We spent a great day up in Milwaukee – checking out the Winterthur quilt exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum – a cool Saarinen building with an even cooler Calatrava addition. The only (minor) annoyance was the two young women standing squarely in front of Raphael’s ‘The Woman with the Veil’ for a good quarter of an hour obviously trying to outdo each other with their knowledge of fine art ephemera. Clueless to the other people wanting to take a look, they continued to plot their theses and the next great action adventure movie it/they would no doubt be turned into. *sigh*
Oh well, from the pretentious to the sublime – the Milwaukee Public Market! I love the market, much less crazed (and a lot smaller) than Quincy Market, and filled with a nice assortment of good butchers, bakers, candy makers and fish mongers. Rich’s goal was a couple of oatmeal scotchies from C. Adams Bakery and some milk and dark chocolate cashew turtles from Kehr’s Candies. My goal was some more of the fantastic sub-dried tomato strips I’d picked up from Rupena’s 
Fine Foods last month when my sister was visiting. Sadly for me, none was to be had, but I did have some luck scoring a new Kohn Rikon double-bladed knife (And for considerably less than the web site asks) as well as the elusive Public Market Tote Bag.
We followed our Public Market visit with a stop at Tenuta’s on the way home for Italian Beef and jus, really good, sharp Provolone, some Pecorino Romano, Joe’s Cookies (little bits of almond heaven) and some lovely fresh frozen smoked Mozzarella stuffed 
pasta (I think it looks like ravioli, but the nice folks at Tenuta’s call it something else, and I’m not going to go downstairs to the freezer to look it up). I also found some of their sun-dried tomatoes – not in strips, but not packed in oil either; so two birds with that stop, hey?
Leaving Tenuta’s, we gritted our teeth about our next (hopefully) quick stop – Woodman’s for some basics – coffee, rolls for Italian Beef and Banzai Burgers and hot dogs, fresh 
Romaine, tomatoes on the vine and English cucumber, half and half, milk and La Croix sparkling water. Surprisingly, for a Friday Holiday Weekend Evening, Woodman’s was pretty mellow, and we were able to get in and out with a minimum of fuss.
Finally home, we opted to call out for Chinese delivery from our trusty Long Sing, and than spent a traditional family evening gathered around the living room: iPod playing Dana Owens and Phoebe Snow in the dock, mom doing cryptoquotes on her laptop, Rich playing his latest game on his, and me with Scrabble on mine – I remain convinced that the computer cheats – but that’s another story.
Today we’ll be visiting some friends, then having other friends over for a cookout – so I’d better move and get the salad started…