Seasonal Sundays (Week 14)

Where were you on the Leap Year, February 29th, a month ago today? It seems like an age or twenty ago, doesn't it? Or maybe, like Leap Year, just four years ago.

~ Skip Straight to the Good Stuff ~

Welcome to Seasonal Sundays ...

So much is happening, so fast, all because of a single invisible force frighteningly effective at attacking human life. One attacker, 7.8 billion attack-ees.

Whether we're fighting for our own lives, the lives of those we love, the lives of many ... there is such an enormous range of experience and responsibility. One attacker, 7.8 billion experiences.

A dear friend who lives in Manhattan is holed up in a small space with a husband, a daughter and her family plus a dog and two cats. The household bywords? Flexibility. Patience. And Above All, Good Humour. Good goals for us all.

And have you heard? Out with "social distancing" and in with "physical distancing". Social distancing sounded too much like hanging out with friends. Learn more? Washington Post.

Be Well. Stay Strong. Keep the Faith.

PS Will we forever mark our lives as BCV & ACV, before and after coronavirus?

About the Photo By Popular Request, a Little Insight into the Top Image: One fall awhile back, we planted daffodil bulbs on the south hill and come spring, were disappointed when so few laff-o-dils (our family name, from my nephew Alex when he was about four) emerged. And then we started to notice small clumps along the tree line and down by the creek and in odd spots on the north hill. Ha! The squirrels had their own ideas where the daffodils belonged and "replanted" them. And every year, more and more daffodils appear in unexpected places ... hmmmm, is there a lesson to be learned?

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PICK ONE

Pick One is for those of us overwhelmed by life's unending choices. If that resonates, then check out this one recipe and then call it a day. It's one that I think could make the most difference, the one I hope will become a regular in your kitchen, as it is in mine.

• THE RECIPE Cook’s Illustrated Foolproof Oven-Baked Brown Rice

Not Just for Christmas

THE RECIPE No-Chill Cutout Sugar Cookies Just mix and roll, no need to wait.

New for Weight Watchers

It's been too long coming but finally, this week, I flipped the switch on the Weight Watchers page at A Veggie Venture, now it includes Weight Watchers' current point-counting rainbow of plans, the myWW green, blue and purple plans. As usual for A Veggie Venture and Kitchen Parade, these pages are hand-coded with super-organization, making it easy to find exactly what you're looking for without wading through photo-heavy page after page.

It doesn't yet include all of A Veggie Venture's recipes (arrrgh does it ever take time to recalculate all the new points) but I'm adding new recipes every week.

I hope you love it!

• THE ANNOUNCEMENT Finally! Vegetable Recipes with Weight Watchers Green, Blue & Purple Points
• THE COLLECTION Weight Watchers vegetable recipes

Random Musings

• Clap-Clap-Clapping ... who else is clapping at 7pm every night, a way to express "thanks" to the medical people who might be lucky enough to be changing shifts ... apparently the time varies, depending on the timing of shift changes in various countries ... the first night, ooops, we went out at 8pm and heard ... only the peeper frogs and some low thunder rumbles to the west ... twas itself, lovely
• Incongruity ... the beauty of the emerging spring seems so out of step with our moment ...
• Who Mourns the Birds ... we're flocked with backyard birds, cardinals, crows, blue jays, flickers, bunting, titmice, finches and more ... and it helps to remember that bird populations were hit ever so hard by the West Nile Virus in the early 2000s but are coming back
• Instacart ... wow, will we ever buy our own groceries again?
• Offspring ... the only thing on Netflix that removes me from the current world, 38 episodes to go, I wonder what the world will be like by then if I limit myself to one a day ... kinda like the 100-calorie Healthy Choice fudge bars that we dole out every night one at a time
• Daytime Distraction ... even though I've worked for myself and from home for 24 years, I'm struggling with staying focused and am definitely feeling unproductive ... I see notes from people who're organizing the basements and pantries and going for long walks and think ... really? good for you but that's not happening here, for sure ... what about you? where's you mind taking you???
• And What Day Is It Today Anyway ... I'm losing track of the days of the week, who knew that my husband's M-F schedule grounded my calendar?
• Where Are You In This Moment? ... This Moment is my umbrella term for "all this" and "everything that's going on" and "dealing and determined but this is no snow day". What's keeping you sane ... or sending you to the ledge? Are you Zooming and HousePartying? Working? Not Working? Organizing? Not Organizing? Cooking? Not Cooking?
• My Heart Breaks ... in due time, there will be reports and hearings and books written about all this but oh my, we are getting so much of this wrong, we squandered so much time, we so brazenly put our own "freedoms" before others' dangers.

