books, Family, Food, Health, home, Media, Uncategorized

Cossack Pie

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In Mollie Katzen’s Moosewood Cookbook is a recipe I have always intended to make, called Cossack Pie. Until now I have had either not enough time, or was missing several of the ingredients. It calls for cabbage, broccoli, onions, carrot, cottage cheese, sour cream, eggs, a little white wine, spices, and a sour cream/yogurt mix. Oh, and a pie crust. When I came upon the recipe the other day, I realized I had everything except fresh mushrooms, but I did find a can of them in the back of the cupboard. Voilá!

There was a lot of chopping – I spent two hours on this thing – but was rewarded. It was delicious, out of the ordinary, and used up some things that needed using. Husband even liked it a lot.

My California friend Fern recently posted on Facebook something like:  Time to check the back of your cupboards, bring this stuff out and do something with it! Here are a few articles that may help in this process:

Food Expiration Dates You Should Actually Follow,

Here’s How Long Those Condiments in your Fridge and Pantry Are Supposed to Last,

and No Flour, Eggs or Butter? No Problem! 23 Cake Recipes for When You’re Missing an Ingredient,

With that explorer’s spirit, I will continue to look through my Moosewood Cookbook and see what else has gone unmade lo these many years.

What have you discovered in the back of your cupboards, or freezer?

Any recipes or ideas you want to share?

Business, Health, Uncategorized, work

Moonshine Hand Sanitizer

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The office operations person at my agency is tasked with finding sufficient masks, sanitzer, and sanitizing wipes for our building staff and for staff who transport clients or who visit clients in their homes.  She has networked with her counterparts at other human service centers to find supplies.  Hand sanitizer has been hard to come by,  and they have turned to local distilleries in Fargo and in our community that are making it by the gallon.  She and the other office managers have a Pony Express type of delivery chain, meeting one another at county lines and regional boundaries for deliveries and pick up. She said it feels like they are hauling moonshine and doing something illegal. I like the image of the transfer of distillery products into State vehicles.

Today she sent an email saying that  we should come and get some distillery sanitizer,  but since it smelled so strongly alcoholic we had to put essential oils in it, as the raw odor could trigger some of our addiction clients into relapse. I went down to her office to get some and put some lavender oil in it.  She was right about the odor.  Pineapple essential oil would make it smell like a pina colada!  She told me that when she and another business office staff member were pouring it out of the distillery jugs into smaller bottles, they inhaled a lot of the fumes and it got all over their hands and was absorbed into their skin. She said they both got red in the face and kind of goofy before they knew what was happening.

It is heartening to see how people here are pulling together to solve problems and help, even if it means spraying moonshine all over the place.

What have you seen people do lately to pull together and make things better? Have you ever been to a distillery?

Art, Business, Family, home, News, Uncategorized

Bad Hair Quarter

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I get my hair cut every six weeks or so. I was supposed to get it cut on April 3, but the ND governor had closed all the salons and barber shops by then, and I have no idea when they will reopen. I am looking at a couple of months of shagginess.  Husband made it to the barber just before the shut down. I will under no circumstances try to trim my own hair.  That would be a disaster.

I heard someone in the news comment that during the next weeks we will see people start hoarding hair dye for “do it yourself” touch ups. Imagine all the off-color roots we will see if there is a shortage! I am  glad I have never colored my hair. That, too, would be a disaster if  I ever tried to touch up my grey. I am not a very neat or precise person when it comes to things like that. I am also not very creative when it comes to figuring out ways to deal with hair when it is not cut to the correct length.

Do you have any creative ideas of what to do when you can’t get to the salon or barber? What do you imagine people will be panic hoarding next?

animals, Family, Food, Gatherings, Health, home, Uncategorized

Breaking The Rules

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Today we broke the rules, at least some, of the social distancing rules. Two dear friends, a married couple of licensed addiction counselors from the Rez came to town to sign their wills at their lawyer’s office, and we had them over for cheesecake and a nice visit over lunch. We hadn’t seen them since the summer. We didn’t hug or shake hands as we normally do (shaking hands is a really big deal with the ND tribes), and we sat about four feet apart at the dining room table, and we had a good talk. They brought a jar of tribal produced honey, and we gave them oatmeal bread, French Bread, and lefse. They showed us videos of their newborn Kiko goats, and we showed them photos of our grandson. It was nice, but odd with the lack of contact and the distance we put between ourselves. We were all very self aware of our coughing and took care to shield the others from our exhalations.

I am a pretty rigid rule follower, and this made me somewhat uneasy, but it felt like the right thing to do.

What sort of a rule breaker/risk taker are you? 

Business, Family, Health, home, Uncategorized, work

Work/Life Balance

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I return to my place of work today. Our Regional Director decided I would be one of the few staff allowed in the building to keep things running.  We have had multiple staff quit to join the private sector in the past few months, and at this point I am one of the few clinical staff left who can do things like sign commitment papers.  I am glad we have quite a few applicants for the vacant positions,  but the virus slowed down the hiring process.

Working in the office is just fine as far as I am concerned.  I really dislike working from home.  I need a separation  between work and home for my own sanity, a reasonable  “work/life balance” not possible when I am at home.  This way I can turn off my computer at the end of the day and drive home and leave work at work.

How do you (or did you) maintain a reasonable  work/life balance?  What happens if you don’t?

