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Tootsie Yr2: Worcester, MA Part 1
Monday was a "golden day".
This is what theater people call a day off...because "day off" can mean no shows, but it can still mean a day of travel, or a day of rehearsals.
"Golden day" means you really do get the whole day free with no company obligations.
I was wide awake at 7am, because I am the type who would rather do a lot in the morning so I can have no worries in the evening.
First, breakfast and packing up a few things that I'm done with (tupperware, the Itaki, the aeropress, misc cooking tools).
Next I loaded my small suitcase with laundry and headed out to the laundromat.
It was raining so the walk was uncomfortably cold and damp, but not unmanagable.
I stopped at the co-op for some breakfast items for tomorrow.
Laundry was uneventful. An hour later I folded it all up, packed it into the suitcase, and walked to Original Grains for a poke bowl.
This place wasn't on my foodie list; it just looked healthy and was on my way back.
I got tuna with a variety of veggies over herbed basmati. It was larger than I expected, and very good.
Back at the hotel I put away the laundry and did 90% of my packing.
All that's left out are some toiletries, the kettle for tea later on, some food, and my computer.
The rest of my day was relaxing. I did some data entry work, napped, watched anime and Food Network with Jameson.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday morning I woke up super early, having slept SO poorly.
I really hope the next hotel is QUIETER.
Had some breakfast, and at 8:30 packed up the last of my things and got on the charter bus.
Our flights were on time, retrieving luggage was fine, the 40-minute ride from Boston to the hotel in Marlborough was fine.
And despite what our info sheet had said, we DID get refrigerators in our rooms! Score!
I walked to the nearest grocery and stocked up on some nice things, but we have a long commute this week so there will be less fancy cooking. I did get some fancy Al Fresco chicken sausages (precooked), a lemon pepper raw chicken breast, and some local eggs to steam in the Itaki. But most of my veggies and some of my other food items are nonperishables in case there's no fridge at the theater.
Once that was done I unpacked for the week, using the desk as my cooking space and a small side table for my coffee station.
One of our rental cars was reserved under my name, so I picked up the key and went to Kennedy's Restaurant and Market for a takeout dinner. I ordered the "Carolyn's Favorite", which was described as a popover "stuffed with warm roast beef, served with au jus and horseradish sauce". What I got was a very soggy halved popover, buried under lukewarm beef and congealed gravy, no horseradish sauce to be seen.
I rescued the meal by buying a fresh popover unmarred by gravy, rinsing most of the nasty gravy off the beef, and adding steamed veggies. This restaurant is on my foodie list and I'm having second thoughts about it, but there are very few restaurant options in the area. Plus, many of their other meal options still look quite good.
And the additional popover that I bought was VERY good. Clearly freshly baked, light and eggy and wonderful.
Inner texture. If you've had a Dutch baby, a Yorkshire pudding, or a French cruller, the texture is similar.
I'll leave Kennedy's on the list for now, solely based on this heavenly popover and for lack of better options near the hotel.
----------------------------------------------------
Wednesday was, weirdly, another golden day.
Last year I could count on one hand how many golden days we got, and this year we have two nearly back to back!
No matter. Since I had a rental car, and since no one else asked to use it, I woke early to drive to downtown Worcester.
First I drove to the theater and the parking garage so I could see what they were like, so I'd be less likely to get lost on opening night.
Then I went to BirchTree Baking Co for breakfast.
I enjoyed a lavender vanilla Earl Grey tea with oat milk, and "triple-berry toast" which was lemon berry cream cheese, jam, fresh berries, and salted almond brittle on house-made country bread. Very delicious.
The country bread was extremely good, but in the end I decided to take home a loaf of their Danish rye made with local beer and fermented grains. Commonly known as Rugbrød, this bread is intentionally dense and nutrient-rich, and not a type of bread I'd normally get. But the rich malty flavor and chewy grains really hit the spot.
(Sidenote: this was a case where my new food scale came in handy. Most MFP entries listed one serving of rugbrød as 100 grams and around 230 calories. I can't even guess at what 100g of regular bread looks like, much less a dense bread like this! So I measured some of my slices and most of them were around 50 grams. Aha! So one slice is approx 115 calories. For interesting comparison, a slice of Nature's Own 100% Whole Wheat is 26g and 60 calories.)
From there I had planned to hit Worcester Public Market as it was right next door, but they didn't open for another half hour.
So instead I went to the Worcester Art Museum.
