Merry Christmas to US!

One of the great catastrophes of 2020 is the inability to frequent our local businesses. This neighborhood is dotted with coffee shops from local favorites like Cafe Sole to the more well known Ozo, Brewing Market and Starbucks.

Mark used to drive through on the way to work. Fueling for a long commute. 

I used to stop on the way to Closings to grab coffee treats for my clients or even better... meet them there to discuss real estate opportunities.

We have a perfectly good coffee maker at home, but it's never going to produce a delish latte. Especially not a latte I can drink in bed!

With travel off the cards, we turned our discussion on holiday gifts to something we could share and appreciate during the COVID-19 shelter-in-place period of our lives. An espresso machine!

We did the research and settled on Breville's BES870XL.

Word on the street (internet) is that it takes a good month to perfect the shot of your dreams. Tweaking the grind setting, the amount of grounds delivered, and of course the amount and temperature of whatever milk goes in.

Our Breville machine arrived today. By Christmas, I intend to be more than satisfied with my new skills. (Don't worry, I have a new plan to deal with the problem that inevitably follows gastronomical indulgence.)

Check out Breville's first day in the Isolation Cafe. This made me happy!

We found a good deal on this model at Williams Sonoma after Thanksgiving.

Wriggles was VERY interested in the new arrival. Not putting it past him to want to drink a latte, but it turns out it was the box he was calling dibs on.

She's a beauty! A perfect fit for the space we have. Very exciting.

The first lot of grounds are dispensed. We started with manufacturers recommendations, but the time will come when we'll tweak and experiment to make a brew that is very much a Dallice and Mark original.

Yep, it certainly smells like a great pull of espresso. 

Mental note: Touch the milk jug as it's steaming to determine temperature. I personally was too pre-occupied taking pictures and ended up with something best described as lukewarm. Nothing a microwave didn't fix. (I know... sacrilege!)

I tapped out my first espresso grounds puck! Not bad, eh?!

Who loves pizza? WE love pizza!

Once in a while, Mark and I order pizza. It's a guilty pleasure for sure and on top of that, I feel the need to apologize that it's generally Domino's. Why? I dunno. We live in a foodie town and gourmet pizza abounds. Plus who doesnt have a friend or two from NYC or NJ... someone who delights in scolding you for eating chain restaurant pizza, non-authentic pizza. Pizza that just isnt "the real thing".

Near the end of "shelter in place" my adorable lender, Susie Kiesling (Elevations Credit Union) mailed me a gift. It was one of those fancy pizza cutters. A half moon shaped board that you rock back and forth to cut the pizza. It was compelling. I had to make pizza in order to cut pizza.

A new hobby was born. The Isolation Cafe was expanding its menu!

Check it out:

Fig and Pig pizza.
Thin crust, fresh mozzarella, prosciutto, figs and arugula. Then a wee drizzle of a balsamic glaze to finish. Mmmmm.... delish.

Then a more traditional pepperoni with peppers, onions and mushrooms. I loaded the tomato sauce with garlic and after a hearty helping of grated mozzarella, added parmigiano-reggiano sprinkles.

In case you were wondering, the dough I used was a traditional olive oil bread dough. Basically just water, oil, salt, sugar and yeast, then few cups of flour and ... done! It proofs for 2 hours in the oven, then is chilled for a couple of hours in the fridge to make it easier to work. 

I roll about 2/3 lb of the dough into a round thats 1/4" thick and put that on a pizza shovel that is covered in corn meal. Quickly load it with sauce and toppings before sliding it onto a super hot pizza stone and cooking the heck out of it for just 12 mins.

* Dont leave it too long on the pizza shovel and dont load it with toppings until ready to shove into the oven. It gets challenging to work with fairly quickly, IMHO and darn that pizza stone is hard to clean once burned with cheese!  LOL

Italian night.... with a twist

Facebook. I have a love-hate relationship with it. When it's not bombarding me with ads or winding me up with fake news, ignorant and discriminatory re-posts and commentaries,  I find myself grateful for connection to loved ones far away, new recipes or life hacks. <sigh>

This week I was inspired and motivated by a lady who turned her focaccia's into beautiful works of art. All edible!  I tried my hand at one and out of it was born Italian date night with Mark.

Fresh homemade bread and spaghetti al dente. (Raise your hand if you DON'T think you were Italian in a past life?!)

