JWG

Cocktail hour in our household is at 6. Just about every night - not when we are going out to a dance.

We have cheese (usually two types) and crackers (two types). Occasionally also smoked mussels, paté or something else such as octopus.

For drinks there is huge variety: single malt scotch, rusty nails, sherry, dubonnet, bloody mary's, martini's, pisco sours. Just one small deink. Robert is the usual preparer - I occasionally do simple things like sherry or scotch and I make the pisco sours.

Pisco sours: 1 oz simple syrup, 2 oz limejuice, 4 oz pisco, 1 egg white; shake in cocktail shaker with ice, pour into glasses and top with a few drops of Angostura bitters. Learned about this drink in our several trips to Peru. Pisco is kind of a Peruvian brandy.

For lunch we have a variety of things that contains protein - mostly store bough such as: quiche, calzones, quesadillas, salami, smoked salmon, tuna fish salad, peanut butter and some prepared salad-type stuff and a piece of toast. Sometimes if we have excessive dinner leftovers we use them for either the protein psrt of the salad. Occasionall puled-pork sandwiches (that's what we had today). Then at the end an apple or a pear split between us and I have a couple of crackers such as AkMaks with a bit of jam spread on them. Water to drink - and I add metamucil to some of the water.

When we go shopping we get some kind of seafood and some kind of meat. In each case enough for 2 meals.

On the shopping day we cook the seafood and save the rest for day 3; on the next day we cook the meat, saving the rest for day 4. Seafood is usually one of: (not in exact order) salmon, shrimp, scallops, swordfish, monkfish, tuna, bluefish (rare to find these days). No exact order depends on what looks good at the fish counter. The fish is usually grilled, but sometimes roasted. The meat is usually one of chicken thighs with bones, steak, lamb chops or shanks, pork loin or chops, sausages - grilled or in pasta sauce, brisket, or lamb or beef stew. For vegetables we choose what looks good. Potatoes with the meat dish and rice with the seafood.

For the cooking days we have fresh salad of mixed lettuce types usually including tomatoes, peppers, and mushrooms. Dressing is olive oil and vinegar - balsamic sometines - almost always with me, occsionally mustard vinaigrette; + ground pepper and herbs (fresh from the garden in the summer)

Beverage is water or occasionally wine.

Shopper cooks on day 1, warms up on day 3, other person on days 2 &4. non-cook washes dshes; on days 2 we save the dish washing until breakfast uless there are too many. Wine glasses get washed on the day of use. Occasionally a day of distruption of we are going dancing - not these days of course. And we always have some frozen pizza or other frozen foods - called emergency food - if for some reason we didn't go shopping or there is a schedule conflict.

We don't have dessert.

For breakfast every day we have a small glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, or occasionally sectioned grapefruit. Preparation is that Robert always squeezes the oranges except on the first of the month when I do it. For grapefruit I always do the sectioning. Occasionally it is oatmeal - expecially if we run out of bananas. Oatmeal is called porridge by Rutherford who helps make it

Robert has coffee - freshly ground beans - light/medium and dark (with a bit of cinnamon and cloves or nutmeg on weekends). I have tea - usually herbal of various kinds - On saturday it is rooibus and on sunday it is something spicy. On special occasions I have Earl Grey.

Weekdays we have cold cereal with homemade granola (Robert makes that), fruit - bananas except in the summer when fresh local fruit is available, and a bit of milk. 4 kinds of cereal - corn flakes, o's, flakes (tasty ones), and wheat squares. Rotated in exact order and since there are 4 kinds for 5 days a particular kind is not locked into a particular day (take from the left put back on the right).

On saturday it is cheese blintzes with yogurt and fruit and a bit of cinnamon and sugar on top. They are home-made. Robert makes the filling the night before, I make the crepes and fill them in the morning. 1 package of cream cheese and 1/2 container of ricotta + orange rind peelings makes about 10 - we eat 4 and freeze the rest; and the next week we use the other half of the ricotta and another package of cream cheese (used to use neufchatel but it is hard to find). So this means two weeks in a row we prepare, and then the following three weeks we just defrost and cook.

On sunday we rotate between pancakes, waffles, and french toast (in that order). The pancake recipe uses egg yolks, corn meal, a bit of soy flour, wheat germ, oil, baking powder, and fruit juice (not freshly squeezed) with beaten egg whites folded in. Got the idea about fruit juice and cornmeal from an inn in Vermont that we stayed in a long time ago. The waffles uses wheat flour, wheat germ, and some soy and rice flour, egg yolks, milk, oil, honey, and beaten egg whites folded in. The ritual for these breakfasts includes an extra egg yolk - the egg white is saved for Pisco sours that evening. The french toast is whatever bread we happen to be using - often challah - in eggs with a bit of milk and some spices. Maple syrup, yogurt and fruit and cinnamon and sugar for the topping for all of these.

We usually have some extra of these as well as crepes and have them several days later in the evening with icecream and sorbet on them.

For special occasions such as holidays - we make an egg dish - often a fritata or sometimes scrambled or fried - or very occasionally poached.

Generally speaking since each of us generally showers alternating every other day, the person who didn't take the shower does the preparation. So no thinking or negotiation is necessary. Whoever doesn't cook washes the dishes.

We have very regular system for meals: planning, shopping, preparation, eating.