Four floors of art, starting with Asian and Greek art on the 1st floor, European art on the 2nd, American and Modern art on the 3rd, and Ye Olde and Old World art on the 4th. Interspersed with these are exhibition galleries which house rotating and visiting collections. The exhibition galleries today were "Jewels of the Nile", showcasing Egyptian and Egypt-inspired jewelery and relics; and "Fathom: the Art of Kat O'Connor".
I enjoyed all of the galleries thoroughly except European art, which frankly I have trouble appreciating.
Gallery after gallery of pasty, smug, and bored-looking white people, everybody posing for ye olde selfie.
Endless pasty, emaciated, European-faced versions of Jesus suffering torment or waggling a blessed fingie or sucking on Mary's teat.
Just, UGH. I can appreciate the artists' abilities and unique styles, but the subject matter is just not interesting to me.
So, no pictures of those. Here are some of my favorites from the day.
This lovely Chinese gemstone has such pretty purples and greens occurring, not to mention the delicate and beautiful carving.
A Greek cup with an owl.
This iron dragon is fully articulated, it can bend and twist.
Detail of the tail, where you can see each moveable iron scale.
These Egyptian figurines got their vibrant blue color from the use of copper in the glaze.
A broken snake statue that had once been part of a temple/place of worship.
I tried to imagine what it must have looked like complete, with worshippers occasionally brushing their hands over it.
This was an entire real chapel house from a priory in France. I can't believe they literally transported this.
A piece of pottery that looks like it's covered in foam.
There were many benches and chairs for people to sit and enjoy the art in each gallery, but these really caught my attention.
I wonder who made them? I hope that people notice them and consider them to be art, too.
Among things that I didn't photograph: the jewelery in the "Nile" collection, because most of it was made in the 1920s and was not actually Egyptian art but a relic of the "Egyptomania" of the 1920s; and the artwork in "Fathom", because I was alone in there with a museum associate who was staring at me and it felt awkward. Also the Modern Art gallery because photographs were not allowed in there for some reason.
This was a beautiful museum with lots of interesting items on display, well worth the $18.
After that I went back to the public market. It was lunchtime so the food hall was in full swing.
I was excited to see many kinds of food including Jamaican, African, Mexican, Thai, Peruvian, and more.
The Jamaican place had a big jug of sorrel drink sitting on the counter, and the menu also advertised curried goat, so I'd like to eat lunch there over the weekend if possible.
For now I focused on the local wares, where I found a bag of truffle-flavored beef jerky, a can of "maple water", and some locally-made kumquat-scented hand lotion. They had SO much more that I wanted--sauces and honeys and kitchenware and crafts, and All The Candies--but I had to exercise restraint!
Back at the hotel I rested and ate lunch, then tried to cook some of my lovely local eggs in the Itaki.
I'm not sure why, but they did not cook through. I cooked them for 15 minutes (I successfully tested this cook time at home) and cracked one open to find it barely cooked on the outside and mostly raw in the middle. I put the other two back in and cooked them for another 15, and got basically soft poached eggs which could have been edible...if I had known they were so soft before trying to peel them.
That's three good eggs wasted, argh.
I'm going to try cooking my other three one at a time throughout the week so I can experiment with the cook time.
Would really like to not waste the rest.
My chicken cooked up just fine in the usual amount of time, so it's not the Itaki or the power source.
Maybe these eggs have extra-thick shells or something.
The rest of my night was spent checking on Jameson, watching Lego Masters, and meal planning for the week.
--------------------------------------------------------
It's Thursday and we'll finally get to have opening night.
Some things that I haven't mentioned:
For travel this week we were broken into two groups, and while our group arrived with no issue the later group had an issue with their plane that delayed them by like five hours.
Also Jared, the guy who plays Jeff in our show, fractured his foot (DURING the show, worker's comp) so now the whole cast has to go back into rehearsals to figure out how to cover.
We only have one show on Friday but I expect the actors and a lot of crew will need to rehearse for much of the afternoon.
The info sheet for Athens, GA has already been given out...we are only there for one day.
This will be my first time doing a "load-and-go" with only one night in a city. I imagine it'll be rushed and stressed.
I still made a MFF foodie sheet for Athens, but it only has the VERY nearest grocery (a Target), nearest pharmacy (a CVS inside the Target probably), and two suggested restaurants listed as "One Shot Stops" for people to consider if they get time to order out and want to make it something special/local.
Anyway, today I'll do some data entry work and take a walk and pack a dinner to bring to the theater since we have a 20-minute commute.
This is what theater people call a day off...because "day off" can mean no shows, but it can still mean a day of travel, or a day of rehearsals.
