Steven Harper's Blog, page 40
February 13, 2021
Dumping the Pandemic Pounds
Like a lot of people, I gained weight during the pandemic, though this problem really began before-hand. In all, I've gained about 15 pounds since Darwin and I got married, ten since the pandemic began. So I've joined a commercial weight modification program.
Like most such programs these days, this one de-emphasizes denial and emphasizes behavior change. It has an app for keeping track of your weight, watching your daily eating, and sending you chirpy "You can do this!" messages. One thing this program DOESN'T emphasize is exercise. In fact, they barely even mention it. It's not until you're in for more than a week that the program off-handedly mentions that for every calorie you burn in exercise, you get half a calorie added to your daily allotment. You would think this would show up prominently as a way to encourage movement, but no. And while food and weight entries are easy to get to on the app's menu, the exercise section is buried a couple levels down. I'm not sure why this is.
The program also tries to move you toward a plant-based diet without actually saying so. They don't say, "Eat vegetarian," but they definitely de-emphasize meat of all kinds. The recipe section is filled with vegetarian offerings:
Crisp Stir Fry Vegetables
Winter Squash Risotto
Lemony Fennel Salad
Tofu Pad Tai
Eggplant and Mushroom Pasta
They seem to have a love affair with soups:
Mushroom and Rice Soup
Minestrone Soup
Carrot Ginger Soup
Vegetarian Barley Soup
Corn and Tomato Chowder
Autumn Harvest Pumpkin Soup
I don't object to this. It's just odd how they quietly emphasize this without actually saying so. Maybe they figure if they draw your attention to it, you'll resist.
My goal is to lose at least 15 pounds, and make a run for 20. (I always find it useful to tell myself, "Get this far with and you can stop, but you can keep going if you want to.") Right now, I'm in the honeymoon phase, when weight loss is quick and easy. I've lost five pounds, in fact. Eventually, my metabolism will say, "Wait--what?" and slow itself down, making it harder to lose more, but for now I'll enjoy being a third of the way toward my first goal.
I'm also discovering the plethora of what I call fake foods. There's a vogue on for creating food substitutes out of vegetables. We have spiral-cut veggies that masquerade as pasta. Frozen risotto and rice dishes filled out with vegetables. And, of course, plant-based meat substitutes. The Impossible Burger is the most famous substitute for ground beef, but I've found plant-based sausage and plant-based sweet-and-sour pork.
In a self-inflicted orgy of "what the hell," I snagged a big pile of all this stuff. I've long been a fan of the ground beef substitutes, but rarely bought them at the store because they're expensive, but I decided I'd spend it now. So far, I'm liking the results.
I've also become a fan of pre-made salads, another new-ish item in the store. They're various styles of salad that come in a sealed bowl and separate packets of the dressing and crispy ingredients inside. I like these because the only other way to make a mixed salad involves buying an entire head of lettuce, a bag of carrots, a head of cabbage, and so on. You chop up ingredients for a bowl of salad, and you're left with huge amounts of leftover ingredients that, in my case, usually go bad before you can use them all up. These bowls let me have a variety of different kinds of salad without leaving piles of vegetables in my crisper drawer that turn into black sludge. The only objection I have to them is the amount of packaging. By volume, the packaging is nearly as much as the salad itself!
My goal is to lose fifteen pounds by early June. We'll see what happens!
comments
Like most such programs these days, this one de-emphasizes denial and emphasizes behavior change. It has an app for keeping track of your weight, watching your daily eating, and sending you chirpy "You can do this!" messages. One thing this program DOESN'T emphasize is exercise. In fact, they barely even mention it. It's not until you're in for more than a week that the program off-handedly mentions that for every calorie you burn in exercise, you get half a calorie added to your daily allotment. You would think this would show up prominently as a way to encourage movement, but no. And while food and weight entries are easy to get to on the app's menu, the exercise section is buried a couple levels down. I'm not sure why this is.
The program also tries to move you toward a plant-based diet without actually saying so. They don't say, "Eat vegetarian," but they definitely de-emphasize meat of all kinds. The recipe section is filled with vegetarian offerings:
Crisp Stir Fry Vegetables
Winter Squash Risotto
Lemony Fennel Salad
Tofu Pad Tai
Eggplant and Mushroom Pasta
They seem to have a love affair with soups:
Mushroom and Rice Soup
Minestrone Soup
Carrot Ginger Soup
Vegetarian Barley Soup
Corn and Tomato Chowder
Autumn Harvest Pumpkin Soup
I don't object to this. It's just odd how they quietly emphasize this without actually saying so. Maybe they figure if they draw your attention to it, you'll resist.
My goal is to lose at least 15 pounds, and make a run for 20. (I always find it useful to tell myself, "Get this far with and you can stop, but you can keep going if you want to.") Right now, I'm in the honeymoon phase, when weight loss is quick and easy. I've lost five pounds, in fact. Eventually, my metabolism will say, "Wait--what?" and slow itself down, making it harder to lose more, but for now I'll enjoy being a third of the way toward my first goal.