Why Food Bloggers Don't Always Mention the Coronavirus

We do, of course, but not with every new recipe. I read dozens of food blogs and know that I find it a little jarring, yes, when our lives are so upended, to open a post and have it not say something.

But there are reasons and I share them here.

• Evergreen Content – Most food blogger content is what the internet calls "evergreen." A recipe or a feature posted ten years ago can be as relevant today as it was when it was first published.
  Take Ham 101: What to Know Before Buying a Ham. It's as useful now as when it was written, especially with occasional tweaks and edits.
  With any luck, the coronavirus will be behind us even if it changes us in fundamental ways. But if every recipe written now mentions the virus, each one will need re-writing later.
• We Can Make a Difference – If we stay bright and upbeat, well, it might just make our readers feel a tiny bit better, experience a moment of escape. If we're full of doom and gloom, well ...
  And most of us think so much about our readers' experiences, our own pale in comparison.
• Advertisers – Paychecks are uncertain for many right now, food bloggers are no different. Our traffic moves up and down, it depends. But some advertisers are explicitly avoiding ads on pages that mention the virus, the pandemic, the scariness. They just don't want their products associated with This Moment.

Something to Read

My friends are reading book after book, reveling in a time when it's perfectly acceptable and even socially responsible to cuddle up with a good book and a cat.

Me, not so much. I have started/restarted/stopped several books, it's a tall expectation now, for a book to keep my brain from wandering off into Future Unknowns.

So is it odd that the two books keeping my brain engaged in This Moment are post-apocalyptic?

• BOOK #1 California by Edan Lupecki (affiliate link)
• BOOK #2 The Plot Against America by Philip Roth (affiliate link)

What's New?!

At least in St. Louis, the groceries are low on frozen vegetables but fresh veggies are still abundant, especially the ones that people are less familiar with cooking like collard greens, mustard greens, turnip greens and more.

• THE RECIPE Slow-Cooked Greens & Smoked Turkey Healthy greens cooked until tender and luscious.

• THE RECIPE Carrot Cake Cupcakes My cupcake adaptation of the carrot cake recipe from Cook's Illustrated.

Just Updated!

THE RECIPE Ham & Beans How to make Ham & Beans with a leftover ham bone.

Text Me Back!

I'd love to hear from you. Comment, send me a quick e-mail via recipes@kitchen-parade.com, dot-dash in Morse code, build a fire for smoke signals, launch a message in a bottle, send a Christmas letter, get the dog to yip, toss me a note wrapped in a rubberband, write a message in the sky, scratch a note in the sand, listen to a seashell, whatever.

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Kitchen Parade is written by second-generation food columnist Alanna Kellogg and features fresh, seasonal dishes for every-day healthful eating and occasional indulgences. Quick Suppers are Kitchen Parade favorites and feature recipes easy on the budget, the clock, the waistline and the dishwasher. Do you have a favorite recipe that other Kitchen Parade readers might like? Just send me a quick e-mail via recipes@kitchen-parade.com. How to print a Kitchen Parade recipe. Never miss a recipe! If you like this recipe, sign up for a free e-mail subscription. If you like Kitchen Parade, you're sure to like my food blog about vegetable recipes, too, A Veggie Venture. If you make this recipe, I'd love to know your results! Just leave a comment below.

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2020