Negative/Positive

Sometimes negative is positive. Like Saturday morning when I got my most recent Covid test results back as negative – that’s good because it means I don’t have the virus, even after working the election almost 2 weeks ago. I waited to give it time to incubate.

Sometimes positive is negative. Like this whole election thing, where as far as I’m concerned the right guy won, but now, with the encouragement of our outgoing president, a percentage of people are questioning the election. Right now I’m listening to the former secretary of state in Georgia talk about auditing and then recounts they’re going to have to do, and how much effort and expense it will be.

And the one that’s been bugging me the most is that since the election Trump’s been pretty quiet. That’s positive, but it makes me wonder what’s getting whispered in his inner circle. That’s negative.

It’s been a weird week. Hot then cold, busy and then not quite as busy. Cancellations.

On Monday I went for a bike ride wearing an old sweatshirt with an even older t-shirt underneath, jeans, and no coat or gloves.

Today I wore the same clothes to go for a walk, but added a hat, a coat, fleece neck warmer, and gloves. And now, sitting at my computer, I added another hooded sweatshirt on top, and slippers, and still my hands are cold.

Monday was lots of online meetings and the last one of the day got cut off abruptly at 5:00 – the person who set it up must’ve scheduled it to end at 5:00 and the meeting software shut it down even though people were still talking. We had leftover pasta and roasted vegetables for dinner.

Tuesday wasn’t quite so busy, and we had this curry pork I’d been wanting to try – the salted cabbage is pretty great! and I did amp up the spices. I used the last poblano from my CSA and added curry power and garam masala, both from Penzey’s – their sweet curry is delicious – along with the turmeric.

Wednesday started off with 3 MSTeams meetings (probably my least favorite of the online meeting platforms) in a row, then I went co-op shopping. I had to call a student in Africa on WhatsApp for advising, I think that went sort of OK. Then our cleaners were supposed to come and I had made plans to go to my office because I had to be in an online awards ceremony for the Wisconsin Library Association announcing literary awards. But the cleaners cancelled, so I did the meeting from home – this one was GoTo Meeting. It was still pretty warm, though getting cooler, and Mark went on our walk in the County park by himself. We had a selection of leftovers for dinner. Mark got the last potato  leek pasty, and I had the last of the greens with peanut sauce in a pita. There were also a few spoonfuls of the pork curry and rice left. I made a tomato salad with warm shallot dressing because our fresh tomatoes from the Saturday market were starting to get soft spots And I got a new cookie cookbook, Sarah Kieffer’s 100 Cookies, that has lots of bars, and I tried out the blondies recipe. I mixed the chocolate chips in when the melted butter and sugar were still a bit too hot, so they became swirls instead of chips.

Thursday I had to go to the dentist, put off since May. I walked. I was dreading the appointment, but it was all OK.

At Mark’s suggestion, I made Cubanos for dinner. And some black beans that were at the back of the closet that never got soft. Rancho Gordo that are usually really good, but maybe they were just too old. I dug the bag they came in out of recycle and couldn’t find a best by date, but they might’ve been really old.

Because we’re going into lock down mode, I did some online shopping – Penzey’s for spices, more Rancho Gordo beans, and one of those weird Amazon orders: vacuum cleaner bags and a new filter for the vacuum; almond paste; and this goat milk bar soap that I usually get at the co-op but forgot when I was there in person.

Friday I had to get out early too for that Covid test. We walked to the library in the afternoon, and got a carry out coffee at Colectivo since they’re open later Fridays. We had fried rice and spicy tofu for dinner. And watched the British Baking show. I guess we could’ve done a baby yoda too, but I didn’t think of that until today.

And I tried another bar from the 100 Cookies book.

The other thing I forgot to get at the co-op was canned chipotles, and I got on a fixation to make enchilada sauce with dried guajillo chiles instead of the canned chipotles I usually use.  Which I finally did Saturday, and man, I always thought cooking beets was good for making the kitchen look like there’d been a murder, but red chile sauce is even better. I had googled around for a recipe only to discover that I had it in my Rick Bayless cookbook, Essential Simmered Guajillo Sauce.

Besides getting fixated on making red chile sauce, I also got fixated on this Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians song, Birds in Perspex. He played it during his Wednesday night Live From Sweet Home Quarantine concert with his new girlfriend Emma Swift (tho I guess not that new anymore; I think they’ve been together since about 2013) from their couch in Nashville. I’ve only heard him do it live, I guess it’s on one his albums made for A&M and out of print. I knew I must have it in my iPod someplace, from some live recording I’ve downloaded, but it’s impossible to search for those, because bad metadata. So, when I figured out I couldn’t buy it from Yep Roc, I looked around for another version and got this show from the Internet Archive, 11-16-1999 at the Crocodile, that does include song titles (yay!). I thought I’d listen to it while I made the chile sauce, and dinner, but first I had to convert all the .flacs into .mp3s, and then I had to build it into a playlist, and by the time I was done with all that it was time for weekend edition. Lucky thing the chile sauce took so long and required so much cleanup, so I did get to listen to the whole show by the time dinner had been made and cleaned up. Rocking in my kitchen to ’80s music, performed in the 90s.

We had beef enchiladas with the guajillo sauce, and I have a bucket to go in the freezer. And I made a half peck of Macintosh apples that we got at the market in the morning into the applesauce. Some for the freezer and some to eat now – we had it for Sunday brunch, and I foresee a couple  of cottage cheese and applesauce breakfasts for me this week.