Weekend Plans Post: Lifehacks
We’re in the home stretch, we’re told. We just have to make it to the vaccination. I’m not in the groups for phases 1-A or 1-B, I *MIGHT* be in the group for phase 2 (I just put in my SAT to ACT conversion score and, jackpot! It’s my BMI!) which means that, fingers crossed, I get the shot come spring.
That’s right around the corner, right? It’s not even a leap year.
So we just have to figure out how to get from here to there. Well, and then quarantine for two weeks before we get the second shot. And then socially distance for another couple of weeks.
AND THEN PARTY TIME.
Wait. Wait. Not yet. We have to get from here to there first.
So we’re trying to figure out little things that we can do to make this last little bit just a little bit better.
The cooking thing has helped a *LOT*. Making rice so I can make my own burritos, making my own Mac&Cheese, making my own skillet meals, and making my own red meat sauce for pizza and spaghetti has turned what could be a chore into something fun and special.
I haven’t tried my hand at baking. Maybe I should… but I still haven’t. That said, we *DID* pick up some of these from Costco and, holy cow, they’re pretty good. They’re not as good as the *REAL* stuff you get from the French Bistro but, hey, it’s tougher to get over to the French Bistro than it used to be. They’re about 6-8 inches and, when you take them hot from the oven, they are ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. And since they’re frozen, you can have them more or less 15 minutes after you think “hey, I’d like some hot bread”.
From there, you just have to figure out “well, do I want to make a hot sandwich? Do I want it with butter and jam? Do I want to whip up some garlic butter and use it to sop up something nice and stewy?”
You know what? We’re going to go back to restaurants and secretly think something like “I made better baked potatoes than this… I made better sandwiches… I made better pizza…”
I mean, it’s still going to be awesome because nothing tastes as good as food that someone else entirely has made. I mean, I’m looking forward to my first meal at Olive Garden already. But I also look forward to *KNOWING* that I make better Italian than that rather than just idly thinking it.
And so, this weekend, we’re going over to Mom’s. We realized that since she had the covid and since she recovered from it, we can go over there pretty much whenever we want! Except, of course, if it’s within a couple of days of her doing risky stuff. And so we’ve been figuring out a schedule with her and this weekend is the first weekend since Christmas that she hasn’t been doing risky stuff for a couple of days first.
I mean, hey. It’s not like I blame her. She had it, got through it, and now she wants to do stuff like go shopping and get her hair done and hug the grandbabies. Heck yeah. I’d be doing the same.
But we scheduled out and asked her “please don’t do anything risky on Wednesday or Thursday and we’ll be over on Friday night!”
And I have made my spaghetti sauce and we’re going to be taking over some of that bread and making Garlic Toast with it and mom’s making a salad and she bought a pie and we’re going to have dinner over there and she’s going to test out my spaghetti sauce for the first time. “Hey, Ma. Thanks. I figured this out from watching you cook it when I was a kid.”
And that will help us get a couple inches closer to the spring.
So… what’s on your docket?
(Featured image is “Schnozz”. Taken by Maribou.)
My docket is getting caught up on a few things I let slide this week. Tuesday afternoon I felt sick, went home early, had chills like WHOA, bundled up and went to bed, got up to use the bathroom, felt dizzy, took my temperature….over 100.
Uh-oh. Coupled with my having had a student (sitting in the back of class and everyone masked) who tested positive for COVID, and having gone out for “big shopping” (masked but still) just under 2 weeks ago, I quietly freaked out. Called in to work, taught Wednesday from home (still not feeling great), got a telehealth visit from my doctor.
She advised me to get a COVID test at the hospital. Now, at this point my temperature had gone back to normal and I had no other COVID symptoms (I was testing my ability to smell like every half hour, either with scented soap or one of my scented candles). I figured it was advisable not to come back to campus until I knew, so Thursday morning I taught from home, and pressed a colleague into service for the lab I could not do.
