HELLO! This is the first post of our Wednesday Potluck Group

Given that we are stuck at our respective homes, unable to meet and eat, I thought we could try to have our usual dinner conversation here. Each week, we can discuss a topic of the week or any other thing that comes to your mind. To introduce a topic, create a post (by using the New Post button in the upper right corner of this page). Then people can converse about it by posting comments under the post. So - we can have multiple posts/discussions in any given week - similar to how we have multiple conversations going around the dinner table. The advantage of this forum is that you get to 'hear' them all. Let me know what you think of this web blog page design, the idea of this in general or other any other comments you may have about this idea in the comments to this post. I'll try to implement redesign suggestions. Please note that this blogspot tool is about 15 years old - this is why I can use it. But it may not be able to do everything we'd like. I'll do my best. I will kick off this week's potluck discussion in the next post. Hope you will join us online!

Truly indoors

I've heard from a gardener friend that this April was one of the coolest, wettest ever which is good for blooming plants.  As I recall, her yard has a lot of them.  Mine is more of the leafy variety.  Either way - it looks nice in the rain.

We are in day 2 of the predicted 4 days straight, tropical storm induced, rain week.  My main coping outlets during lockdown/stay at home have been hiking, gardening, and dog walking - not possible now.  During truly indoors time, I think I understand how pets left at home while people work feel.

Thankfully, we're all set to turn to yet more internet.  I hope everyone who wants to will be able to join our zoom meeting this evening.  In addition to joining via computer, you can also join via your mobile phone.  My sister does this and she said after downloading the zoom app, it wasn't hard to use.   Hope to see you soon!

Finding the unexpected

As our days in social distancing extend in number, I'm looking for ways to find something new or interesting.  Often this is online.  I feel like I've hit the jackpot when I see a really funny joke.  (I can recommend the comic strip 'Pearls Before Swine.')  Since so much of what we see, we have already seen, it gets trickier to think of some new aspect to mundane things.

The best escape is going out, I find.  Thankfully it's spring so the usual walking paths are changing a lot.  It's always nice to try a new place for walking and I often take photos of flowers, reptiles or moths to try to identify at home.  Ringneck snakes are my new favorite - so cute, completely harmless.

Uliana asked that I put together a list of good walking places nearby, since I've done a fair bit of hiking locally.  Here are 3 categories, which will increase in difficulty but all are 3 miles or less.  I will include only things that I know are open now.

Paved, flat places to walk
Coker Arboretum on UNC campus
Bolin Creek trail at the Chapel Hill community center - also the rose garden there
Southern Community Park at Southern Village - walk around the soccer fields
Jones Creek Greenway - the paved path starts at the back of the parking lot of Morris Grove Elementary on Eubanks Road
Morgan Creek Trailhead - off highway 54 west of  Columbia St/15-501
Homestead Park - off MLK blvd and Homestead Road
Hillsborough River Walk - start at Weaver St. Market parking

Fairly flat, wooded trails
Anderson Park in Carrboro - this is a very short walk around the pond
Bramley Forest North - off highway 10 in Durham
Saxapahaw Island Park - in the Haw River at Saxapahaw
Occoneechee Speedway trail - near the intersection of highways 70 and 86 in Hillsborough

Medium hiking trails, has some steep ups and downs (dress for tick prevention!!)
Wilson Park in Carrboro - this is where I go most often these days
North Carolina Botanical Garden trails - behind the center, which is closed
Battle Branch trail - on the opposite side from Bolin Creek trail at the CH community center
Hollow Rock Nature Park - off Erwin Road in CH near Pickett Road
Saxapahaw River trail - accessed just behind the Haw River ballroom
Duke Forest trails off Whitfield Road - these can be long and challenging
Haw River access - off 15-501 as you drive toward Pittsboro, on right just after Moore Mountain Rd

What great places do you know for walking/hiking?

Too much

One of the hazards of having so much time to fill is overdoing it.  If that involves cooking or baking, you can freeze what you can't eat.  But sometimes it just goes to waste.  That can also happen if you try something new which it turns out you don't like, of course.  Then you don't have the potluck group to suffer through it with you!  The old wisdom or sayings about it being harder to cook for 1 or 2 certainly seems true.  I try to cut recipes in half but that's harder when it's half an egg.

Other activities can get to be an overload as well.  When you're home all the time, it's easy to get caught up in the same thing again and again.  Finally, you look up and say - wow, I'm kind of sick of this now!  Sewing, anyone?  I'm trying to set a more reasonable pace to avoid burnout.  Also, I'm running out of thread.

