Exhausted social butterflies

Near the end of semesters, especially the spring one, all sorts of social events get piled up on one another, and then there's spring stuff too. So Friday night the Phactors were out for pizza with a couple of young couples, and a couple of old couples (oh, we're one of those!), a sort of mixer type of social event, which was quite fun until they dropped our deep dish supreme as it came out of the oven!  The next morning the Phactors paid off the purchasers of a charity auction treating this charitable bunch to brunch after a wildflower walk. You can figure out TPP's part in all of this; funny how similar a taxonomy class field trip and a wildflower walk can be.  It was great weather, great food, and great fun. And you had a choice of Bloody Mary recipes, all well spiced, and with vodka, tequila, or akvavit.  If you have never tried the latter, do so.  That evening was a student awards banquet; great fun but hard to recognize everyone when they're all cleaned up as you never see them. Nice to see all the achievements recognized too. The next morning was a double header where the church president (Mrs. Phactor) was organizing and lobbying and having a congregational meeting to decide about replacing a furnace with geothermal system at an additional cost.  And in addition, TPP was speaking to the congregation about biodiversity and human population.  After that, immediately after that, our long time dinner group was having its spring brunch, and to make that possible at all, the Phactors were cooking yesterday during the afternoon and evening (before and after the banquet); our recipe was smoked salmon and scrambled eggs in filo pastry, a sort of breakfast strudel (most excellent).  And there is always way too much food.  Just 3 hours later, the Phactors went to another awards reception and retirement celebration. Now we are just plain exhausted, both overfed and over indulged in diverse beverages. It was a great weekend, but man, wouldn't want to try and keep up that schedule for very long. Is tomorrow a Monday? We need to rest up!

Saturday AM field trip

TPP is generous and supportive of a number of nonprofit organizations and lots of starving artists.  So this AM he found himself leading three couples on a field trip wild flower foray.  It seems TPP's expertise was auctioned off along with fancy brunch for a fund-raiser; yes, botanically prostituted by his own wife.  Since 2013 has been a pretty cool and late, it was hard to know what to expect out in woodlands, but when you teach plant taxonomy for a few years, you learn about all the good places to find nice wild flowers.  So here's the rundown for April 20, 2013: early whitlow grass, cottonwood, cutleaf toothwort, dutchman's breeches, bloodroot (almost gone), troutlily (white), bluebells (only on south facing slopes), yellow violet, spring beauty, and a buttercup, and after a bit of searching, liverleaf - Hepatica.  And like any good field trip this one finished with a nice dry Spanish champagne, a mushroom quiche, sauted asparagus with avocado butter, a fruit salad with ataulfo mango, a lemon-cream cake, and bacon.  So as you can see Mrs. Phactor made it quite worth my while, and quite worth their while to have made a generous contribution for this field trip.  It was fun all the way around.

Food quest in action

The food quest of a couple of days ago is being put into action, and the Phactor has just spent 30 mins carmelizing a pound and a half of purple onions. Apparently a dozen or so people are coming for brunch tomorrow. So let's see what's cookin'. For starters, curry-spiced bloody marys, shrimp with eye-popping, sinus-opening cocktail sauce, a Phactor speciality (love that horseradish), and a modest little chicken liver pate on slices of baguette. The main dish is a lovely smoked salmon potato frittata with dilled sour cream accompanied with some baked applewood bacon, an arugula salad with balsamic carmelized onions, and a rosemary foccacia (semolina used here). For finishers, an apple-cranberry crisp and a spiced (5 spice powder & almond flour in here) cranberry almond bundt cake with orange frosting. More or less our usual Sunday morning fare.