COVID19: Thoughts for the Day, Bill and Kinky's 6th Gotcha-Day

When Jack and I got home from celebrating Father's Day with Mom and Dad on the farm last week, we sat in the car with the doors open for about 30 minutes and watched lightning bugs. That was the farm trip when Josie wandered off, so she was tired and asleep in the back seat. We could hear her light snoring, and the wind was blowing pleasantly before rain later in the evening. The mosquitoes weren't bad and not a single car passed on the road, so we just sat and enjoyed some of the evening. We've both noticed that there seem to be more lightning bugs this year. Maybe people are spraying less RoundUp. Maybe it's just a banner year for lightning bugs. We slept good that night.

Mom and Dad kind of have a cat. It's a gray stray who likes hanging at their place and keeping the rodent population in the barn and shed under control. They think it's a male but aren't sure. I think it might be a male, too. He's got a big round head like a tomcat, and it's been visiting on and off for two years ago. If it was a girl cat, she'd have gifted them some feral barn kittens by now. He's pretty, a soft bluey-gray with muted stripes, and he seems pretty chill. They feed him, and he lets them know if there's nothing in his food pan. I love when Mom tells me about what the cat's into during our phone conversations, and sometimes during our in-person visits, he strolls around the periphery of the yard and checks out what's going on. He's pleasant and friendly from a distance, like a neighbor you wave at who waves back, but y'all don't talk and maybe don't even know one another's names.

Jack and I eat a lot of homemade pizza, and lately our dough has been ragged and hard to stretch. We made the switch to WalMart brand flour, because "what difference could it possibly make?" Right now we have two batches rising - one with the WalMart brand flour and one with King Arthur from a brand new bag. I'll blog about the results of the experiment to let you know what happens.

One of my goals for the week is to stay upbeat and focused on things other than not getting to spend any time with Sis, Chris, and the girls over July 4th weekend, which is always one of our family times. I have much privilege and good fortune in my life, and I'm not going to be a sadsack about anything. 

Today is the sixth anniversary of rescuing Bill and Kinky and making them part of the family. These are all from their very first day here. They finally grew into those ears and are still precious.

COVID19: A Declaration of My Favorite Mac & Cheese Pasta Shape

When I moved into my first apartment and started buying my own groceries, one of the first things I did was start buying pasta in different shapes. I'd always been fascinated by the spirals and bowties and the shell ones and the big tubes when shopping with Mom, but my family made spaghetti with spaghetti and macaroni with macaroni. Ma-Ma Harris would sometimes use the little shells for a special occasion, but our everyday mac and cheese was made with elbows, and either those or bagged egg noodles were what Mom used in casseroles and the one-skillet dinners I grew up eating.

Suddenly, I wonder where we've put our electric skillet.

I remember once talking Mom into buying a box of Hamburger Helper with wheel-shapes for the simple reason that I thought the pasta was cool and it was supposed to taste like pizza. I don't remember having that variety of Hamburger Helper ever again, so it couldn't have been that great, but my fascination with interesting pasta shapes has followed me into adulthood.

Magazines have always been scattered across my life, and "Good Housekeeping," "McCall's," "Family Circle," and "Southern Living" were all among the subscriptions my mother, grandmothers, friends' mothers, and every waiting room I ever visited got, and somewhere between waiting to get my teeth cleaned in second grade and my first trip to Kroger as a person with a kitchen, I learned more about what's what - twisty pasta for some salads and orzo for others; linguine for spaghetti sauces when you might have to hold it for a few minutes before serving and ziti for spaghetti sauces when you are serving children who might or might not have the practiced, fine motor skill of wrapping noodles around their forks; wide egg noodles for chicken soup and narrow ones for stroganoff.

Despite all of that, I'd never had a preferred pasta for mac and cheese. Elbows are fine most of the time, but a couple of times when I carried a pot of my homemade stuff to covered dish dinners in recent years, the elbows collapsed onto themselves. They weren't over-cooked or otherwise foul, but the structure didn't last through an hour's transit from our kitchen onto our friends' plates, and while they tasted fine, I was unhappy with the deflated look of the noodles. Shells, Ma-Ma Harris' fancy meal favorite, are my general preference over elbows, but too many folks associate shells with the Velveeta boxed dinner, and yes, I've enjoyed some of that stuff and PLENTY of homemade Velveeta mac and cheese over the years, but I really don't want my lovingly made-from-scratch with real milk and cheese-I-shredded-by-hand to be mistaken for it.

