Hey.
We’ve settled into a new rhythm, with probably 2 nights per week of take-out, focusing on our favorite restaurants. Cooking maybe 3 nights a week, leftovers for lunch and other dinners.
It’s interesting how much “roll your own” is in people’s responses to the medical situation. At our house, we don’t believe in sterilizing every supply and food item, nor do we use gloves, but I do believe heavily in masks. I also don’t believe in leaving the house except for essential business, and for me that doesn’t include driving to a nature preserve 20 miles away. OTOH, I could argue that my use of take-out is also non-essential, because I can cook perfectly fine, thank you.
I did get out of the house this weekend because a friend scored a 50lb bag of bread flour, and I did the work of divvying up 10# lots among thankful friends. That does feel essentially, reducing strain on the retail groceries.
Cooking, I’ve been fooling around with Tagines. It seems that with a standard dutch oven, there are “nubbins” on the inside of the lid, dripping the water back into the pot, no different technically from a tagine. However, I’ve eaten through all my preserved lemon supply, which was the impetus, so I guess I’ll just do tagines without, and wait until I can get to a specialty grocery, or it’s lemon season again.
Thus we are all making our own rules.
At some point I throw up my hands - if people want to some how equate personal liberty with a public health emergency, I’m just flabbergasted. Maybe I shouldn’t be surprised, that’s what the anti-vax thing was about too. And apparently the San Francisco Anti-Mask League of the Spanish Flue Epidemic. Fine, I guess I’ll just stay home for a long time.
In the groceries around me, there are still lines most of the time, and most staff are not using masks and not really able to socially distance. In checking on some groceries this weekend, every line had people without masks, so we were unwilling to wait in those. We’re now pretty well stocked and truly down to one visit a week. And yes, we’re doing “ethnic” groceries, which is to say, our small neighborhood mexican and deli. It’s harder to stay away from people, but the stock levels are good. We were low on salt but the mexican market had these bags of salt unlike the format I’ve ever bought in a safeway, but it’s the kind of salt I was looking for.
I was hoping the take out cocktail thing would be more fun. I did it with Rooh in Palo Alto, and it was just a cocktail that happened to come with my to-go food. I probably am drinking a bit more - wine every night with dinner, when it used to be really just saturday and sunday - because I"m at home and not driving. I have gone for a couple of growlers to-go, I wish I could talk myself into a drive to Laughing Monk, I understand it’s still open and I really want it to survive.
I notice how much Hong Kong has come back to life, specifically around restaurants and the food scene, according to a friend who resides there. It’s not that they’re hiding numbers, he has an uncle who is a doctor and sees the real day-to-day. I guess America is not suited to collective action, and we’ll pay for it.
