Hot Fun in the Summertime

Not as often as I'd like but I do come up with fun ideas for chicken occasionally.  This night I stuffed the skin with kale, shaved potato, and Cotija cheese but THEN I crusted them with crushed up Flamin' Hot Fritos and baked.  This was so very summer.  I'm not sure why but salty food with larger pops of flavor taste best in hot weather.  The cool potato salad and the buttered corn on the cob were the perfect companions to these thighs.

There Is No End To What We Can Do Together

I'm two weeks back to work but pre Phase 2, so still void of actual customers. P and I were discussing how each little freedom we gained during quarantine, we're handing back one by one like pennies at the candy counter.  Now, these were all things we accepted pre-COVID 19 but somehow indulging in those freedoms made life feel so delightfully unregimented.  Waking up and eating when your body knows it's hungry, going to the bathroom not every 2 hours but when you need to.  Working for a full 8 hours and traveling back and forth to work basically takes your entire day.  When you come back and make a meal, clean up and then shower yourself, welp, you have time to basically check if the world is still crazy and maybe take in some visual nonsense before it's all over and you start again.  Logically, I know this is the deal.  This is how we live, in order to live.  I just can't help but notice how oppressive it feels when you've lived it differently for awhile.  You have to make a living and I actually love to work.  It's how we work could use some tweaking in that Google office kind of way.  I've been in retail for 42 years and I believe if the processes feel like prison, that is what your salesperson will reflect.  People take advantage and that's a fact but they will anyway so maybe the best you can hope for is motiving the majority through small allowances.  Its amazing how simple pleasures really are the best.  Like these after work frozen Whole Foods pizzas. 

You'd Best Believe She Hardly Gets a Penny

Brooklyn Hospital Staffers take a knee for George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, the African American Medical worker killed by police in Kentucky 

These scenes are powerful and especially during the Pandemic and by these city hospital heroes caring for us under these outrageous conditions.  Braving desolate streets at night, the subways and buses, fear of carrying the virus home to family members, seeing so much death, all for low pay and long hours. 

I find myself very torn lately, feeling so blessed that we didn't die from the virus and no one is sick (knock wood) yet in my family or friend circle.  A time of celebration.  Of course I feel terrible that amidst all of this hardship that this community is hit with these new examples of brutality and injustice.  I can only be silent, holding back a big lump in my throat looking at these ladies, I'm assuming many of them mothers.  I remember I had wondered where were all the women during the protests and this reminds me, they're working.  From these images, you feel so much, the history, the misery of it all.  

I was thinking to be any kind of defender I need to research each of these occurrences for myself and get educated on all of the details, some of which become murky.   I hate that this is happening to our cities, to the black community, to good cops, to innocent people.  I sincerely want to help but hate virtue signaling.  I didn't make time to read about each of the shooting deaths in these last weeks following George Floyd, only Breonna's.  I'm still sick from the Floyd footage.  I never thought we'd wake up and watch Instagram videos of a man dying in real time.  I don't want to do it again.  I don't think it's healthy for us to get desensitized like that, however, it was necessary this time, I suppose. 

But I may have changed my mind about the responsibility to bury myself in all the minutia.  I don't think that helps anyone in the end.  In these photos I see good, hard working people taking a pause, which helps me to understand the importance and complexity of this issue, much more than a hundred newspaper articles.  I hope the honest, respectable cops and folks living in those affected communities  can get together and discuss what needs to be done.  I will be right there if anyone should ever ask for my help or to get involved, but there are more than enough social justice warriors in this town right now, armed and ready.  

I was greeted after work with a Chopped basket featuring unripe pears, baby peppers, boneless chicken thighs and spinach.  I roasted and stuffed the peppers with pepperjack and pepperoni as an appetizer.  I made a nice stir fry with the chicken, pears and spinach and brown rice.  I figure living a good life is as good a service as anything I can contribute right now.