Quiches, Textiles and Tea, sofa risers, doors, keys, cabbages and kings

Cooking for the freezer today, two crustless spinach quiches, using mozzarella cheese. 

Battle stations, then wonderful smelling quiches hot from the oven. Once cooled, I'll slice and wrap them for the freezer, to go to when I'm recovering.

Today's PT was a bit rugged, the changing temperature, swinging over 40 degrees over a couple of days, having made Helen Hip a bit unhappy.  

I got resistance bands, green blue and black from Theraband, Emil's recommendation for my current fitness level, and tomorrow I'll start with them. Years ago I had bands, which wore out, proving I used them. 

Then Gary rushed in, wanting to check various keys I keep,  because he changed his lock.  

All done at warp speed.

Textiles and Tea today presented Peyton Pearson, a brilliantly gifted weaver, hsnd dyer, graphic designer, punch needle artist, already with a name, at 27!

Watch out for him, he's a rising star.

Then another irruption from Gary, who has finally found the right doors for our outdoor storage areas. Which will need to be stored in my living room pending painting and installation.  He needs a second person to lift them -- heavy solid slab, not hollowcore.

Here's a neighbor helping, Gary being on the other side, glimpses only

And here's the current state of play

The door, stored until painted and installed outside, adds a charming rustic touch to this shabby chic interior. 

In among all this is Michael the contractor,  who has finished the risers for the sofa, just before leaving for a week.

Note the higher level of the sofa, unbelievably more comfortable now that the height is right.

Now to fold the laundry I was doing before the day got complicated. My knitting friends also emailed today with offers of help and food if required, so nice.

Considering I'm a single older party living alone, it's amazing how complicated my days can get. Something for everyone today.

Happy day everyone, try not to have everything happening at once. Which is more than your humble blog writer can manage, it seems.

One busier person today was my Senator, Cory Booker, holding the floor of the US  Senate,  giving a marathon civics and history class, with the support of other Democrats, and still going, since yesterday, non-stop. Good trouble and a hero of our time.

Reclaiming our flag 

Turns out chimps could cook....

Some cool experiments with chimps in the feature news, including some, done years ago by Jane Goodall, whom I trust not to be mean to animals, show that chimps like cooked food more than raw if they can get it, and undergo processes that they see as cooking.  

Experimenters give them slices of raw potato, show them to put them in a fake oven, researchers then replaced them with cooked slices, the chimps retrieved the slices now, they think, cooked, and liked them to the point of trying to get them cooked all the time.

So they could cook if: they had access to fire, had opposable thumbs, had good cookbooks, and had the vocabulary to express themselves suitably when the recipe doesn't work as promised...

However I have a lot of respect for chimp intelligence and I suspect that as long as the researchers are willing to do the cooking, the chimps will be willing to let them.

Not unrelated to this is the flying series of texts and calls and visits I had yesterday, related to what was in fact a simple operation of borrowing and lending a neighbor's key to a trusted third party.  Every solution another friend and I offered turned out to be too simple, and now we have a situation where Neighbor A, who is away, arranged for Friend B to stay in the house with the dogs while Relative C has to get back to work after watching them very faithfully, while beloved Relative D gave birth to Neighbor A's granddaughter, far away, proud grandparents in attendance. Oh, and I have a pic of the newborn, beautiful girl.

Anyway,  all clear so far?  so Friend B texted multiply and called me, leaving pretty much involved messages involving Neighbor E's spare key to Neighbor A's house.  Part of the confusion arose from the fact that Handsome Son and Neighbor E have same first name...rising above that, Neighbor E, falling down laughing, came across the street yesterday and handed Neighbor L, I mean me, his spare key to the other neighbor's house, to hold until Friend B comes to collect it later in the week.  He said he too had had a spate of texts and calls over this, and had unraveled the request.

We both agreed that just having Friend B pick it up from its unlocked permanent hiding place would have worked, too, without involving any other parties at all, but we concluded it was not people-intensive enough for her.  I also happen to have the numeric code you can use instead of a key, which I could have told her, but that would also be too easy!!  
 
However, I'm fine, since it means I'll get to see Friend B, and I enjoy that anyway. But I think a troop of chimps would have settled this faster by making a researcher do it.

But it did give me the chance to ask Neighbor E while he was at my house, what sort of wood that decorative cranberry scoop is, and he opined, my wood expert this, that it's pine, it is indeed old and it's probably been hung on a wall for many years.  All of which fits with what we knew before but he didn't.  And I learned about ten things about old pine in the process.

And  I gave him a sample of the dipping sauce I made for the Ottolenghi leek fritters -- he's a great cook -- to give us his thoughts on what it might go with, since neither Handsome Son nor I thought it was a good match with the leek fritters it was designed for by Ottolenghi. So he's off to experiment and test it on his noncooking but appreciative wife, Neighbor F, I guess, if we're coding everyone.

Little postscript wrt the fritters: as I worked on the complicated sauce I wondered if Handsome Son would test it then request ketchup.  After dinner, I asked him about the sauce and he said, well, it would be better with maybe fish, but with the fritters I'd have liked ketchup but didn't like to ask, after all the trouble you took...so I assured him that in this house if he wants ketchup, he shall have it!  But I did appreciate the tact.