Not one for idle hands...

Sometimes I sit down and say to myself "when I have time, I'm going to... (insert wishful thinking here).

On that list, has always been taking old negatives from travel 20+ years ago and somehow getting digital pictures from them, economically. Then archiving those pics so that if the house burns or floods, or the march of time is damaging, I'll still have something to look back on.

Today's the day... or probably more realistically, this is the week!

I had Amazon deliver me a little device called a Kodak Scanza. Not actually sure what I was expecting but I guess in my mind it was going to be bigger... heavier... I dunno!
It's only about 5" in diameter and maybe 7" high.  And it was surprisingly affordable too.

You place the negative in the tray, shove the tray into a slot and bingo! There's the image, in full color on the little screen. Hit save and it puts a copy of that onto the SD card you have already inserted into the back of this device. Then it's just a matter of downloading the files/images from that card to your computer.

No its not professional quality or perfect or even super quick. But when you're on lock-down and most of your work has been suspended, time is more plentiful than money. Besides, I'm just loving the walk down memory lane as I create a back up copy of my travel memories. These pics will serve me well for email or social media and if I ever wanted to, I could probably get small (5x7") sized prints without a problem from the files.

My first project is scanning the 27 rolls of film I had developed after a trip to Africa in 1999. Yep, 1999 was pre-digital photography for the amateur. Heck it was pre-cell phone camera and definitely pre-social media!

Travel was different in those days. No GPS/Google maps, no apps for translation, Uber, hotels.com. Email was something you checked at internet cafes, for a pretty penny, I might add. You never sent an email to your parents to let them know you were ok because it would still be many years before they got on board with that sort of communication. Remember postcards? Yeah, that's what parents got... if they were lucky.

Here are some of  my favorites from a trip that was almost 3 months long, mainly camping and spanned 7 countries, starting in Kenya and ending in Zimbabwe.

Images from The Isolation Cafe

Let's face it, there will come a time where we realize we either have COVID-19 in some (hopefully mild) form or must have had it. The goal is less about stopping everyone from getting it and more about stopping the most vulnerable from getting it or delaying the intensity of the outbreak, so healthcare is available to those who actually need it. IE Spreading out the cases over more time.

There is no cure and treatment comes in the form of making sure a person is in the best place they can be to ride it out and fight it off.

So it makes the most sense to me to keep the ol' body in good working order just in case it's called upon to fight hard... to fight a viral infection like breathing and survival depends on it. Because it might!

These are my goals:

1. Eat well

2. Sleep well

3. Exercise

4. Reduce stress

5. Avoid infection for as long as possible

The Isolation Cafe helps with 4 of the 5. I'll have to take care of the exercise with a different approach, obviously.

We had this meal a couple of nights this week. Ribeye with sauteed onions. Baked purple potatoes, parsnips, carrot. Roasted Brussels sprouts.

Below; Slices of eggplant being "sweated" in preparation for eggplant Parmesan later.

Check out the beeswax food covers my sister bought me for Christmas in New Zealand, a couple of months ago. We love that it saves us from using plastic wrap! My set of covers are awesome blues and florals that I just adore.

The finished product...

Eggplant Parmesan with garlic toast

Homemade bread goes stale much quicker than store-bought.  It's perfect for French toast.

At some point recently, Mark heard that lobster fisherman were suffering too. And that lobster was a good deal cheaper right now. A week later a cooler with dry ice inside was found on our doorstep. You can guess what was chillin' inside!

A part of me feels guilty about the good life, the ample opportunities that we have and the frickin' menu's that are bringing us joy. We are grateful for the motivation to be more creative in the kitchen. That's why I'm slipping a record of this event into an older post. The intent is to be able to look back honestly at our life... but not to gloat about it or even really to attract new readers with this post.

Seriously.. this is the first lobster omelette I've ever eaten!

 AND the first lobster rolls since I left the northeast 15 years ago.

