Like most of you, we are trying to go as long as possible without going food shopping, and part of that is getting a regular delivery from Baldor every 10 days or so. Once we get to Days 9 and 10, which is where we are right now, it becomes all about stretching out what we have and cooking down the pantry. I had started our trusty No-Knead bread (using all white whole wheat flour) on Tuesday night, so going into Wednesdayโs dinner, I knew that would be on the table. But what elseโฆ?
Pantry: Victoriaโs Harissa-Honey Beans
โฆWell, thereโs a lot to be said about the scourge of social media, but sometimes the stars align, and you come across something like these beans that offer at least a little redemption. They were on Victoria Granofโs instagram feed (Iโm sure youโre tired of hearing me call her a genius after writing about her for 10 years), and this was her caption: โOh beans, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways: 2)ย @rancho_gordo Corona beans, half a jar ofย @minaย harissa (says spicy on the label but itโs not), a swig of olive oil, a dribble of honey, and some dillโฆโ I happened to have everything she called for โ even a bag of Rancho Gordo beans (though they were lima) which I promptly added to the instant pot. If you donโt have dried beans (or enough time to soak and simmer dried beans), canned white will work just fine. This is how I interpreted her shorthand.
Victoriaโs Honey-Harissa Beans
3 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 small onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 carrot, minced
kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tablespoons harissa (or tomato paste plus a pinch of cayenne if you donโt have harissa)
squeeze honey (about 2 teaspoons)
1/2 cup (ish?) chicken or vegetable broth
3 cups (2 14-ounce cans) cooked white beans (such as lima, cannellini, navy)
fresh dill
Add oil to a large skillet set over medium heat. Add onion, garlic, and carrot and cook until vegetables have softened, about 3 to 5 minutes. Stir in salt, pepper, harissa, and cook until harissa deepens in color and gets toasty, about 2 to 3 minutes. Stir in honey. Stir in beans and enough broth to make it saucy (not soupy). Heat until warmed through. Serve with a good crusty bread and garnish with dill.
Project: Quick Pickling
Not all quarantine projects are the kinds of things best served warm with ice cream. Part of clearing out the refrigerator for the next round of groceries is not wasting the odds and ends of whatโs left over. Enter: Quick pickling. I mean, you could do real pickling, of course, but thatโs a legit project that requires actual technique and gear. You can decide you want to quick pickle something at 11:30 am and have cabbages (or wax beans or carrots or onions or radishes or peppers) steeping in their pickling liquid by 11:45, which accurately tells the story of my Thursday morning. (Note: For legit pickles, book owners can see page 137 of How to Celebrate Everything.)
Hereโs how to do it: Slice and chop your vegetables then stuff into a jar. In a small pot, simmer 1/2 cup water, 1/2 cup red or white wine vinegar, 2 tablespoons sugar, and 1 tablespoon of kosher salt until the sugar has dissolved, about 3 minutes. Let cool slightly, then pour the pickling liquid over your vegetables. Let cool, then refrigerate for 24 hours for best results. You can also add herbs (dill, thyme) and peppercorns to the liquid and switch up the vinegars. Note: I tripled the recipe for the batch you see above since it was an extra large jar.
Purpose: Tell Me Something Good
I need some good news. What has brought you joy lately? What has brought you comfort? What has inspired you? Comment below and Iโll send out a free book (any of mine) to the comment that gets the most likes by the end of the week. Yes! You can like comments, did you know that? (Just please, honor code, donโt like your own more than once ๐ Inspire us!
Stay safe, stay home.
The goal of theย Project, Pantry, Purpose seriesย to keep us sane, distracted, and connected. Please continue to comment below with suggestions for recipes, projects (for kids and adults), good deeds, donation ideas, stories, movies, games, puzzles. Or just tell me how youโre doing, whatย yourย daily routine is, andย especially how DALS can help you or people in your community. You can also email me directly at jenny@dinneralovestory.com.
Gratitude: Going for a daily 4 mile morning walk โ even in cold or rain โ and stopping on the way back for coffee at the only local walk-up counter that remains open. Somedays my hubby joins me, and on really special days the 13 year old daughter tags along.
Iโve been a member of a community of women who have met a few times per week for bootcamp class and group runs that are led by an amazing running coach and personal trainer. Most of us are in our 40โs and 50โs and have children ranging in age from babies to college-aged kids. Weโre a support group as much as a fitness group.