I'm also discovering the plethora of what I call fake foods. There's a vogue on for creating food substitutes out of vegetables. We have spiral-cut veggies that masquerade as pasta. Frozen risotto and rice dishes filled out with vegetables. And, of course, plant-based meat substitutes. The Impossible Burger is the most famous substitute for ground beef, but I've found plant-based sausage and plant-based sweet-and-sour pork.
In a self-inflicted orgy of "what the hell," I snagged a big pile of all this stuff. I've long been a fan of the ground beef substitutes, but rarely bought them at the store because they're expensive, but I decided I'd spend it now. So far, I'm liking the results.
I've also become a fan of pre-made salads, another new-ish item in the store. They're various styles of salad that come in a sealed bowl and separate packets of the dressing and crispy ingredients inside. I like these because the only other way to make a mixed salad involves buying an entire head of lettuce, a bag of carrots, a head of cabbage, and so on. You chop up ingredients for a bowl of salad, and you're left with huge amounts of leftover ingredients that, in my case, usually go bad before you can use them all up. These bowls let me have a variety of different kinds of salad without leaving piles of vegetables in my crisper drawer that turn into black sludge. The only objection I have to them is the amount of packaging. By volume, the packaging is nearly as much as the salad itself!
My goal is to lose fifteen pounds by early June. We'll see what happens!
comments
January 26, 2021
Darwin: Ninety Days Out of Town
Darwin has accepted a position as interim village administrator for Blissfield, which is just north of the Michigan's lower border, about 20 minutes from Toledo. The place is a smidgen closer than Albion is, but it takes 90 minutes of driving to get there, and he can't commute daily. He'll be working there for about three months or until they find a permanent administrator, whichever comes first.
This means we're spending a chunk of time apart again. Darwin drives down to Blissfield on Sunday evening, works four ten-hour days, and drives back up Thursday evening. The village is paying his housing costs when he's down there.
Darwin reports that Blissfield is a very nice town with very nice people. The council really likes his work, and they've made noises about maybe making his interim position permanent. Darwin nicely told them that his family is up here, and he unfortunately can't take a position that far away from home on a permanent basis.
He likes working in Blissfield, though neither of us likes being apart again. I thought this aspect of his job was over when he left Albion, but apparently not. It makes for lonely evenings for both of us.
So to cope, I bought an Oculus Rift. Who needs a husband when you have VR?
comments
This means we're spending a chunk of time apart again. Darwin drives down to Blissfield on Sunday evening, works four ten-hour days, and drives back up Thursday evening. The village is paying his housing costs when he's down there.
Darwin reports that Blissfield is a very nice town with very nice people. The council really likes his work, and they've made noises about maybe making his interim position permanent. Darwin nicely told them that his family is up here, and he unfortunately can't take a position that far away from home on a permanent basis.
He likes working in Blissfield, though neither of us likes being apart again. I thought this aspect of his job was over when he left Albion, but apparently not. It makes for lonely evenings for both of us.
So to cope, I bought an Oculus Rift. Who needs a husband when you have VR?
comments
January 22, 2021
The Plague Diaries: Steven Gets Vaccinated, Stage 1
A while ago, Michigan declared that teachers were Class 1B for COVID vaccines. This means teachers are basically second in line after healthcare workers and seniors. I learned about the health department's vaccine registration web site going live for 1B patients by sheer accident, when a friend mentioned it in passing. When I visited the site, it took me six tries to get registered because the site kept crashing under the pressure.
The web site scheduled my first vaccine for January 22--the day I'm writing this--and my second for February 15. But here's the thing: Wherever Schools decided to start face-to-face instruction for all secondary students on Wednesday, January 20. I was (am) very much against this decision, and feel the schools should remain virtual until at least teachers and staff can be vaccinated. I'm frankly terrified that I'll pick up the virus somewhere--especially at work--and bring it home to Darwin, who is in a highly-elevated risk group. This is a serious, wake-up-sweating-in-the-night kind of fear.
I couldn't see taking the risk.
And so I elected to stay home Wednesday and Thursday, using my personal leave time. And the district grants 10 extra COVID-related sick days. Getting vaccinated falls under those days. So I'd only be losing two days of my own time. Okay, then.
My thinking is that once I get the vaccine on Friday, I'll have the weekend to start building immunity. The Pfizer vaccine has a 50% immunity rate after the first vaccine (though it take several days to get there). So when I go back to the building on Monday, I'll have at least some immunity, and get more every day. I intend to maintain strict protocols in my classroom as well, which will also help.
I don't think my principal was very happy when I told him I'd be out for the first three days of the semester, and I got the impression that substitutes are already difficult to come by, but he didn't fight me about it and he said he understood why I was doing it. I think for a moment he thought I was quitting, which would have made his life really difficult, but that wasn't the case.
Today--Friday--I drove out to the vaccination site, which is the fire station in Holly about 20 minutes away. Signs near the station directed me to go around back, where I found a line of about twenty cars. I joined it, and it moved briskly ahead. When I got close to the front, a masked lady approached the car to get my information and check my ID.
I suddenly realized I hadn't grabbed my wallet when I left. Several frantic moments followed. The woman wasn't sure if I could get vaccinated without showing ID first and was going to find a supervisor to ask, and I wondered if I would have to drive back home and potentially lose my vaccine. Then I remembered that I keep an expired driver's license in the car just in case. I dug around and produced it, and the lady said that would do. Whew!
