COVID19: Merry Belated Coronavirus Christmas

Merry belated Christmas, everybody!

The Page-AnderVernonsons celebrated today on the farm, and while it was chillier and windier than any of us would have preferred, the sun was out, the weather was dry, and the family was ready to spend quality time together. 

Christmas came and went, and for the first time in my life, I didn't spend any time at all with Mom and Dad, which felt weird, but like I said in a Facebook post, my Christmas wish for all the people this year is safety, and staying home was the safe choice for us. 

Light and steady snow fell on and off from the evening of the 23rd throughout Christmas Eve, giving us a dirty white Christmas with most, but not all, of the ground covered. East Tennessee looked like a Christmas card. Middle Tennessee looked like a Christmas card that fell to the ground and got stepped on a few times. At least we got some snow, though, and for some people, maybe including Jack and myself, seeing flakes heading to earth on Christmas Eve was a nice treat during this weird time. 

The high temperature was only forecast to be in the mid-20's on Christmas day. We talked about rearranging plans and doing things differently to keep the family relatively comfortable and absolutely safe in the cold weather. The Vernon girls said they needed to see Nan and Papa on Christmas, and I don't blame them a bit, so Sis and Chris brought them for a short visit during the heat of the day, which was 20'ish on the thermometer at noon. Jack and I decided that he would stay here with the fire to keep the house warm, and I would go to the farm to see everybody. Because of the abbreviated length of the visit we'd already opted to not even think about food or presents, so I bundled up and got ready to go. Jack cranked the car to get it warm for me then realized that the road had patchy ice. I took a good look up and down the road in front of the house. No, there wasn't a lot of ice, but what was there was slick. I know the road well enough to know where the bad places will be after any given weather event. As Sis says, Jack and I live on one of those roads that "makes them close schools every time it snows a little bit." 

I was bummed to miss out on Christmas time with the family, but I would've been more bummed to miss out because I was in a ditch or sick with COVID, so I stripped off my layers of warm clothing without much complaint or cursing. 

Weather-wise today was the best day, so we made a plan and had Christmas.

Yes, we were chilly, but we were also happy and glad for the opportunity to be together. 

Here are a few photos from the day. I'm operating on a Chromebook now and don't have Photoshop for any tweaking or adjustment, so we make do with what they look like from the camera.

COVID19: Onion Pie

I'm competing in the Chopped Christmas Virtual Challenge that the local extension office is hosting through Facebook. Three weeks of preliminary challenges - appetizer, entree, dessert - will determine the three competitors in the final challenge with the winner to be named sometime around new year.

Participants are given the same set of required ingredients and a deadline for creating a dish using them. Photos and recipes are submitted to the extension office and posted on the UT-TSU Extension Facebook page, then the public according to Facebook votes, an assessment by three neutral judges is made, and a winner and runner-up from each week's competitors are chosen. 

For the first week's required ingredients were cream cheese, onions, garlic powder, cranberries, and pecans. Because I've been having so much fun lately with pastry and making a pie of some sort every few days, I came up with the idea for a Cranberry-Pecan Crostata. I made a scruffy puff pastry-pie pastry hybrid, and by "scruffy," I don't mean it looked rough or haggard - it was flawless - but the  method of pulling together and folding pastry with a massive load of chilly butter to create layers and layers of deliciousness isn't stuffy, overly-precise, or labor intensive. 

After rolling out my pastry, I used a ruler to lay out a perfect rectangle, trimmed away the ends, and created a folded edge. An egg, garlic powder, salt, and pepper were mixed into softened cream cheese before I spread it across the pastry. Toasted pecans, reconstituted dried cranberries, and slices of red onion completed the crostata. I brushed a beautiful egg wash around the edges and crumbled some flakes of Maldon on for good measure.

I thought the resulting creation was beautiful, and Jack said it looked like something in Southern Living, but it didn't catch the eye of the folks on Facebook in a good way. I got less votes than anyone else by a fairly wide margin, and I continue to consider the futility of trying to sell onion pie to the masses, no matter how good it might taste in real life.

Because it did taste fantastic!!

COVID19: Cousin Marcie

Jack's cousin Marcie is a hospital social worker in Ft. Myers, Florida and among the handful of people that Jack and I talk to semi-regularly on the telephone. She's also among the handful of people who have spent the night here.

She's a kind and thoughtful person, and COVID19 has made her job a whole lot harder in an area which, like Tennessee, is seeing a surge in cases with no real end in sight. 

Marcie grew up in McMinnville and has the mountains in her spirit, but she's at her best in the ocean breeze. 

To let her know how much we love her, I painted this picture for her. It's big - 12 inches square - and based on a photograph her husband, Chad, took one day when they'd paddled to a stretch of isolated beach somewhere off the Gulf of Mexico. The canoe was hand-built by one of her grandfathers and is one of her most treasured, cherished possessions. It's also a hell of a canoe. 

COVID19: Fire Safety

My best friend's family home burned to the ground Sunday, and I'm heartbroken.

When I was a child, I was so afraid that our house was going to catch on fire that there were nights I couldn't sleep. I remember once when I was an older kid - 8th grade'ish, because we'd already moved to the farm - I lied to Mom and Dad about a nightmare, because I'd started thinking about fire after I went to bed and needed to be comforted. They did, because that's what they do. 

