Coming up

I knew Big Tim's block party would be a good time, I just didn't realise how different it would be from last year. Partly it was that being a legitimate invitee rather than a crasher made me quite a bit bolder at chatting up neighbours, but also that a real dropoff in attendance from his usual posse made this more of a necessity. Not that there weren't friendly bears to talk to. Graysong was in town for a visit, but I actually spent most of my time engrossed in conversation with a soft-spoken sweetie from the Quad Cities.

And then there was the torrential deluge which struck only moments before the big communal dinner was scheduled to happen. To tell the truth, it felt like rain most of the day, but we've been there so many times we didn't take it seriously. For a while, every big storm was going either to the north of us or the south, so with only a 30% chance in the forecast, I didn't take it seriously. Especially as the clouds kept breaking to allow sunshine in.

When it became clear we weren't going to be passed up this time, BT sprung into action. Food and furniture were swept up onto porches and into vestibules. We had a stir-crazy hour as it poured in buckets, but no sooner had it begun to let up but we made a dash across the street for the porch with the smoked pork shoulder. By the time I moved on to the dessert porch, it was hardly drizzling.

And then conversation in camp chairs on the street well past the hour when the barricades came down and cars began whizzing past us until we realised it was only five of us left on the street, some of whom had been up since 6 a.m. In some ways, smaller was better.

Day of unrest

A good day, but a tiring one. We were meeting friends at the Natsu Matsuri hosted by Chicago Buddhist Temple in Uptown, so the trip to replace the boots that I trashed in Florida after filling them with bilgewater from the lagoons in MacArthur Beach State Park go to pushed to first thing in the morning, when I was still pretty knackered from too many juleps the night before. Fortunately it all went to plan and we were back with new boots (and Rockports and a belt and thongs) early enough to get a bit of a rest before heading out again.

The festival was a more modest version of the Midwest Buddhist Temple's--so modest it reminded me almost exactly of the parish fairs of my youth. They ran out of teriyaki before we arrived, forcing us to fill up on inarizushi and udon. Since there wasn't much in the way of events (not to speak of the exhibits), the real attraction became talking to our pals and the couple who joined them. Soon enough we realised we could just as well do this anywhere and moved on to a hip bakery on Wilson.

We got there just as they were closing, but ended up with about an hour outside before they came to tie up the chairs. That was ample to discuss shisō recipes, kaijū fetishists, and a restaurant with a critter-meats concept called "PDF" or "Pretty Durn Fresh". I still wanted to make a coca de Sant Joan to celebrate Midsummer's, so we skittered home and I mixed up the dough before heading out to do some gardening.

My back started screaming almost immediately, so I accomplished only a bit of what I had planned. But the tulip bulbs are in the ground at last and I've moved the lilies-of-the-valley from the south fence and certain death under the shade of the giant hostas to the edge of the devil strip and a fighting chance at survival. Then it was back inside to scrub the inside of my fingernails thoroughly, less I make it a more earthy bread than I had planned.

The yeast action was so subdued, however, that I worried whether anything was happening at all. Annoyed, I turned the oven on low and distracted myself with the Old Man's carbonara. When I checked again, I was relived to see proofing, but I gave the dough an extra half hour before stretching it, painting it with egg, and strewing the pine nuts and diced candied peel.

For perverse reasons known only to him, Colman Andrews has you bake this coca for at least twenty minutes whereas his ordinary recipe calls for only 10-15. Good thing I'm a nervous baker who checks too often or we would've had a tragedy. Instead, it was just a somewhat blackened crust. We were both pleased with the result, but acknowledged that it wasn't quite up to the level of a good roscón or pan de muertos.

After all this, I still had the laundry to finish plus a raging case of reflux left over from that moring. (The chai latte at the bakery-café was a definite mistake.) Right now I'm consoling myself with the fact that I still have four sickdays and nothing pressing on my calendar for tomorrow, so another bad night like the last one and I'll just stay home.