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?

Another Wednesday with no potluck

As I found myself standing over my dresser organizing my earrings yesterday, I decided that lack of social activity is really taking its toll.  You'd think with all this cleaning, gardening, hiking, and mask sewing I've been doing to stay busy I'd feel like I'm getting in better shape but it doesn't seem that way.  Also I'm trying to resist the urge to comment excessively on social media.  Put the computer down - people still don't need everyone's 2 cents on everything.  A lot of social media is just to vent.

Which leads me to today's post.  I hadn't realized how much I enjoy eating anywhere but home.  It's fun to see somewhere else, try something else, be with someone elses.  Of late our version of changing it up for dinner is to eat leftovers, Bill reading a book (biography of DeGaulle) and me continuing to binge watch whichever series I'm on now (season 2 of Star Trek Discovery).  Perhaps it's time to arrange a picnic lunch out of the house.

What have you been doing to mix up your mealtimes?

Where have you ordered take out?

During social distancing, the kitchen seem to become the hub of activity.  There's no more meals packed to go, after hiking.  No more eating out sometimes.  Even those strange places where you order at a window and then eat at a table outside - the tables are packed up.  I'm guessing food trucks are also a thing of the past - too risky.

To help keep the local restaurants open, Bill and I are going to order take out sometimes.  Yesterday's pickup shows the real advantage of this.  Bill likes spicy Asian food but as you know, I'm not a fan. So we each ordered what we wanted from 2 restaurants across the parking lot from each other, to be done at 6pm.  It was great - curbside service from each.  I had shrimp provencal and vegetable tamale from Venable and Bill had spring roll, papaya salad, and curry from Thai Station.

Gotten any good take out lately?

Are you trying any new recipes this week?

Due to the quarantine, Bill and I are having to plan out our meals rather than be spontaneous each evening, deciding what to make or to go out in the afternoon.  Probably planning out the week is a better way to go on a regular basis, a good habit to start up.

This week, in addition to some of our usual fare, we're trying a new recipe for meatless lasagna.  I know someone made this as main course for at least one potluck but it's the first time either of us has tried it.  We'll freeze half the batch for later.  Here's a link to the recipe we're using.
https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/meatless-lasagna/

In other news, I'm glad to have found a way to be useful (besides weeding the garden).  Friends of ours have just been able to return from Europe and are in self-quarantine - the kind where the county health department calls them to make sure they are at home.  So we (or more likely I) am going to do their grocery shopping for them and drop it on their step.  I tried to set up shopping online (where you drive up and pick up your stuff) but all the slots for that with local stores is already full.  We wear gloves whenever we go anywhere now, which isn't much of anywhere at all anymore.

Hope all of you are well!

What was your last dining out experience before social distancing or self-quarantine?

Governor Cooper has closed all North Carolina dine-in restaurants as of Tuesday March 17 (St. Patrick's Day), 2020 at 5pm. Describe your last adventure eating out.

The last time Bill and I ate out was the previous evening - dinner at Elements. We closed it out in style. My kids were in town. You may have heard that my ex-husband died on Friday. Bill and I had just cancelled our wedding dance - and the kids had cancelled their tickets and plans to visit us in April. Suddenly, they had to travel and I was glad to get a visit. After helping Sky and Kevin clear David's apartment in Raleigh and attend to other details over the weekend, everyone was physically or mentally exhausted or both. The kids really wanted to take Bill and I out for dinner to celebrate our marriage before they left on Tuesday morning. It turned out to be excellent timing.

When we got to Elements, I apologized to the waiter for breathing their air.  It seemed we were very underdressed but were we so tired and the place was so empty, it didn't matter.  The waiter was just glad we came out to eat.  We were the only customers until later a couple sat at the bar area and 2 women at a table far away. We had the best table - the one surrounded by windows with dozens of orchids, and we got lots of attention. The waiter even told us it was ok for us to be loud. For some reason, we had been speaking quietly. So we started taking group photos, which didn't turn out too well - very amusing. As usual the food was terrific. I had the halibut special with mushroom risotto, asparagus, and some indescribable sauce. Bill and Sky both had bun cha - Bill's was pork and Sky's vegetarian with tofu. Kevin had the hot and sour soup - quite spicy. Sky ordered bread pudding dessert for the table. I think we couldn't have planned it better.
 
 To finish the story, both Sky and Kevin were able to return home on Tuesday morning. Trudeau's order closing the borders of Canada exempted US citizens for now. Kevin's flight had only 5 passengers and he said customs was a breeze.