Then another snag: the lady told me that although I'd been scheduled to get the Pfizer vaccine, the fire house actually got a shipment of Moderna vaccine. This wasn't a big deal, except that the time frame for the second dose was different. I would have to reschedule that by calling the health department after February 1. Well, great. After the Great Web Site Challenge, I didn't think it'd be easy to get through to DHS by phone. But there was nothing for it.
The lady gave me a sheaf of papers with vaccine information printed on them and directed me to drive into the fire house. I was expecting (hoping) that a bunch of hot firemen would descend on my car like the pit crew at a racetrack to give me the vaccine. My hopes were dashed. A roly-poly woman in a tie-dyed mask leaned into the car with a syringe instead. "I have mad skillz," she told me, and poked my arm.
I drove to another parking lot where I needed to wait fifteen minutes under the eye of another set of medical staff to make sure I had no adverse reactions. While I sat there, I did a web search for the efficacy of a single dose of the Moderna vaccine.
Hello! The studies reported that the Moderna vaccine has a whopping 80% immunity rate after the first dose.
Suddenly the snag didn't seem so snaggy anymore.
I drove home after the allotted wait time. Later in the evening, the injection site became sore and I felt a little off, so I took some Tylenol. Now I'm feeling perfectly well.
And . . . 80%. I feel a lot better about returning to work.
comments
The web site scheduled my first vaccine for January 22--the day I'm writing this--and my second for February 15. But here's the thing: Wherever Schools decided to start face-to-face instruction for all secondary students on Wednesday, January 20. I was (am) very much against this decision, and feel the schools should remain virtual until at least teachers and staff can be vaccinated. I'm frankly terrified that I'll pick up the virus somewhere--especially at work--and bring it home to Darwin, who is in a highly-elevated risk group. This is a serious, wake-up-sweating-in-the-night kind of fear.
I couldn't see taking the risk.
And so I elected to stay home Wednesday and Thursday, using my personal leave time. And the district grants 10 extra COVID-related sick days. Getting vaccinated falls under those days. So I'd only be losing two days of my own time. Okay, then.
My thinking is that once I get the vaccine on Friday, I'll have the weekend to start building immunity. The Pfizer vaccine has a 50% immunity rate after the first vaccine (though it take several days to get there). So when I go back to the building on Monday, I'll have at least some immunity, and get more every day. I intend to maintain strict protocols in my classroom as well, which will also help.
I don't think my principal was very happy when I told him I'd be out for the first three days of the semester, and I got the impression that substitutes are already difficult to come by, but he didn't fight me about it and he said he understood why I was doing it. I think for a moment he thought I was quitting, which would have made his life really difficult, but that wasn't the case.
Today--Friday--I drove out to the vaccination site, which is the fire station in Holly about 20 minutes away. Signs near the station directed me to go around back, where I found a line of about twenty cars. I joined it, and it moved briskly ahead. When I got close to the front, a masked lady approached the car to get my information and check my ID.
I suddenly realized I hadn't grabbed my wallet when I left. Several frantic moments followed. The woman wasn't sure if I could get vaccinated without showing ID first and was going to find a supervisor to ask, and I wondered if I would have to drive back home and potentially lose my vaccine. Then I remembered that I keep an expired driver's license in the car just in case. I dug around and produced it, and the lady said that would do. Whew!
Then another snag: the lady told me that although I'd been scheduled to get the Pfizer vaccine, the fire house actually got a shipment of Moderna vaccine. This wasn't a big deal, except that the time frame for the second dose was different. I would have to reschedule that by calling the health department after February 1. Well, great. After the Great Web Site Challenge, I didn't think it'd be easy to get through to DHS by phone. But there was nothing for it.
The lady gave me a sheaf of papers with vaccine information printed on them and directed me to drive into the fire house. I was expecting (hoping) that a bunch of hot firemen would descend on my car like the pit crew at a racetrack to give me the vaccine. My hopes were dashed. A roly-poly woman in a tie-dyed mask leaned into the car with a syringe instead. "I have mad skillz," she told me, and poked my arm.
I drove to another parking lot where I needed to wait fifteen minutes under the eye of another set of medical staff to make sure I had no adverse reactions. While I sat there, I did a web search for the efficacy of a single dose of the Moderna vaccine.
Hello! The studies reported that the Moderna vaccine has a whopping 80% immunity rate after the first dose.
Suddenly the snag didn't seem so snaggy anymore.
I drove home after the allotted wait time. Later in the evening, the injection site became sore and I felt a little off, so I took some Tylenol. Now I'm feeling perfectly well.
And . . . 80%. I feel a lot better about returning to work.
comments
January 18, 2021
The Mystery of the Furnace: Solved!
I texted our downstairs neighbor, who is away for the winter, and told him about the heat. I didn't hear back until the next day when he texted to say his son had cranked the heat up to 90, thank you for letting me know.
This solved the mystery. The heat was coming up from downstairs, and it started quite a while after our neighbors left because the son came over later and turned the heat up.
But now we're wondering . . . why would the son, who we assume is keeping an eye on the place for the winter, turn the heat up to 90? Or even at all? Theoretically all he does he pop in to check unforwarded mail and make sure the pipes hadn't broken or whatever. It would take less than five minutes. Why would he need to turn the heat way up?