Our bedrooms had electric wall-heaters, and during cold weather, Dad cautioned us on the daily about not leaving anything in front of our heaters. We'd say, "OK," and he'd expound by telling us how quickly the wall could catch on fire. Cynthia and I slept in a room with a window that opened onto the front porch. If we'd needed to get out or needed rescue, we were right there, and I don't remember either one of us leaving anything in front of the heater during any kind of weather, because that territory and all the territory around it was strictly off limits.

When I bought this house in 1993, it had baseboard heaters and a wood stove. I burned wood when I could, but working 12 hour night shifts in the ER made burning wood for a primary heating source impossible, so I used the baseboard heaters a lot to keep myself comfortable during my work stretches. When I was off, I mostly stayed home and built warm, roaring fires. 

My first winter here, an ice storm took out the phone and electric lines, and single-digit temperatures made a fire necessary. The dog, Tess, and I snuggled on a pallet in the floor by the fire and near the sliding glass door, where daytime light is nice that time of year, for the better part of three days. I boiled  ramen noodles and had fun making snow on the deck with the pot water. I baked a potato. 

One of those nights Tess barked, and I woke to see a section of the flue glowing red like horseshoes in a blacksmith's fire. I knocked the stove's vents shut with the poker and waited for the damper handle to turn black again before using pliers to ease it around a few notches. 

After that, using the baseboard heaters didn't seem nearly so dangerous as they did before, and to my credit, even if the rest of the house looked like a rathole, I kept the area around the baseboard heaters swept free of pet hair and dust bunnies. 

When Jack and I opted to make this our permanent home, one of his first orders of business was disconnecting the heaters from the great room and moving them to pre-scrapyard staging under the deck with the old waterheater

Twenty years later when Jack and I bought that new stove I blogged about here, we had to retrofit everything from the stove up, which included taking off the old chimney and re-doing that part of the roof before cutting a new hole and installing a new flue all the way up from the stove. We don't have a chimney now. We have a pipe with a peaked topper that looks like a little round birdhouse or something in a cartoon.

The guy who supervised the whole operation told us that it was a wonder the place hadn't burned to the ground as much as we'd used the old stove. The original flue wasn't rated as flue pipe at all. It was surplus mobile home ducting that had been powdercoated. It wasn't even the right diameter to mate-up with modern chimney flues. The stove itself was literally a fire-trap and so heavy we nearly killed ourselves getting it loaded up for the trip to the scrapyard, which was, incidentally, the same trip with the baseboard heaters and old waterheater from under the deck. 

We still have a couple of baseboard heaters - one in each bedroom - but we never use them anymore. 

Last night, after learning that the fire which destroyed a family home - a Tennessee Century Farm farmhouse - and everything but my friend's 90'something year-old daddy started with a baseboard heater, Jack noted that we need to go ahead and get those last two pulled out and hauled off. 

Dad still checks to make sure we haven't started using them again and remind us to keep the cat hair and dust bunnies swept out of the way.

I do. Believe me, I do.

COVID19: Let's Talk about Shoes

We had snow yesterday. It was that beautiful kind of steady snow that covers the tree branches and makes the ground white but mostly melts and doesn't make the roads dangerous. I call it "friendly snow," because it isn't treacherous or threatening as long as you watch your step and don't take stupid chances where the ground might be slick.

That will probably be the only snow we get, because I also ordered winter boots yesterday. 

I went to Amazon to look for something entirely different, but before I was finished, I'd scored Cyber Monday deals on shoes for both Jack and myself as well as Christmas presents for Sis and Chris. My holiday shopping has been more on schedule than recent years, and it feels good to be mostly finished here at the beginning of December. 

The boots I've ordered are purple and lined with dark grey fake shearling. They were less than twenty dollars, and I'm more excited about them than I probably should be, but I haven't had winter boots since I was a kid. This is going to be a whole'nother ballgame when it's time to walk Josie or do laundry. 

My favorite winter shoes ever were these things called "hut scuffs," which were insulated clogs with soft, gummy soles for walking on icy porches and whatnot. They came with extra liners, and I wore those shoes until there were holes in the soles. Jack and I both had a pair which we bought on final clearance from either Campmor or Sierra Trading Post back in pre-Croc days before most men, especially rural Tennessee men, wore clogs. Jack was on board from the get-go, because he's all about comfort and function, and if nothing else, clogs are comfortable and functional. 

He's wearing clogs at this very minute.

My clopping-around-the-house shoes have, until very recently, been a pair of worn out Keen sandals with stepped-down backstraps, I didn't realize just how much they were hurting my feet until I stopped wearing them, which was Thanksgiving. When we were at the farm, I slid my feet from my shoes and started rubbing them pretty aggressively. Mom asked what was going on, and I told her how much my feet hurt on a regular basis and how I probably need to get some new shoes to wear around the house. I told her about how much I'd loved the hut scuffs and showed her my worn out Keens.

She told me that she'd just gotten new house shoes from Amazon and retrieved them from the house. They were plain blue scuffs with bright chartreuse lining and lightweight waterproof soles. They looked huge, so I slid my big dawgs into them. With room to spare, I told Mom the shoes are obviously too big for her and claimed them for my own. 