Went out to the hospital midday. I’ll say the test (I had the standard swab-all-the-way-up-the-nose) is not pleasant but I’ve had far worse medical testing done. If I had to I’d do it again but I’d not want to do it on a weekly basis.
Late in the afternoon (the benefit of going to the HOSPITAL and probably having a hefty insurance co-pay later) I found out: negative.
I probably had either food poisoning, food intolerance reaction, or somehow, a GI virus sneaked past my masking and distancing. (The only symptoms I had were the chills/fever, some abdominal cramping, and SERIOUS hives, which, in retrospect, suggest food intolerance reaction)
Anyway, I am so relieved not to have the ‘rona I don’t even mind going in to my office on a SaturdayReport
I’m pleased you didn’t have it!
In the past, I’ve been in a place where I had to use 3-4 sick days every year. A persistent cough, gastro-intestinal distress, or… how to put this… “an excess of humors”.
Dodged that bullet last year, dodged it (knock wood) so far this year… Next year, the first time I get the bug that’s going around, it’s going to knock me out for a dang week.Report
I’m glad you don’t have it, too.
To be honest, that nose test terrifies me. I have a big fear of nosebleeds, and the thought of getting that test makes me panicky. But again, I’m glad you’re negative.Report
I was really scared going in because I get nosebleeds easily, and I have a deviated septum (broke my nose twice in two separate accidents in my teens/20s. Never had the septum corrected because the ENT surgeon I was referred to said “if you’re not having breathing problems, don’t get the surgery; the recovery from it is miserable and you’ll hate me after it for going through all that to see no improvement in function” and I was struck by his honesty and believed him)
It was weird and briefly uncomfortable but I did not get a nosebleed. The nurse said it was rare anyone did. I also told her about the deviated septum and she said unless it was BAD, it shouldn’t be a problem (it wasn’t).
I mentioned elsewhere that the discomfort level was not as bad as, but similar to, getting a Pap smear, but that’s a gender-specific comparison (then again: one of my female friends laughed and said “that’s exactly how I described it when I had it done a month ago”)
The tl:dr: I am super squeamish and have nose and sinus issues, and it was not that bad, really.,Report
Thanks for saying that. I know it’s no guaranteed that my experience (should it come) be nosebleed free, but it makes me feel better.Report
I may also have got an unusually gentle nurse, I think she realized how scared I was. Then again, 11 months or whatever this is into it, hopefully anyone doing testing has a LOT of experience at it.Report
I was sick two-ish weeks ago with all the key symptoms. I got tested and it was negative, but it made me think how we’re not allowed to be “just sick” anymore. Everything has to be treated with the utmost suspicion.
And I, too, am glad you came up negative. Are they still shoving the swab all the way to the back of your sinuses there? I’ve been tested twice, and both times it was merely an uncomfortable, ticklish 10-second swirling inside my nose.Report
yeah, I was told that was the best way to do a “rapid test” and I really wanted fast results so I could go back to work (sad lol except teaching online from home is worse)
the nurse said she had to “get into the ‘mucus pocket’ at the back” and I am claiming Mucus Pocket as my new garage band name.
Also, I think the way my doctor did it, she did it to maximize the chances of my insurance paying the biggest share of the test possible; in her “appointment write up” (which she posted in my online records) she used certain keywords like “symptoms consistent with” and “exposed to someone who tested positive” (I was, briefly, a student, but we were both masked and about 18′ apart)
that said I wish the “spit on a strip” test that was supposedly based on home pregnancy tests had come to fruition, that would be so easy.
then again, in China they have apparently gone to using ANAL swabs, and….I’ll take the one up the nose, thanks.Report
Yeah, but the nasal swab means that you can’t check your phone during it.Report
My institution has created its own saliva test. It’s awkward and embarrassing. Someone is watching you while you drool a bodily fluid into a test tube. But it’s not nearly as uncomfortable as I imagine the nasopharyngeal thing to be. (Also, they don’t really watch that closely, they’re just sitting at a table several feet away.)
