Restoration

Varnish gets dirty, it absorbs all the crap in the air. Air is filled with particulate matter. Collect rainwater and you'll see what I mean. I'm a student of water. Take care of what I drink, especially a year like this, when I hardly ever drive in, and filtered water is just too heavy to carry: the bench mark, a cubic foot of water. Once every fifty or hundred years, you have to clean the surface of a painting, which involves stripping off a layer without disturbing the substrate. Not easily done. Q-tips and a specific solvent. Could drive you mad. Most of our Carters have been restored, by contrast we have one on extended loan which has not been cleaned and it's quite dirty. If, as is likely, we're given the painting, it'll go immediately to be conserved. Exhausting week, I'm glad I could drive in the last couple of days. End of the day today, D and were both the walking dead, we pushed hard all week. But the show is up, and lit, I made the labels today, got them attached, and started cleaning the floor. I'll work on that for half-a-day tomorrow, and repackage the etchings for Glenn and Linda. UPS was not happy with my recycled furniture box because it had text all over the outside. I got some nice triple-wall cardboard, no writing. Packing them the way Art (the artist) says he does them all the time. Didn't drive in any supplies, which is always a bad idea, but I didn't get a chance to run over to Kroger, we were balls to the wall all day, and I certainly wasn't going to go in there at five on Good Friday. I'll stop in first thing tomorrow, I just need a couple of things. I'm going to do another pork tenderloin, rolled in sorghum molasses and "breaded" with ground nuts. This is so good, it'll make you weep. You'll need a sauce, I have the advantage here; I have a sauce that's ten years old and contains hundreds of ingredients. What I hope for, at this time of year, is root vegetables that have been in storage. The sugars have started to convert. When you hit it correctly, with a drizzle of melted butter, and a grind of black pepper; parsnips, turnips, sweet potatoes, become a kind of ambrosia. Mike came up behind me, asked if I'd found any morels. I told him no, but my records show they should be out right about now. . We agree to call each other, when we find the first one, with specific information. I need to bring in a dozen eggs tomorrow. A morel omelet is one of the finer things in the universe. I shave some good hard cheese on top. A slab of toast with very good jam. People are always giving me very good jam. I make a red onion jam that's perfect with this omelet, it takes maybe thirty minutes, but if you're standing at the stove anyway, what does it matter? Slice a large red onion quite thin, a shallot, a clove of garlic, caramelize them, stir in something sweet, some apple cider, reduce it. This is very good with anything, outstanding with seafood. I often forget what I was fixing and have it on toast.