As soon as I got home, I logged ordered just like'em for her in size medium. They came in the mail today, and we dropped them off (along with a little bag of hand pies) at the farm on our way to pick up groceries.

COVID19: Safe Distance Thanksgiving on the Farm Photos

 

COVID19: 1979 Thanksgiving Trip to Michigan - Part I

One year we went to Michigan for Thanksgiving. 

1979.

I don't remember what "the family car" was at that time or why we borrowed Ma-Ma Harris' car, but we went in the Nova and traveled in tandem with Uncle Bill, ex-Aunt Doris, Billy, and Brent. They were in a gold LTD station wagon, and we all left from Smithville on Wednesday afternoon. 

I remember being sorry to leave school at lunchtime, because Mr. Hyde was going to do his famous chain reaction demonstration in the aquarium in his classroom that afternoon. He had a big aquarium - maybe 40 gallons - but it didn't have any fish in it. It was mostly just a big, empty aquarium in the corner of a 9th grade science classroom, but once a year, Mr. Hyde would set about a hundred mousetraps, arrange them in the floor of the aquarium, then drop in a ping-pong ball to demonstrate what a chain reaction is. 

The plan was for the adults to drive until they were too exhausted to wiggle, then we'd check into a motel and finish the rest of the trip on Thanksgiving morning, which seemed reasonable, since the Michigan relatives drove to Tennessee more often than the Maryland cousins or Aunt Bobbye and Uncle Clyde, who lived in Houston, and the way they talked, traveling to Michigan and back wasn't that much more of a deal than going to Knoxville or Chattanooga. 

Dad got pulled over for speeding by the Kentucky Highway Patrol south of Cincinnati. That was the first time I was ever in a car that got pulled over, and 40 years later, the flash of those blue lights is bright  in my memory

Dad did get a ticket, and he felt bad about it because we were in Ma-Ma's car - like it was going to count against her on her permanent record - and even way back then, I think the thing cost nearly $80 to resolve. 

We stopped somewhere for a snack and to regroup after the ticket ordeal. Uncle Billy had pulled over, too, a mile or so down the road to wait for us to catch up and ended up getting questioned by the same trooper about what he was doing and why he was pulled over and was he traveling alongside those speeding people from Tennessee with the same last name. 

At the end of the day, we stopped north of Cincinnati but not as far north as Dad and Uncle Bill had hoped we'd get. 

COVID19: Chicken Pot Pie

Saturday, we got our bi-weekly box of produce from Misfits Market, and I should have taken a picture of the inside of the box to show you how pretty everything looked. 

After a couple of glitchy deliveries - one box got lost in transit and one was missing a couple of items - we're back on track. This order had mostly familiar things that we use on a regular basis - salad greens, sweet peppers, big round onions, small red onions, and cabbage. We also got bok choy, Bosc pears, a couple of avocados, a bunch of radishes, a bag of pearl onions, and a small head of radicchio. The gold beets Jack had wanted were apparently not a go, so our box contained two celery roots as a substitution.

We've not had celery root before, but I've seen them used on cooking shows in savory dishes where potatoes, turnips, and other root veggies go and had no reservations about cubing-up one of those puppies and adding it to this huge and delicious chicken pot pie.

I normally use a potato but substituted the celery root, and it was fantastic. The flavor was very subtle and mostly appeared as a bright, nutty note. The cubes were creamy but didn't lose their shape or get mushy like some potatoes are wont to do. If I hadn't known what it was, I probably would have guessed it was a mild variety of turnip. 

The pearl onions were fun to prep. I made an "x" at the bottom end of each one then plopped them into boiling water to blanch for a few minutes before getting shocked in a bowl of ice. The beautiful little "pearls" blip out easily with a pinch and squeeze from the top and are what you need in a pot pie. The recipe I loosely reference whenever I make pot pie is one by Ina Garten, my kitchen spirit guide, who strongly suggests using pearl onions, because they're sweet, tender, and have a gentle flavor. 

Before the pandemic, Kroger could be a reliable source of inexpensive pearl onions in the freezer section. Fresh ones tend to be priced as a specialty produce item, seasonal, and not particularly in demand by cooks in this part of rural Middle Tennessee. When pearl onions were offered in the "pick six" section of our Misfits Market options, I selected them first and said, "Ooooo, pot pie" and made other choices accordingly.

The substitution of celery root was happenstance and well-fated. We'll put that in the box again. It would be great in all kinds of soups, a mash with beef or pork, roasted in the oven like potatoes. A new thing to taste and explore.

COVID19: Happy Birthday All Around - Scorpio Edition

Dad's birthday was the same day as the election. Mom's was today. 

Two Scorpio parents.

I'm not into astrology enough to know what that means and had to check with Google to be reminded what sign influences those born in the first three weeks of November.

Scorpio, according to the few sources I checked, is strong-willed, sensitive, and nurturing. They are also most compatible with Pieces and other Scorpios, so there you go. Mom is one of the most strong-willed people I know. Dad is, too, but he's a lot more subtle. I looked to see what sign he's closer to than Mom, and it's Libra, and according to the internet, Libras are charming and beautiful, and they are driven to orderly, balanced, aesthetically-pleasing things. 

Chris' birthday is two days after Dad's. Sis is a Pieces. 

So, there you go.

Happy Birthday, November people I love. 