That said, the test we use, as I understand, hasn’t been FDA approved. I don’t know if that’s just because of bureaucracy or if there’s a real problem with the test. Supposedly the test is PCR (which is a good thing?), but the accuracy might be less than the nasopharyngeal.Report
“Mucus Pocket” is definitely a band from Seattle in the late 80’s/early 90’s that never quite broke through.Report
This. I have further comments, but they might stray into politics territory (or at least controversy territory.)Report
My wife and I will be having a friend over Saturday and we’re going to order delivery. We’ve been doing this thing, every other Saturday. One week we’ll go to her house, and two weeks later, she’ll come to ours.
I can’t lie. It is a little risky. We don’t wear masks. We haven’t been vaccinated. And (as far as we know), none of us has gotten sick or has the anitbodies. Our friend does a reasonable job of being careful and not taking too many risks–except of course when she doesn’t. And my wife and I don’t take a lot either–except of course when we do. So….it may or may not be defensible. But it’s basically our only social life.*
That is, if you don’t count my two-days a week visit to my worksite as “social,” which in a sense it is. I’m one of the lucky ones who has the option not to come in at all. But for my own mental health, I feel I “need” to come in, and part of that “need” is the “need” to interact with the handful of my coworkers who also choose to come in. Although we get along well, we’re not great friends or anything. I just like the interaction.Report
Getting going on a bathroom remodel, so I’ll be shopping for tile, etc. Also, meeting with a kitchen design person to kick some ideas around about that.
It appears I had a comment eaten in reply to filly that I don’t want to rewrite, so suffice it to say I’m glad you’re OK!Report
Forgot to mention thanks to Jaybird for the Comfort Colors recommendation. Great for one of my wintertime cycling layers. I’ve been on a shopping spree.Report
OH HURRAY! I’m so pleased that you like the shirt!Report
Yeah, I bought a couple, too. Haven’t worn them yet, but I do like the look and feel of them. They’ll get washed with this week’s laundry. Thanks for the rec!Report
I’ve had two friends who cut back on restaurant eating a few years ago after they got Blue Apron-type services and discovered they could do better. Not that they cooked every day, but both of them couldn’t handle paying for restaurant food that wasn’t as good as their home cooking.
There’s a sandwich shop near me that always has fresh ingredients, which is something that you can’t do from home if you’re a bachelor. Maybe you can get a couple days’ worth of lettuce and tomato from the grocery store salad bar – hoo boy, do you think those things will ever come back? A head of lettuce for a bachelor is pointless. Maybe I could go through a head of Brussels sprout and a cherry tomato before they went bad.Report
Blue Apron is something that I mocked when I first heard about it but then I watched it in action and I now think that it’s amazing.
It’s not something that I’d recommend for everybody. No, not at all.
*BUT*.
If you are someone whose cooking skills are in the “turn on the oven, remove lasagna from box, remove plastic from lasagna” area, then Blue Apron will get you from “I don’t know how to cook” to “I know how to cook”.
“Adulting 101” is one of those topics that shows up from time to time and how we need high schools or colleges to teach it. Well, Blue Apron is “cooking 101”.
I can totally understand how someone who is only cooking for one wouldn’t want to get a head of lettuce. Blue Apron sending 5 romaine leaves in a ziploc? Suddenly, that’s the difference between having the side salad and not having it.Report
I often talk about the difference between being a cook and a chef.
A cook takes a recipe and executes it. Can you follow directions? Are you handy enough in the kitchen? Well then, you can probably be a cook!
A chef is the one who creates the recipe. A chef can look at the basket on “Chopped” (Licorice! Pig cheeks! Iceberg lettuce! Black Rice!) and turn it into a delicious meal. A chef has to know not just what to do but how and why. Most of us won’t ever be chefs, but we may be able to dabble.
The problem is when the two are confused.