Some days, when you wish you could visit the local restaurant serving Indian, Thai, or Italian fusion cuisine, the only thing to be done is cooking it yourself. This week we have nibbled on Italian, Russian, Indian and French food, fresh from our own kitchen. Even though we'd rather be supporting local businesses, we are grateful for all that we are capable at home too. Comfort food.

Sense and Sensibility in times of COVID-19

You've probably guessed by now that I was a little bit of a "prepper" BEFORE this whole COVID-19 thing went down - long before self-distancing turned into self isolation turned into the current stay at home ordinance.

Supplies for cleaning and baking were always in stock in our house. As were paper towels and toilet paper. I had 3 tiny hand sanitizers for travel purposes and 2 N95 masks to protect me from fumes while painting etc. Our lives would not have been awful if we hadn't been able to buy much at the store in the last couple of weeks either.

That didn't stop us from adding to supplies though and we were quick to buy additional canned and frozen veges, a big bag of flour, more sugar, pasta, rice, potatoes, onions, meat and treats for the cat, a frozen whole chicken for us, plus freezer-type Ziplock bags and reusable plastic storage containers.

In the last week, I have found a few additional things online too - at less well trafficked websites - not even close to the first page of your Google search. I acquired a couple of travel sized/3oz spray hand sanitizers (70% alcohol), UHT milk, two reusable filter masks. All at normal prices and in quantities that are perfect for two people. I refuse to contribute to the hoarding insanity or reward those who are price gouging.

I'm happy to share tips and tricks to make your stay at home more like a vacation than a prison sentence.

Got symptoms and need to leave the house? (Thankfully no... but...)
Personally, this is only the time I'd wear a mask. It would stop me from coughing/breathing germs on others and when I inadvertently touch my face (which we all do) it's a little barrier between dirty hands and direct contact to mouth and nose.

UHT milk. It seems half of the US is unfamiliar with this product. UHT milk is milk that has been heated briefly to a much higher temperature, to kill bacteria. It is packaged appropriately and then doesn't need refrigeration, but is shelf-stable for 6-9 months. If we experience milk delivery or supply issues, having this on standby means no big deal. I will not be leaving the house to go in search of milk. It may not taste exactly like the milk you are accustomed to but it's close and if you are like me, it's absolutely good enough. Much more, natural and less processed than all those nut, soy and oat liquids that call themselves milk, but if that is your thing, you can probably find shelf-stable versions of these too. You can often find UHT milk at office supply stores, FYI. (Or at least, you could.)

What do I think about milk powder? It's pricey and perhaps getting pricier by the day. It will never taste like milk when you drink it or put it on cereal, but Im sure it's a better than nothing for cooking etc.  I do not have any and have no plans to buy any at this point.

On a side note... A few years back I took a camel safari in the Thar Desert in India. We camped on the dunes, slept under the stars and our guide cooked our meals from scratch. Every morning and night, he made us chai over the campfire. We were 3 days in before I saw his "recipe". He had been using baby formula as the milk substitute for campfire chai. Truthfully, it was darn good chai.

The moral of the story is, in a pinch, we use the resources available to us - whether it's price or supply that is the issue, there is often an alternative and our less privileged brothers and sisters all over the world have long been practicing this successfully. As did our grandparents and generations before them, who endured and survived more hardship that we will probably ever experience.

NOTE: I am not suggesting you run out and buy up baby formula!!! Leave it for the babies, please. I'm just saying, in challenging times, we get creative to solve problems. Think outside the box and be grateful for all the alternatives and options we still have. :-)

Boulder County (and City) Mandatory Stay-At-Home Ordinance

Today is day 13 of voluntary self-isolation and it is DAY ONE of the Boulder City and the   Boulder County mandatory "stay at home" ordinance. 