COVID19: Viral Thoughts on a Sunday Evening

The progression of COVID19 cases here in DeKalb County continues to climb. We're at 971 as of today, the 15th of November, which is spitting distance of a thousand.

DeKalb had 18 new cases. Yesterday, we had a record 51 new cases. The day before that, it was 6. The trendline is shifting steeply upward. The schools start back with in-person learning tomorrow after a two week quarantine break due to sick students and staff. 

Privacy concerns keep the flow of information from being immediately helpful, and contract tracing is spotty. 

Some people say they can't imagine what the period between Thanksgiving and the end of January is going to look like, but I can. I've spent hours with co-workers writing plans and testing them with table drills and staffed walk-throughs at various hospitals in preparation for worst case scenario situations - tornadoes, floods, the collapse of the power grid, anthrax, a radiation incident or nuclear disaster, civil unrest. And, yes, pandemic.

COVID19: Greetings from Tuesday Morning

The election is over. Joe Biden is the President-elect, and the first good bit to bubble to the surface was  relief.

Relief.

Pennsylvania called the result just before 10:30 on Saturday morning. We hadn't been up for long, and when I logged onto Facebook, my friend Jeffry had just posted the wonderful news. He's a stickler for facts, so I knew he was telling the real deal. Jack came in from walking Josie to find me with happy tears streaming down my face. 

Later in the morning, Nevada called the race for Biden. Georgia is also showing blue. There's no way for Trump to make up the difference in the votes, but he's raising a big stink about it. I'm not worried at this point. The election is a done thing, so I'm just going to sit here in the corner and wait for everybody to get over the sting of butthurt. 

Facebook is awash with stinging comments from Trump supporters who feel that the election is being stolen, and some are planning a mass exodus to a competing platform which promises no censorship, no fact-checking, and no liberal bias. Good riddance, I say. Don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. 

A friend sent me a message earlier and asked if I wasn't going to take at least one victory lap around Facebook about the result of the election, and I told him that I just don't have it in me this time around. I'm posting pictures of the beautiful trees in the woods behind us and a bunch of different pies I've baked. What's more American than apple pie? and each one shouts USA!! in its own special language. I've made a post or two about how generally grateful I feel these days. 

Trump has damaged so much, including relationships between people, and as glad as I am about the result, celebration seem out of place with the pandemic spreading like wildfire and many Tennesseans, including our governor, unwilling to accept the result of the election. 

Governor Lee questions whether or not God would put a Democrat in charge after all the wonderful work Donald Trump has done over the last four years. In my daily call to his office tomorrow, I'm going to remind him that the will of the voters of the United States determines the outcome of the election. He has managed to be a successful businessman, but he certainly doesn't have a good set of leadership skills for governing a state. He seems hesitant to make any move that hasn't been seeded by Trump Republicans at the national level. 

Ben Carson has COVID now. That was in the news today. He was at the election night gathering at the White House along with members of the administration who have tested positive and others, like Betsy deVos, who deserve to test positive. He has sold out his brothers and sisters and disavowed the suffering of his own people. If he pulls a Herman Cain and dies, there will almost be poetic justice in his passing. 

Speaking of poetic justice, I nominate Justice Clarence Thomas for the Black Republican COVID19 Death trifecta but only if he dies after 1/20/2021. That's inauguration day (and a palindrome, like taco cat and god dog) Joe Biden will get to replace him. With Merrick Garland. Or Barack Obama. 

I get chills just thinking about it.

COVID19: An Apple Pie Photo Essay

Apples from Griffin's Produce in Smithville.

Jack and I bought these on election day.
Arkansas Black, Mutsu (!!! my favorite), Rome

This Rome has beautiful snow-white flesh,

and there are lovely blushes of red inside.

These have tart flavor and give the pie 

some fun, red color as it bakes.

The Mutsus are HUGE. 

This may end up being a big pie.

Swoosh!

Three tablespoons brown sugar.

Two teaspoons cinnamon.

I hope I have enough pastry.

A pass with the magic rolling pin.

Two or three passes.

Whoof. That's a lot of apples.

PattyCake, PattyCake... Wait.

This isn't a cake.

This is a pie.

A really big pie.

A big, delicious, apple pie.

Yum.

COVI19: Random Election Thoughts

Before anyone was facebooking, I had this blog. Writing here, sharing the ordinary happenings of life, "little excitements," was my entrance to social media, and I still get a kick out of the onesy-twosy visitors who drop in every week and being able to track where in the world my visitors are and reading old posts about kayak trips and birds and snowfall and dogs. I've intentionally written more during the COVID19 pandemic, whether anyone's reading or not, because this is a meaningful and significant time and one of these days, my blog posts will provide a unique perspective. March already seems so very far away. My April pickles were so enthusiastic. 

The election is dragging out, and while most of us are quite convinced that Biden will get the win based on facts and numbers, Trump and his supporters aren't giving up easily and have created threats to vote counting centers in Arizona and elsewhere. Now, there are concerns that his people will take to the streets and create chaos and the violence Trump has told them to expect from Democrats and liberals. Two hours ago, Donald Trump, Jr. urged supporters to start a war over the counting of votes. 

One thing is for sure: there are a lot of people, our POTUS among them, who have no idea how any of these processes work, and some of them are going to potentially dangerous extremes, unwilling - possibly unable - to connect in any meaningful way with truth and reality.