Blue Apron does a good job of keeping cooks (or almost-cooks) as their audience but adding just enough chef-ery to the mix so that cooks (or almost cooks) can maybe too dabble a bit as chefs. Beyond the ease and accessibility of the ingredients and such, it also goes just a bit further than a traditional cookbook.
Alton Brown’s show “Good Eats” is similar. He doesn’t just give recipes but gives all the why and how behind them. So you learn some techniques and you look some things about ingredients.
If Blue Apron feels like it is helping you become a better cook, “Good Eats” should be your next stop. And if AB’s schtick is a bit too much for you, the Fan Page has full transcripts of every episode: https://www.goodeatsfanpage.com/Report
I used to love “Door Knock Dinners” where the host showed up at the front door with a local chef, who went through the refrigerator, freezer, pantry, and spice shelf, maybe spent a few bucks at the local grocery, then prepared a gourmet meal.Report
The inverse of that is “$2 meals!”
Ingredient list:
5-cents of olive oil
Oh, fish you, man!
I’m not familiar with DKD but I’d probably have been into it.
My girlfriend is somewhere between Stoufers and IA. She bakes but that’s science, not art. Before we lived together, I’d go through her pantry and be like, “You have 3 half-used bags of flours and literally no pepper.” I shudder at a DKD visit to her old place.
Conversely, she’d look in my pantry and be like, “You have 7 different kinds of salt. Why?”
It’s amazing we’ve lived together for 6 months already.Report
I always suspected that people who had volunteered for DKD kept their freezers and pantries loaded up.Report
Yeah, getting someone to say “wait… can I swap ingredients? Like use yams instead of potatoes? Can I use ginger instead of garlic? Wait. I can add ginger, if I just feel like it? And red pepper flake?”
HOLY COW THIS IS A GUIDELINE
And then they can discover that recipes *ALWAYS* don’t ask for enough garlic and they never even mention paprika except for the occasional one for potato salad.
But I’ve met a lot more people who need to get from Stouffer’s to Ingredient Assembly than I have IA to Twiddling.Report
I think that’s because so many recipes used to start with…
“Step 1: Debone your fresh caught grouper.”
The beauty of these meal kits is they’re like, “Have you ever sliced a bagel? Cool. Do that… but to this piece of celery we already mostly prepped.”
Stoufers>IA is less about skills and more about a sense of competence.Report
There’s also this weird dynamic where it’s considered shameful to have moved from D- to C instead of moving from D- to A-.
Hey, you know what? If you moved from removing the plastic to maybe sprinkling some Kraft Italian Cheese Blend on top of the lasagna before baking it, you have it it out of the park, my man.
OH MY GOSH YOU’RE GOING TO PUT SOME KRAFT PARMESAN ON IT BEFORE SERVING IT HOLY CRAP EVEN BOLTON RAMSAY WOULD SAY THAT THIS WAS A MEAL FIT FOR A KING
But other people say stuff like “oh, you made lasagne from a box? And you still spell it with an ‘a’ rather than with an ‘e’? Shouldn’t you have just gone to Burger King instead?”
And you know what? Heck with that.
Start fiddling. Start playing. Don’t be afraid to try new stuff. Make something better than anything you’ve ever tasted in between attempts to add lemon juice to heavy whipping cream.Report
I also recommend America’s Test Kitchen. In my opinion, they’re really good, and their recipes almost always work–and they give you a lot of background so you can learn why something works (and why some things don’t).
I love Good Eats, too, but I haven’t watched it in years. I don’t have cable and while there’s probably some way to watch it online, I just haven’t looked into it.Report
I haven’t tried Blue Apron, mostly because if I’m going to get something delivered, I want it to be hot, pre-made, and bad for me. One exception is a local restaurant that makes what in my opinion is high quality food and puts it in boil in the baggie kits. They’re so easy to do, and the food tastes REALLY good, that I’ll do it. It’s quite expensive, though.Report
The sad part of “adulting” is that it’s real. I was taught to cook, sew a button, use the laundry and dryer, iron a shirt, balance a checkbook, etc by my parents. In the 80s. Of course my high school also taught home ec. Once two generations don’t know how to do something, it’s lost.Report
Yeah, I’m often surprised at people not that much younger than I am who don’t know some of the basic stuff. I remember teaching some of the girls I was in the college dorm with (fall1987) how to sort laundry to avoid dying your whites pink and the like. I was surprised people didn’t know that.
