We've tried two new food things this week. On Monday, the husband made a Peruvian rice and beans dish known as tacu tacu. It was a late Mother's Day present since we'd had leftovers the night before. The tacu tacu recipe came from Joe Yonan's "Weeknight Vegetarian" column in the food section of The Washington Post. It was quite good, and we will definitely be having it again.
Last night, we cooked steak on a rock. For Mother's Day, older son gave me two stones from a company known as Artestia. He gave another set to the husband as an early Father's Day gift. He also provided the steaks. You heat a stone for around 40 minutes in a 525 degree (F) oven. When you take it out, you plop the steak on it. You can cook the whole steak and then eat it or cut bites off to cook more quickly and eat the steak as it cooks. You can also cook eggs on them, though that seems a bit too much work for scrambled or fried eggs. We first had steak on a rock at a now-closed Caribbean restaurant in a city up north Route 29. Again, something we will be repeating.
In the old-normal, pre-coronavirus world, I would be packing right now and trying not to obsess over making sure all the paperwork was in order. Tomorrow, the husband and I would be driving up to Dulles International Airport and taking an overnight Turkish Air flight to Istanbul. There, we would get on another Turkish Air flight to Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, the start of a 17-day trip through three countries commonly thought to be along the Silk Road of Marco Polo's day. We recovered the full cost of the trip plus insurance when the tour company cancelled things. It's hard to say if we'll have the chance to do that tour again or, if we do have the chance, we would take it.
Travel as we've known it may never be the same again. It's not at all clear when different countries might change their current border lockdowns. You can probably get out of your home country, but it's not clear what other countries would admit you right now. Even state-to-state travel can get complicated with some states requiring a 14-day quarantine period for anyone entering from another state. And should those state quarantine requirements be lifted, I'm not sure I want to get on an airplane. Will "Road trip!" be the new way to go? "Shotgun!"
The local paper ran an article yesterday reporting that a majority of local residents do not support the partial reopening of the state (minus Northern Virginia) starting Friday. I hope those people vote with their feet and stay at home. I hope that things work out and that the decline in the relevant metrics continues, but I won't hold my breath. We'll see what things look like after Memorial Day.
1 comment:
We just don't know what the future will look like. I'm certain that I won't be leaving the country this year, my quilting weekend a couple of hundred miles away in early July is probably toast but the knitting retreat in September may yet be a runner. All this effort I put into getting out of the house and meeting people - well, it was nice while it lasted.
We had fish on a tile in Turkey (a curved roof tile) and a rich meat stew sealed into a clay pot, baked and the pot cracked open at the table. I guess they both originated in the days of the communal oven.
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