Chocolate Chip Cookies Guest Blogger John

This was a great time baking these cookies but it was worth it because these were great cookies.

Food is the New Weather

Remember when small talk was nothing but weather? That's food now, am-I-right?

This was Monday, March 23, BTW.

Speaking of food and Monday, we got a lovely delivery of navel oranges and muffins from Poh-Poh and Gung-Gung on Monday. Excellent top-up for all the snacking that is happening.

Unsurprisingly, we've got more time for cooking. I even made homemade chicken fingers. a little too salty for my liking but everyone else thought they were amazing. I used the crispy fried chicken recipe from the Joy Of Cooking. 

Kind a labour-intensive. flour-egg-flour-rest-flour-egg-flour for each piece.

Yep, deep fried. finished in the oven.

They were popular!

So just like the weather can mess up your day (snowy, icy commute,) food can, too. I was a little nervous about breaking the isolation for grocery shopping and it was okay until check out and then, ugh. The cashiers are not allowed to help you pack in your own bins/cloth bags, which makes sense. But then it took me forEVER to clear the conveyor from my over-packed cart with enough food for five people for more than a week. The only thing that helped was that they were only using every other cashier (to allow for more distancing) and so I could use the counter beside us. I'd put some stuff on the conveyor, go pack that once it was scanned, go back and put more on the conveyor, repeat until the cart was empty. Then I had to go try to pack the rest of the stuff AND fit it back into the cart. So sorry to the people behind me. Next time, I'll accept the plastic bags, which will definitely not then fit back in the cart and so I will just get a second cart and ask someone to watch one while I unload the other into the car. You live, you learn. 

A few assorted comments about the experience.

• Parking was free - thanks, Loblaws! and the parking lot was quite empty.
• The store wasn't too crowded, even at the cash registers.
• I didn't notice a lineup outside the door when I arrived but by the time I was done, there was one. They are limitting the number of people in the store at any one time.
• There were just a few out-of-stock items that I wanted to buy. No eggs was the most disappointing. 
• No arborio rice was also disappointing. I have some lovely chicken stock and have been saving it for risotto. Naomi had also found a neat recipe in one of her cook books that needs it.
• I spent nearly $500 even though there was very little meat available.
• But shopping took me so long and they are so-well staffed that I decided to go back in after packing the car to see if they had restocked, which they had for: celery, fresh chicken (there was literally no fresh chicken when I went through the first time even with the 2 pack per customer limit), ground beef (limit 2 small packs per customer) and sugar, kinda.
• Because of the the chicken limit, I went with the large pack of chicken breasts rather than the small pack of chicken thighs, which we all prefer.
• The bunches of cilantro were huge. Enormous! Can I dry it? Freeze it? Make a tex-mex pesto?
• Plain old granulated white sugar was one of the first things we ran out of. I substituted honey but felt sorry for myself. Even when I went back in, they didn't have any of the usual packs but they had restocked these and felt like I'd struck gold.

I'm using 1/2 a sugar packet per mug. I use a largish mug.

The trip and unloading took me well over two hours. Maybe three. almost two days later, I haven't quite finished freezing everything. But I did freeze some more bread and reminded myself of my Aunt Joan.

Don't worry, we're reusing those squares of parchment paper.

I don't think I've ever put so much thought into a grocery list. The kids were quite thoughtful with their suggestions and were very moderate in their treat requests even though I'd asked for their "wishlists." Here's the second draft and check-marked results.

One of the items is "dessert mixes" and it's hard to find many that aren't chocolatey. Naomi doesn't like chocolate at all. I found this.

It took 3 of our 11 eggs but Naomi made these all by herself.

not as photogenic as the package...

but really delicious!

The lemon squares were dessert on Wednesday when we had Adam's favourite meal for dinner: pork-and-rice-and-gravy. The side of cauliflower is not one of his favourites but it is one of mine. Sorry, no pics. On Tuesday, we had John's favourite meal. Tacos are perhaps the only dinner he truly likes. 

Saturday, March, 21. Guest blogger Naomi. (again).

Today, when we went on our walk, mom decided she wanted to show us part of the UofT campus. What we saw were

• The weird tower things
• Some big canons
• The sundial 
• The meridian

Unfortunately, we don't have any photos of the canons or the sundial. When we got back we played a game of German bridge after Adam did his practice quiz and we ate dinner.
Editted by mom to add that we do have a photo of the cannon and the sundial and also pics of the kids learning some more card skills, notably shuffling. 

Adam, working on his practice math kangaroo
test.

Me and john finally finding out what those weird
 tower things do. (The tips point to the  CNTower)

Me, walking the meridian.

Our game of German bridge.  As a puzzle try and figure out
who sat where and who won.

Just a random telephone both.

Almost all of us looking at the weird tower
things. 

These are the weird tower things.

