All in all

All in all, last week really wasn't a bad week. I had enough sick leave to take Tuesday-Friday off from work. And I did so not because I was in so much pain, but because I have a very public position in the library (mine's the main circulation desk) and I really didn't feel like going in when I looked like a victim of domestic abuse. Going to the grocery store on Thursday was bad enough. At least children will stare openly. Adults take one look, pretend they didn't see, then watch you out of the corners of their eyes. It's weird being stared at. But at that point, the bruising looked like (as one friend put it) a butterfly over the top half of my face. (Don't worry, it's mostly gone now. Although, I've got an appointment today to see if it needs to be reset, and it's a little crooked, so it will most likely bruise up again....) It also stopped hurting pretty quickly, resolving down to a dull ache that's really easy for me to ignore. The Vicodin I took when I posted last week was the last one. It made me so sick to my stomach!
Anyway, if you ignore my broken face, last week was a pretty good week. I had plenty of time to read, and cook, and bake, and garden. And help a very pregnant L put a new battery in her car, then feed her lunch. She gave me more rhubarb and some thyme in exchange. (Get it? I gave her my time, so she gave me her thyme!) We're both very proud of our gardens, by the way.
Shane's been muttering about me having too much rhubarb in the house, so I made a rhubarb coffee cake. (Sorry, I won't put the recipe up here because it's my mother-in-law's and I don't know if I have permission to give it away.) And then I froze just a little bit more rhubarb. I don't think Shane has noticed yet. But our freezers are getting rather full. I'm wondering how much more I can put away before winter? Hopefully, plenty of squash, rhubarb and berries! Especially if I get more zucchinis like this one:

I made it all into this recipe (with a few tweaks, like not having any eggplant and adding chicken), which ended up looking like this before topping it with mozzarella and tomatoes:

The two halves are different because I underestimated how many veggies I'd need to cover that much surface area! But the bread was home-baked French bread, so it was especially delicious. Shane was skeptical about it when I mentioned making it. But as I started cooking the veggies he said, "That smells good. That smells really good." And he started stealing veggies from the pan. Then off the bread. When it was finished and we finally sat down with it Shane said, "We have to add this into the regular rotation of meals." At least for the summer, we definitely will.