It’s been three weeks of not going anywhere non-essential.
It’s not fun being “old”.
In two days we were going to go celebrate my ten year anniversary of being retired. Now, we will raise a toast here at the house. We are really glad we have the luxury of staying home, and the privilege of getting things delivered.
I have been working on updating my resources, sadly neglected, on this web page to highlight the small local businesses that we support.
I also realized that maybe writing more will calm the nagging anxiety we can’t shake.
I know we are lucky. Right now, we get our weekly farm share from Lancaster Farm Fresh Co-op and our monthly meat share from Evermore Farm. We have curbside service at Wheelhouse and at Harris Teeter.
Thankfully, my chest freezer in the basement is still full of tomato sauces and roasted tomatoes, blueberries, stocks, soups, grains, flour, nuts and pesto. The freezer up here has a good variety of meat and some frozen vegetables.
The pantry? Beans galore. Condiments. Oil. Vinegar. Spices and herbs. Pastas and lentils. Oats. Rice.
I started making my no-knead bread again.
The simple version. Flour, salt, yeast, water. An 18 hour rise. Google Jim Lahey no-knead bread if you want to try it. We were lucky to find yeast at Harris Teeter. This recipe only uses 1/4 tsp so we can make 8 loaves from one envelope.
The other staple? My simple tuna dish. Tuna, onion, white beans, salt and pepper.
The recipe calls for tuna with olive oil but anything will work. Over greens is our preferred way to eat it.
I am making soups. Omelets. Pasta with sauces. Eat one night. Freeze the other half for later. Minimizing the amount of protein in the dish. Heavy on the greens and grains.
Hanging in there. Praying for friends and relatives on the front lines.
How are you coping?
AnnieRie Unplugged 
I’m ‘coping’ with the ‘great No Baking Powder/Shortage of Cream of Tartar” crisis of 2020 – by girding my loins to tackle starting/maintaining a sourdough starter, once more, to delete the need for baking powder for pancakes and biscuits – – sigh – waiting on a pail of soft wheat to blend in with the local hard winter wheats I have, to do more baking, in toaster oven, of pies/casseroles, since my adult son moved home last fall – is now working OT at FedEx for his part in the supply chain – and well – we both rather falter on physical labor on just a meat/good fats diet – LOL – that said, had trouble sourcing as usual clean top soil in form I can quickly toss around me self (bags), to expand gardening areas, but did score today, by venturing outside of a few blocks around me for the past month – some operations seem grim, some operations seem like ‘biz as usual’ etc., and thus far, stocked, electricity and internet (I earn my living via internet dependent operations…) and so, as long as power/net stay on and no drying up of local water supply – we are faring okay – with only mild adaptations here and there, OR a return to doing things the long/slow way, when it was so easy to just pick up a can/bag of in the past years – (I think I last bought baking powder in…um…2017? 2016? LOL – shows how much I bake non-yeast breads! LOL
Crock pot bread is wonderful! 2 hours in the crock pot, 15-20 mins to put together the 4 ingredients (flour, yeast, salt, olive oil)…..no waiting to rise!!! Finding yeast has been a chore so I tried to do a sour dough starter and failed miserably. I could get the flour/water to smell sour and slightly bubble, but I could never get it to float in water. I finally found yeast in the store and decided that the crock pot method works for me.