A few months ago, I watched a video where the chef made homemade macaroni and cheese using a pasta I'd never really noticed in the grocery - orrichiette.

Orrichiette means "little ears" in Italian, and guess what it looks like?

Yep.

They're simple dome-y discs of pasta which are actually shaped more like red blood cells or shallow hats than ears, and they are everything you want your mac and cheese - anything with creamy sauce, really - to be. It works like a shell, as a cup, to hold sauce inside only better, because it's more substantial and has a structure to keep it open, and the outer ring provides a hearty bite.

Shells take 8 or 9 minutes to cook; these take 11 or 12.

I should have taken pictures when I cooked it to go with that chicken dish the other night, because I'm not doing a very good job drawing a mental picture for you. These are from Google images.

Dry orrichiette:

Orrichiette mac and cheese:

Both WalMart and Kroger offer it in one pound packages, and I encourage you to give it a try the next time you have a hankering for mac and cheese.

COVID19: Fresh Veggies and a Winning Chicken Dinner

Our friend and sort-of neighbor, Michael Kingsbury, grows a great little organic garden. His place is between us and almost everywhere else, so stopping by for bags of homegrown, freshly-picked vegetables is super convenient, especially this year with our pandemic precautions. 

Michael's set-up is very safe and appropriate for social distancing. His elderly mother lives with him, and he is clearly taking no chances with either of their health. Aside from the safety and convenience of buying form him, his prices are more than fair. 

His lettuce has been beautiful this year, and we've had delicious salads from his patch all spring. Our little rows of romaine mix and black-seeded Simpson have been fun to grow and tasty to eat in handful-sized salads, but Michael has kept our biggest bowls full of crisp, clean, organically-grown greens.

When Jack came home from a quick trip to the farm Friday afternoon, he had bags from Michael's. Lettuce, beets, green bell peppers, jalapenos, green beans, zucchini.

For dinner that night, I thawed boneless, skinless chicken breasts, sprinkled them with salt and pepper, and pan fried them in a couple of big blops of duck fat. If you aren't familiar with duck fat, it's a kind of liquid gold that will make your baked potatoes taste better than anybody else's and gives incredible richness to any pan sauce you might want to make

Duck fat, like most animal fats, has a high smoke point, so you can get it hot and keep it hot without burning your food and smoking up your house. It also tastes incredible. If you don't have it, don't worry - canola oil works GREAT and also has a high smoke point. 

When the chicken had browned on both sides over high-medium'ish heat and was "right at" done, I deglazed the pan with rough-chopped green pepper and onion and a splash of liquid from the rest of a can of artichokes we'd had lingering in the fridge for a few days. I threw all of that together with a handful of all purpose flour and another big dollop of duck fat and was off like the wind on a thick delicious gravy. I used homemade stock and low-fat milk to liquidize and thickenize everything. Another sprinkle of black pepper and fifteen or a hundred more grains of salt later, the sauce was silky-smooth and not too rich - like the filling of a perfect chicken pot pie. I placed the chicken back on top and let everything just stay hot on the stovetop while I boiled a pot of pasta and finished the green beans, which I cooked in the Instant Pot and deserve their own blog post. 

There were also roasted beets a la Jack, roasted zucchini slices a la Pam, Great Value brand white bread, and patriotic M&Ms for dessert. 

We had such a lovely meal, I wish I'd taken a photo, but by the time it was done, people were hungry, so we ate. Sometimes there's simply not time to find my phone and realize it's not been charged in three days. 

COVID19: Case Counts, Frustration, Back to School

Yesterday, Tennessee had 799 new cases of novel coronavirus. The day before that, the number was 986, and before that, it was 800'ish. We've had, I think, two separate days with more than a thousand cases each. 

Different kinds of businesses in the state keep opening to customers - some with restrictions and limits on occupancy and some without. Restaurants are supposed to be operating at maybe 50% of what is normally allowed, but I think some are pushing the envelope because they need and want the business, and people are more than ready to give it to them. 

More and more frustration with the situation is building, and without clear orders/requirements to wear masks or to limit shopping and other outings to essential business only, some states, like Tennessee, are struggling to get ahead of spiking numbers of cases. "Flattening the curve" is still weeks and an atrocious number of preventable infections away. Unless folks start taking this pandemic seriously, we may not get to that point. 