We were concerned about how weโd maintain community and fitness during social isolation, but our coach/trainer moved everything to Zoom, and now we hold our classes online. After class, we hold a round table check-in where everyone can express concerns, air grievances, and celebrate triumphs. We now โmeetโ for coffee even on the days when we donโt workout because we are all finding this sense of community to be so essential for our mental health and well-being.
Connecting daily with these women has helped me get through the busy days of homeschooling while working full time, cooking almost every meal, and missing my extended family.
This is going to sound silly but I am early into my first pregnancy and really anxious about it. Every morning after my partner brings me coffee in bed, I open my pregnancy app and read off the facts of the day about our growing baby. Itโs kind of nerdy I guess but it does help replace the anxiety I feel about being pregnant during a pandemic with anticipation and excitement.
My boyfriend and I making each other laugh until we cry for the past 9000 days is joy, comfort and I love him more every day.
One of our guinea pigs will most likely need to be put down in a few weeks (not responding to meds). To make the last few weeks meaningful, weโve created a sort of guinea pig hospice retreat. Everyday, each of my kids does something for her that she likes, spends time doing something they like with/to her (dance for her or read or play the violin), and then something kind for someone else in her honor. Itโs been amazing and profound to see how caring and kind and gentle and thoughtful my kiddos are. Our new motto has become โLive your life like Cookie is dyingโ. A bit morbid, yes, but it has also been something really great that has come out of this time together.
My four-month-old learned to roll over, and she is so stinking proud of herself! Her toothless beaming smile every time she rotates back-to-tummy, or tummy-to-back, is radiant and redemptive. She has no idea whatโs going on around her! All she knows is that sheโs learned a new skill and now she can observe her three-year-old sister from a new vantage. I keep looking at her and thinking โyup, the world is going to keep turning.โ (Itโs a good thing she wonโt remember any of this; I had to take her to the pediatrician for her four-month shots last week and both the doctor and I spent the entire visit in masks and gloves, which made me weep in mourning for the innocence weโve already lost.)
Whatโs honestly bringing me the most joy right now are my 7 and 4 year old. It seems like the internet is filled with people feeling sorry for people with kids at home. This has been a fun time with them. Granted, I still work (from home) full time, but getting to get up later, bake at lunchtime if we want to, eat dinner together, and sit and watch Nailed It together vs running around cleaning and prepping for the next day, is such a welcome break. If not for them to focus on, Iโd go a little crazy right now. Also, watching them participate in Zoom calls is so hilarious.
Iโm a high school Foods Studies teacher and as you can imagine, teaching this kind of class in a online way is incredibly hard. When I first started this journey I had an idea in my head of which students would be able to manage this transition (Iโve got 18 years of teaching under my belt, Iโm a pretty good guesser!). But I was completely wrong. Some of my more absent and struggling students are doing really well in this new way of doing things. Asking good questions, looking for more material, joining all our online โface to faceโ classes. That fills my cup and keeps me slogging forward. And seeing the kids each day (we do one class per day for high school students in our district) and seeing their pride in cooking for and with their families is just awesome.
Thank you for posting about this book! I didnโt know it existed. I love LIW and devoured the Little House series again and again as a little girl, and I love them just as much today. Iโve added it to my โTo Readโ list!
I enjoyed the Birchbark House series by Louise Erdrich which follows a Native American family and community. They are richly written and not to be missed.
Every morning I Facetime with my grandson, who is in first grade. He reads to me, 1-2 chapters of a Magic Treehouse book. We talk about vocabulary words, why the K in knapsack is silent, and philosophical questions brought about by the bookโs theme. We talk about how punctuation marks are a readerโs traffic signals, and how to observe them. We talk about Pokemon Go, about what his sister baked the previous day, about everything. I am so grateful to have this opportunity to get to know him in this special way.
This is all so hard, working a full time job (my husband too) while being home with our 4 and 1 year olds. But, silver line is that we ARE home with them. We get to see them in all their glory (and tears). I am especially excited that I will likely see my 1 year old walk for the first time (she normally goes to daycare).
As much as we miss playgrounds, itโs also a joy to see my two pre-schoolers make games out of sticks and rocks, jump in mud puddles on rainy day โpuddle walksโ (and pretend when it hasnโt rained) , play various forms of โchaseโ, and generally take pleasure in the bits of the natural world theyโre allowed to access and explore.