Guest blogger, Naomi. Thursday, March, 19th

Today was a very meh day. Everyone kinda just hung around and did whatever. Some of the interesting things we did today were...

In the morning...

• Mom went to donate blood (they really needed donors)
• Dad set up a Kahn academy account for the family

In the afternoon...

• Mom and John baked brownies (I didn’t really care because I don’t like chocolate)
• All of the kids did a lot of questions on Kahn academy 
• We had our first FaceTime music lesson 
• They ate the brownies they made earlier today 

John, looking very pleased that he and mom
Made brownies.

Looks like mom likes her book.

Guest blogger. Naomi. Wednesday, March, 18th

Naomi plays goalie against Adam.

Violet's birthday gifts.

Adam, getting ready to shoot.

~Hour long walk there and back.
Then came home to dinner made by Adam

Dinner. Made by chef Adam

Before Bedtime

What's that saying? "Never tell your mother you're bored." Keeping occupied shouldn't be a problem tomorrow.

This is what we call "double-fisting" around here. Notice that each of them is using both a hand-held gaming device and their desktops simultaneously.

We are doing other stuff besides screen time. Today, we walked for over an hour, played Pandemic (so close to winning. literally one action short) and Hanabi, worked on a craft for a gift, on practice math contests and filled in some more of Pascal's hexagon. The kids also practiced violin and piano.

Early Days of Social Distancing

So far, so good. We're in the fortunate position of not needing to worry about ourselves very much but to protect the well-being of others, we're taking a pretty strict approach to social distancing. For now we just need to figure out what to do with ourselves. Here's some stuff we've done.

Naomi did most of the planning and building. If it weren't for her, we'd be on our screens a lot more than we are. Today's MVP for sure.

Dion, Adam, and Naomi did most of the ball hockey playing.

John wasn't really into the hockey, but he was into building stuff. 

There were some glitches. like wind.

After hockey, Naomi started to learn how to use the 3D pen that she got for Christmas from Poh-Poh and Gung-Gung.

These are giant over-lapping Pascal's triangles. More progress has been made after this pic was taken. We are still in negotiations over which multiples will be highlighted.

This is apple crisp. We're eating better than on a usual Monday.

I don't have many other pics, so far. But we've also been doing chores, going for walks, practicing music and math contests and playing board games when we aren't on our computers. Once March Break is officially over, I'll take on the marking pile while I'm working from home.

The Lead Up to Social Distancing at the Lew House

I don't see why I wouldn't blog a least a little bit until things are back to normal.

In roughly chronological order, here's the last week and a bit.

• Last Monday, the Canadian government advised against travelling by cruise. And so, we cancelled the Disney cruise, to which we had been really, really, really looking forward.
• We also cancelled the flights and were irritated by WestJet's handling of that. And almost a week later, well, that money might be right off.
• The kids were disappointed but understood that we were doing what was necessary.
• We then hemmed-and-hawed about some kind of local trip for a couple of days. But no.
• Thursday at 3:45 pm, we got an email from the TDSB more-or-less reminding us to wash our hands regularly.
• Not 15 minutes later, I got the news from the CBC that publicly-funded Ontario schools are closed for two weeks after the March Break. 
• As it happens, I had a lieu day booked for Friday the 13th, the last day of school before the March Break. It was kinda lucky because on Friday, there would have been many more questions than answers. So on one hand it's a little disorienting to have been out of the loop but on the other, I don't mind that I missed out on the confusion at school that day. 
• I'd kept the kids home that day also because we had dental checkups around the middle of the school day.
• So our social distancing got an early start, compared to most teachers and students.
• I also got to go grocery shopping off-peak on Friday. And while the store was strangely busy for early business hours on a Friday, it was no busier than the typical after-work rush that I usually experience. The store was also quite well-stocked.
• As it happens, I'd already been gradually stocking up on long-shelf-life groceries and supplies for a couple of weeks, because I considered it possible that we could be asked to self-isolate after our cruise and didn't want to come home to nothing. So on Friday, I just needed to pick up some perishables to restock the fridge that we'd been emptying in preparation for the cruise.
• Friday evening, we got an email from our vice-principal indicating that teachers are to be available to work-from-home (most certainly not travel) during the school closure. There are still lot of questions about what work will look like after the break but I'm not worrying about that until after March Break.
• Last week, Dion's work had started with a work-from-home rotation but has now moved to remote working for everyone for at least two weeks.
• All of our extra-curriculars have been cancelled, except for music lessons, which will happen via video.
• Since Friday, we've only had a few F2F interactions with anyone besides ourselves. One stop at Indigo and one stop at a local game shop to buy some gift cards (me only.) I'm seeing online that this is one way that people are trying to support small businesses who will surely struggle during mass social-distancing.

I think that most of my coming posts will be filled with pictures and anecdotes of how we are keeping ourselves well and occupied.