We are permitted to leave the house for essential errands only. Essential errands seemed to start out looking like pharmacy and grocery runs. I believe it now includes outdoor exercise not within 6' of another person, medical and recreational marijuana, liquor runs, gas, banking, hardware store items, cleaning supplies and guns and ammo!

Yeah... we are still a LONG way off what I would call hardship, but one can't help but wonder about the guns and ammo thing. Not allowed outside to shoot and not allowed outside to threaten another person or their hoarded toilet paper either, so I'm struggling to understand the dire need to keep gun stores operating. And let's face it, if shot and taken to hospital, the chance of acquiring COVID-19 just went up exponentially. <sigh>  Priorities...

I digress.
Since I now full-time manage and work in The Isolation Bakery and The Isolation Cafe @ 285 Martin Dr, I'm actually busy everyday.

The upside is that the part of my brain that is creative in the kitchen and enjoys the smell of anything cooking, also needs a project to stay sane. Plus, I'm enjoying having Mark around and appreciate this opportunity to take care of him to the best of my ability, as he continues to work full-time from his home office.

This week I have already cleaned out the freezer. With that, comes more inspiration and motivation.

1. Rhubarb Pie from last years rhubarb harvest.
2. Chicken Soup with stock garnished from a roast chicken I boiled beyond reason 6 months ago.
3. Frozen plums... still cogitating on ideas for those, actually. Any thoughts?

Homemade bread with homemade plum and cardamom jam

Rhubarb pie

Thank goodness I stocked up on whipping cream, eh?!

We have a treadmill and yes, the time is fast approaching when I will need to stop using it as a clothes horse and start using it for pie mitigation instead. :-)

COVID-19 Hardships and Warming up those Coping Muscles

Mark and I took a talking-hike yesterday.

We were discussing the generation (half generation) of kids that still feel entitled to spring break, frat parties, sharing drink bottles etc.

He said he thought the rationing that took place for years, during WWII taught our grandparents the value of things and how to cope better. Then our parents heard the stories... Then it was a history lesson for us and has since become so far removed, that personal experience is not something most of us can draw from to cope with hardship.

I disagreed. Yes the war was a prolonged period of rationing and limitations to life. But about every 10 years, I think we (humans) experience something that could ask us to exercise that area of our brain/psyche. Something that changes our normal way of life, forces us to reduce our consumption, face hardship head-on etc.

Immigrants and refugees to this day, go through hardships and change their normal way of life, in the hope of coming through stronger and better off... even if only in the next generation.

People all over the world and the USA have poverty stricken lives that mean they struggle with getting a good breakfast before going to work, school or taking care of others.

Natural disasters like fires, floods, hurricanes happen and people lose electricity, clean water, homes and family members in an instant.

All over the country and globe, grief from divorce, miscarriage, death affect humans that are poor and wealthy, diverse in ethnicity and religion, without discrimination.

10+ years ago families lost incomes, homes, cars, vacations, new clothes and the option to consume almost anything in the same way, when the recession hit them close to home.

20+ years ago 9/11 rocked a city, state, country and the world. The fallout kept hurting people. The trauma touched people for years... even those nowhere near the epicenter.

Some people will remember living through the oil crisis, other wars, the less recent stock market meltdowns of the 70's, 80's and more.

Our "coping muscles" have not been well exercised when we have not experienced hardship for a while. But they are still there and lucky for us, we just need to warm them back up again. It hurts for a day or two!

The people that have not lived through something/anything like this either weren't alive 10 years ago or were being (understandably) protected from these fears and hardships by parents. Do they have "coping muscles"? Barely.

The kids that have transitioned from being protected to not being protected as much are the spring-break aged kids - late teens and 20-somethings. This is probably their first foray into adulthood with stress, hardship, forced limitations and dangers that they are being asked to personally navigate and mitigate. They have no experience to draw from, think they know more than they do and their frontal lobes (judgement centers) may not be fully developed yet. The cherry on the cake? They have this "invincible" mindset - that we all had at that age!

