Q8 – SaltShaker

Social Isolation, Day 8:

8:00 Awake, start to make coffee. Refrigerator door falls off as I open it, sending things crashing to the floor. Henry awakes and helps me get it back on its hinge – it’s broken, but at least with no weight on it – redistributing everything that was there to other shelves or our small beverage refrigerator – it stays closed. We just have to be careful opening it further than a certain point or it will pop off the hinge again. Nothing else we can do about it until quarantine rules are lifted and a repair-person can come fix it. We lost three eggs.

8:20 Coffee making resumed. Coffee drinking started. Email check (minimal stuff these days, nothing to handle for the restaurant, obviously). Facebook check – messages, comments, etc. A brief scan through my “feed”, but I’m not really feeling it today. Check my usual news sites for latest stuff happening in the world.

9:15 Henry awake for real now, make him his breakfast.

9:30 Daf Yomi – read and think about today’s Talmud page, write up a little blurb on my personal blog about it.

10:15 First round of exercise. Full stretch. Then 70 jumping jacks, 50 crunches. Then pick a kenpo technique at random to practice – today is the 2nd degree brown belt technique, Hidden Fist, both versions of it, and I go through both versions 15 times on both the right and left side.

11:00 Shower and shave.

11:15 I haven’t posted anything on the SaltShaker blog in a few days, as I haven’t been doing any real experimenting. Do I just post a casual, “this is what we’ve been eating” post? I mean, we have some pretty pictures, and maybe it will inspire readers to make something, even something simple. And, it will fill a little time in my day.

Friday night: This was intended to be a step-by-step, but honestly, we weren’t thrilled with the resulting dish. It was okay, but too salty, and the lamb was tender enough. It was a recipe for North African (Tunisian) spiced leg of lamb that I pulled from The Atlantic. Basically the leg is rubbed in a paste made from coarse salt, turmeric, cumin, caraway, savory, rosemary, garlic, chilies, and olive oil.

Marinated for the day, then browned and cooked for roughly 50 minutes, following their instructions.

Then placed on a bed of sliced red onions with white wine and lemon, and finished off as instructed.

We just, as I said, found the whole thing to be too salty and the lamb not tender enough after that cook. Maybe if it had been slow braised in all those spices and then cook down the onions afterwards, I don’t know. It wasn’t interesting enough to spur me to experiment with it again, though no doubt it will spark an idea down the line. We ended up chopping up the lamb and cooking it into a leftover cream soup with cabbage and white beans, and then using that as a pasta sauce. That was actually pretty good.

Saturday lunch: Feeling the need for something with a touch of sweetness. Buckwheat pancakes for lunch on Saturday, with bananas cooked in a little butter and maple syrup. Hit the spot.

Sunday lunch: A semi-break in our isolation. Our next door neighbor has been isolating for the same week we have, and, like us, only going out to buy stuff from the market when necessary. He made a pot of pork cooked in olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic, oregano, thyme, and parsley, we made a mixed salad of lettuce, tomato, red onion, beet, and hard boiled egg. We met out in the back garden and sat at opposite ends of the table and used tongs to pick things up for our individual plates.

Saturday & Sunday: Good for two dinners (and still a little left over), I made a pot of bolognesa sauce and a package and a half of penne pasta. We do love a good bolognesa sauce, and this one, maybe because of the situation, just tasted extra good. That or the special hongos de molle (he says similar to pine mushrooms, and they look like that, but they grow under molle trees instead of pines. Molle is the peppertree, from which we get the berries called pink peppercorns. Online research says that they’re a type of puffball mushroom, which these definitely don’t look like in form, although these are dried, so maybe…) and homemade sausage that my friend Maurizio had given me a week ago.

11:35 Damn, that didn’t take long. Start watching the last of the finals week episodes before the grand finale of this season of My Kitchen Rules. The bitchiest and most ridiculous home cooking show ever created. It’s like watching a car crash, you just can’t take your eyes off it once you start.

12:50 Time to prep lunch. Making milanesas (basically weiner schnitzel, Argentine style). Easy and tasty. Start a load of laundry too. Listen to the latest Quillette podcast while doing so.

1:20 Lunchtime. Watch last night’s episode of NCIS: LA.

2:00 Read the latest wine news on Wine Spectator.

2:20 Cut up strawberries and add to my latest water kefir. Gotta get our probiotics.

2:30 Clean the kitchen.

2:40 Reading time, along with an afternoon coffee. The City in the Middle of the Night, by Charlie Jane Anders – sci-fi novel, knocked off a little over a third of the book. Answered my first reservation request in almost two weeks… but my momentary excitement is dampened – it’s a request for January 15, 2021. Who makes restaurant reservations nine months ahead of time for a vacation? Or even for not vacation? I thank them for the enthusiasm and let them know I’ll get back to them around the beginning of December.

4:20 Quick 10 minute upper body workout with dumbbells, plus push-ups.

4:30 Portuguese lesson online

5:00 Call with my broker in NY just to settle some things that were still up in the air with my accounts.

5:10 Henry is starting a couple of hours of online dance classes with his students and dance company, so with music too loud to watch something or to concentrate on reading… put in some time playing Everquest online.

7:10 Help Henry stretch after his classes.

7:20 Start dinner prep… arroz con frutos del mar – rice with seafood, Peruvian style. Or as close as we can get it with ingredients available right now.

8:00 Zoom chat with friends

8:40 Cook dinner. Listen to the other end of the political spectrum, the Intercepted podcast.

9:20 Dinner is served (step by step coming in the next post)