and Friday afternoon) class is Garde Manger so it covers mostly cold dishes like sandwiches, banquet food, appetizers, fancy stuff, etc. To open the quarter we made loads of bread (baguettes, rye, and whole wheat) to freeze and store for use over the next few weeks as we create various canapés and whatnot. Unfortunately, I’m just now beginning Baking and Pastry (Monday – Wednesday evenings) so I was trying to learn and follow along with my teammates: big mistake. Everyone in my class has already had Baking so I figured they’d have some basis for production even if it had been a few quarters ago (there is one guy is quite excellent). As with most things, don’t get too comfortable assuming knowledge resides in anyone’s bean. Of course, we are doing all these breads in Baking over the next three days so my own experience will greatly improve. Our product came out poorly, at best. I might knock out a few extra loaves of each in the bake shop so I can carry them over to the other class.

After wrapping up on Saturday afternoon, the 61 went to dinner in D.C. and then to see One Man Lord of the Rings at Woolly Mammoth. Both of the girls are big Ring fans so I figured they enjoy one guy, dressed only in a jumpsuit and wearing a microphone, running through all three movies in a bit more than an hour. It was very enjoyable, even for a non-Tolkien-only-mostly-seen-the-movies-and-never-read-the-books chaperone. I pointed out to both of them after the show that the movies seemed to me to be mostly marching, running, fighting, and horns a-blowing; when reduced to an hour you’d surely discover that I was mostly correct.

I tried to engage X on what she thought the civil engineering/scheduling plan might be for the Orange line and new Silver line Metro trains once they hit East Falls Church station. She actually left the room mid-query to show her waning interest in that conversation.

The 51 hit Eastern Market early yesterday morning and were enveloped in a heat index of over 90° at 9am. We did stop for crepes before making a few passes through the flea market, art/craft/creation stalls (I’ve now narrowed down my cutting board desires) before gathering up our ingredients in the food hall. We ended up with quite a crowd at The Hilltop for Sunday pizza night last night so I had execute some deep mathematical formulae to figure out if I had enough pie to cover five adults and four children. We managed.