everyday eating during "unprecedented" times
Today went by surprisingly quick. I had some odds and ends for lunch, worked on my knitting, did some writing. Read.
I made dinner early so at dinner time just had to serve it.
The air quality was still bad today but a little better than yesterday. It rained in the evening. Not the best weather going into July!
Went to Lidl this morning! I didn’t get too too much but enough for a few dinners and some odds and ends that I think might work in some of the community cookbook recipes.
The skies are so yellow with ash from the Canadian wildfires. I wore a mask into the store but didn’t bother when unloading the groceries into my home and really should have. I can’t imagine what it is like closer.
For lunch we had leftover Chinese food. I did some organizing and planning out recipes in the afternoon but I really don’t know where the day went!
Lulu finally ate a full meal! It’s been almost a week. I think the antibiotics are working.
I made a kind of ugly but okay meal for dinner—sockeye salmon, asparagus and these frozen sourdough rolls I got from Wild Grain. My goal was to get things out of the freeze and eat so I accomplished that at least.
Watched Ridley on PBS and plugged away at my knitted bag project. I’m simplifying the straps a little bit because the directions have me handling the yarn a lot and it’s splitting. Ridley isn’t bad but they drag things out and make things mysterious that don’t have to be. Every episode is like missing five lines of dialogue that would tie it all together and tighten the show up.
Had leftover knackwurst/squash/potatoes for lunch with an egg.
I went to make shrimp salad for dinner and the shrimp was freezer burnt. Really not having good food luck outside of the cake!
We ended up getting some tender and fries for dinner and I made a little marinated tomato salad.
Tomorrow I’ll go to the store and hopefully have some luck!
Recipe development day! I made and posted a Sweet Cherry Corn Cake that came to me in a dream.
For lunch I had some pimento cheese and crackers.
I was planning on making dinner but we had Lulu’s vet appointment and ended up getting Chinese food. At least we have leftovers! Lulu needs some teeth pulled and apparently that’s why she hasn’t been feeling well. They put her antibiotics in the meantime.
Getting close to starting the handles for my knit along bag while we watched Endeavor. I can’t believe it’s been on since 2012!
I had a doctor’s visit early then went to IKEA to look at bookshelves/storage and get lingonberry jam. The jam has really gone up! It was almost $6 a jar!
I mailed out my cracked old phone to a buyer from eBay and I’m paranoid something is going to go wrong. I wiped the phone and all but after the guy agreed to buy it and paid he kept asking questions I couldn’t tell him because I wiped the phone like battery life etc.
Matt wanted club sandwiches for lunch so he picked them up but they gave us the wrong cheese. Why do we bother?
For dinner I made this knackwurst sheet pan dinner but with baby potatoes and zucchini. I parboiled the potatoes first.
For dessert I had some bánh da lợn leftovers. I hadn’t had any yet but it held up well from Saturday!
Watched Cannes Confidential on Acorn. Not bad! I was expecting it to be in French but it’s not.
Today was a little weird food-wise. The plan was to get some Mexican food Matt wanted for brunch and then have leftover bánh mì for dinner.
But Matt went to go pick up brunch and they were out of half the menu because they “are closed on Mondays”? So he got himself something but they didn’t have anything I wanted so I ended up eating bánh mì.
His meal was weirdly skimpy (never going there again) so he ate his “dinner” bánh mì in the afternoon.
So we ended up getting take out from this new place and it was okay but not great. I got jjajangmyeon and there was hardly any sauce. Like maybe 3 tablespoons on top of a huge, deep pile of plain noodles—none under the massive amount of cucumber. It wasn’t enough to coat the noodles at all.
Matt got some soup and the noodles were good but there wasn’t much too it. We got roujiamo to split and it was just okay. They have a pretty big food menu but I wonder if it is more a cold drinks place with a snack bar than a restaurant-restaurant?
Just food failures all around! We were just trying to get a break from cooking a little bit and it wasn’t worth it.
No clue what we are doing for dinner tomorrow!
This morning we made pancakes before I went to a (yarn) spinning class at noon and Matt went to pick up a piece of art I won at auction down in Northern Virginia.
I really think after the classes in July that we are taking together I am going to take a break from classes for a while. This one was 12-4 and I was so hungry by the end and got a massive migraine on the drive home. You can’t really eat and do fiber arts at the same time!
The class was also kind of disorganized, we ran out of time and one woman didn’t even finish anything at all. There were only three of us but the wheels needed a lot of adjusting and we only had two drum carders so we had to take turns prepping the fiber to turn into yarn which took up a lot of time. I was able to come home with some to spin here which is nice but I don’t feel like class hit the goals it was supposed to. Everyone was very friendly though! I did learn some tips and how to use a drum carder.
Northern Virginia means going out of your way to get the good bánh mì so Matt got a bunch and we split some for dinner and will have more tomorrow—we found you can “refresh” them in the oven pretty well depending on the filling.
We don’t really have real bánh mì anywhere closer so it was a treat! We haven’t had them since last summer when I went to pick up a spinning wheel from Craigslist I ended up not liking and selling.
Evening was a blur of sandwiches and migraine.
This morning I dashed out and picked up a book at the library and went to Lidl. Lulu isn’t feeling well so I got her some chicken and us some basic vegetables we were low on. I still want to eat what we have on hand!
For lunch Matt got us sandwiches at the further away Italian deli.
Then I made a cake from a vintage cookbook. It came out a little sad. I don’t have great luck baking cakes when it’s so humid out! Matt said it tasted okay but I wasn’t hungry.
For dinner we had steak and I made a broccoli casserole from a 1970s cookbook for a post on Cooking in Community. That will go up in August.
I’m worried about the Lu! She’s always had some stomach troubles but I feel like the bouts are getting closer together now. We made an appointment at the vet but they didn’t have any appointments until Tuesday. If she gets worse, we will take her to the emergency vet but hopefully she will feel better? Her tail is uncurled and she isn’t eating much, not even the chicken and rice.
Tomorrow we both have to go out and I’m nervous about leaving her but we don’t have a lot of choices. Hopefully she will nap? We won’t be gone too too long.
Mailed out some books today, sent out UPS package at Michael’s and got some knitting bobbins for free with a voucher and a credit from the nice clerk.
Came home and had a pimento cheese sandwich. We bought the pimento cheese at Costco and I was skeptical because we’ve had some really bad (sweet!?!) pimento cheese in the past but it was good! Very similar to what I make myself. It was the jalapeño version by Callie’s Hot Little Biscuit (what a name!).
Worked on Cooking in Community and then made a little pork loin with roasted potato and roasted radishes. It came out really good! I love roasted radishes.
Worked on Cooking in Community all day.
Had some popcorn for lunch. Really didn’t have anything else easy to make and I couldn’t bring myself to eat soup.
For dinner we had the rest of the hot dogs and tots and made coleslaw. More cherries.
I pulled some steaks out of the freezer for Friday. I think I’m going to try to skip grocery shopping this week. We have a lot of vegetables I bought last week that we haven’t eaten and I really want to free up some room in the freezer(s). Our tiny freezer in the basement really needs to be defrosted. My goal is to clear it out and then fill it with dumplings and easy to make food we actually like. We haven’t been freezing a lot of meat or anything but I think we have a lot of things like puff pasty and shrimp.
Worked on my knitalong project while we watched Mord mit Aussicht. It’s slow going and I’m worried I won’t have enough yarn! They swear we will though.
Rachel Eats Dinner 