Many counties, including DeKalb, are planning to start school as usual in August, but nobody seems to have a clear idea of what's going to happen or how it's going to look in practice. From what I've seen on social media and in the news, the people in charge of coming up with a plan haven't been and aren't listening to teachers, focusing instead on doing whatever is necessary to stimulate the local economies which pay the bills and make-nice with the loudest, meanest, most oppositional parent voices. 

As a non-parent, some say I don't have a dog in the race, but I'm a property-owning tax payer, and while my sister and nieces aren't part of the school system here, they are very involved in the school system where they live, so yes, I do. Sis teaches, and Lu and Bea are both students. Wanting them to be safe and expecting the safety of people just like them to be the priority isn't selfish, and none of us - NONE of us - should expect anything less. 

My blog readership is tiny, but I'm thinking about writing a letter to the editor, and this is a good place to practice.

Click on this link to reach the Tennessee state website to see each day's updated case count, recovered, death, and number of tests performed. It is updated at 2:00 p.m. daily.

https://www.tn.gov/health/cedep/ncov.html

COVID19: Father's Day on the Farm

We celebrated Fathers Day on the farm yesterday afternoon with another pizza party on the back porch, like we did for Mothers Day, and this time we upped our game with homemade ice cream and a jar of delicious meringues as a special treat for Dad.

Meringues are nothing more than egg whites whipped to stiff peaks with sugar and vanilla (or maybe peppermint would be good, you think?) before being piped onto trays to dry and gradually cool overnight in an oven that's been preheated to 350 degrees then turned off. 

I've only had them once or twice before, and they seemed super fancy and too elegant and frou-frou, but there's almost nothing to them. The hardest thing is getting a feel for piping with a bag, but I overcame my fear of that when I learned that deviled eggs are WAY easier to fill with a bag than a spoon. Even if you don't have official tips and are just using a zip-top bag with a hole in one corner, piping is the way to go and not that difficult. 

This "batter" - is it a batter, or is it just a pile of meringue? - is sticky because of the sugar, and by the time I had my meringues piped onto parchment lined cookie sheets, my arms were gummy to the elbows, and gooey little gobbets of froth were on my glasses, in my hair, and all up and down the front of my apron.

In other news, I have started wearing an apron. My sister is going to be so proud.

The pizza was terrific, and I would have taken a picture, but about the time we got it sliced, Jack looked around and asked, "Where's Josie?"

We've taken to bringing the beagle with us most everywhere we go, because she enjoys it and when she's with us, she's not going to have an accident in the house. Josie isn't a "pee in the floor" kind of dog like Diva and Dudley both were in their later years, but she IS getting older, and it works out now despite the warm weather because we aren't getting out of the car anywhere except the farm. 

Josie loves Mom and Dad, and their backyard is one of her favorite places. They have plenty of nice grass, and one of the first things she always does is roll around for a good five minutes. She sniffs around to find interesting smelling things before driving her shoulder down hard and flipping her legs back and forth in the air, scrub-scrub-scrubbing her back on the thick, bouncy grass. The sight is ridiculous, but with the sounds she makes, you know it feels incredible. 

Whenever we take Josie anywhere, we keep her on a long leash. It isn't really a leash - it's a 15'ish foot long piece of nylon cord with a twist-lock caribiner on the dog end of it and big loop with a regular caribiner on other. When we did some sessions with a great local trainer back in 2016, we learned to use one with her, and it works great when we use it correctly, and at the farm, we generally don't worry. Josie typically hangs nearby, and we don't worry too much about her wandering. Two weeks ago she managed to get wet over there without us ever figuring out how or where, then today when we realized she wasn't in the yard, things got tense.

She mostly - MOSTLY - responds to a "Josie come" command, but it really only works when we can make eye contact after we call her. She doesn't have a track record of consistently coming when called from a distance, and today didn't earn her any "good girl points."

Jack went around one side of the house and I went around the other, and about that time, we heard the neighbor's dogs start barking. They have, I don't know, not as many little dogs as it sounds like they have, and thinking Josie may have headed that direction, Jack and I loaded up in the car and rolled over there, but Josie was nowhere to be found. 

After several panicked minutes, Dad found her checking out the cows in the woods behind the barn, and we were able to finish our delicious dinner, including strawberry chiffon cake from scratch and Jack's homemade buttermilk custard ice cream, which is, I swear, the best ice cream I've ever eaten.