It's easy to judge them. And blame them, maybe rightly so, for their part in continuing to spread a virus that is much more detrimental to us than themselves.

It's harder to see life from their point of view. 

This week, my goal is to try and be more gentle and less judgmental. 

The Isolation Bakery @ 285 Martin Drive

285 Martin Drive is the epicenter of many things:

It is our safe place.
The place where Mark and I (and Wrigley) receive mail.
Headquarters of Silver Fern Homes - real estate and property management.
A tiny wildlife paradise - host to squirrels, birds, bees and rabbits among other critters.
And a temp place of rest for many an Airbnb guest - when social distancing isn't a thing.

And now 285 Martin Dr is home to The Isolation Bakery.

Uh-huh. With more time and more flour than I know what to do with, the Isolation Bakery was birthed! Seriously, if Mark and I are going to stay home indefinitely, we are also going to enjoy it!

The Isolation Bakery posts will always include pictures of goodies and treats, warm from the oven.

And feel free to reach out to me in the comment section or by email or phone or whatever, if you want recipes. We are not that isolated, after all!

Traditional Boule Bread

Chocolate Chip Cookies

Lemon Cream Tart

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Hot Cross Buns for Easter!

Plum crumble. Mmmm.

The COVID-19 Isolation Learning Curve - More positive than the Infection Curve!

I know... You are used to seeing adventures, travel pics and all sorts of stuff that doesn't take place INSIDE my home, when I post here.

Brace yourselves! This is a new type of adventure. I'm learning live life to the fullest from my sofa for the foreseeable future.  It has taken a while to tear myself away from 24/7 CoronaNews and social media posts, but holy moly, now that I have, there is brain space to think, to learn and to embrace the new normal.

I'll start by giving thanks to my parents - incredible role models. And state categorically that I am grateful for how I was raised.

Firstly, they taught us cooking from scratch and always had a pantry that was stocked with "the basics" like flour, sugar, onions, potatoes, rice,  pasta tinned tomatoes etc. They made their own jam and chutneys, bottled fruit and froze vegetables. They lead by example. Perhaps never realizing the gift they were bestowing on us. (I'm fairly sure it took me a good 35 years to realize!)

Secondly, we were taught to never spend ALL your money. No matter how much you earned or didn't earn, you spent a little less and kept some aside for when earning was harder or spending jumped up.

My pantry is stocked and the bank account is not in distress. I'm also healthy. Hallelujah!
I know not everyone can say that.

There are plenty of people out there for whom loss of work - or even reduced work - is financial hardship from the get-go. That means when the rest of us went to Costco and bought more than the normal amount of food, preparing to stay home for 2-3 weeks minimum, some didn't have the money to do that. The struggle is real. The challenge to feed and pay rent/mortgage is huge. When schools close and children are sent home, how does one go about working (if job still exists) and maintaining childcare 24/7? What does Corona-fear feel like if you are older, immune-compromised, have underlying conditions? I don't know. I can't wrap my head around any of this, if I'm being honest.

Today I online ordered some coloring books and had them delivered to friends kids. I don't know what else to do and OMG, it feels like a very feeble attempt to help!

Then I realized that rather that feeling guilty for what I have, or for what I cannot do to help, or feeling scared for what might happen in the near future, I need to make a conscious choice to use my time at home more wisely and kindly.

I'm deciding to be grateful and happy and content with this new (temporary) life on my 0.16 acre of Boulder first-world goodness.

Typhoid Mary? Who me?

Just to clarify before anyone becomes (more) afraid of me...