This place is weird.
Darwin saw the son lurking about yesterday, and this morning, our condo was back to normal. Our furnace is back on, and we're paying for our own heat.
It was the neighborly thing to do, but sometimes I think I should've kept my big mouth shut . . .
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This solved the mystery. The heat was coming up from downstairs, and it started quite a while after our neighbors left because the son came over later and turned the heat up.
But now we're wondering . . . why would the son, who we assume is keeping an eye on the place for the winter, turn the heat up to 90? Or even at all? Theoretically all he does he pop in to check unforwarded mail and make sure the pipes hadn't broken or whatever. It would take less than five minutes. Why would he need to turn the heat way up?
This place is weird.
Darwin saw the son lurking about yesterday, and this morning, our condo was back to normal. Our furnace is back on, and we're paying for our own heat.
It was the neighborly thing to do, but sometimes I think I should've kept my big mouth shut . . .
comments
January 14, 2021
The Furnace
We shut the furnace off more than a month ago. The condo is still warm, even hot. Today we topped out at 81 degrees. Still no idea why this is. Not complaining, mind--just wondering.
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Setting Up the Paperless Classroom
We're supposed to start face-to-face instruction next week. I won't be there--that's a separate entry--but I did have to set up my room.
This was an unexpected challenge.
I've been teaching from home over the Internet since last March and haven't been to my classroom for more than a few minutes since the building closed. There's a lot to do, and new ways in which to do it. I had to get in there to set everything up.
This week is exams, and yesterday after the first set of finals ended, I got together all the stuff I'd brought home for teaching-- textbooks, regular books, various bits of computer equipment--and drove down to Nameless High School.
The place was empty and ghostly. The halls echoed in weird ways. In my classroom, I found all the tables and chairs stacked in neat piles--the custodial staff at work like magic elves. The last time I was here, I'd put all my teaching stuff into the room's cabinets as I did every year, though usually I do it before summer break, not before spring vacation. Getting it all out and setting it all up and arranging all the furniture is a huge annual chore, one I dislike very much under normal circumstances. This year, it was worse.
See, I had to figure out how to set the tables and chairs up so that my students could keep their distance from each other. This is easier in an elementary school, where the kids are tiny. In a high school, the students are full-sized, and they take up a lot of room. I also have large classes. As of this writing, my largest class has 34 students in it.
But wait--there's more.
The district is having students with last names A-K coming in on the first day while students who are L-Z will remote in from home. The next day, they switch. Theoretically, this means the class count is halved on any given day. But that ignores little anomalies, like the fact that my 34-kid class has 20 A-L students and 14 L-Z students. So I actually have to figure out how to accommodate and keep distant 20 students instead of 17.
I spent considerable time measuring out floor space and table size and finally was forced to conclude that it's impossible. In the end, I set up 20 tables and spaced them as far apart as possible. I put a chair at each one, measured, and found the best I could manage was between four and five feet distance. Nowhere was it six.
To keep myself as safe as I can, I'll be keeping empty the seats closest to my desk if at all possible. I'm hoping my classes get balanced out so I have fewer students, but I'm not holding my breath--unbalanced class loads is a perennial problem at Wherever Schools, even when there =isn't= a pandemic. I also plan to keep the window cracked and the door open to ventilate the space as much as possible. Students will have to wear layers.
The district has also provided these odd tri-fold barriers. The borders are made of a weird corrugated plastic material, and the windows are a pale, translucent blue. They unfold and stand upright on a table to make a little enclosure. This is a good idea, of course, but I can't for the life of me figure out why they windows are BLUE. You can't really see through them. The students won't be able to see me at the front of the room, and I can't see them. What idiot made these? And why did the district buy them?
Once I got all that set up, I started in on the technology. I have to keep a web cam set up so the students at home can see what's going on in class. I also have to be able to toggle between the web cam and the Smart Board so the home kids can see what I'm writing. This is going to be awkward and difficult, I can see already, and I have to adjust my expectations about how much material I can get through in a class--a fair amount of time will be taken up adjusting technology.
I connected, booted up, and fiddled. By now I was getting hungry. I had left home at 1:00 and it was closing on 4:00 now. Fortunately, I'd thought to bring food with me, so I took a break.
Another teacher dropped by and we chatted from a distance. She has teenaged daughters, and she warned me that in the local teen scene, mask restrictions are widely ignored. "They visit at each other's houses and hang out all the time without masking," she said. "No one's making them wear one."
Jesus.
Once the tech was what I hoped was running order, I started in on the teaching stuff in the cabinet. But after a while, I noticed something. I was getting out my set of in- and out trays for papers to grade, my staplers, hole punch, tape dispenser, pens, pencils, white board markers, and so on. Except, wait--all this stuff is for dealing with PAPER, and we're still using Google Classroom for our materials. I won't be handing out paper, nor collecting any. My classroom has gone truly paperless. I didn't actually NEED any of this stuff.
So I put it back.
Education types have been predicting a paperless classroom for more than fifteen years now, but it never quite happened. Partly it's because of momentum--paper is deeply entrenched in school culture--and partly it's because there hasn't been equitable access to technology. Now we've been forced into a paperless classroom, at least for this year. I'm wondering if it'll continue even after the pandemic.
