We’ve all been coping with the pandemic for nearly a year now. People have adjusted their lifestyles in different ways. For us, it mainly affected how we entertain. We’ve avoided large gatherings and only eat out or go to a pub when we can be seated outdoors. I think this is true for many people.
I browse a number of forums online and from what I gather, there’s been a resurgence of home cooking – this makes sense as restaurants are restricted in many areas. If you take a look at a couple of online kitchen knife retailers, like Japanese Knife Imports or Japanese Chef Knife, you’ll see more sold out items than knives on offer. We still manage to socialize and dine with friends – we just restrict the number of people we interact with.
Sunday was a great example. We went over to Frank and Kelly Burk’s house for a potluck-type meal and cocktails. Mike and Jodi Hall also came over. Mike brought shredded pork and beef he had smoked for tacos. We brought taco toppings, a green salad and tortillas. Kelly made flan for dessert – it was her first attempt at flan and it was outstanding.
As usual, we had a good time with great food, good people and lots of laughs.
I don’t have much to report as it’s been business as usual this week – pickleball in the mornings, a couple of grocery runs and playing with ham radio in the afternoon. We’ve been doing a lot of cooking, but that’s not unusual for us. What is a little different is our roles in making some of our dinners. For example, on Tuesday. Donna manned the grill and cooked chicken thighs, legs and wings while I was in the kitchen preparing Japanese fried rice. Donna also grilled baby bok choy. The grill used to be my bailiwick while Donna cooked in the kitchen.
We’ve been buying whole young chickens, right around five to six pounds. I break down the whole chicken into 10 major pieces – two legs, two thighs, two breasts, two tenders and two wings. I also set aside some of the other meat taken from the carcass to use for yakitori. We find the whole young birds to be more tender and flavorful than the over-sized breasts and other pre-cut chicken meat found in most grocery stores.
Since we had a lot of fried rice leftover, Donna decided on Wednesday night to make a new recipe – orange beef. She used boneless ribeye steak. I was her sous-chef – well, I was more like a line/prep cook. She told me she needed minced ginger, minced garlic, and minced jalapeno pepper and I got to work. She used these ingredients along with orange zest and orange juice, soy sauce and brown sugar to make a sauce. Meanwhile, I trimmed the thin-cut steaks and cut them into strips along with some green onions.
It was delicious – the orange beef is a winner.
A couple of rows down from our site, there’s a park model home that has informal live music occasionally. They keep it under the radar. They put a sign out with a picture of a dog – the sign says “Lost Dog.” That’s the signal for live music on that day. It also has a smaller sign that says “Band practice at XXpm.” The Lost Dog band usually plays in the evenings, but yesterday they were playing in the afternoon as I returned from giving pickleball lessons.
They have to keep it low-key because we aren’t really supposed to have gatherings with entertainment in the park under covid restrictions. Everyone has been good about it – keeping their distance and they keep the sessions short enough that a large crowd doesn’t gather.
We have four more days until we close the deal on our park model house. Here in Arizona, park model homes are classified as mobile homes – even though you’d have a hard time ever moving one. This means transfer of ownership isn’t like a regular real estate transaction – it’s more like titling and registering a car! I’ll withdraw a cashier’s check from the bank tomorrow and on Monday, we’ll go to the DMV and make the transaction.
The weather this week has been great as promised. We’ve had daily highs near or at 80 degrees. It will be a little cooler – in the lower 70s for the week ahead, but we should continue to have plenty of sunshine. Tomorrow I’ll have to be up early – I have to take the truck back to Sullivan Motors in west Mesa at 8am. The airbag light is on and they have to replace the clock spring under the steering wheel and a side curtain airbag. This was part of the deal when I bought the truck. It will probably take most of the day to perform the work.
*Just so you know, if you use this link to shop on Amazon and decide to purchase anything, you pay the same price as usual and I’ll earn a few pennies for the referral. It’ll go into the beer fund. Thanks!