At the same time, Trump is suing to both stop and continue vote counts in Pennsylvania. 

Our country has fallen far, and I don't know how to feel about it. In 2016, the election of Donald Trump seemed to be a fluke. For four years, I've been in the mindset of one recovering from an accident. Clinton won the popular vote by more than 3 million votes, but electorally and with the influence of foreign powers, Trump happened. 

Convincing myself that his presidency didn't happen on purpose was easy, because I wasn't alone. So many of my friends had the same shocked, horrified response. Our Trumper friends had allowed themselves to be tricked into electing an immoral, corrupt con man in their evangelical gullibility and simple-mindedness. We laughed at how muddy they got on their way up to that squishy mound of moral high ground they claimed and cluck-clucked about how blind they were to the abuses of power and the cruelty of policy.  

How wrong we were. 

COVID19: Wee Morning Election Day Nervousness

It appears that I'm blogging some insomnia here on the eve of the election with a torrent of emotions churning. I'm wound so tightly that I can barely lift my left arm. The crick in my shoulder area has been going strong for two days now, and as much as I wanted to get a lot of things accomplished yesterday, I didn't. 

I showered and managed to put together a tasty pot of black beans for our dinner. Jack made cornbread and dug the jar of onions I pickled Saturday out of the fridge. Deliciousness for a chilly, stiff-shouldered election eve. Solidly-prepared, no-frills food is where we live. With my shoulder hurting the way it does, though, I wasn't on the crave for the last of the pie, so we're holding on the two remaining slices of our mos recent galette - a pear one - until tomorrow. Pie for the victory celebration, we hope. 

My post-midnight snack was a double helping of raisin bran eaten from an empty yogurt tub. Yeah, it's that kind of night, but I know myself well enough to know that if my body's craving a few carbs in the middle of the night, it's better to go ahead and give it something instead of waking up in a bad mood because I stayed awake, flopping around, thinking about cereal. 

Mom is horrified on the regular by the feeding schedule Jack and I observe, but we do what works for us in this world right now. I can't help but think that once current events aren't in such constant turmoil and the COVID coast is more clear, find ourselves with more routine in our routine.

COVID19: More Fanciness

I made another one of those not fancy pies the other night, but I got a little fancy with it. As I prepped  the apples and put handfuls of slices in the bowl, they arranged themselves kind of like this, and I was inspired to try something a different. Maybe there's a technical term for this arrangment. I don't know. I'm calling it a basketweave and delicious! 

The apples are Granny Smiths we got in a 3 pound bag from WalMart for less than four dollars. They're small, firm, and, like the pie - not fancy at all - but they know how to put on a good show when you ask them nicely and give them some fresh, loud cinnamon to call their own. 

COVID19: Pre-election Jitters

I don't write about heavy stuff here very often, because this is a safe space from that kind of trouble, but these are strange times, and so much of what I do and share here, the sketching and baking and getting excited about vegetables are a response to them. 

Hurt. Confusion. Frustration. Anger. Fear. Those are all the words I write in big, dark letters on the board without much prompting or soul searching. Those emotions have ridden barely below the surface of me for the last four years, and in what counts as normal conversation anymore, I can talk about them without hesitation, citing cruel offenses to humanity, our planet, the rule of law, the status of our nation on the world stage; calling out those who will forever and unforgivably bear the stain of this time.

2016. 

I know I need to write about it to unload it from my emotional luggage and position myself to recover.  Preferably before the 2020 election happens on Tuesday. One of the first things Jack said when we knew for sure that Trump had the electoral votes he needed to win the presidency was, "this is worse than 9/11," and has that not been the damn truth? especially these last few months with thousands of people dying from COVID19 every day?

COVID19: Phoebe Turns One

In a month, Phoebe will have been with us for a whole year, which means her first birthday is probably sometime this week give or take a few days. We rescued her the weekend before Thanksgiving, and Dr. Little estimated her to be about four weeks old when we carried her to see him the next day, so Happy Birthday, PhoebeKitty.

I started to say she's the tiniest, most pitiful kitten we've ever rescued, but that might or might not be true. We'd have to prowl through the aforementioned Dr. Little's records to find out for sure. Venus was so tiny, malnourished, and eaten by fleas when she showed up at the door in September 2001 that we didn't know if she'd live long enough to even go to the vet. She may have been smaller and sicker than Phoebe. Puddy was a scrap of dehydrated baby kitten when I found him in the Food Lion parking lot on Father's Day in 2015. He wasn't sick, but he was itty-bitty and needed a lot of support in the first weeks. 

For what it's worth, one of the things Jack and I are "good at" is helping little baby kitties confront their challenges and establish healthy, happy lives. 

The next real challenge Phoebe faces is transitioning to a diet of all adult cat food. Right now she gets a can of Fancy Feast soft kitten food in the evenings, but with her being a year old, that has to change. The protein content in kitten food is too high for adult cats, and the prospect of keeping her on any kind of canned food opens the door for Bill and Kinky - especially Kinky - to expect equal rations. He already has a hard time understanding why Phoebe gets something different and delicious in her very own bowl and lingers close at feeding time in case an opportunity for a sharing situation presents itself. 

Josie shares Kinky's concerns.