I got home well after 7:00.
comments
This was an unexpected challenge.
I've been teaching from home over the Internet since last March and haven't been to my classroom for more than a few minutes since the building closed. There's a lot to do, and new ways in which to do it. I had to get in there to set everything up.
This week is exams, and yesterday after the first set of finals ended, I got together all the stuff I'd brought home for teaching-- textbooks, regular books, various bits of computer equipment--and drove down to Nameless High School.
The place was empty and ghostly. The halls echoed in weird ways. In my classroom, I found all the tables and chairs stacked in neat piles--the custodial staff at work like magic elves. The last time I was here, I'd put all my teaching stuff into the room's cabinets as I did every year, though usually I do it before summer break, not before spring vacation. Getting it all out and setting it all up and arranging all the furniture is a huge annual chore, one I dislike very much under normal circumstances. This year, it was worse.
See, I had to figure out how to set the tables and chairs up so that my students could keep their distance from each other. This is easier in an elementary school, where the kids are tiny. In a high school, the students are full-sized, and they take up a lot of room. I also have large classes. As of this writing, my largest class has 34 students in it.
But wait--there's more.
The district is having students with last names A-K coming in on the first day while students who are L-Z will remote in from home. The next day, they switch. Theoretically, this means the class count is halved on any given day. But that ignores little anomalies, like the fact that my 34-kid class has 20 A-L students and 14 L-Z students. So I actually have to figure out how to accommodate and keep distant 20 students instead of 17.
I spent considerable time measuring out floor space and table size and finally was forced to conclude that it's impossible. In the end, I set up 20 tables and spaced them as far apart as possible. I put a chair at each one, measured, and found the best I could manage was between four and five feet distance. Nowhere was it six.
To keep myself as safe as I can, I'll be keeping empty the seats closest to my desk if at all possible. I'm hoping my classes get balanced out so I have fewer students, but I'm not holding my breath--unbalanced class loads is a perennial problem at Wherever Schools, even when there =isn't= a pandemic. I also plan to keep the window cracked and the door open to ventilate the space as much as possible. Students will have to wear layers.
The district has also provided these odd tri-fold barriers. The borders are made of a weird corrugated plastic material, and the windows are a pale, translucent blue. They unfold and stand upright on a table to make a little enclosure. This is a good idea, of course, but I can't for the life of me figure out why they windows are BLUE. You can't really see through them. The students won't be able to see me at the front of the room, and I can't see them. What idiot made these? And why did the district buy them?
Once I got all that set up, I started in on the technology. I have to keep a web cam set up so the students at home can see what's going on in class. I also have to be able to toggle between the web cam and the Smart Board so the home kids can see what I'm writing. This is going to be awkward and difficult, I can see already, and I have to adjust my expectations about how much material I can get through in a class--a fair amount of time will be taken up adjusting technology.
I connected, booted up, and fiddled. By now I was getting hungry. I had left home at 1:00 and it was closing on 4:00 now. Fortunately, I'd thought to bring food with me, so I took a break.
Another teacher dropped by and we chatted from a distance. She has teenaged daughters, and she warned me that in the local teen scene, mask restrictions are widely ignored. "They visit at each other's houses and hang out all the time without masking," she said. "No one's making them wear one."
Jesus.
Once the tech was what I hoped was running order, I started in on the teaching stuff in the cabinet. But after a while, I noticed something. I was getting out my set of in- and out trays for papers to grade, my staplers, hole punch, tape dispenser, pens, pencils, white board markers, and so on. Except, wait--all this stuff is for dealing with PAPER, and we're still using Google Classroom for our materials. I won't be handing out paper, nor collecting any. My classroom has gone truly paperless. I didn't actually NEED any of this stuff.
So I put it back.
Education types have been predicting a paperless classroom for more than fifteen years now, but it never quite happened. Partly it's because of momentum--paper is deeply entrenched in school culture--and partly it's because there hasn't been equitable access to technology. Now we've been forced into a paperless classroom, at least for this year. I'm wondering if it'll continue even after the pandemic.
I got home well after 7:00.
comments
January 9, 2021
Let the Frying Continue!
I've been playing more with the air fryer. The home-made french fries are a major hit around here. I already have a fry cutter (I think it belonged to my grandmother), which forces a potato through a grill and cuts it into fries in a snap, so it's easy to make them and eat them hot from the air fryer.
This morning, I decided to try hash browns. I grated a potato, wrung it out in a damp cloth to get rid of the excess moisture, tossed it with a little olive oil, and spread the results over the bottom of the air fryer. Let the machine do its magic for about five minutes. The results were wonderful! Hot, crispy hash browns that weren't at all oily.
Yesterday, I was at the store trying to figure out what to have for supper, and I decided to splurge on steaks. Back home, I pan-fried them with a wine and butter sauce. I also made buttered corn and a pile of air fryer fries. Everything was wonderful.
And I can totally tell myself it's all healthy because of the air fryer. :)
comments
This morning, I decided to try hash browns. I grated a potato, wrung it out in a damp cloth to get rid of the excess moisture, tossed it with a little olive oil, and spread the results over the bottom of the air fryer. Let the machine do its magic for about five minutes. The results were wonderful! Hot, crispy hash browns that weren't at all oily.