We sat and talked, socially distanced but still close, and watched a summer storm move in, enjoying good company until the first raindrops fell. Josie seemed unbothered by being tethered to a chair after we found her. The panting and big smile on her face as she sprawled on the cold concrete of the patio indicated that the adventure was worth the "punishment."

Some adventures are like that. 

COVID19: A Goodie from Sis

I meant to share about this weeks and weeks ago, but I got distracted by other things and never did until now.

Sis sent me the nicest surprise for my birthday and Mother's Day - a surprise box from Parnassus Books with items selected especially for me by author and Parnassus co-owner Ann Patchett herself.

If you don't know about Parnassus, the quick and dirty is that prize-winning author and long-time "local" Ann Patchett saw a need for Nashville to have an independent book seller after Davis-Kidd and a couple of other long-time Nashville bookstores closed their doors. The big chains had taken a chunk of their customers, and the internet took a lot of the rest of them and left people who wanted a more personal book shopping experience with few places to turn. Ann and a partner opened Parnassus in 2011 and now have a couple of locations in the Nashville area.

If you want to read more of the Parnassus story or shop its website, click here.

The Vernons had already gifted me with a sturdy new palette and two new tubes of watercolor for my actual birthday, so I was super-surprised when I received another special goodie in the mail.

On the day it arrived, Jack and I also received two or three other things from Amazon, so I tore into the box without realizing it was a kind of birthday/Mother's Day gift that coordinated with a similar gift she'd sent Mom.

Sis had asked me questions about what kind of books I've been reading and some vague explorations into my current preferences, but I still didn't think anything about it until I opened the box and found this --

I dug a little more and found this before I closed the lid and waited until I'd gained permission to go deeper. 

The rest of the gift was gorgeous and special and perfect.

A hand-written note from Ann Patchett,

a beautiful little sketchbook with a bee motif (perfect) and a copy of Madeline Albright's autobiography (also perfect),

and a delightful set of colored pencils in a pretty tin. 

I am incredibly fortunate to have such loving, generous people in my life, and my sister is one of them.

COVID19: Food Will Win the War

During the first World War, the concept of "victory gardens" or "war gardens" was introduced in a proposal by George Washington Carver as a way to decrease the pressure on the public food supply. Here in the United States but most especially across Europe, food production was substantially decreased because much of the usual agricultural workforce was fighting the war.

The goal was to encourage every family to grow a garden and for gardens to be placed in public spaces. 

During both the first and second World Wars, victory gardens spread across the land and around the globe. Victory gardens became popular in Canada in 1917 after the Ministry of Agriculture promoted "A Vegetable Garden for Every Home."

In March 1917, the U.S. National War Garden Commission was established and a war garden campaign was launched. President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed, "Food will win the war."

Read more about victory gardens on Wikipedia here.

Back when the isolation recommendation came down back in March and everybody was panicking about what we might or might not be able to buy from the grocery store, I said, "We need to plant a little victory garden," and ordered us some seeds from the Burpee website. 

Black-seeded Simpson lettuce, a romaine mix, arugula, and radish seeds arrived in the mail a couple of weeks later. Jack scratched the old weeds and new poison ivy sprouts out of the little bed by our driveway, and we planted two little rows of lettuce, a couple splashes of radishes, and an edging of arugula. We added some of the fertilizer Dad gave us and waited for the rain to fall.

Here's what it looked like a couple of days ago.

It needs a bit of weeding, but the lettuces are growing well, and we've harvested three little salads. At the right of the photo, you can see more little rows of sprouted greens which are three and a half weeks behind this first planting. We're super-proud of how they're growing.

The radishes have been a bit of a disappointment. We had ONE get round an radish-y, but the rest have merely grown busy top-parts with no radish formation underneath. We do have a new variety of radish - rat's tail radishes - which are grown not for the root but for the seed pod. We're still waiting to see exactly what those are going to produce, but the harvest so far really looks like a rat's tail.

Stay tuned for a photo of those in the coming days! 

COVID19: Surviving Food Poisoning

Here's a piece of advice - look through the items in the door of your refrigerator and toss out anything past its expiration date.

I'm newly on the mend after nearly 24 hours of gastric distress caused by having eaten a salad with expired Kraft Caesar, which I never should have even thought about using from a fundamental level. Like Jack says, there's something intrinsically wrong with bottled Caesar dressing because it is so dependent on fresh ingredients and preparation just prior to dressing a salad with it, but it was there. A dollop and eight hours later, so was I, and I was hugging the bathroom garbage can for dear life.