My parents taught me the stuff you listed, and also how to change a washer in a faucet (not that useful any more given modern faucets), basic toilet repair (handy!), how to change the oil in a car (I’d rather pay someone to do that though). I also learned how to run a sewing machine and how to knit and crochet by my mom, I have made some of my own clothes, but I wouldn’t expect most people to know how to do those things.
my brother and sister in law know how to do basic carpentry – she learned growing up and taught him, so they have done stuff like build sheds on their property.Report
A major contributor is the fact that the *real* adults aren’t adulting.
I remember asking my 4- and 5-year-olds where groceries come from when we were starting a unit on cooking.
“The mailman brings it!”
This was 15 years ago. Those kids are now in college and have possibly never gone food shopping. Because they weren’t taken food shopping as kids. Rinse and repeat.
I sometimes use the convenience of click-and-pickup or shopping delivery. But I also make a point of going to the store and bringing the children with me. “No, we have to check the eggs first to make sure none are broken.” “See? Here is the expiration date.” “When we pack the bag, put the bread on top. Why do you think we do that?”
I also make sure they see me doing things around the house so they don’t grow up thinking all that happens by magic. And, increasingly, they are tasked with helping those efforts. And not in the “Oh, isn’t it cute that Little Johnny [note: Little Johnny is 12] pushed the vacuum around for 5 minutes and only made things slightly dirtier?” way. In the, “No, that isn’t how the vacuum works way. This tool is for doing this. This tool is for doing that. So which tool should we use if we’re trying to do this?”
So some of this stuff needs to be taught but much of it is simply absorbed by living amongst the work being done and then refined over time. We’re losing the absorption points.Report
Excellent pointReport
True. I remember my mom showing me how to check eggs in the store when I was quite young, and how to pick “good” produce.
I will say I rail as an adult about kids running in the grocery store and being noisy, and “why did both parents have to come to the store and drag the kids along” but maybe the parents were teaching that stuff and I didn’t see it? Or maybe they really were just letting the kids run wild.
We also had a big garden, one year she bought a few peanut seeds even though Ohio is ill-suited to their growth because she wanted my brother and me to see how peanuts grow (they have a weird thing – the pods develop underground, after the flowers are done the peanuts develop in the soil). (My mom is a botanist so those kinds of things occurred to her)
also my brother and I had chores growing up: dusting, and vacuuming, and mowing the lawn, and weeding, and doing dishes. We were shown how to do it correctly when young, and then it was just expected we did it correctly. I learned how to make my own bed as a kid and to do laundry.
I also learned fun stuff – I learned to bake before I learned to cook, my mom would let me make chocolate chip cookies (from scratch) and even cakes. And learning to sew and crochet was fun because then I could make my own stuffed animals as a kid. (I also learned how to follow patterns that way)Report
There is a weird feedback loop where we seem increasingly intolerant of children in certain public spaces, the children don’t learn how to function in those public spaces, the children who do enter those public spaces act inappropriately, and we point to that as reason for why children shouldn’t be in certain public spaces. There is also a through line of modern parenting trends that fails to recognize what behavior is appropriate and in what context.
A few years ago I was on a flight. Apparently, there was a baby on board. I say “apparently” because the little feller didn’t make a peep until landing. While we were being held on the runway, the baby started to cry. Within a couple minutes, someone yelled, “Will someone quiet that baby?!?!” Like, dude… are you really upset that an otherwise silent baby is crying for a couple minutes? THAT’S WHAT BABY’S DO!!! Someone else chimed in, “It’s a baby. What’s your excuse?” People clapped. Awesome move.
