When I began writing this bit for my blogsite, it was an anniversary of sorts, the 300th day of self-isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic. What a downer of a milestone… As many Americans will testify, our situation could be much worse though!
As of
this moment, our small county has reported 4,493 cases of Covid-19 or 1
infection for every 12 residents. One
person has died out of every 1,289 people in the county. In the State of Tennessee, there has been 1
death for every 921 residents… This is the reason that doing just about
anything outside our home is so limited.
Drives in the country and trips to the grocery store or for needed
medical appointments are our ‘breaks’ from being completely homebound.
Laurie continues her efforts to photograph our feathery friends. In this case she captured this picture of a male Downy Woodpecker. The ladies don’t have that red patch on their heads. They are frequent year around visitors to our bird feeder. These little birds are widely distributed throughout the USA and Canada.
If you follow my blog you may remember that I bought Laurie a natural wood charcuterie tray for her birthday. So, one evening in December we put our new purchase to use. It was loaded with 4 different varieties of Italian salami, a stack of peppered roasted sliced deli chicken and 7 different types of cheese. It was a simple but enjoyable evening meal…
This may look a bit disgusting but I just don’t like to waste food. We had a slice of leftover pot pie and a leftover boneless thigh that remained from another meal where we had Laurie’s baked chicken with enriched cream of chicken soup… I just mixed them together and heated them in the microwave. Of course, after taking the photo I added my Tabasco, making it look even worse but enhancing it for me!
As I went through our photos, I realized that I’d never posted anything about our ‘stay-at-home alone’ Christmas dinner. We’d purchased a standing beef rib roast from Fresh Market…opting for the choice cut vs. the prime cut. The price difference was significant enough to take my breath away…
We ate very well on Christmas Day! Beef rib roast cooked medium rare plus roasted potatoes, gravy and carrots. We also had a side salad and some nice bread. I will say that the next time I buy prime rib roast, I will splurge and open my wallet for the prime cut. While our meat was good, it lacked the flavor that superior marbling brings with prime beef.
We did have lots of leftovers and a couple of days later, we had open face hot roast beef sandwiches with gravy for dinner. I also enjoyed a number of cold roast beef sandwiches.
On to the more mundane meals… In this case, we had a lone remaining English muffin and what was left of the chili that Laurie had made earlier. So I lightly toasted and buttered the English muffin, and then, using the microwave, I melted shredded Tillamook sharp cheddar cheese on both halves. Then I poured the remaining chili over the muffin halves and topped the whole thing with a couple of easy-over eggs. An excellent breakfast!
On another morning I made my patented scrambled cheese eggs for breakfast. I used 3 eggs, 3 different types of cheese, a fork full of cream cheese, a squirt of half and half milk, lots of pepper and a bit of onion powder. I also fried up the remaining potatoes from our Christmas dinner and warmed up a couple of slices of leftover bacon.
We
toasted and buttered Wolferman’s English Muffins, topped them with half strips
of bacon and covered them with the cheesy scrambled eggs! It was a great breakfast!
We’re always looking for prepared appetizers or entrees to try…something that we rarely did pre-pandemic. In this case we decided to buy a box of Quality Foods garlic sriracha, Applewood bacon wrapped shrimp as an appetizer. In actuality we ended up having these shrimp for dinner with a salad. They were quite tasty…probably a 7 out of 10. Even better, instead of the 12 shrimp per box as it is labeled, this box contained 13 shrimp!
I started with a bird in our yard and I’m ending this post with another one. Laurie took this photo of a cold looking robin perched on a branch of our big old oak tree right after our 2.5 inch ‘snow storm’. In the winter robins flee south from Canada and Alaska as well as from along the most northerly edge of the 48 states. They tend to stop and spend the winter wherever they can find enough food…and we see more robins in the winter here in East Tennessee than we do any other time of the year.
Just
click on any of the photos to enlarge them…
Thanks
for stopping by for a visit!
Stay Safe
and Take Care, Big Daddy Dave
The two breakfast meals look especially good.
ReplyDeleteI agree on not wanting to waste food, Dave, and so we do not as well. That said, some of our leftovers meals may be less creative than yours but always enjoyed. I haven't taken any photos of them recently but a recent one involved a whole cauliflower, diced peppers, sour cream and cheese and then it was baked. We enjoyed that casserole as a side dish with several meals. The natural wood charcuterie tray was a great gift and we have also enjoyed dinners of cheeses, salami, crackers and wine.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely love that last picture, friend David! Looking forward to the return of the robins ... March? April? May? ... smiles ... Sending love, cat.
ReplyDeleteWe're out and about pretty much like you are, except for drives in the country, snow and too cold here to go out if we don't have to! Our county overall is 21,000 cases. Your food all looks good, prime rib is always a winner, but the breakfast's looks awesome to me, esp the last one! Good bird pics! We too feed the birds, the squirrels, etc. Rocky, our little tiny squirrel comes up to the sliding door every morning looking for a hand-out, but he must've ticked someone off last night as he has what looks like a small bite above his nose, and a tad bit of fur missing on his back. At least he survived whatever happened! I'm glad you said the difference with the woodpeckers--we have a male here everyday and we wondered about the female. We have 3 bird books that I could've opened, but now I don't have to, thanks! 😊 They're all so interesting to watch. Lots of snow by feeders so Bill just throws the seed on the snow now and we watch the birds flock to it. Take care, be safe!
ReplyDeleteI read from newspaper that vaccines have been distributed in many drug stores now, include Walgreens....
ReplyDeleteYou may check your nearby drug stores to register for vaccines...
# The first and the last photos so wonderful...lovely birds.
As always, your foods look very delicious....
## Have a wonderful weekend...
A lot of good meals happening at your place!
ReplyDeleteTanza, Regarding the vaccine distribution, every state and in Tennessee, every county is doing its own thing. The big chain pharmacies are working in nursing homes and are not yet offering the vaccine on premises. Stay Safe and Take Care, Big Daddy Dave
ReplyDeleteI see...
DeleteHave a nice weekend