Our shopping system is to usually go every four days - triggered by needing food for dinner. it is usually me (before the plague I often went shopping after I went to the gym) and these days often when Robert is practicing singing. We keep a list right by the dining table in the kitchen and add things when we notice them. We have a nice shopping cart/bag with wheels so it easy to bring the groceries home by foot for the few blocks from the store.

One problem with the list is that I have trouble writing bananananananananananas....and fitting it on the page. And today I put Maypole Spyrits on the list when I saw we are getting low on maple syrup. And I always have to decide if it yogurt or yoghurt.

For certain items like bottles of olive oil we have a spare bottle in the closet and when the current one is emptied and the spare is brought into the kitchen we add olive oil to the list so we never run out of important stuff.

We keep what we call emergency food in the freezer - such as pizza - for times when we don't have suitable food to cook or the schedule is bad - such as today with the SuperBowl starting at 6:30.

And there always canned soup and tuna fish in the closet plus a few other things.

Breakfast is when we get up - usually a bit after 8 - our people companions who are in bed try to persuade us to not get up so that causes a bit of delay. Normal lunch hour is 1pm. Cocktails at 6 and dinner at 7+ a few minutes.

Our dishwashing habit is to always wash the dishes after breakfast, not after lunch, and after dinner when cooking is done. The person who doesn't cook or prepare is the dishwasher. Washing in the sink, drying in the rack - never had a dishwasher. Occasionally if too many dishes are piled up in the sink an extra round of dishwashing is done at some point.

Today is Martin Luther King day. A couple of his quotes:

“We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.”

“The function of education is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. Intelligence plus character – that is the goal of true education.”

This picture was taken shortly after King, Ira Blalock (on the left), Gordon Gibson (on the right), and some others were released from the Salem jail in 1965. As it turns out I knew Ira Blalock because he was the minister in a UU church in Wellesley that I went to for a while with a bunch of friends. And Gordon Gibson was a minister in another Boston area church who performed my first marriage in 1966 (in the MIT chapel). -- and yes, I have posted this before.

---not my car, but an inspiration: 1932 Chevy wagon ---

In 1967 it was time to get a more practical vehicle with room to carry things in it (like lumber from the lumberyard since we were doing lots of home renovations) so I bought a 1967 Volvo 122S wagon - silver/grey, not red. At some time we replaced it with a yellow Toyota Corona wagon. Robert also had a car - first something from his parents, then a Chevy Nova, and then a Saturn.

Since then we have had a series of Subaru wagons: a Loyale, a Legacy, an Outback (dont remember the years), and now a 2017 Outback - our current car. (All have been silver.)

It is very convenient having a wagon with lots of room to carry stuff back and forth between our two houses, sound equipment to dance camp, and brush to the brush dump (8 loads this year). And with the back seat down you can lie down on the floor - foam cushion of course - good for non-driver on long trips.

One of the few good things about the current Pandemic is that the Metropolitan Opera streams a different opera every day.
This is what we watched since July 6:

Puccini: La Bohème
Mozart: Cosi fan Tutti
Tchaikovsky: Eugene Onegin
Puccini: Madama Butterfly
Wagner: Tristan und Isolde
Puccini: Turandot
Gershwin: Porgy and Bess
Berg: Wozzeck
Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro
Wagner: Tannhäuser
Strauss: Der Rosencavalier
Puccini: La Fanciulla del West
Mozard\t: The Magic Flute
Mozart: Don Giovanni
Bizet: Carmen
Wagner: Die Walkure
Verdi: Aida
Wagner: Parsifal
Gershwin: Porgy and Bess
Weill: The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagony
Berlioz: Les Troyens
Wagner: Götterdämmerung
Puccini: Tosca
Verdi: Il Trovatore
Bizet: Les Pêcheurs des Perles

We also watched L'Orfeo by Monteverdi put on by the Boston Early Music Festival.

We danced on 23 days - many virtual - normally it is 90 or a few more

1 NewYear's eve and a bit after at the Scout House in Concord
3 Challenging Contras at the Scout House: Jan, Feb, Mar
2 Contras in JP
2 English Country dances in Harvard Square
3 English Country dances in JP
3 days at the Dance Flurry in Saratoga

1 VirtualEnglish in Harvard Square
1 Virtual English in JP
1 Virtual Contra at the Sout House
1 Virtual Contra at Vitual Fall Dance Camp
1 Virtual Contra in Bay Area
4 Virtual Contra in Greenfield

In our two houses in Cambridge and Gloucester

Morgan Hotel in London
Bannister Hotel in Johannesburg
Vineyard Hotel in Cape Town
Courtyard Hotel Arcadia in Pretoria
Rovos Rail from Pretoria to Victoria Falls
Zambezi River Lodge in Zimbabwe
Imbabala Zambezi Safari Lodge in Zimbabwe
BritishAir Johannesburg to London

Guana Island Resort in the British Virgin Islands
Hampton Inn in Saratoga Springs for the Dance Flurry

Of course we missed a lot that were planned: SanFrancisco; Dance Camps in Aptos, Woodstock, and Becket; Finland; Dublin; Pittsburgh and Philadelphia; and perhaps more. But we did get two international trips to Southern Africa with a couple of days in London and the British Virgin Islands.