everyday eating during "unprecedented" times
Went to Philadelphia for the day! Went to a fiber arts store in Mount Airy then got hoagies and ate them in FDR Park. I got a small one (prosciutto, mozz and peppers) and the roll wasn’t great. Matt’s medium Italian looked really good though. Gorgeous weather!
Then we went to the Swedish museum for the Marimekko and textiles exhibits.
Then we came home and had the leftover ribs with some zucchini, garlic and onions over grits. Really good!
Watched the Ted Lasso finale!
Today was supposed to be a day trip but Matt didn’t sleep well and didn’t feel up to the drive.
Instead we got some things done around the house (like clean up from yesterday!) and plowed through some leftovers.
We made trout salad with the extra trout we grilled Sunday for lunch. I had some leftover cake for a snack. Read in the hammock. Worked on the community cookbook site.
For dinner we had leftover carne guisasda over fresh saffron rice.
We watched more of The Diplomat on Netflix. I started a very long book about the Oscars.
Fingers crossed we make it out of here tomorrow.
Today’s Matt’s birthday! He spent most of it doing the food projects he enjoys but doesn’t always have time for.
He got up super early to make barbecue sauce and start grilling some ribs. The sauce was so good! It was spicy mango and he made a dry rub to go with with. We had the ribs for lunch with some corn on the cob (surprisingly good for May, no idea where it grew) and corn muffins.
Then we recreated his 8th birthday roller skating party and had a homemade pizza and ice cream sundae party. I did not make the ice cream or the many toppings but I was tempted. We did make the pizzas! A bunch of different toppings from mortadella to fancy cheese to pepperoni and mushroom.
We have a lot of leftover ribs and pizza! we erred on having too much rather than run out. Ice cream too. And we still have cake from over the weekend. I don’t think we will have to do much cooking this week.
For lunch I made crispy tofu and peanut soba noodles with cucumber while Matt did yard work.
Today was nice weather and I hung out in the yard with the dogs which they love. The air smelt like flowers.
My back is a little sore and I don’t know why. I was sitting in the hammock so maybe that is it. I need to just lay down in it.
Then Matt went to put up the ribs for dinner and they were bad! They were sell by 6/1 so that’s disappointing. We have had this issue with pork in the past which is one of the reasons I wanted to make them yesterday.
Matt ended up running to the store (again!) to get more and we are going to try again tomorrow for lunch. They take hours so he will have to get them going early in the morning.
Instead he grilled some trout we had and some salmon he picked up when he bought the replacement the ribs so we can have leftovers later in the week. I made some coleslaw and we had rice with it. I was all set for ribs though! Hopefully they will be good tomorrow. I don’t know why the picture is so awful looking, it was actually pretty good! I think it’s the brown spices throwing it off.
Matt made pizza dough for tomorrow. He really perfected the technique earlier in the pandemic but we haven’t made it in a long time.
I’m reading a translated Swedish book and in it they say Sweden doesn’t have jury trials. How interesting! I don’t know how I feel about that. I also finished the audiobook of Saint X.
Today wasn’t bad but I feel like the days keep getting away from us! No matter what I plan, things take longer than expected or something goes awry.
Started the day wresting a coconut cake into my car. It is one of the only times I wish I had a different car—balancing a cake on my car hood and unlocking the door with an actual key is not for the faint of heart. I also got some cheese Serrano bread. I think they only sell it on the weekends, I normally go on weekdays.
For lunch we got our favorite sushi takeout. The place isn’t close but it’s tasty, fresh and a good price.
I set up this website with my community cookbook work today. I have so many books from the grant project and I’d love to keep it going.
We were going to grill ribs (that’s why I got the bread) but time got away from us so Matt made Puerto Rican style carne guisasda for dinner. It was really good but I bet it will be better as leftovers. My goal was to have leftovers from the weekend so if we can do a day trip Tuesday, we won’t have to worry about dinner.
We had some cake and watched Fanny: The Right to Rock on PBS which I’ve been wanting to see for years. It was good and they totally should be on every single woman rock star, rock history list, timeline etc but they really kept harping on how they aren’t remembered like other big acts of the day.
They had huge success, a record deal, the label rented them a whole house to live and record in and they toured the world with massive names in the early 70s. They did endorsements, appeared in commercials, tv shows, many articles were written about how they were this amazing female band and how rare and great that was. But then they broke up after 4 years and never toured or made music together until just a few years ago.
Of course people aren’t going to remember you like The Rolling Stones if you quit after 4 years. Beyond the Beatles virtually all of the old acts we still remember from these eras are ones that toured forever (or still tour) and put out music. They didn’t. They had huge successes and walked away. Which is fine but then I don’t think you get to complain that people aren’t obsessed with you fifty years later.
We also watched The Fabelmans which was somehow both too long and too short. I didn’t realize the whole movie was about his mom’s love of a man who was not his father.
When I got up this morning I saw two cardinals, one male and one female sitting in the grass together, chirping! I’ve never seen that people. Flying around, yes. Chilling in the needs-to-be-mowed grass? No. I thought maybe one was injured but thru seemed fine and flew away. Maybe they were snacking on fallen serviceberries? The birds have been wilding out lately!