Yesterday, I was at the store trying to figure out what to have for supper, and I decided to splurge on steaks. Back home, I pan-fried them with a wine and butter sauce. I also made buttered corn and a pile of air fryer fries. Everything was wonderful.
And I can totally tell myself it's all healthy because of the air fryer. :)
comments
The Plague Diaries: Uncle Dave
My uncle Dave died of COVID-19 at 7:30 PM yesterday. He and his wife Joan went to visit a family member and they stayed several hours. The next day, the family member called Joan to say she was in the hospital with COVID-19, and that she'd had symptoms the day of the visit, but hadn't said anything. The next day, she was dead.
Dave and Joan very quickly developed symptoms of their own, but while Joan's were mild, Dave got sicker and sicker over four days, though he refused to go to the hospital. Finally he couldn't stand without help and Joan called an ambulance. They admitted him to ICU. That was three days ago. Yesterday he died.
Now I've lost an uncle on both sides of my family to COVID. Dave was my mother's brother. Indul, who died in June, was my father's brother. It's a harsh blow to our family.
Don't let your guard down, everyone.
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Dave and Joan very quickly developed symptoms of their own, but while Joan's were mild, Dave got sicker and sicker over four days, though he refused to go to the hospital. Finally he couldn't stand without help and Joan called an ambulance. They admitted him to ICU. That was three days ago. Yesterday he died.
Now I've lost an uncle on both sides of my family to COVID. Dave was my mother's brother. Indul, who died in June, was my father's brother. It's a harsh blow to our family.
Don't let your guard down, everyone.
comments
January 1, 2021
The Plague Diaries: Beginning and Ending the Holidays
This year, Darwin and I scaled way down for the holidays. It wasn't just because of the pandemic, either. We're in a smaller house, and the boys are grown, and we sided with the faction that says, "Holidays are really for the children, and we don't have children in the house, so . . . "
Also, Darwin has been agitating for years for us to get holiday decorations that are "just ours." By this, he meant "matching holiday decorations that we bought together instead of the combination stuff each of us brought to the marriage." I resisted this. To me, decorating for the holidays means bringing out all the heirloom ornaments, the collected figures, the elementary-school craft projects, and everything else the family has created over the years. Also, getting all new stuff raises the question of what to do with the old. There's something . . . discomforting about throwing out long-cherished holiday ornaments. So we put off the idea of retooling the holidays.
Until this year.
Now we're in a new place, and a smaller one, to boot. And we wouldn't be having a big celebration with lots of people over. It made sense to scale back.
Thus, the shopping began.
We bought a new tree--our old one was cranky and difficult to deal with anyway. And we spent considerable time visiting different stores until we found a new set of ornaments we both liked. We also bought garland made of red wooden beads that I liked very much. We kept our old tree-topper, which is a wickerwork star set with holly and ivy. It looks both Pagan and Christian, which lets us both meet halfway.
When we set up the tree at home, we discovered to our delight that when you stacked the different segments of the tree together, it also automatically plugged in all the LED lights. (Using our previous tree involved a lot of hunting for cords and trying to figure out what plugged in where.) And the lights could be set to multi-colored or all white, which was great--Darwin likes the classiness of the all-white lights, and I like the hominess of the multiple colors. This tree lets us switch back and forth as we wish.
Our other holiday stuff is in a storage unit just across the street. Very easy to get to, almost as fast as trooping down to a basement. We headed over there to get a few other things and hauled them upstairs to the condo. See, we didn't do EVERYTHING new. We used the family stockings we've had for years, for example, and put out the knickknacks from Ukraine and set up the Father Christmas figure. Really, it was the tree and ornaments that were all new.
Later, we sent out holiday cards. And wrapped presents. It was very pleasant.
The holidays happened (see previous entries). Today is New Year's Day, and I always declare it the day to strike everything. Everyone is home, no one has any plans, and if you wait past NYD, you end up celebrating Valentine's Day under the tree. Darwin always groans about this chore and sneakily asks if we can't wait until another day, like when he's at work. This is always met with crossed arms and a "Get your slippers moving, McClary!"
We popped over to the storage unit to fetch the boxes and bins and set to work. It took less than twenty minutes to take everything apart and put it all away. It was a bit of a nice surprise! In previous years, striking the Yuletide decorations takes a couple hours. This was a definite advantage to scaling back!
A winter storm was pelting everything with ice pellets when we brought the bins down to the car. I drove carefully down the slippery street and we put everything back into storage without incident.
The last thing we did was throw out the extra holiday cards and wrapping paper. Darwin said, "Shouldn't we save them for next year?"
"The whole point of scaling down is to have LESS stuff," I said, "not more."
Darwin agreed with this, and everything went.
All in all? The reasons for the low-key holidays were awful. The result, though, was something of a nice change. Most of the stress was gone. No one felt hurried or over-worked. It was a nice change of pace. We'll take our advantages where we can get them.
