Bonnie came by shortly to pick me up; I was hoping Jane
would join her to liven up the conversation, but that
wasn't. We had enough to talk about, though. In Watkins
Glen, we did a supplemental provisioning at Tops, where
I found family packs of ground beef and boneless skinless
chicken breast. A giant pack of white meat cost a buck more
than a tiny quartet of thighs, which would have fed 3 or so:
as it was, this made 23 meals - cutlet, pojarski, stir-fry,
and bai chieh ji, see below. The ground beef turned into a
large pot of Bolognese (minus chicken livers), a small pot
(6 servings) of chili, 12 burgers, half of which ended up
being given to Burt, see subsequent post.

Back at the house, Jane was involved in conversation with
Bonnie's two daughters, one son-in-law, and one granddaughter.
The son had just taken off, trying to drive to Atlanta in one
go, and the other son-in-law didn't show up at all, begging
bad back (it's a 2-hour drive).

I had planned on showing up after Bonnie's Nicoise dinner,
but even despite a day's delay, I hit it square on, the
others having taken the early days, and so I endured a
meal of greens and tuna fish. Luckily there weren't any
anchovies. Dessert provide most of the calories and all of
the enjoyment: Seneca Farms grasshopper and vanilla with
what was introduced to me as Kate's perfect berry pie (a
not-too-sweet and pretty delicious blueberry-strawberry
concoction in a decent though vegan crust) and Jane's
"magnificent apple pie" made with half Empires and half
Cortlandts that made me think of saying Will you marry me,
it was so good, as it was made with a part butter crust,
The vanilla ice cream, mild in flavor with moderate
richness and moderate sweetness and a lot of overrun, went
pretty well. The grasshopper, which I didn't taste until
days later and by itself, was a mild mint with swirls of
chocolate wafer crumbs.

After dinner there was a bridge game, at which I wasn not
too easy, having not played in decades, but I cleaned their
clocks (whatever partnership I was on won).

--

The daily routine: a couple miles' walk before it got too
hot, for those who felt up for it (I went the first day but
found that the mosquitoes found me almost immediately, and
there were a lot of them), Wimbledon (a lot of tennis
fanatics in this crowd), lunch, which for everyone else was
cold cut and cheese sandwiches and chips, but for me was
leftovers or chili or spag Bol that I made, siesta and/or
bridge and/or a swim in the lake, cocktails, supper (main
dish by me, salad - green Romaine unless otherwise noted -
made by the ladies, dessert), bridge or cribbage (silly game),
a futile attempt to find MSNBC (a lot of Rachel Maddow fans,
but apparently the local cable company isn't one of them), and
so to bed.

--

There was a catch-as-catch can meal, at which most of
them had leftovers, and I made cheese crisps out of Cuba
Cheese Shoppe's Longhorn Swiss, of which there remained a
lot, largely owing to its intrinsic tastelessness. The
frying improved the stuff amazingly. For me, the main meal
was a alrge dose of most-of-the-time vegan Kate's pulled
pork with Stubb's sauce, which was quite good though, as
you might expect, had had all the delicious fat trimmed
and discarded.
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