Happy Sunday and happy day one million in quarantine. I am sure that I will be back in it to win it on my #quarantinechef antics since I generally enjoy cooking...but right now, I want to be writing a book, and so cooking is really not what I should be spending my time on. I may need to reconfigure my cooking / eating so that I make more things that are fast instead of elaborate, even if that knocks a few points off the flavor scale.
But really, I was just a little cranky all day. I woke up relatively early but doomscrolled on twitter before I got out of bed - I'd successfully stayed off twitter before noon for almost two weeks, which has been v. helpful, but today it didn't happen. Then I put on yoga pants and walked down to the farmer's market, which was the highlight of the day - I got some perfect tomatoes, and some squash and zucchini and lettuce, and that was all great.
Then I came home and did some more nothing before making lunch - I baked some bacon (for salads this week) and also cooked some bacon along with potatoes, onions, red pepper, and garlic to make a v. delicious hash. That will get me through a few days of meals. Then I had to clean up the kitchen, and I ended up cleaning out my fridge - necessary, but not entertaining. All of this is compounded by the fact that my arm still really hurts from falling on my face yesterday (well, I didn't fall on my face, but only because my arm broke my fall) and so I can't lift my arm above my head and have to be careful while doing basic tasks. Grr.
Eventually I called my parents, who were in good form. I also prepped dinner - I grilled some chicken for upcoming salads, grilled some breakfast sausage because it needed used and I figured I could throw it on the grill, and also grilled a flank steak to go with the tomatoes and burrata that I'd already acquired. This whole mess was a bit hit or miss - I think I overcooked the chicken based on the bite I had, and the steak didn't turn out particularly well either. However, I'm blaming the steak on the meat itself - it was perfectly medium rare from a temperature and color standpoint, and I'm pretty sure I sliced it properly, so it was either the steak itself or the marinade wasn't a winner. But the breakfast sausage was tasty, and any the real star of the meal was the tomato and burrata salad, so whatever.
Then I cleaned up my kitchen again, and eventually I wrote for thirty minutes - it maybe saved the overall outcome of the day that I actually got a few hundred words on the page despite my crankiness. And then I had an impromptu family call with Aditya, John and Jess; it was arranged pretty late and so most people couldn't make it, but it was good to hang out with them and catch up on their local minima. Everything that was wrong before seems to be getting better, but of course it's now getting worse because of the omnipresent wildfires [the air quality in Berkeley is horrendous, the fires are still blazing everywhere, and they're about to get another round of intense lightning storms that will light things up again]. And I told them about the derecho, which has been dramatically underreported - and, as is my common refrain these days, makes it feel vaguely apocalyptic.
But family time is always a good time, so I'm glad we caught up (and I evangelized bug out bags to them, although I really need to create mine rather than spending my time evangelizing them to others). And now I need to go to bed - goodnight!
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