The View from the Hermitage, Day 36

The Washington Post has run several articles recently on the boredom or creativity people deal with while quarantined. What makes one bored? What creative endeavors do people use to fill the time or otherwise deal with probably more solitude than they are used to? Trying to learn a foreign language is frequently cited as a time-filler as is learning to play a musical instrument. And judging by the absence of flour and yeast from grocery store shelves, many people are baking.

Filling time is not really an issue here in the Hermitage. Before I tried to retire (that's a whole other story), I only worked part-time and from home. Since my attempt at retirement, I have had even more free time here at home. In other words, filling in time at home has not really been an issue. I have one quilt ready for the last step of binding and another quilt pieced and ready to pin to the batting and backing. I have a simple project on my loom, a tool I'm still getting comfortable using. Not using the loom, I wove a large square of martial arts belts in various colo(u)rs; I'm still pondering where to go with that project. And ....

I've been cooking real meals, from recipes even. Since there's no running to the grocery store for a quick pick-up of something I don't have, I've had to get creative with what I do have. I think the Food Channel at one time had a show called something like Door Knock Dinners. They'd knock on your door and ask if the chef standing beside the host could come in and make dinner using whatever he or she could find in your kitchen and pantry. My making of vegetable fried rice was not nearly the level of dish a chef would have made, but it was as authentic as I could get based on several recipes I found online. Usually I only make enough rice for one dinner for two and maybe a lunch for one. I made twice as much the other night, actually planning on making fried rice the next night.

Older son is doing our grocery shopping, so there are sometimes surprises in what he gets in response to what I had on my list. Last week, he picked up some stew beef. It was chopped in chunks smaller than I usually use, so I decided to see what else I could make. I think I googled "beef stew meat" or something similar. One of the first recipes to pop up was for Mongolian beef, something I'd heard of but never eaten. I had to swap out a couple of ingredients--light brown sugar for dark, a regular onion for the green ones, dry ginger for minced--but the result was incredible. I'll definitely be making it again. Older son bought some lamb stew meat this past weekend, and I may use that just to see what it tastes like.

Finally, older son noted that the husband had not had ham for Easter. I usually bought ham slices and just threw them into the oven or plopped them into a frying pan. Last night, I cooked a whole hockey-sock-sized ham. I just followed the directions on the label, but I still count it as cooking something new. We're having some leftover ham for dinner tonight, and the rest went into the freezer. And while I would typically settle for canned pineapple, older son got a fresh pineapple. I may never used canned again.

And so, none of the above has anything to do with the novel coronavirus per se, but it is related to the passage of time in the Hermitage. If I start in on the virus and related personalities such as He Who Shall Not Be Named, my blood pressure might go even higher. And since that, in addition to my asthma and age, puts me at higher risk, I think I'll just stop here.