Luckily, the throwing up part stopped as soon as I'd emptied my gut, and I wasn't plagued by dry heaves or anything other than a splitting wide-open headache and cramping in my lower belly in the wake of the worst.

Yikes. At least it wasn't COVID, and it passed within 24 hours.

COVID19: Chomping at the Bit to Get My Teeth Cleaned

I haven't been to the hygienist since last September, so up there on my list of "first things I'm going to do" when the COVID19 coast is clear is get my teeth cleaned.

Having struggled with chronic gum disease and avoiding trips to the dentist to my own detriment for a lot of my adult life, I finally got back on a good program with Dr. Tatum and the good folks at DeKalb Dental Clinic back in 2017, and since then, I've been a strict adherent to my scheduled visits and look forward to crawling into the chair for forty-five minutes of quality time with Phyillis, the best hygienist in the world. 

I never can remember Phyllis' last name, but she really doesn't need one. She's like Cher and Madonna and Prince - she is such an individual, she is simply Phyllis.

Once, after trying some toothpaste Mom recommended for three months, I had a LOT of crusty stuff around my gumline, and I swear there were a couple of times I thought Phyllis was going to have to anchor her foot on my chest to get it broken loose. For whatever reason, this stuff works wonders for Mom, but it's absolutely not what my mouth needs, and I promised Phyllis I wouldn't veer away from Crest's line of Pro Health toothpaste, which has served me well for the last few years.

My favorite of the different varieties is Gum Detoxify, which leaves my teeth feeling extremely clean without overwhelming, too-strong mint flavor or an abrasive feel. 

Since the beginning of self-isolation, I have been diligent in my mouth-care routine, especially at night. 

My toothbrush is an Oral-B Braun electric number, which I got as a gift when I became a new patient at DeKalb Dental Clinic, and the preset cleaning routine I use spends a full six minutes cleaning my mouth by quadrant. After that I run a 750 ml tank of warm water through my Water Pik before rinsing with the store-brand version of gentle fluoride mouthwash and heading to bed, most nights with  Pro-Health Floss Pick. 

All things considered, I'm pleased with the way my mouth feels, and I think when I finally get back into the chair for time with Phyllis, the time I spend every night being nit-picky with my teeth and gums is going to pay off. 

As a former dental-phobe it feels pretty weird to look forward to a hygienist visit, but things and people change, and here we are.

 

COVID19: Pick-Up Shopping

Jack and I pick up groceries at WalMart later today, and we're pretty psyched about it.

Since the beginning of social distancing and protective isolation, we've both come to love ordering what we need online then picking it up at the scheduled time. The first couple of times we did it, we weren't sure if it was going to be a thing for us in the long-term or not, but we've decided that even after the coast is clear, we're going to use grocery pickup to make our lives easier and more efficient. 

With online ordering, comparison shopping is so much easier than on-the-fly in the store. WalMart's website puts a lot of information "right there." Price per ounce or unit is easy to find, and it's convenient to click over to Kroger and Amazon to find the best deal across retailers. 

Pick up is a breeze. Park and call the number. Pop the trunk. Boom, you're done. 

We've only had a problem once, and it was at a Kroger in Murfreesboro where we'll likely never, ever shop again, and that experience has been the exception, not the rule. 

The pickup clerks at the McMinnville WalMart are consistently friendly and have the routine down. They wear their masks and take appropriate precautions. They minimize the amount of talking at the car window and are ready to do-the-do. Mom's even taken to putting her insulated zip bags in the trunk and asking the clerks to put her cold things in there. We'll do that tomorrow. 

I know online ordering and pickup isn't for everyone, but it's working out well for us, and we're finding that we're eating healthier and spending less money on groceries than we ever did before this situation started. When we aren't in the store, we aren't tempted by impulse buys and the displays of tasty junk food we crave even more when it is in our faces in the aisle at WalMart.

My weaknesses have always been things like Little Debbie cakes and cheese curls, but I've managed to stop even considering them for our grocery orders. When we want cake, I make cake. Thus far we've had angel food, lemon Bundt, and strawberry chiffon - all from scratch. Instead of cheese curls, a few little slices of cheddar on a half-dozen saltine crackers are an incredibly wholesome and satisfying way to satisfy the cheesy urge. 

Jack and I do splurge on some basic, plain chocolate M&Ms every couple of weeks and make them last. I've stopped using our food scale to weigh out little portions, but that's always an option if we start running short.