"Golden day" means you really do get the whole day free with no company obligations.
I was wide awake at 7am, because I am the type who would rather do a lot in the morning so I can have no worries in the evening.
First, breakfast and packing up a few things that I'm done with (tupperware, the Itaki, the aeropress, misc cooking tools).
Next I loaded my small suitcase with laundry and headed out to the laundromat.
It was raining so the walk was uncomfortably cold and damp, but not unmanagable.
I stopped at the co-op for some breakfast items for tomorrow.
Laundry was uneventful. An hour later I folded it all up, packed it into the suitcase, and walked to Original Grains for a poke bowl.
This place wasn't on my foodie list; it just looked healthy and was on my way back.
I got tuna with a variety of veggies over herbed basmati. It was larger than I expected, and very good.
Back at the hotel I put away the laundry and did 90% of my packing.
All that's left out are some toiletries, the kettle for tea later on, some food, and my computer.
The rest of my day was relaxing. I did some data entry work, napped, watched anime and Food Network with Jameson.
-----------------------------------------------------------
Tuesday morning I woke up super early, having slept SO poorly.
I really hope the next hotel is QUIETER.
Had some breakfast, and at 8:30 packed up the last of my things and got on the charter bus.
Our flights were on time, retrieving luggage was fine, the 40-minute ride from Boston to the hotel in Marlborough was fine.
And despite what our info sheet had said, we DID get refrigerators in our rooms! Score!
I walked to the nearest grocery and stocked up on some nice things, but we have a long commute this week so there will be less fancy cooking. I did get some fancy Al Fresco chicken sausages (precooked), a lemon pepper raw chicken breast, and some local eggs to steam in the Itaki. But most of my veggies and some of my other food items are nonperishables in case there's no fridge at the theater.
Once that was done I unpacked for the week, using the desk as my cooking space and a small side table for my coffee station.
One of our rental cars was reserved under my name, so I picked up the key and went to Kennedy's Restaurant and Market for a takeout dinner. I ordered the "Carolyn's Favorite", which was described as a popover "stuffed with warm roast beef, served with au jus and horseradish sauce". What I got was a very soggy halved popover, buried under lukewarm beef and congealed gravy, no horseradish sauce to be seen.
I rescued the meal by buying a fresh popover unmarred by gravy, rinsing most of the nasty gravy off the beef, and adding steamed veggies. This restaurant is on my foodie list and I'm having second thoughts about it, but there are very few restaurant options in the area. Plus, many of their other meal options still look quite good.
And the additional popover that I bought was VERY good. Clearly freshly baked, light and eggy and wonderful.
Inner texture. If you've had a Dutch baby, a Yorkshire pudding, or a French cruller, the texture is similar.
I'll leave Kennedy's on the list for now, solely based on this heavenly popover and for lack of better options near the hotel.
----------------------------------------------------
Wednesday was, weirdly, another golden day.
Last year I could count on one hand how many golden days we got, and this year we have two nearly back to back!
No matter. Since I had a rental car, and since no one else asked to use it, I woke early to drive to downtown Worcester.
First I drove to the theater and the parking garage so I could see what they were like, so I'd be less likely to get lost on opening night.
Then I went to BirchTree Baking Co for breakfast.
I enjoyed a lavender vanilla Earl Grey tea with oat milk, and "triple-berry toast" which was lemon berry cream cheese, jam, fresh berries, and salted almond brittle on house-made country bread. Very delicious.
The country bread was extremely good, but in the end I decided to take home a loaf of their Danish rye made with local beer and fermented grains. Commonly known as Rugbrød, this bread is intentionally dense and nutrient-rich, and not a type of bread I'd normally get. But the rich malty flavor and chewy grains really hit the spot.
(Sidenote: this was a case where my new food scale came in handy. Most MFP entries listed one serving of rugbrød as 100 grams and around 230 calories. I can't even guess at what 100g of regular bread looks like, much less a dense bread like this! So I measured some of my slices and most of them were around 50 grams. Aha! So one slice is approx 115 calories. For interesting comparison, a slice of Nature's Own 100% Whole Wheat is 26g and 60 calories.)
From there I had planned to hit Worcester Public Market as it was right next door, but they didn't open for another half hour.
So instead I went to the Worcester Art Museum.
Four floors of art, starting with Asian and Greek art on the 1st floor, European art on the 2nd, American and Modern art on the 3rd, and Ye Olde and Old World art on the 4th. Interspersed with these are exhibition galleries which house rotating and visiting collections. The exhibition galleries today were "Jewels of the Nile", showcasing Egyptian and Egypt-inspired jewelery and relics; and "Fathom: the Art of Kat O'Connor".