I went to the library to drop off my books and pick up reserves and chatted with the librarian about my talk in a week or so! I can’t wait until that’s over.
On my back to my car an elderly man said I was glowing with internal light and that I was blessed by God with good fortune and a direct connection to the heavens. Then we chatted about the weather and went about our days.
I bought ice cream, sundae toppings, some “cup” pepperoni, soda, more ingredients for the carne guisada we planned for Sunday, Manning’s hominy (can be hard to find so I bought six!) and hot dogs at the regular grocery store. I’m looking forward to pizza and sundaes for Matt’s birthday Monday!
Matt made us grilled cheese sandwiches with pickles inside for lunch.
I want to do the Purl Soho knit along for June but it looks complicated! Provisional cast on! Kitchener stitch! My thought was it might be a good project to take with me for my class in June so I don’t get ahead of what we are doing together out of the book. I wound the yarn for my next project and the Purl Soho one yesterday while I attended the weaving zoom.
For dinner we ended up getting lomo saltado take out, the pulled chicken leftovers we had planned on didn’t look great. I guess it is the first night of our staycation!
Yellowjackets!
The weather has been so nice, let’s have that hold when we on are “vacation” next week! I sat outside and did another inspo collage for my class in the afternoon. Mitzi played outside and watched me while I did it and then showed me a flower that bloomed.
In the morning I dropped off the last two board games I sold on eBay. I have a couple more (one new, one played once) that didn’t sell that I think I’m going to stick in a little free library—they were small card type games that aren’t very expensive. I can’t see someone paying almost as much in shipping as a new game would be in the store. Then I went to pick up a prescription and went to Aldi. I spent the least amount on groceries in a long time! We already had some steaks, stew meat and pizza toppings at home so I only got some vegetables, fish and ribs.
For lunch we did not have a lot of options! Matt had some canned soup, crackers and cheese and I made myself some popcorn. I really wasn’t too hungry.
Matt had a doctors appointment and no one at the hospital including his doctor were masking. This is never going to end. It is disgusting how little medical professionals care about patients. This was a specialist that deals with many cancer and other immunocompromised people. My husband isn’t one of them but everyone deserves to be able to get safe health care.
For dinner we just had some leftover pasta salad and refrigerated kolaches I got at Aldi recently. They were okay. We had the cheese and sausage ones and the cheese was in the sausage which I don’t love. We have another bag with jalapeños that might be better. They weren’t cheap (about $7 a bag) and I don’t think I’d get them again. I was trying to find something new we could get to have on hand when we don’t feel like cooking.
We had dinner early because Matt had a virtual piano lesson and I had a weaving meeting and presentation. It was interesting and noisy to have both going at once!
Pretty day today but I spent a lot of it working on decoupage to serve as inspo for my class next month. I got two done and sorted out the papers for two more.
I had leftover stuffed ham fried rice for lunch which was just okay. A little dry. Matt went into work again today so he got lunch near work.
After work Matt went to a memorial for our beagle, Dottie’s first owner. Her owner was the brother of a colleague of Matt’s from work who had taken ill. She mentioned that she couldn’t take in his dog because she was allergic that’s how we ended up giving her a home. The memorial was at an Italian restaurant and he got to meet everyone, hear stories and share Dottie pictures and updates. They were so nice and sent him home with bread, cannoli and two pastas, one with shrimp and one with crab. It was really good!
I had an awful migraine most of the day so early to bed after we ate and watched Ted Lasso. Is Nathan’s girlfriend a figment of his imagination? I joked about this before but it sure feels like it.
XFINITY continues to be the worst! I filed a complaint with the Maryland Attorney General’s consumer protection office. I can’t take it anymore. Hopefully they will do something, all XFINITY does is lie and try to gaslight me.
Besides dealing with that again, I got a lot of chores done and some writing. I ordered some used books for the grant talk in June.
For lunch I had some tomato soup (canned) and goldfish crackers. At lunch time I put up pulled chicken and made macaroni salad for dinner.
We are having a staycation next week to use up some of Matt’s vacation days—travel with three dogs is daunting and I’m going away in early June—so I’ve been trying to come up with some ideas for that. Previous staycations have been a bust for weather and us deciding to not cook and get take out. We do not have great take out options nearby so I want to plan some more fun meals to make while we are home for days we don’t go on a day trip or do anything major.
Dinner was tasty and I am patiently waiting for Matt to catch up knitting his wrist warmers so we can start the next pattern in the book.
I didn’t do much today but read. I’m okay with that! I did go over some new community cookbooks that finally arrived. My library talk is in two weeks!
For lunch we had the leftover salmon cakes and mashed potatoes. It was a perfect lunch sized portion left.
Part of the reason I have done nothing but read today is that I spent literally over six hours with XFINITY customer service trying to get my mother’s name off the account my dad opened after her death. They are liars and gaslighters. It’s still not fixed and now they are heavily implying that someone hacked the account just to add her name and do literally nothing else.
For dinner Matt made fried rice with stuffed ham I made for my most recent books and froze. It was pretty tasty! It already had the greens and ham so he didn’t need to add much.
Rachel Eats Dinner 