Tag Archives: covid-19

Just the Two of Us – Thanksgiving in the Time of Pandemic

Last week my home state of Massachusetts tried really hard to get in touch. Phone calls, text messages, even an email from Congressman McGovern. All telling us not to have Thanksgiving with anyone beyond those you live with. Seriously, their message was to lock it down. Naturally there were a few caveats for those folks who are determined to go against the recommendations. If you are someone who decides not to follow the sage advice of health officials then your ill-conceived gathering should be limited to 10 people inside or 25 people outside.

Pond alongside logging road in fall.

Here’s my truth – our house is so small if I invited 10 people inside to eat it would become a super-spreader event. Plus eating outdoors at this time of year? Brrr. I’ve been doing the al fresco, twelve-feet-apart dining (we increase the recommended distance whenever we take our masks off to eat) on those few occasions when our adult children visited us during 2020. What was lovely in June, became brisk in October, and has turned frigid earlier in November. I appreciate how fantabulous it is to see those who are dear to your heart. Even if you can’t hug them, it is wonderful just to be a masked six feet away from them. However eating outside in New England, during November is cold, really cold. So this year will just be my husband and myself at the table.

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How We Shop Now

For the majority of my life I have loved food shopping. It is what you do prior to cooking, and cooking as you may have guessed from reading this blog, is one of my joys. What I know from years of grocery shopping is this:

  • Each store is unique
  • Shopping where there are happy & knowledgable employees is more fun
  • Mentally bookmark stores with unique/quirky items
  • Not all bulk sections carry foods you want to (or should) buy
  • Produce sections tell you a lot about the community
  • Not all of us like other people packing our shopping bags

Then there are the farmer’s markets – a wonderful subset of places to food shop. Loved both because my dear Grammy Caldwell started taking me to them when I was a young girl, plus they give you an opportunity to speak with the farmer who grew the food, and you get to go shopping outdoors! My lifelong love of farmer’s markets and farm stands is something I’ve written about here and here and here.

The thing is food shopping isn’t what it once was. Continue reading

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May 2, 2020 · 8:55 am

Sunshine Milk

Marshes on Nantucket

It may be the beginning of April, though honestly March does not feel as if it were just a month ago – it feels instead like an entire year ago. Given the planet is in the middle of a pandemic my sense of time is completely skewed.

Low tide on Nantucket Island

My grandparents, and presumably yours, lived through the Influenza Pandemic of 1918-19. Hundreds of thousands of people lived with the terror of Polio until a vaccine was created in 1955. Covid-19 is the most recent disease to sweep across the globe. I’m not a scientist so I have no advice to offer of how to cure this disease. Nor am I a doctor, so again, no brilliant insights of how you can attempt to avoid this disease, though there are several things you can do to help “flatten the curve”*, and I sincerely hope you are able to do them. As someone who is most often found in the kitchen, all I can offer you at this moment is a bit of sunshine in a cup. Continue reading

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