I make chicken salad with grapes so I would think blueberries would be good too!

FOAS, I think much will change as a result of this pandemic. Our shopping and dining ways will change and likely work environments and of course retail shopping, who knows what will survive this shut down?

We had a big grocery workers strike around 2006. The supermarkets lost a share of their business to Smart & Final, T.J's and Target/Costco/Walmart. Many no longer purchased staples and things like toilet paper and cleaning supplies from the supermarket, that business was lost forever after a 4 month strike.

I thought I’d posted this but apparently not. DD, who to my disappointment has never been very interested in baking, decided to make hot cross buns for the first time yesterday. They look pretty good, going by the picture she sent :-)

Definitely cooking things out of my usual rotation and trying to use things up so as not to be wasteful. I made a broccoli & cauliflower quiche earlier last week, to use up those veggies before they could spoil, and Friday night made a big chicken pie with a bag of frozen mixed veggies, potatoes, onions, and a leftover 1/3 roast chicken, along with gingerbread made with the last of some sour cream and coconut sugar that needed to be used up as well.

I also have 2 planters full of lettuces, so we're having green salads to make use of that before it perishes in the coming hot weather.

Since this is the first time in over a year and a half that I have someone living with me, I've been able to cook all the multi-person meals I've made for decades. Most of it is Italian (thanks grandma) - stuffed shells, manicotti, lasagna, and garlic bread with them all. But we also smoked a 22lb brisket on Monday that yielded sammiches and scrambled eggs with brisket that just got used up yesterday morning. Half the brisket went to a friend and a huge chunk of our portion is in the freezer. I've probably jerked four dozen chicken thighs in the last month and there's a major hunk of ham waiting to be smoked for dinner.

For two people who consider a bagel and lox to be a full breakfast, our morning meal has taken on a different significance. Carol has made pancakes, gotten very creative with scrambled eggs, and converted most of my homemade challah into French toast. We're lucky to have fresh squeezed OJ in the local supermarket, but they also have fresh blood orange juice. Living alone, a bottle of that would go bad long before I could drink it. Together (there's that all-important word) we buy them in pairs.

Even our lunches are also more exotic than normal. From simple tuna fish gussied up with sauteed onions on fresh-baked kaiser rolls to elaborate chef's salad with leftover anything and homemade dressing. Bread is a crucial choice when we're shopping. We've found a local grocer who has wonderful small batch offerings of sourdough, homemade Russian rye, and killer rolls.

And since the bulk of our baking is for our cookie friends, we've tinkered a bit with some of our recipes to wild acclaim. One full batch (11 dozen) of our standard mint chocolate cookies got some rum extract added to the mix. We ended up baking six full batches before we ran out of rum and had to cut off the orders. A full batch of Key Lime cookies was gone in fifteen minutes when the word got out. One local cookie friend dropped off a bag of lemons a family member shipped to him from Florida and had us bake two full batches of Lemon Drops to carry him through the quarantine.

Not all of the baking has been Colorado-style, however. Onion pie, blueberry pie, scones (three different kinds), and we're now up to eight loaves of challah. I understand this time will be known as "Quarantine plus fifteen" to account for the excess weight gain.

I've always loved to cook and as a writer, I'm home most days anyhow, so the whole stay-at-home thing hasn't been much of problem. I'm glad to see that so many of us are not wasting this opportunity to sharpen our culinary skills. Stay safe, be healthy, and always be creative.

DD made dinner last night.

A carrot/veg soup

Fennel salad

Asparagus

This morning we had a family Easter in the backyard. Rest of the ham, another salad, egg dish in the background. Lattes and mimosas.

We are sitting around - seems to be the trend - reading (DS), painting (DD), working on neighborhood newsletter (me), writing letters (SWMBO).

At noon we had a Zoom cocktail party with a bunch of friends. Odd hour but one is in Berlin so hard to do it any later. I made this cocktail: 1.5 oz gin, 0.5 oz St Germain, 1.0 oz orange juice, 1 lime’s juice, 1 tbsp sugar, shake with ice, serve with orange and lime slices.

That ham looks awesome, as does the asparagus.

Last light we had a leg of lamb for Easter dinner. It was weird, the meat thermometer only had one setting for lamb, "77C-Done", but it was getting late and DH would have to go back to the city before the lamb was ready according to the thermometer. So I pulled it out at 67C, which was a little over the old "20 minutes per pound + 20 minutes" rule of thumb, and it was close to perfect, even a little overdone. Delicately pink and so juicy.

John, the ham looks good and so does the asparagus. I think roasted is my favorite way to eat asparagus.

Here, since there was no flour to be found, I ground some einkorn and made peanut butter cookies. They were surprisingly fluffy and not very sweet, I liked them although the kids preferred them when I mixed in M&Ms, go figure.

Tomorrow I have to take Mother her weekly meals and her groceries. Our lockdown has intensified and only one shopper per 1,000 square feet is allowed into the grocery stores. Elery was there at 8 am this morning when Meijer opened and managed to get most things on the list that Mother gave him. Still no toilet paper and no soft margarine, so she's just going to have to bite the bullet and put butter on her toast, what a hardship, LOL.

Tomorrow wind gusts of 50 MPH have been forecast, so I won't be working outside, I may grind some more wheat tomorrow when I'm done at Mother's.

Annie