I enjoyed all of the galleries thoroughly except European art, which frankly I have trouble appreciating.
Gallery after gallery of pasty, smug, and bored-looking white people, everybody posing for ye olde selfie.
Endless pasty, emaciated, European-faced versions of Jesus suffering torment or waggling a blessed fingie or sucking on Mary's teat.
Just, UGH. I can appreciate the artists' abilities and unique styles, but the subject matter is just not interesting to me.
So, no pictures of those. Here are some of my favorites from the day.
This lovely Chinese gemstone has such pretty purples and greens occurring, not to mention the delicate and beautiful carving.
A Greek cup with an owl.
This iron dragon is fully articulated, it can bend and twist.
Detail of the tail, where you can see each moveable iron scale.
These Egyptian figurines got their vibrant blue color from the use of copper in the glaze.
A broken snake statue that had once been part of a temple/place of worship.
I tried to imagine what it must have looked like complete, with worshippers occasionally brushing their hands over it.
This was an entire real chapel house from a priory in France. I can't believe they literally transported this.
A piece of pottery that looks like it's covered in foam.
There were many benches and chairs for people to sit and enjoy the art in each gallery, but these really caught my attention.
I wonder who made them? I hope that people notice them and consider them to be art, too.
Among things that I didn't photograph: the jewelery in the "Nile" collection, because most of it was made in the 1920s and was not actually Egyptian art but a relic of the "Egyptomania" of the 1920s; and the artwork in "Fathom", because I was alone in there with a museum associate who was staring at me and it felt awkward. Also the Modern Art gallery because photographs were not allowed in there for some reason.
This was a beautiful museum with lots of interesting items on display, well worth the $18.
After that I went back to the public market. It was lunchtime so the food hall was in full swing.
I was excited to see many kinds of food including Jamaican, African, Mexican, Thai, Peruvian, and more.
The Jamaican place had a big jug of sorrel drink sitting on the counter, and the menu also advertised curried goat, so I'd like to eat lunch there over the weekend if possible.
For now I focused on the local wares, where I found a bag of truffle-flavored beef jerky, a can of "maple water", and some locally-made kumquat-scented hand lotion. They had SO much more that I wanted--sauces and honeys and kitchenware and crafts, and All The Candies--but I had to exercise restraint!
Back at the hotel I rested and ate lunch, then tried to cook some of my lovely local eggs in the Itaki.
I'm not sure why, but they did not cook through. I cooked them for 15 minutes (I successfully tested this cook time at home) and cracked one open to find it barely cooked on the outside and mostly raw in the middle. I put the other two back in and cooked them for another 15, and got basically soft poached eggs which could have been edible...if I had known they were so soft before trying to peel them.
That's three good eggs wasted, argh.
I'm going to try cooking my other three one at a time throughout the week so I can experiment with the cook time.
Would really like to not waste the rest.
My chicken cooked up just fine in the usual amount of time, so it's not the Itaki or the power source.
Maybe these eggs have extra-thick shells or something.
The rest of my night was spent checking on Jameson, watching Lego Masters, and meal planning for the week.
--------------------------------------------------------
It's Thursday and we'll finally get to have opening night.
Some things that I haven't mentioned:
For travel this week we were broken into two groups, and while our group arrived with no issue the later group had an issue with their plane that delayed them by like five hours.
Also Jared, the guy who plays Jeff in our show, fractured his foot (DURING the show, worker's comp) so now the whole cast has to go back into rehearsals to figure out how to cover.
We only have one show on Friday but I expect the actors and a lot of crew will need to rehearse for much of the afternoon.
The info sheet for Athens, GA has already been given out...we are only there for one day.
This will be my first time doing a "load-and-go" with only one night in a city. I imagine it'll be rushed and stressed.
I still made a MFF foodie sheet for Athens, but it only has the VERY nearest grocery (a Target), nearest pharmacy (a CVS inside the Target probably), and two suggested restaurants listed as "One Shot Stops" for people to consider if they get time to order out and want to make it something special/local.
Anyway, today I'll do some data entry work and take a walk and pack a dinner to bring to the theater since we have a 20-minute commute.
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Personally I think they should be mandatory, tours are hard enough. The number of times I’ve heard “we have tomorrow off, we’re just traveling to ____.” And I’m so tempted to say that is NOT a day off!
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But yeah a "day off" is NOT a day off on a tour, that's for sure!