Day 81 of Safer-at-Home here in Panama City Beach, Florida. This morning’s statistics for COVID-19 for Bay County are 100 confirmed cases and 3 deaths, and for Florida are 56,830 cases and 2,460 deaths.
I truthfully tried to avoid the news this past weekend. What our country is going through right now between the virus and the killing of George Floyd by the police, leaves me feeling nothing but sadness and a feeling of hopelessness. There was a small protest here and if I had known I would have attended.
What I did instead was cook. I cooked a bone-in Boston butt all day in the oven. I had originally planned to cook it my Instant Pot (IP) and make carnitas, but when I took it out of the freezer I realized it was way too big for the IP. And since it had a bone, I wasn’t in the mood to try to cut it into 1 or 2″ squares . So I switched gears and made pulled pork. I tried a new rub and like it for its saltiness.
While the pork was cooking I made some mango salsa. The mangos were in my Misfit Produce box. Then I realized I needed something to put the salsa on and cooked a pot of Cuban black beans. I think I cooked them for 3 or 4 hours, added various ingredients at different times. The recipe I used called for green bell peppers, another item from my Misfit box. I usually cook with red, orange or yellow bell peppers as I find the green bitter. But because of the long cooking time I didn’t notice any bitterness at all. In fact I really liked the beans and will try that recipe again when I have a full day to cook.
I also made some potato salad. The recipe I used I learned from Jennie, a friend from probably 45 years ago when I lived in the San Fernando Valley in California. It was her mother’s recipe and I have been using it ever since. Unfortunately the pickles I had in my refrigerator and used in this recipe were not to my liking and so I was a little disappointed in the results, but not enough to throw the salad away.
Today I was back to business, trying to line up estimates for repairs to the house from damage sustained by Hurricane Michael. Of course no one has called me back. I also tried to call my mortgage holder to discuss the funds. Tried is definitely the operative word. I was on hold forever it seemed. The recording started by saying that they were swamped because of the COVID-19 in that people were I guess negotiating their mortgages. Then you have to go through a series of menus to get where you want to be, talking to a real person, but because they are busy you get music, interrupted by a recording that says we value your business and this goes on for an eternity. Hunger won and I hung up after a half hour or so. I tried again later in the day with the same results. Of course I know better than to call on a Monday. So I will try again tomorrow.
During the weekend I tried to think what the subject of my Freebie Friday should be. I decided I wanted to do something with homemade patinas. So now I have a starting point. I am a novice at this virtual teaching and have a steep learning curve. I like using Zoom because it is interactive. My daughter, Carolyn, suggested I prerecord some of my demo and use the share function on Zoom. So I hope to do that this week also.
Stay Safe, Stay Healthy