COVID19: Pandemic Biscotti and Looking Forward

The last time I made biscotti was Christmas 2009 when Lucia was one and teething. I'd made biscotti the previous year, having taken a biscotti class at our friend Claudia's house only a couple of days before Lucia was born. In the confusion of baking and blogging and becoming an aunt, some of Sis and Chris' friends who followed the blog for updates briefly thought the baby's name was Biscotti Lucia. Here's that post:

https://2busyandersons.blogspot.com/2008/12/biscotti-lucia.html

Lately I've had a craving for it, so when I mentioned that I was adding whole almonds to our grocery order and Jack piped up with, "Why don't you make some biscotti?" I decided to do it.

The first two batches - classic almond with lemon zest and vanilla and orange-cranberry - turned out so nicely that I'm thinking ahead to Thanksgiving and Christmas. Yes, I wrote those words, and we're not to Halloween yet. 

Sliced and ready for the second bake.

Even though there's zilch possibility of having anything close to a "normal" season and visiting with people the way we like to, I can't remember the last time I got excited about the winter holidays this early in the fall. 

                                      

COVID19: Early Vote

Jack and I voted Thursday afternoon.

We normally vote on election day at the Keltonburg Community Center and visit with Miss Linda and Miss Iva Dell, who always work the polls, for a few minutes. Miss Linda mentions the time she and Coach saw us eating with chopsticks at the Chinese restaurant ten years ago, and Miss Iva Dell asks how Sis' girls are doing and wants to see photos. Both women are retired elementary school teachers and worked with Dad at Smithville Elementary. Miss Iva Dell was my fourth grade home room teacher and graduated from high school with Uncle Billy, and Miss Linda's son, Rocky, and I went through school together and were in the same graduating class. Her husband, Coach, also taught at Smithville Elementary after a notorious career with the boys' basketball program at DeKalb County High School, including the years I attended. The roots run deep, and we always find plenty to talk about when we go vote. 

This time is different. With the dual threat of COVID19 and potential intimidation from the president's goons on election day, we took advantage of the opportunity to early vote at the courthouse. 

I thought voting was supposed to start at 1:00, so we arrived almost an hour early to find a group of people already waiting outside the locked doors of the courthouse basement. The line, as it were, was a dozen or so people scattered around the entrance area. The first person in line was a maskless man wearing a big, straw cowboy hat who sat in a lawn chair with an umbrella attached as a sunshade. He talked loudly to another maskless man who had also brought a chair from home and nodded as the man with the hat gave assurances of Trump's re-election and explained how "they're gonna target WalMart distribution centers and Amazon warehouses and burn'em all down when the results are announced. They hate white people that much."

The other man admitted that he sometimes watches a few minutes of CNN "just so see what they're up to."

I pilfered my giant handbag for the sketchbook and pencils I'd brought in case we needed to kill time, settling on a concrete bench to wait it out while Jack nervously took census of the other people waiting for voting to start. As I flipped to the drawing of a little block building I'd sketched-out the previous night and started adding trees behind it, Jack twitched and huffed yet another ragged sigh into his mask. He wanted to leave and didn't have to say it, and I admit I'd lost track of how many folks were crowding into the space nearby. 

I whispered some angry words about abandoning our spaces near the front of the line - we're so rarely early for things, and Jack whispered some angry words about dying of COVID19, then we stomped off to the car.

Forty minutes later, we put on our masks and joined the line. Groups and clusters of people, some wearing masks but most riding bareback, wrapped around the "Union Planters corner" to "across from Cantrell's Jewelry." 

A lot of visiting and laughing happened, and a toddler in orange pants gave hugs to the older women her mother knew. A man with a giant Trump flag and a tiny American flag mounted on a fishing pole shouted random admonishments from the sidewalk beyond the 100 ft. polling place boundary near the bank's drive-thru. The pod of folks immediately in front of us was a pair of elderly couples and a little man who was thankfully wearing a mask, because he talked a blue streak the whole time. He wasn't spinning conspiracy yarns. He talked about his garden and his cousin's garden, a truck he had fixed at Mark's Body Shop, all the tobacco his mama's people used to grow, taking a load of goats to the sale barn, every lawyer who's represented him in the last twenty years, going night fishing at Holmes Creek, and how he usually waits to vote on election day.

I eavesdropped, shifted myself away from folks, and shuffled forward almost to the courthouse doors. The check-in table was within sight. The closer we got, though, the more the couple behind us and the people in line behind them pressed toward us, and our progress stalled. Suddenly, one of the election officials appeared in the doorway and instructed everyone to spread out. She waved toward the "stand here" stickers placed at safe intervals on the interior floor and then asked us all to move aside, explaining that a voter had passed out and was unresponsive. She moved up and down the line to see if anyone knew the woman, but no one spoke up. The ambulance arrived, and the crew quickly packed up their patient and headed to the hospital with her. 

A half hour later, votes cast, we headed home. The lingering irritation I had about abandoning our place near the head of the line was misplaced because that situation was less safe than standing in line, and after all, we've waited four years for this, what's an extra hour and a half? 

Here's the guy with the flags. We know his name, because the former chairperson of the local Republican party had to remind him where he was supposed to stand. 

COVID19: Pandemic Update

10/20/2020. I wanted to type it out to look at it. 