Im sure there was an Italian desert that I could have whipped up, but the truth is, there was a small bunch of browning bananas on the counter. If they didn't end their lives as banana bread tonight, they would have been fruit fly utopia by tomorrow! 

One of the positive outcomes of COVID quarantine is small changes in behavior, don't you think? Like not wasting food.

Gardening... to take away the COVID-19 blues

Getting ones hands dirty actually does feel good. Physically satisfying, mentally upbeat kinda good.

I'm running out of photo archiving work just in time for planting season.  I'm guessing we've seen the end of snow and when I embarked on the following projects this week, I ardently hoped not to be met with loss and heartache due to sudden temperature swings again!

Project#1

Planting an orchard and about 27 evergreen trees at my Dyer Rd property.

NOTE: There a many places to buy trees but when you need 40 or so, delivery is a must. On top of that, I am a novice and was looking for a tree farm/nursery that was heavy on the education part of the shopping experience too. I stumbled upon FastGrowingTrees.com in February and have been super impressed with the education, quality of service, ease or ordering and now, delivery too.

Check it out... a FEDEX tree delivery from North Carolina! While the boxes weren't entirely square on arrival, I quickly discovered that the roots/pots were in each end and the middle part of the box was skinny branches and leaves and not really impacted like you'd think after seeing the dents.

Right now my acre of property is just begging for more trees. A sturdy wind-noise-view block starts with planting fast growing trees along the back property line. I chose Green Giant Thuja for their privacy, speed of growth, deer resistance and disease resistance.

The fastest way to dig holes apparently by skid-loader with mini bucket-thing. Thanks, Josh Mitchell!!!

Planting was a 2 day affair. And I had help! It is nothing short of hard work and lets not sugarcoat how it really went:  For weeks I looked forward to the outdoor task, the physical workout, the joy of watching it come together. Then I tortured my muscles, skinned my hands and tweaked my joints to get things planted quickly. I ate Ibuprofen for dinner and still woke up feeling like I'd been hit by a bus.

Long story short... I'm built to sell real estate rather than haul trees and soil, dig clay and rocks. I am so looking forward to getting back to my real (estate) job!

More exciting though, is the beginnings of an orchard.  A dozen or so trees will bear peach, plum, apricot, pear, apple and cherry fruits in just a couple of years, fingers crossed.

I dug these holes myself... 

  

Project #2

A wee raised bed garden at home.  Something to direct love and attention toward as a pandemic rages. And perhaps organic veggies and herbs to add to meals well into 2020 too.

Since Airbnb is canceled until further notice, I turned a guest room into a temporary greenhouse. For the past 1-2 weeks seeds and baby plants have been thriving near sunny windows, behind a locked door. Growing silently in baking dishes and recycled containers as Wrigley tries his darnedest to find a way in.

A baking dish covered in plastic wrap means you almost never have to water it.

Radishes sprouted in just 2 days!

Mark got this strawberry before the cat or the squirrels got wind of it.

Basil... ready to become Caprese salad?

Success! This was as close as Wrigley got to investigating the wee plants.

 

About the raised bed; soon to be renamed The Isolation Farm @ 285 Martin Drive.

I bought this little number on Amazon. It came flat-packed and I followed IKEA-like cartoon directions for assembly. One hour and one screwdriver was all it took. Then 10 bags of high quality garden soil later, it was ready for planting.

It could not have been easier and smells deliciously like cedar!

I'd like to say that I have the patience of a Buddhist monk and diligently "hardened off" the plants by bringing them in and out of the house for several days to acclimatize them. The truth is that one balmy evening, I opened the door, pulled them outside and planted them. The next morning, I checked to see if any had up and died from shock or overnight temps and delightfully (luckily) discovered, they had not. :-) 

The next day, I also planted seeds. Right now the bed contains tomato, zucchini, strawberries and herbs such as dill, oregano, cilantro basil, sage and chives. There are Mesclun lettuce and bush bean seeds planted here and in the "greenhouse" guest room, Swiss chard, radish, parsley, hot peppers and yellow squash are still germinating.

 

I connected a couple of fine sprayers to my my irrigation system already present in the yard so that each morning around 6am the garden is dampened and the plants are ready to face the warm spring sunshine that is Colorado (this week). 

Wrigley the cat, update:

So far, so good. Wriggles has left footprints in the raised garden for sure. But the plants are intact and his penchant for litterbox use over outdoor pooping, is finally paying dividends! 

(Yes, week 7 into the Self Isolation Experiment of 2020 and I can still find things to be grateful for!)

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.