Twilight zone

Last night I came home from work and turned on the radio to listen to NPR while I cooked dinner (fried rice, with shredded pork & chicken, sweet peppers, carrots, scallions, peas, garlic & ginger. Just realized I forgot the egg). And entered the Twilight Zone.

NPR had decided to devote coverage to a press conference that Trump was holding on the coronavirus. It was pretty nuts (CNN thinks so too, but they would). Pence in charge of public health response (Pence who actually increased HIV/AIDS in Indiana by refusing to have clean needle distribution sites), the stock market is plummeting because of the people on stage at the Democratic debate the night before, the US is doing better than most countries. Trump answering questions and trying to sound serious for over an hour.

Mostly I kept thinking that here’s a way for this administration to do a lot of things they want to do – close borders, limit people’s movements, generally clamp down.

It lasted forever, but finally ended, and we ate. Looked sorta like this but no beer to go with, and no egg or tofu.

I’m still in the midst of this way too busy at work, not really cooking span, although I have pulled off a few things – like the fried rice. Tonight I made this pasta from the New York Times – well, an insert in the Sunday Times, on one pot meals – where you put the pasta and olive oil and cherry tomatoes into a skillet, and pour boiling water over and kind of cook it all up together until it makes its own starchy sauce. It’s a trick based on why restaurant pasta is different from homemade – it’s because in restaurants there’s a pasta reheating well or cooker with water that’s much more starchy and rich than the one-time pasta water you end up with when you boil one batch of pasta at home. Anyways, I made it with cherry tomatoes and baby kale from the winter market and half a roast chicken breast and some parsley and water cress (also from winter market) I needed to use up.

And on Monday, we made chicken pot pie, coleslaw, peach pudding cake, and roasted broccoli and cauliflower for the food pantry meal at Goodman.

I took some pictures of old dirty snow and the front lights and my iPhone wallpaper that’s a picture from a book that I unpacked for the UW Libraries book sale, all images about that late winter feeling. In the words of Jefferson Airplane, “Stop your mind with dirty snow“. In a meeting I was in last week, on a very cold morning, somebody asked if we thought the cold made us stupid, and I said no, being too busy is what makes us stupid.

Oh and of course, there’s pie. Made almost week ago, on my mommy’s 95th birthday (February 22) though sweet potato was not her favorite pie. That would have been apple.

This morning on my walk to work I thought about all the things I’d say in this post and of course I’ve forgotten. Guess I might as well go wash the dishes and then watch TV.