Tennessee's COVID19 numbers are spiking, but this time, the bulk of cases are hitting rural areas like DeKalb County where we live. We've had 17 deaths here, and I'm afraid to speculate how many more families in our community will have to face incredible loss before this pandemic is brought under control. 

Governor Bill Lee flatly refuses to issue a mask mandate, even though the White House has given him the directive to do so according to a couple of verified news reports I've read in recent days. He insists that people are going to do the right thing when exercising their personal freedoms and says we should give people the space to make their own choices. Funny thing, though, is how his belief in personal liberty doesn't extend to women who need abortions, but that's another basket of mess for another day's words.

 

Monday, Tennessee reported more than 3,300 new cases of COVID19, which is the one-day record thus far in the pandemic. People who have hung their hat on patriotism, community, and living "the golden rule" would just do anything to help their neighbors and be a good citizen except wear a mask. Governor Lee has delegated the decision-making for mask mandates and restrictions on gatherings to leaders at the local level, and for little towns that mostly run themselves and don't generally require a lot of hard-core leadership, being tough and sticking with unpopular decisions for sake of public safety are easier said than done. 

COVID19: Fancy/Not Fancy

The first acorn hit the roof over the weekend, so fall has arrived. 

No matter what the calendar says, and we've already talked about how the buckeye in the front yard is naked by the end of July, the season is official when we hear the first BANG>rattle>rattle>rattle on the roof. Jack and I have both seen and heard and been struck by falling acorns in recent days, but until we hear the first one. From inside. With music or the TV going. That's the official. Officially.

In celebration of the change of seasons, I made this pie, which is actually a galette, with two apples Mom and Dad gave us and one apple that came in our first box from Misfits Market. More on that in a future blog post.

Anyway. Here's the pie:

Isn't it pretty? The apple shape was unintentional, but when it turned out like that by happenstance, I took it as a good sign.

Galette is the easiest way in the world to do pie. When I told Mom what I planned to do with some of the apples she and Dad had just given us, she accused me of being fancy. Maybe this seems fancy because the name is French, but I've seen, and probably made, mud pies fancier than this. 

The crust is a plain'old homemade crust (or use store bought - it's fine) with mostly butter and a little bit of lard rolled out in a basic circle shape with 3 apples sliced thin, a teaspoon of cinnamon, a tablespoon of lemon juice, and 3 tablespoons brown sugar tossed together and arranged into rough stacks. The pastry gets snugged up tight with some loose pleats and light squeezes here and there. Drizzle the juicy stuff from the bowl over the apples, give the pastry a brush of egg wash and a sprinkle of coarse sugar, and slide that puppy into the oven for 40'ish minutes, and you have galette. I roll my pastry out on parchment then move it onto a sheet pan. Add filling. Flop the edges over. Hug around it with your hands. Boom. Pie.

Not fancy.

There's no rolling pin magic trick to get the pastry into a pie pan or crimped-edge expectation, no top crust to bungle, no trimming off the excess or guess-work about whether the inside is done yet. The most tedious thing is thinly slicing your fruits. If the slices aren't thin, the pie will be soggy. Use vegetables, like onions, peppers, and spinach, for a savory pie. Add onion powder or a spice blend to the flour for the crust to up the ante. 

Jack made whipped cream, and we grated a bit of nutmeg on top. Maybe that's fancy. It certainly was delicious.

COVID19: Hit the Floor and Roll with It

For the last couple of weeks, I've been using a foam roller and a couple of different little balls to do what's called a trigger release on my piriformis muscle and several places around my shoulders. Using the word "miracle" bothers me, because a) I don't believe in miracles and b) it's only been two weeks. 

And while I don't believe in miracles, I do believe in jinxes enough to not brag about anything before it's proven itself in the long run. That said, WOW! my creaky, gristly, wake-me-up-at-night parts feel pretty great.

The mule who normally kicks me in the right hip at 4'ish in the a.m. has stayed in the barn and so has the little pitchfork which regularly hits my right shoulder with tingles and aches from her razor sharp daggers. The only night my sleep was interrupted by aches and pains have been the nights when I decided to take the day off from literally rolling in the living room floor. The creaks and groans aren't as bad as normal overall, but hitting the floor - and the wall - for some trigger point release is becoming a key part of my daily routine. 

Sis first introduced me to the foam roller when she brought hers to the farm a couple of Christmases ago.  She was either training for a half-marathon or rehabbing something injured and said foam rolling felt great and had helped her overcome pain and activity intolerance. At that time I was too undone to think about adding anything to my life, especially exercise, so I banked her solid recommendation in the back of my mind where it stayed until recently. 

I was actually browsing support pillows when I noticed the Amazon Basics Foam Roller in  "Recommended for You" items and started scrolling through the reviews. An hour later, after reading a couple of trusted-source articles about the benefits of foam rolling and trigger point release, I added one of the Amazon ones - 36" long (easier for beginners) in solid blue - to my wish list and began considering how I could integrate twenty minutes of relaxation practice into my daily routine. 

The next morning, after tossing and turning and not sleeping well, I found more time to read about trigger point release then hunted for odds and ends to give myself a makeshift session. Jack's homemade back massager - eight old tennis balls ke-bab'ed onto a 20" length of PVC pipe - is a wonderful DIY tool for its intended purpose, but the balls are too soft and squishy to reach deeply enough into muscle tissue to have much impact and neither did an intact tennis ball. A piece of differently-sized PVC pipe we use to massage our feet was too short to do any good on my hip and had rough edges which dug into my skin through my clothes. 

