Good as always.
Also Good.
We are down to 2 bottles of pancake syrup, so this wlil probably continue for a bit.
I added red peppers, onion, sweet Italian sausage, diced tomatoes, tomato sauce and a bunch of herbs and spices. A good pasta, lots of leftovers (used 1# of penne and what was left of elbow macaroni) and good to eat the next day or so.
I never made the rice, so delayed!
So the idea of making a plan, and then not being able to select the produce, just struck me as annoying, so I’m doing a simplified meal plan. With a good excuse that Memorial day is in here.
Brats
Burgers
Pancakes
Pasta
The original plan was to head down to Cedar Rapids this weekend and watch my niece and niece* graduate from high school and go to the parties the next day. This is not how the week worked out.
Shannon tested negative on antigen test on Sunday and Monday, but when in on Monday to get a PCR test and tested positive. From discussions with her manager, she was not the only one who brought this Covid home. When Shannon asked me how I was feeling to try to get an impression of my level of sickness, I honestly had to say I almost always feel not great, so at this time I felt lest not great. I tested negative on a antigen test on this past Wednesday, and then got tested w/ a PCR that afternoon, and also tested positive.
My primary care provider noticed the test result pop up, my doc is the best, and reached out to ask if I wanted to do the antiviral course. Initially I refused cause I wasn’t feeling to bad, but after discussion w/ my cohorts, changed my mind and accepted it. As of now I just finished day three (twice a day, 2 pills each time, i started in the evening) of five of the round of Paxlovid. Reading about the why that it works combining a drug to help the liver fight HIV/AIDS and then another that blocks the replication of Covid related protein, is kind of interesting.
My only side effect, is a annoying taste in my mouth, which was described as possibly metallic, but to me is more a combination of a penny, fresh dirt, and a new insight this morning, hangover mouth after drinking really shitty beer (No I didn’t drink last night). On the positive side, this is easily distracted by chewing gum or eating. So the only time I’m not doing one or the other is as I go to sleep or wake up.
As it stands, we’re mostly feeling fine, We both cough here and there, but unlike earlier in the week, for Shannon, where the amount of coughing made her wake up early, which is not a thing that normally happens. I worked the entire time, not cause I had to, since I’m remote. On Thursday I was a bit tired so I called it a day a mere 30-45 minutes early, I had already taken Friday off.
The sign I was on the mend, was when the idea of going to bed at 9:30-10:30 seemed absurd, as I’m a normally a wind down at 10:30.
We are taking the appropriate precautions, and I have ordered groceries for pickup, and I’ll break out an N95 to go pick them up and have them put them in my trunk.
Good as always.
Again, due to the amount of syrup we have, this will happen on the regular. I swapped back to the Cooks Illustrated version.
Good things.
I added more red peppers, red pepper flakes, Parmesan, and ricotta. It led to a savory spicy clerkly can taste the red peppers dish. Apparently I didn’t read the directions well as I a salted all the peppers. Since it is not yet tomato season, I used a can oaf diced tomatoes. I forgot to add the vinegar so I added a splash of champagne vinegar and stirred it in. I really enjoyed this, though I guess I didn’t really make the recipe but it is close-ish.
Iðunn Exited to watch the activity under the front hedge
Brats
Pancakes
Taco Salad
I had set aside this bottle of wine for the purpose of saving it for a special(ish) occasion, but here we are. The one pan part was spoiled by the “I refuse to fry bacon in the microwave”. That being said, it was extremely thick bacon that I fried in a pan, and other then the American cheese and microwave bacon, I followed this pretty closely (added more mustard powder and Worcestershire sauce. I swapped the American cheese with a local Iowan variant (Milton, but not Prairie Breeze), shredded, and spread across the top. The bacon was extraordinarily thick. But the wine. Holy smokes. Worlds Apart Wine. fantastic.
In listening to Dave Chang on his multiple podcasts, I get the idea he doesn’t like precise recipes too much, so this makes sense. That being said, I adjusted down the suggested amount of chili crunch, since I didn’t know how spicy it would turn out, and still needed to have it in the range that Shannon would tolerate. so I used ~ a quarter of a jar of the crunch. Other then that, it turned out pretty good. I added more crunch when I had leftovers later.
While trying to reorganize the freezer a little, I found more chicken so I took out two packs and it was more then 1.5 pounds of chicken that I needed, so I adjusted the recipe up to accommodate. Over all this worked out pretty well, except i didn’t really have more red pepper or onion around. But still, pretty good, as the temp was cooling down a bit.
