04/18/2020

Never in my wildest dreams did I think this was what I would be writing about. Traveling and seeing the US by coach – YES…boating adventures – YES but all of these things seem like a distant memory right now. Our days are filled with routine things, we are happy to be waiting this mess out in a warm sunny place, we are grateful to be healthy and uber grateful that our family and friends are healthy. That said, I still feel anxious…my need to know hasn’t gotten much satisfaction. Totally agree Mick…lots of useless information out there right now.

So here is how day THIRTY of our sheltering in place went:

• Wally and I did a 3 mile walk in the morning…We traipsed thru the orchard and around the golf courses. Our wildlife spotting today was two HUGE carp in the big pond on the 18 hole golf course. These big boys were at least two feet long, goldish shadows, lazily swimming through the water. Not photogenic but cool to watch. We also found a small fish spine at the other end of the pond so there must be some smaller fish in that pond that we didn’t see.

• The Palm Springs Farmers Market is still up and running so we decided to go check it out after some friends told us how well it is being run – Thanks Cindy!!! The sidewalks at the entrance had circles painted on them six feet apart and as someone left the market, a person was allowed to enter and you advanced a circle until you were in. Masks were required to enter, only 50 people at a time are allowed into the market, you could not touch anything and again there were circles at each vendors booth. There was a well dressed dude standing off to the side of the entrance line letting everyone know how this was going to go down (check out the picture and you tell me that’s not well dressed). The wait was less than 5 minutes to go in and I must say it was so much more civilized than many markets I have been to in the past. I scored a beautiful loaf of cinnamon carmel swirl bread (oh breakfast boy, please come out and play), two bunches of amber beets, one bunch of red beets, fresh carrots, three baskets of luscious strawberries and two fresh hangar steaks. Wow, look at me out shopping again!!!

• I spent the rest of the afternoon in the kitchen putting away the market treasures, noshing on those strawberries and cooking up a storm. I used the instapot to sauté beet greens with red onion and garlic (yes, the tops of beets are edible people). Found a partial bag of brown lentils so those got cooked next in the instapot and combined with the beet greens along with some fresh parsley. Then I cooked the beets in the instapot…all of these yummies will be used for dinner tomorrow with that fresh hangar steak.

• We sat outside and enjoyed our late afternoon Gin and Juice while Bentie zested lemons.

• Dinner was Barbacoa Beef served over Garlic Couscous (cause I had a partial bag of that too) topped with Roasted Corn and Cilantro and a side of Spicy Coleslaw.

• Worked on this blog post.

Day THIRTY was almost normal too… do you think this is just part of that acceptance thing??? Maybe, except normally we would be sharing this delicious meal with friends.