• 10 days ago, I traveled to a place that had no COVID-19 cases. (Unlike Colorado when I left.)
• I took all precautions re: sanitizing my tray table, arm rest, buttons and controls around my seat and I didnt use the bathroom on the flight.
• On return through Stockholm 4 days ago, they had started getting community spread virus (like Colorado). But it's not like I was mingling... no galleries, museums etc for me. I had a hotel room to myself and I walked in the city, vs taking Uber.
• I also spent 2 hours in the airport at Reykavik, Iceland, where there was plentiful soap, hot water and hand sanitizer. I didnt buy food or drink here. But there were plenty of other people traveling to the US too. They MUST have had exit interviews, like me and passed!
• Then I slept on the plane or spoke to my two seat neighbors (I had the window seat). It was bulkhead seating and the row in front was 6 feet away. My neighbors had their own packets of Chlorox wipes. They had not been to Iran, china or Italy.

Then I came home and had to go to the supermarket (where I wore gloves, FYI) and wasnt sure whether to laugh or cry at the hysteria that was taking place.

OMG people!!!

Hoarding copious amounts of toilet paper in preparation for an illness that doesnt cause diarrhea?

Buying quantities of fruit and veges that you cannot eat in time before they rot?

Aside from a pastry chef, does anyone need 10lb of butter? 

My personal favorite... Avoiding Chinese food?! What the heck is wrong with you?! Shame, shame.

And then there are all those unhelpful posts on Facebook and the 24/7 "Coronavirus news" playing.

An uptick in people drawing all their money out of bank accounts and stashing it at home.... then buying guns to protect it!

Who is bathing in fear and ignorance and wondering 

why they feel like crap? Are afraid? Judgmental? 

Be honest. 

The truth is less dramatic. It will only make you feel better if you take a few deep breaths and try just a teensy bit to believe I'm not walking around like Typhoid Mary, one breath away from sending you to the hospital. Likely, neither is anyone else who loves you.

I have no symptoms. I feel fine, thanks for asking.

As a PRECAUTION, Im social distancing. This is not the same as quarantine and in fact quarantine/isolation is reserved for people who have symptoms, been in direct contact with someone who is sick with virus or has had a positive test.

As of this afternoon, there have been 160 positive COVID-19 tests in Colorado. 7 in Boulder County.

Colorado has a population of 5.8 million people.

Take a deep breath. Leave room for the possibility that you might be ok. You'll feel better.

Bye Bye Stockholm.. get well soon

I arrived in Stockholm yesterday, later in the afternoon. It was rainy and grey and now a city under siege too.

When I left here early Monday morning, Sweden had a handful of confirmed COVID-19 cases, all of which were attributed to travel from a high risk country. Stockholm was bustling. I was one of many at the Vasa Museum, cafe and on public transit.

The next day, Tuesday, I woke to news in northern Sweden, that Stockholm had confirmed its first "community acquired" case of COVID-19.

Yesterday (Thursday) as I checked into the hotel, I was warned by the only staff member I saw that Stockhold had hit 600+ cases and the US President had announced a travel ban to the US from Sweden and the other 27 Swengen countries. Essentially, if I was not traveling on my US Passport, I would not be going home tomorrow!

What does it look like on the ground?

It's eerily quiet around the city. I don't believe there are "rules" prohibiting shops being open etc, but many of them are closed. Galleries, cafes, souvenir shops that line the cobblestone streets and alleys of Gamla Stan, where I'm staying, are dark.

My Abisko friend, Lynette and I, agreed to meet up for dinner before going our separate ways. The restaurant was half way between my hotel and hers and although a cold night, we both walked to it last night. Polpette is an Italian-Swedish, fusion restaurant. Outside, on a handwritten whiteboard, 30% off dinner

The skeleton staff inside, served us with big smiles. Dinner was spectacular and Lynette and I enjoyed wine and creme brulee too.  They closed the restaurant after we finished... 8pm. The staff were eating the daily special when we left.

My heart goes out to them and business owners here and everywhere. It's obvious the is the beginning of a downturn for them. Tourist and local money... staying home with the people charged with its care.

It was time to stay goodbye and I walked back to my hotel, sorry I couldn't (didn't want to) spend more time exploring this gorgeous city.