So I know I like ramps and sausage, and I had a bit of sausage left, so I thought this might make a good topping, and it did…with a light touch. Perhaps pickled ramps would be better here, but it still worked. I did mix some mild Italian and a bit of spicy just to get enough to make patties for the both of us.
This was ok. Rampy, fatty and eggy. but combined…it was ok.
Good as always. I’ve ben short on buying, as I try to get the freezers more organized.
Of the things that have been going on, the storm water drainage is taking a lot of attention lately. I am amazed at how things are going at times. For example Friday Morning they had tons of giant pipes on the street, and by Friday night, they were all gone. Underground? Moved elsewhere? Probably underground, but still.
As a new element was they are moving some power poles, because the next ingress point will be pretty close to across the street. I thought they were going to start this past Thursday moving wires from the old poles to new poles, so I warned co-workers that I might lose power. They didn’t actually start moving wires until Friday. I have been taking Fridays off, so this would be annoying but less problematic, I guess. It ended up not being a problem until my wife got home and noticed they had dropped some wires in the transfer. They were hanging over the dead end that the driveways of my house and the two others on our dead end.
Come to find out, the wire(s) that were down probably led to the neighbor that lives behind me. She’s in her mid 90s. She gets her land line phone service and DSL from the only game in town. After getting in a phone queue, due to actual wires blocking the street. I got on the web and walked through opening a ticket for her. The first day that they could get her was Tuesday. Mid 90s, no cell phone, Tuesday (4 days later).
I logged into my account to check what else I could do, then about 20 minutes into being on hold, I noticed a different number to call, and called that one (having one on in the background and another on in the foreground) at 35 minutes, once I started talking to a rep, I hung up on the first call, since it was still on hold. I chatted with the rep for a bit expressing that there are wires on the road, neighbor in 90s has no phone service, 3 households perhaps trapped.
So you are thinking, why do I think they are phone wires. Because they look like the phone wires that are going into my house (not that we use them).
I dropped the “how are we supposed to leave with wires across the road, to the farm dinner that we paid a lot of money for” at some point, but Monday was the earliest we could get them out.
After that, My next door neighbor left back to her house, and I went downstairs to try to internet shame them into coming out earlier.
It seems like this went into a slow response time frame, to keep me feeling like there is progress.
So for the phone time, submitting forms, not including internet shaming, 1 hour 15 minutes or so.
I kicked that off, then called MidAmerican. 8 minutes later I was off the phone, I told them I was pretty sure it was phone wire, more then once, That it was a sub contractor associated with the power movement related to the construction of the storm water pipes.
Somewhere between around 7 and around 10:30 (when Shannon went to bed) someone had come (probably MidAmerican) to clean up that wire from hanging down into the street. It’s now piled up to the side of the road.
So my plan is that when / if I get a call Monday, I’ll tell them to work on my 90’s neighbor for the purpose of getting her back with a phone. But Who knows how this is going to work out. I have been honest w/ the rep on Twitter DMs that the wires are cleaned up (ish), but reminded them that my neighbor is without a phone.
Italian Sausage Burgers with ramps
Brats
We ended up going to Tupelo Honey, which was fine, and the to Hello, Marjorie for a cocktail (TH vs HM cocktail? HM hands down, not even close). And then we realized that going to the Steve Martin - Martin Short show didn’t start until 8, not 7, so we wandered up to the the sculpture park, wandered around a bit, and sat in the shade for a bit. It was interesting to see the people that just roll through the park, which seems like quite varied in age and etc. It does seem sad to see some of the minor defacement inside Panoramic awareness pavilion by Olafur Eliasson. You could see children playing, people just hanging out, a couple yelling at each other across the street, children crying, but it was still nice to be there. We took the walk back from the Park to the Civic Center and enjoyed the Music, Jokes ribbing and general silliness of Steve Martin, Martin Short. Certainly a nice date night.
Always good, always different. Remembered the mustard.
Fried egg, pulled rotisserie chicken, ramen. I should’ve thought more and added some vegetables.
Easy to put together, nice smell, haven’t had a cocktail with it yet. Maybe tonight.
Always a favorite around this time of year. I picked up some more ramps today. I did realize I have quite a bit of Arborio rice, especially since I bought another bag. Just a meal that takes time, highlights ramps and is just something you eat around the spring.
I didn’t have dry sherry, but I used sherry none the less, I thought this was pretty easy to put together, since I swapped out the ginger and garlic for their dried counterparts. I skipped, cause I couldn’t find, the Thai Basil leaves, but I did use the Momofuku toasted sesame oil and that added a nice flavor. Enjoyable.
Some wonderful prosciutto, pasta, peas and just over all goodness. I’ve noticed more and more that Iðunn really craves cream and high umami cheeses. Good stuff.