Family, Food, holidays, home, Kids, Music, Uncategorized

The Easter Parade

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Daughter phoned this week to ask, or rather, to demand, that we send an Easter basket to her. She said she thought she deserved one because she had been stuck in her apartment for a month and hadn’t seen any of her friends, and, well, could we send milk chocolate and some sour things, please?  I said that we would of course send her an Easter parcel, but she wouldn’t get it until the middle of next week.

We also sent a parcel to our grandson containing old Curious George books we had here, and The Golden Egg Book, which is a sweet story  by Margaret Wise Brown about a bunny who finds a mysterious egg and who ends up with a duckling for a best friend.  Son and DIL thought our grandson would appreciate pretzel fish rather than  candy, so he got those, too, as well a teddy bear. He will be two at the end of the month.

This is the first Easter in my memory that we haven’t been doing music in church. I usually complain how exhausting all that performing is,  but I hope we never have another Easter like this one, and I would welcome that sort of stress right now.

What are some of your Easter memories?

Family, Health, home, Medicine, Technology, Uncategorized, Words

Your Private Hell

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Husband declared the other day  that his private Hell consisted of dealing with paper (he has neuropathy in his fingertips from diabetes and can’t sort or easily manipulate papers or feel his fingers on a keyboard), keeping organized the cords for our various computers,  phones, and tech instruments,  and the internal combustion engine. He is in Heaven, on the other hand turning a phrase or writing a psychological evaluation.

What would constitute your private Hell?  

Art, Family, Music, Radio, Songs, Uncategorized

We’ll Miss You John

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I didn’t grow up with much folk music to speak of.  Neither of my folks was a big music fan; their idea of a great bit of music was Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass.  Much of the music that I gravitated to as a teenager wasn’t appreciated, particularly by my dad.  He thought Bob Dylan and John Denver both needed nasal operations and he was sure that pretty much every single Simon & Garfunkle song was dirty.

When I moved to the Twin Cities and discovered the Late Great Morning Show, it was like doors opened up into a whole new world.  Although I didn’t know much of the music to start with, I loved it all.  And, of course, John Prine was in the mix from the beginning and I always loved his down to earth humor.  His passing leaves a hole in my life that I doubt can be filled.

This isn’t actually my favorite piece of his, but it seems appropriate today:

 

Do you have a John Prine favorite??

Art, Family, Health, Medicine, News, Uncategorized

CONSTRUCTION ZONE

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Today’s post comes from Jacque.

Two weekends of my life have been lost to construction of homemade masks.  This is not usually how I would spend a weekend, but then these are not normal times.  And what else was there to do anyway given our Shelter-in-Place order.  And constructing masks certainly is preferable to allowing debilitating fear and anxiety about our COVID-19 problem to take over my life.  I would rather allow something useful to take over my life.   The need for these was urgent, though.  Several people asked me to send masks ASAP.  Unfortunately, many of them are going to medical providers:

  • Sister-in-law, a doctor. She says they have shields and it was suggested they use homemade masks under them.  They had to find their own homemade masks.
  • Brother-in-law, a nurse. He has masks at his hospital but they are forbidden from using the one mask they have been assigned anywhere but in direct care.
  • Daughter of a friend, another nurse. Her hospital has assigned each nurse one N95 mask with the instructions to use a homemade mask over it to preserve the usefulness of it.  She also had to find her own mask.
  • My mother’s assisted living facility which has no masks at all—they are entirely dependent on donated masks amid the most vulnerable population of all.

To date, I have made 65 of these, and mailed out or given away 60.  Someone at  Blue Cross Blue Shield and Allina designed the masks I have made, then sent them out appealing to anyone who can sew.  An NBC article I found yesterday cited a research study by a Dr. stating that these screen out 79% of viruses and bacteria.    Not bad for quilting materials.  The instructions (thrown together and hand drawn) are here:

Then came the issue of obtaining materials.  First everyone everywhere ran out of elastic, then elastic hair ties which were used to improvise elastic.  I hear people are cutting the elastic off of underwear to make them.  I found shoelaces, ordered 4 spools from a shoelace site, and have been attaching those.  They tie very tightly and stay put.  The medical people need that.  Next, during a trip to Joann Fabric, the store was shut down because people would not stay 6 feet apart in the store.   Thus my on-line order was cancelled.   I went to the Edina Joann, and joined a line in front of the store.  They only allowed 25 customers in the store at once to maintain a distance.  The fly in that ointment was that all 25 customers headed for the quilt fabric department – to make masks.  We did our best to maintain 6 feet of distance from one another.  I did get more fabric, then launched into making more.

I am taking a break now from mask construction, having overdosed on the entire project.  I just could not do one more after yesterday.  I sent them off Monday morning to family in Phoenix, to KC, to Iowa wishing them 79% ability to block a virus and that they perform efficiently.  In a few days I will start some more, but I won’t make that many at a time again.   Today, for a change of pace, I planted my cold frame, wallowing in the joy of early Spring and the possibilities of my garden.  Then I fixed supper, using the baked potato recipe Steve posted yesterday via YouTube.  They were good.

What have you overdosed on lately? 

Family, Food, home, Seasons, Uncategorized

Quick Breads

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The frozen bananas were calling to me on Sunday, imploring me to make them into banana bread. I complied, dragging out James Beard’s banana bread recipe, omitting the nuts, and adding a brown sugar glaze to the top when it was done.

I like banana bread and a cranberry bread my mother always made at Christmas, the recipe I unaccountably lost.  Date bread is a waste of good eggs and butter, as far as I am concerned.  Blueberry muffins? Yum!

What are your favorite quick breads and muffins?