All the projects that I've been putting off over the years are now invading my dreams.  Why aren't I working on those?  I should be more productive, take advantage of all this time to focus.  All these little ducks are following me around, quacking for attention.

What has you on overload these days?

Trivial details

As the scope of our world has shrunken somewhat, small details become more obvious.  This feeds right in to my head full of useless trivia. 

This week, I've come across a new word which is rarely used but some of you may remember it from the Watergate era.  During the hearings, the inimitable Sam Ervin found the possibility that the Nixon Whitehouse was using charity as a shield for their activities preposterous, so he posed this question to the witness - "Are we to believe that the [Committee to Reelect the President] was an eleemosynary institution that gave $45,000 to burglars simply because it felt sorry for them?"  After the laughter died down in the room, Ehrlichman replied "I'm afraid that I'm not your best witness on that, Senator."  Indeed not.  LOL

This delightful word, eleemosynary, turns out to be useful in another way.  I had heard it spoken and so I had no idea how it was spelled.  In an effort to figure out what this word was, I turned to Google and entered my best guess based on pronunciation 'iliamossenary.'  And then, a rare phenomenon occurred.  A fun internet puzzle is to try to find a word or phrase which stumps Google and comes up with nothing.  Google is pretty sophisticated at this point and will usually suggest some likely alternative with suggested pages.  But this misspelling did the trick - no hits returned and no suggested alternatives.  So cool to stump Google!  I had to guess a few other spellings to find the actual word I had heard.

Back to our main topic of food, I've been paying more attention to the ingredients I use in my normal dishes.  So when it calls for cheese, I make sure to buy the extra sharp cheddar or the more expensive Romano to add a flavor kick.  Or we add Canadian savory to the eggs in the morning for a little more pizzazz.

Have you been paying more attention to small things in your cooking or to other things during isolation?

Clearing up

Yesterday was chain saw day.  It was a good time to examine the yard and cut away the dead wood and useless understory - at least until the blade was too dull and needs sharpening.  My trouble with all gardening is that when you are done and the debris is neatly cleared away, the area looks as if it always looked that way and nothing has been done.

I've been doing some of the same in the house.  Looking at the pantry, I wonder what anardana (dried pomegranate seeds), mace, star anise, and cardamom pods were ever used for?  Will I ever use brown rice flour or 1/2 a pack of old ladyfingers again?  I'd hate to throw them away and then have to buy them again.  So the cooking and baking is getting a little more inspired, in an attempt to use these old odd ingredients in various recipes over the last month - red wine vinegar (marinated pork roast), bay leaves (creamy chicken potato soup which didn't call for bay leaf but I used it anyway), smoked paprika (patatas bravas), pickled okra (cuban chicken rice bake).  Baking now seems to use up common ingredients which you can no longer find in the stores - raisins, chocolate chips, flour, sugar.  So I've tried to make more unusual (if less successful) desserts like Carrot Banana Ginger cake with yogurt and honey frosting.  I think the frosting was worth it.
1/2 cup Greek yogurt
1 tbsp honey
2 oz cream cheese
1/4 cup of hazelnuts (optional)
cinnamon to taste

Have you been using any unusual ingredients lately?  What has coronavirus lockdown caused you to uncover in your house or yard?

Losing focus

Mechanisms for coping with social isolation depend on personality.  This morning, I joined my first coronavirus zoom conference.  Strangely, it was a sing along with everyone but the guitarist on mute.  It made sense but still seemed somehow even more remote.  I've also joined a 75+ member mask sewing brigade.  It's good to feel useful and imagine that I'm part of something larger.  Perhaps we'll all get together for a group photo at some time in the future.  So far, I feel like an international spy - picking up my materials and instructions at a designated drop spot, wearing gloves to ward off polonium poisoning and a mask to hide my identity from surveillance.

A friend of mine has a teenage son, who wanted to connect with his friends so much that he wrote out several riddles, put one each in plastic easter eggs, and had his mom drive him around to his friends' houses so he could hide one in their lawn for a customized egg hunt.  The friends were supposed to solve the riddle and send him the answer in email.  So creative.

Another friend has started a series of facebook videos, in which she dresses up in a costume and presents a one minute message of the day.  These are everything from political jokes, to a new food pyramid featuring Oreos and snacks, to destroying a dollhouse with her crinoline skirt.  Crazy.  Oh, and a matzoh headband - I don't know what it was either, you had to see it.

Continuing on to our topic of food - I tried a seldom used scone recipe this morning.  They turned out edible, luckily, after I had to rescue the dough from 2 major baking mistakes.  I think I'm starting to lose focus.

How has your cooking been going lately?  Any disasters or successes?