So I ordered the roller.

The first workout was clumsy and halting as I fumbled through the moves from the photos in the articles I read, but I knew instantly when I hit my piriformis. I mostly knew what to expect and moved the tight band of muscle across the roller, settling slightly into the "knot" and allowing the roller to press more deeply into the tissue. I felt an easing of the tightness and slowly rolled myself down to the next little tight spot and moved around and to the other side. After finishing with my hips and buttocks, I shifted my effort to my upper body. The roller felt a little clunky around my shoulders, but I followed the sequence of exercises I'd reviewed ahead of time and went about the rest of my day. 

That night I slept more comfortably than I have in as long as I can remember. All kinds of variables come into play and the keys to restful sleep aren't the same for everyone, but right now, I seem to be closing in on some of mine. 

In the weeks since I started rolling every other day or so and with the addition of a lacrosse ball and a massage orb, both inexpensive additions to my toolbox that were recommended by my massage therapist friend to isolate specific muscles around my shoulders, the results have taken me to the next level.

Not only am I sleeping better, I parked the car today and was able to turn my head and shoulders both directions instead of backing into the parking place instead of relying solely on the mirrors. I look forward to seeing where this goes. 

It is definitely a path in a positive direction. 

Here's a good basic resource if you're interested:

https://www.healthline.com/health/foam-roller-benefits

COVID19: More Loafing

Yesterday afternoon was perfect for a nap because the rain and the mood were right, but I made a loaf of bread instead.

The recipe, which is Mark Bittman's take on loaf bread from "How to Cook Everything," (this is the version I have - it's only $16.50 from Amazon - I got mine from Mom for Christmas one year) is my favorite basic dough and offers a lot of versatility. I've used it to make sandwich buns, dinner rolls, cinnamon buns, and now a loaf of what I've dubbed "Notorious Justice" to honor the life and memory of the incredible Ruth Bader Ginsberg. 

I added two big tablespoons of Penzey's Justice seasoning to the dry ingredients and chose extra virgin olive oil (instead of canola oil or butter) to pump the savory flavor of the seasoning. I used a smidge of Justice in the first version of sun-dried tomato bagels but chose a mix of Turkish oregano and Italian seasoning blend in the half-dozen I sent to Sis. 

The seasoning of that first batch was so subtle it was barely there, so for this loaf of bread, which has the same measure of flour as the bagels, I used about twice that amount. The next time I might or might not use more or supplement with a couple of teaspoons of onion or shallot powder - not garlic, because it could easily overpower the lovely melody of alliums and green peppercorns in the Justice blend.

Here's how the bread looked before and after I baked it:

                                                        

                                                      

That big bubble rose so high in the oven that it touched the upper heating element and had started to scorch when I smelled something going on and rescued the bread. I had to move the rack down and lost some heat from the oven in the process, but an extra five minutes of baking time did the trick without browning the top too too much. 

The texture is perfect, and again, I may or may not add more seasoning the next time I do a Notorious Justice loaf. This tastes pretty darn good - kind of like garlic bread but with warm, friendly allium flavors baked into it rather than buttered-on in an aggressive slick of garlic.

For flavor, I give myself a B to B+. An overnight proof in the fridge would've brought this into the exceptionally good range but for start-to-finish in the span of four and a half hours, it's a solid effort.

Technique is where I have the most opportunities to improve. My loaves and buns have a tendency to do like this loaf and grow giant air-warts on top, but this is the first time I've had a loaf rise enough during the bake to touch the element. Smelling the scorch and taking care of that situation was fortunate, but I should have realized there wasn't enough clearance between the risen loaf and the top of the oven and moved the rack beforehand. C- on that part of the score. 

For my skill level with bread baking, this was a deliciously average'ish performance. 

COVID19: Bloom Where You're Planted. Or Somewhere Else

Mom and Dad have expanded their back porch, and the little offset flower bed by the kitchen door was sacrificed for the project. 

A few weeks ago, I rolled to the farm and helped Dad relocate a couple dozen marigolds and some pretty yellow and brown coneflowers which came up voluntarily this year. Someone gave Mom a bouquet of cut flowers at an event at some point in the past year, and after they shriveled-up, she tossed the stems out the back door and into that bed.

When the seeds sprouted, she wasn't sure what they were, but she suspected something good.

They turned into this:

Pretty, huh?

We relocated those, too. Some to the round bed at the front corner of the back yard and some in another bed by the electric pole. We dug a few and scattered out the older, seedy-headed stems in hopes that they will populate the new area as easily as these did.

The marigolds have taken to their new home. A hot day in August isn't the best time dig and replant, but it had to be done, so we watered them in immediately even though plenty of rain came later in the day. After only a few weeks, they look like they've lived where they are forever. 

Here's a picture I snapped as I was leaving the day Dad and I worked the beds. It looks so much better now. I'll have to take a shot or have Mom send one to share here! 

Dad and I were both exhausted, but we had a wonderful time and made Mom happy with our hard work. 

I brought a picnic, too. Fried chicken sandwiches (leftover from the previous night's dinnner) and homemade potato salad. Dad was much appreciative.