I know it gets gushed about on social media, but I hate the new trend of parents creating “Gift baggies” or whatever nonsense to dole out to their fellow passengers to pre-apologize for their baby being on the flight. Why? Why should someone have to feel guilty just for trying to travel with a young child? I can understand being frustrated with a parent who lets an older child act inappropriately without any intervention. But a baby?
Sorry, I’m getting a little ranty.
If those kids were indeed just running around unsupervised with no parenting, I’d agree that is problematic. If they were just sort of being obnoxious the way kids are obnoxious and the parents were managing it without chastising their kids every second for simply being kids, than I’d argue we need to make space for that. It is how socialization happens.Report
I’ve seen kids in the store whose parents were talking to them, teaching them stuff, whatever, and that was fine. I’ve also seen parents dinking on their phones and ignoring everything else while their kids ran around and it always made me nervous because….while kidnapping is less common than in the 1980s scare-stories we got fed, it’s still possible, or the kid could get hurt some how.
I have friends who did “practice run” restaurant meals – either going to a family casual place, or doing a “fancy” meal at home – and expecting their kids to have “proper restaurant behavior” and when the kids demonstrated they could, then they went to a fancier restaurant. I mean, I would never expect, I don’t know, an Olive Garden or somewhere to have kids being absolutely perfect but also I don’t expect kids screaming and running around the tables in a sit-down place.
then again, IDK, it’s been a year since I’ve been in a restaurant so *I* may have forgotten how to behave in one…..Report
Back in the Before Times I was at the grocery and happened to be looking in the right place when the harried young mother lost hold of her four-year-old. He darted through the mess of shopping carts where she couldn’t possibly follow at speed. Just as he broke into the clear, I scooped him up and whispered in his ear, “Not today, dude.”
His mom and I didn’t say a word to each other, it was all body language and expression. “Thank you so much for capturing my monster, and for whatever you said to him that made him giggle instead of scream.” “Grandpa reflexes. Been through it for two generations.”Report
I’ve been in similar situations. Sadly, there is a decent change that situation could have turned on it’s head with the mom yelling, “GET YOUR HANDS OFF MY CHILD!” Especially to a man doing what you did. It’s sad, from my perspective. I’m glad the mom appreciated your support.
I do think the pendulum is swinging back a bit, thankfully.Report
So about 20 years ago, my wife and he sister and her husband went to Italy. Their daughter was 5 ish. Back then, there was no mcdonalds in this small Italian town. We ate dinner at the hotel dinning room-a rather upscale hotel. There were zero kids there but my neice. Folks came over several times to compliment her behavior to my SIL and husband. I was surprised because she acted like this all the time and didn’t think anything of it. She also was quiet as a mouse on the plane ride. Maybe no one bothers to teach their kids how to behave anymore?Report
It always seems odd when I say it, but one of the lessons people refuse to learn from cooking shows, and it really limits them, is you can’t be afraid to make a stack of dirty dishes. At some point my wife-to-be asked me, “Why is this better when you cook it than when I do?” I pointed at the sink and said, “Because doing it properly requires a mixing bowl, three cups for the ingredients that need to be premeasured, four pans, plus spoons, spatulas, and knives.”Report
Yea, but why the chainsaw?Report
You ever carved the ice sculpture for the centerpiece without one? A bit more seriously, setting expectations count. I “plated” things; my wife-to-be sort of slopped them on.Report
A chainsaw really whips the air into a souffle in a way that a whisk just can’t hope to match.Report
I try to do the dishes as I cook, so there’s not a whole pile to do afterward. That may not be the most sanitary practice, but I hate having a big pile to do after dinner.Report
I did a scavenger hunt/walk in San Francisco. It was fun. Then my friends and I watched a proudly dysfunctional couple make asses of themselves in public.Report
Was this one of all y’all’s proudly dysfunctional couples or one of someone else’s?Report