Friday, March 27, 2020

Eating Well during Week 1 of Soft Lockdown

Coronavirus Crisis dinners, week 1 of “soft lockdown”, March 16-22 

Monday March 16
For Monday dinner, we had chicken-apple sausages, rice, leftover beets, leftover tuna noodle casserole, and roasted cheesy cauliflower.  High praise for this meal.  Younger Daughter happily ate the cauliflower!

Tuesday – leftovers

Wednesday
YD cooked dinner on Wednesday night, because I had a webinar to attend.  She made baked salmon, mac n cheese, and mixed vegetables (from the freezer).  It was delicious.

Thursday
Dinner was spinach-mushroom-onion quiche, using any kind of cheese we had in the house.  It turned out quite nicely!  Plus a baked potato, and a delicious ripe cantaloupe that the Common Household Husband had gotten a few days earlier, back when he was still going to the grocery every day.

Friday 
Leftover quiche, cantaloupe, plus Shabbat bread.  The shabbat bread was not the expected beautifully shining challah, but a few slices of white bread (it’s the only kind of bread the store had) and bagels. 

Saturday
For dinner on Saturday night, Younger Daughter and I made Mujadara, a Middle Eastern dish of lentils, basmati rice, and caramelized onions.  YD and I loved it; the CHH did not.  We didn’t have the garnishes called for in the recipe (green onions, cilantro, yogurt), but I felt a sense of triumph when I found a jar of mango chutney lurking in the corner of the food shelf in the basement.  So our lockdown garnishes consisted of chutney, hummus, and Bhuja snacks.  Delicious!

Sunday March 22
For dinner we had leftover mujadara.   The Common Household Husband said he would eat his rations because that’s what the times call for.

On Monday March 23, Governor Wolf ordered us to stay at home except for life-sustaining stuff (so, no going out because you have a hankering for lemon cake).  I call it Lockdown (rather than Soft Lockdown) but it isn’t really a total lockdown.

4 comments:

Karen (formerly kcinnova) said...

We've been in lockdown for a while, more seriously since Monday night (or Wednesday at midnight if you were a business) but soft lockdown for -- I believe -- 10 days prior to that. We went from "Hey, no groups more than 50" to rumors of only 10 people or less while we visited dh's parents along with his sisters. No hugging, but we were together. Then dh and I went camping without any Wi-Fi, data, or electricity for 24+ hours and when we returned, suddenly schools were closing statewide and the world was going crazy. That was 2 weeks ago, and I quickly shopped at Costco for things like peanut butter and butter and nuts and wine.
Dh went to 4 stores in 2 days earlier this week. It's his normal, separating the shopping out like that. We are now hunkered down and I wish I'd thought to get chocolate. What's even worse, all of the state lands (not just state parks) have been closed so there's no place to go fishing or hiking -- both perfectly good solo activities. *sigh*
And I miss my grandchildren and their parents.

Meanwhile, we're eating rice and lentils and inexpensive meat -- just like normal.
PS: If you have a can of beer, you can make beer bread.

melissa said...

We've been eating all right. Better than normal, probably, since we have more time to prep meals. And we've committed 2 meals a week to local places for take-out.
Much rather do this than a power outage.

Common Household Mom said...

@Karen - Of course! Beer bread! You are brilliant. We aren't big beer drinkers, but we have some bottles in the fridge, probably 5 years old, which would probably make excellent bread. Thanks!

Aileen said...

Virginia's lockdown starts today. I hope your family stays well.