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Also, Darwin has been agitating for years for us to get holiday decorations that are "just ours." By this, he meant "matching holiday decorations that we bought together instead of the combination stuff each of us brought to the marriage." I resisted this. To me, decorating for the holidays means bringing out all the heirloom ornaments, the collected figures, the elementary-school craft projects, and everything else the family has created over the years. Also, getting all new stuff raises the question of what to do with the old. There's something . . . discomforting about throwing out long-cherished holiday ornaments. So we put off the idea of retooling the holidays.
Until this year.
Now we're in a new place, and a smaller one, to boot. And we wouldn't be having a big celebration with lots of people over. It made sense to scale back.
Thus, the shopping began.
We bought a new tree--our old one was cranky and difficult to deal with anyway. And we spent considerable time visiting different stores until we found a new set of ornaments we both liked. We also bought garland made of red wooden beads that I liked very much. We kept our old tree-topper, which is a wickerwork star set with holly and ivy. It looks both Pagan and Christian, which lets us both meet halfway.
When we set up the tree at home, we discovered to our delight that when you stacked the different segments of the tree together, it also automatically plugged in all the LED lights. (Using our previous tree involved a lot of hunting for cords and trying to figure out what plugged in where.) And the lights could be set to multi-colored or all white, which was great--Darwin likes the classiness of the all-white lights, and I like the hominess of the multiple colors. This tree lets us switch back and forth as we wish.
Our other holiday stuff is in a storage unit just across the street. Very easy to get to, almost as fast as trooping down to a basement. We headed over there to get a few other things and hauled them upstairs to the condo. See, we didn't do EVERYTHING new. We used the family stockings we've had for years, for example, and put out the knickknacks from Ukraine and set up the Father Christmas figure. Really, it was the tree and ornaments that were all new.
Later, we sent out holiday cards. And wrapped presents. It was very pleasant.
The holidays happened (see previous entries). Today is New Year's Day, and I always declare it the day to strike everything. Everyone is home, no one has any plans, and if you wait past NYD, you end up celebrating Valentine's Day under the tree. Darwin always groans about this chore and sneakily asks if we can't wait until another day, like when he's at work. This is always met with crossed arms and a "Get your slippers moving, McClary!"
We popped over to the storage unit to fetch the boxes and bins and set to work. It took less than twenty minutes to take everything apart and put it all away. It was a bit of a nice surprise! In previous years, striking the Yuletide decorations takes a couple hours. This was a definite advantage to scaling back!
A winter storm was pelting everything with ice pellets when we brought the bins down to the car. I drove carefully down the slippery street and we put everything back into storage without incident.
The last thing we did was throw out the extra holiday cards and wrapping paper. Darwin said, "Shouldn't we save them for next year?"
"The whole point of scaling down is to have LESS stuff," I said, "not more."
Darwin agreed with this, and everything went.
All in all? The reasons for the low-key holidays were awful. The result, though, was something of a nice change. Most of the stress was gone. No one felt hurried or over-worked. It was a nice change of pace. We'll take our advantages where we can get them.
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New Food Item
For Christmas, I got an air fryer. Go me!
I've been wanting to play with one for a while, but Darwin said, "No more kitchen gadgets!" I felt slighted. I'm not one of those home chefs who collects kitchen gadgets I never use. I use my Instant Pot, bread maker, Kitchen Aid, and deep fryer regularly. The only gadget I stopped using was my rice cooker, because the Instant Pot does a better job--and I gave the rice cooker away.
But I forbore getting an air fryer. Until now.
I've been playing with it all week, and I have to say that it works as advertised. The air fryer is really a small convection oven with a non-stick baking surface that promotes quick crispness. The big thing about it? It's =fast=. Way faster than an oven. The first thing I tried was frozen tater tots. They were done in less than ten minutes and were super-crispy in a way tater tots are supposed to be but never actually are.
Next I tried some home-made fries. I sliced up a potato, tossed it in some olive oil, and slid it into the fryer. In less than fifteen minutes, I got hot-hot-hot, crispy french fries. In an oven, it would have taken an hour, and there'd be no crispness. This was great!
Then I cut chicken into bite-sized pieces, breaded them (egg, spiced flour, breadcrumbs), and air-fried them. In 15 minutes, they turned into the best chicken nuggets in the world--a crispy outer crust and a tender, juicy inside.
Baked chicken was next. Marinated chicken breasts tossed in olive oil and salt. Instead of taking an hour, they took less than 20 minutes. Let them rest for five minutes, and they were fantastic!
On New Year's Eve, I made cheater donuts. I opened a can of biscuit dough, cut holes in the center, and air-fried them. Took eight minutes. Brushed them piping hot in melted butter and rolled them in sugar and cinnamon. They were wonderful! Next time, I'll try spraying them with butter-flavored cooking spray and rolling them in sugar substitute to make a more Darwin-friendly version.
A bonus positive thing: I can bake stuff in warm weather without roasting the entire kitchen.
For Christmas, I got an air fryer. Go me!
I've been wanting to play with one for a while, but Darwin said, "No more kitchen gadgets!" I felt slighted. I'm not one of those home chefs who collects kitchen gadgets I never use. I use my Instant Pot, bread maker, Kitchen Aid, and deep fryer regularly. The only gadget I stopped using was my rice cooker, because the Instant Pot does a better job--and I gave the rice cooker away.
But I forbore getting an air fryer. Until now.
