DINNER 149: Monday, May 29, 2006
We slept in this morning, a lovely thing. The fan in the bedroom kept us cool, and Buster was reasonably quiet until he messed his playpen at 7:00am, but we were able to get him cleaned up, settled in, and everyone back to sleep without much fuss. We got up around 10:00am and went back over to Home Depot to pick up a few more yard items, including new brackets to secure our dog-door-through-the-backyard-screen-door since Mr. Face just discovered he can get through the old setup. Quite alarming to discover your blind cat blundering around the backyard!
We also stopped by the Delhi Garden Center to get some plants & mulch for the front yard. Wendy did a great job of getting everything placed, planted, watered, and mulched. If everything lives, we should have a fairly nice front yard.
At 3:00, I headed into downtown Cincinnati for the annual Taste of Cincinnati festival to work in the Cincinnati Magazine/Cincinnati State booth. This was the first year for this booth, which featured restaurants listed in the magazine’s Top 25 in the city. Students in the culinary program got to help out in the booths, a nice chance to ‘rub elbows’ with the professionals. I worked with the gang from Knotty Pine on the Bayou who were serving their Seafood Etouffee. Once their shift was done at 6:00, we served Chocolate Grand Marnier Bavois which were made in the kitchens at school. The Bavois is almond sponge cake filled with Grand Marnier Chocolate Mousee which has a blob of soft caramel in the center, then topped with pistachio dust and half a chocolate-dipped strawberry to crown it. We had approximately 200 pieces to sell, and we sold them all.
After cleaning up, I walked around the festival and dinner was a Gyro, some cold sesame noodles, and some roasted corn. I came home tired & sweaty, but happy from a good day’s work.
As for the carpenter bees referred to in yesterday’s update, it sounds like we got MOST of them; there’s very little humming from the roof of the porch now. We feel like another attack should allow us to declare victory. This attack will probably come Tuesday evening (but don’t tell the bees that; we want to surprise them).