Category: Blog
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Postcards from the Pandemic – Holy Week Edition
I retired from organized religion years ago, but remember all too well the dreariness of Lent, when good Catholics were expected to abstain from chocolate or wine or some other delectable indulgence. Ironically, for Lent this year, the Covid 19 pandemic compelled me to revert to being that “good Catholic” once more, for I had […]
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Postcards from the Pandemic
After hearing horror stories about long lines of people storming Walmart to buy fabric for face masks, I decided to go shopping in my closet instead. I donated my Victoria Secret bras after the company was disgraced by its association with Jeffrey Epstein and the #Metoo movement, but for some reason forgot to reattach their […]
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Postcards from the Pandemic – a Friend in Knead is a Friend Indeed
For the love of Bread, stay home! And we did, with the kindness of a virtual stranger. Yeast is as hard to find as hand sanitizers these days, but N. found several packets in an East Coast grocery and offered to send them out to her kneady friends. N. and I know each other through […]
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Postcards from the Pandemic
When I need comfort food, Mujadara is my Mac & Cheese. This Middle Eastern lentil and rice dish is fragrant with cumin, allspice and cayenne, topped with caramelized onions and parsley. Because I have more time to be finicky these days, I ended up drawing from three recipes. These two from Melissa Clark for the […]
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Postcards from the Pandemic
Yesterday I did an hour of Youtube Yoga, forgot what day it was, cooked this soup and shakshouka and forgot to bathe.Without the Monday – Friday routine of carpools and yoga classes, I’m beginning to feel like that matriarch in Downton Abbey. As always, cooking forced me to focus, with delicious results,. We showed the […]
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Postcards from the Pandemic
Fusion Shakshouka is what happens when your family has eaten all the lamb shanks, leaving gravy to delicious to toss, and a dozen quail eggs too small to fry one by one. Breadcrumbs from last week’s home baked whole wheat loaf stood in for tomatoes to thicken the gravy. And as a special shield against […]
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Postcards from the Pandemic
Culinary Therapy for Covid days I’m not sure which is more stressful — losing audio on a Zoom Yoga class in the middle of a vinyasa, or producing less than a page of decent writing between calls on the day job. Dinner was today’s sole success. This article explains my heightened obsession with cooking https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/how-cooking-became-the-perfect-recipe-for-my-spiralling-anxiety/2020/03/20/a56d068a-4832-11ea-ab15-b5df3261b710_story.html […]
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Postcards from the Pandemic
I found eggs at Trader Joe’s for the first time today after a two week absence. We stood in line the way folks do for a hot new club or the best Sunday brunch place but spaced farther apart. One TJ employee ushered an old lady in a purple bathrobe to the front of the […]
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Postcards From the Pandemic
Ignorance is bliss. Unaware that Mayor Faulconer had ordered the closure of all beaches, parks and boardwalks in San Diego yesterday, we took what turned out to be our last walk in Balboa Park this afternoon. Unaware that Trader Joe’s has shortened its store hours , we arrived 45 minutes before it closed at 7 […]
Marivi Soliven 