Iโm an Assistant Teacher at a local preschool. While I dearly miss the day to day interaction with these little humans Iโve found a lot of joy in participating in Zoom Circle Time, sending positive messages to the families and children through Facebook and preparing easy โdo at homeโ lessons for our families. As a staff we send a positive boost each dayโฆ.something weโve heard about or something to make you smile. Today was a boost from CBS Sunday Morning who reported about Big Birdโs positive message to children during this time of the Coronavirus. Looking forward to a time when we can all be back together again at our preschool!
Iโve been lucky enough to let my morning slowly unfold. Iโm able to do a run or hour long yoga practice, have a leisurely breakfast with my 20 year old daughter whoโs home from college, probably for the last time. I enjoy my coffee while I just take the day in. Iโve also started reading poetry and read a poem to finish up my morning.
One thing thatโs bringing me a ton of joy is family dinner. It has always been a priority in our house but now it is so unhurried โ both the food preparation and the lingering over the meal. We are coming to the end of 6 weeks and we have not gotten take out a single time โ I have cooked every night. Itโs so enjoyable to cook without being rushed! And I have an appreciative audience, which helps. Whatโs funny is how many of the recipes are yours โ chili, chicken parmesan meatballs, butternut squash soup, shrimp tacos. You and Ina Garten have the cookbooks I turn to again and again for solid family meals.
All that said โ donโt pick me for a cookbook! I have all of yours and someone who doesnโt should be the recipient.
My 17-year-old daughter is the only girl in our family, with three brothers, and her 16-year-old cousin has just the one brother, so the girls have always been kind of like the sister they never had to each other. Watching their friendship over the miles during this time has been a lovely thingโ whenever my sis and I hear our girls squealing with laughter, we know theyโre on the phone to each other. ๐
My sister in law is having a baby today!!! Iโm so excited to find out if itโs a boy or a girl and Iโm relieved that my brother is allowed to be in the hospital with her.
Some days I feel like I barely move at all while Iโm sitting at my WFH desk. So, I started taking โcoffee walks.โ I wake up, bundle up (hopefully soon it will be warm enough to go without the jackets!), pour some coffee in a to-go mug, and take a walk around my town. I donโt have a distance or a time in mind โ I just try to enjoy the fresh air. Sometimes a family member comes, sometimes my boyfriend comes (we are all quarantining together), and sometimes I go alone and listen to a podcast. I truly look forward to it every day!
Such a great idea and truly refreshing! And taking the coffee to go is a nice touch! Take care!
Chocolate.
An article in yesterdayโs paper mentioned the work that my 4th grader is doing with her classmates to fight pollution โ we are proud parents for sure :).
https://www.oregonlive.com/environment/2020/04/on-the-50th-anniversary-coronavirus-in-oregon-makes-for-an-earth-day-like-no-other.html
Here has what has brought me joy lately. I work as a nurse in a large hospital taking care of new mothers and babies. Itโs a scary time for all health care workers, of course, but when I am there itโs pretty easy to leave the fear behind and focus on helping the new parents as they fall in love with their new little ones. In the midst of death there is life, always a miracle and so joyful.
Thank you for all you are doing now, and all that you do, even during a โnormalโ work day. The world goes on because of people like you. Thank you from the bottom of my heart!
Watching my 4 yo and 1.5 yo daughters grow their relationship. I love watching big sis try to read to little sis, calm her down with a toy, or โquizzingโ her on where her toes, fingers, and belly button are. These are the few stolen moments in the day where my husband and I can just stand back, โspyโ on them, say nothing, and just smile.
Watching my three-year-old sonโs imagination blossom during all of this time has been inspiring. We went from a go-go-go lifestyle to one largely contained in an apartment and I was worried about the effect it would have on him. His storytelling skills and his world-building have expanded over the past weeks. Iโm crediting it to all the open-ended play and reading (with a healthy measure of Disney+) that makes up the majority of our days now.
The homemade bourbon cream that was last nightโs project is also bringing me quite a bit of joy.
I am deep in the garden / flower bed planning research for our new to us house. Scrolling through different IG feeds of Midwest gardens is bringing me joyโฆespecially Lurie Garden posts.
Have you watched John Krasinskiโs โSome Good Newsโ segments!?! So great! Thanks for keeping up the blog, it seems to have an even deeper meaning during this quarantine!