I've been playing with it all week, and I have to say that it works as advertised. The air fryer is really a small convection oven with a non-stick baking surface that promotes quick crispness. The big thing about it? It's =fast=. Way faster than an oven. The first thing I tried was frozen tater tots. They were done in less than ten minutes and were super-crispy in a way tater tots are supposed to be but never actually are.
Next I tried some home-made fries. I sliced up a potato, tossed it in some olive oil, and slid it into the fryer. In less than fifteen minutes, I got hot-hot-hot, crispy french fries. In an oven, it would have taken an hour, and there'd be no crispness. This was great!
Then I cut chicken into bite-sized pieces, breaded them (egg, spiced flour, breadcrumbs), and air-fried them. In 15 minutes, they turned into the best chicken nuggets in the world--a crispy outer crust and a tender, juicy inside.
Baked chicken was next. Marinated chicken breasts tossed in olive oil and salt. Instead of taking an hour, they took less than 20 minutes. Let them rest for five minutes, and they were fantastic!
On New Year's Eve, I made cheater donuts. I opened a can of biscuit dough, cut holes in the center, and air-fried them. Took eight minutes. Brushed them piping hot in melted butter and rolled them in sugar and cinnamon. They were wonderful! Next time, I'll try spraying them with butter-flavored cooking spray and rolling them in sugar substitute to make a more Darwin-friendly version.
Another plus: I can bake stuff in summer without roasting the entire kitchen.
More cooking adventures ahead!
comments
I've been wanting to play with one for a while, but Darwin said, "No more kitchen gadgets!" I felt slighted. I'm not one of those home chefs who collects kitchen gadgets I never use. I use my Instant Pot, bread maker, Kitchen Aid, and deep fryer regularly. The only gadget I stopped using was my rice cooker, because the Instant Pot does a better job--and I gave the rice cooker away.
But I forbore getting an air fryer. Until now.
I've been playing with it all week, and I have to say that it works as advertised. The air fryer is really a small convection oven with a non-stick baking surface that promotes quick crispness. The big thing about it? It's =fast=. Way faster than an oven. The first thing I tried was frozen tater tots. They were done in less than ten minutes and were super-crispy in a way tater tots are supposed to be but never actually are.
Next I tried some home-made fries. I sliced up a potato, tossed it in some olive oil, and slid it into the fryer. In less than fifteen minutes, I got hot-hot-hot, crispy french fries. In an oven, it would have taken an hour, and there'd be no crispness. This was great!
Then I cut chicken into bite-sized pieces, breaded them (egg, spiced flour, breadcrumbs), and air-fried them. In 15 minutes, they turned into the best chicken nuggets in the world--a crispy outer crust and a tender, juicy inside.
Baked chicken was next. Marinated chicken breasts tossed in olive oil and salt. Instead of taking an hour, they took less than 20 minutes. Let them rest for five minutes, and they were fantastic!
On New Year's Eve, I made cheater donuts. I opened a can of biscuit dough, cut holes in the center, and air-fried them. Took eight minutes. Brushed them piping hot in melted butter and rolled them in sugar and cinnamon. They were wonderful! Next time, I'll try spraying them with butter-flavored cooking spray and rolling them in sugar substitute to make a more Darwin-friendly version.
A bonus positive thing: I can bake stuff in warm weather without roasting the entire kitchen.
For Christmas, I got an air fryer. Go me!
I've been wanting to play with one for a while, but Darwin said, "No more kitchen gadgets!" I felt slighted. I'm not one of those home chefs who collects kitchen gadgets I never use. I use my Instant Pot, bread maker, Kitchen Aid, and deep fryer regularly. The only gadget I stopped using was my rice cooker, because the Instant Pot does a better job--and I gave the rice cooker away.
But I forbore getting an air fryer. Until now.
I've been playing with it all week, and I have to say that it works as advertised. The air fryer is really a small convection oven with a non-stick baking surface that promotes quick crispness. The big thing about it? It's =fast=. Way faster than an oven. The first thing I tried was frozen tater tots. They were done in less than ten minutes and were super-crispy in a way tater tots are supposed to be but never actually are.
Next I tried some home-made fries. I sliced up a potato, tossed it in some olive oil, and slid it into the fryer. In less than fifteen minutes, I got hot-hot-hot, crispy french fries. In an oven, it would have taken an hour, and there'd be no crispness. This was great!
Then I cut chicken into bite-sized pieces, breaded them (egg, spiced flour, breadcrumbs), and air-fried them. In 15 minutes, they turned into the best chicken nuggets in the world--a crispy outer crust and a tender, juicy inside.
Baked chicken was next. Marinated chicken breasts tossed in olive oil and salt. Instead of taking an hour, they took less than 20 minutes. Let them rest for five minutes, and they were fantastic!
On New Year's Eve, I made cheater donuts. I opened a can of biscuit dough, cut holes in the center, and air-fried them. Took eight minutes. Brushed them piping hot in melted butter and rolled them in sugar and cinnamon. They were wonderful! Next time, I'll try spraying them with butter-flavored cooking spray and rolling them in sugar substitute to make a more Darwin-friendly version.
Another plus: I can bake stuff in summer without roasting the entire kitchen.
More cooking adventures ahead!
comments
