The weekend
It's been lovely.
Friday night was a second Friday, which means Open Studio night at the Fine Arts Building. Every month, different artists have open houses, and Hodge the Bookstore Cat
holds court at Selected Works Used Books. I visited a couple of the studios, bought a couple of books, and admired Hodge.
The Fine Arts Building is just down the street from Symphony Center, where I had tickets for the L.A. Philharmonic with Gustavo Dudamel conducting. I had a bite to eat at the Bass Bar in the rotunda before the concert, which was fantastic. They played John Adams' City Noir and Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique" Symphony, with two encores, the Intermezzo from Puccini's "Manon Lescaut" and the Waltz from Leonard Bernstein's Divertimento for Orchestra. It was quite delightful, particularly the Adams piece, a jazz-inflected evocation of '40s film noir.
Yesterday, I went early to the Hyde Park Garden Fair and stocked up on herbs: sorrel, thyme, Italian oregano, basil, dill, parsley, lemon balm, chocolate mint and spearmint, which I planted in containers on the back porch.
I had a few friends over for dinner (not the usual size crowd, due to scheduling conflicts and illness). I poached a fillet of salmon in white wine, and made a sauce from sour cream, thinned with a bit of the poaching liquid, dijon mustard, lemon juice and fresh dill. Served with oven roasted new potatoes with rosemary, and broccoli. My friend Margaret made a luscious frozen dessert involving pineapple and whipped cream. We killed a couple of bottles of wine, too. DeeJay won't be with us for the next couple of dinners, so she brought my birthday present two months early. Part of it was marjoram seeds, an herb I hadn't bought that morning!
Slept in a bit this morning, and will be off to the opera in a couple of hours, Jake Heggie's Three Decembers, with Frederica von Stade in her last Chicago appearance.
Friday night was a second Friday, which means Open Studio night at the Fine Arts Building. Every month, different artists have open houses, and Hodge the Bookstore Cat
holds court at Selected Works Used Books. I visited a couple of the studios, bought a couple of books, and admired Hodge.
The Fine Arts Building is just down the street from Symphony Center, where I had tickets for the L.A. Philharmonic with Gustavo Dudamel conducting. I had a bite to eat at the Bass Bar in the rotunda before the concert, which was fantastic. They played John Adams' City Noir and Tchaikovsky's "Pathetique" Symphony, with two encores, the Intermezzo from Puccini's "Manon Lescaut" and the Waltz from Leonard Bernstein's Divertimento for Orchestra. It was quite delightful, particularly the Adams piece, a jazz-inflected evocation of '40s film noir.
Yesterday, I went early to the Hyde Park Garden Fair and stocked up on herbs: sorrel, thyme, Italian oregano, basil, dill, parsley, lemon balm, chocolate mint and spearmint, which I planted in containers on the back porch.
I had a few friends over for dinner (not the usual size crowd, due to scheduling conflicts and illness). I poached a fillet of salmon in white wine, and made a sauce from sour cream, thinned with a bit of the poaching liquid, dijon mustard, lemon juice and fresh dill. Served with oven roasted new potatoes with rosemary, and broccoli. My friend Margaret made a luscious frozen dessert involving pineapple and whipped cream. We killed a couple of bottles of wine, too. DeeJay won't be with us for the next couple of dinners, so she brought my birthday present two months early. Part of it was marjoram seeds, an herb I hadn't bought that morning!
Slept in a bit this morning, and will be off to the opera in a couple of hours, Jake Heggie's Three Decembers, with Frederica von Stade in her last Chicago appearance.