Hi,

I don’t have a recipe for you today.  If you follow me on Instagram and/or Facebook you already know… my kids are back home.  They went to school for a total of 10 days.  Yes, I counted.  My kids are not in the same classroom.  There are four 5th grade classrooms.  Two of them had to be quarantined; my two.  They each had someone in their class test positive so they are home for the next two weeks.

We are being responsible and following all the rules.  The girls are not leaving the house; they can go in the front yard and back yard.  That’s it.  Husband and I do not need to quarantine because we are “contacts of contacts.”  There are several charts and graphs to explain it.  The school district emails them to us EVERY. SINGLE. DAY.  I get it!  Thanks!

On Saturday, husband went to play golf.  Someone he played with tested positive on Tuesday.  So now husband is quarantined too.

I am our only link to the outside world.  Thank God I can leave the house.  As someone who is better at finding silver-linings than me pointed out, at least they are all quarantined at the same time.  It would be worse to have a different person quarantined every couple of weeks.  If that were the case we wouldn’t be able to do anything together as a family.  Thanks Diane!

Also, everyone is feeling fine.  We are basically halfway through quarantine and no signs of illness so that is what’s important.  We are walking around smelling random things constantly just to make sure we can still smell.  We are behaving like crazy people.  But, with everything going on I definitely did not get my act together for a proper blog post.

I did make butternut squash soup last night for the first time.  It was delicious.  The first time I ever had butternut squash soup was New Years Eve 2003 at SqWires.

It was amazing and I’ve never tasted one better.  Mine was really quite good but we did a lot of tweaking and tasting in the final stages.  A said it needed more cinnamon, E said it needed more salt.  They were both right.  I really wanted it to be dairy-free but it needed some cream.  Husband left the room and came back saying, “I know what this needs,” and set down a bottle of merlot.  Now, I have not had a drink since Sunday (my medal arrives in a few days) but the merlot did pair beautifully with the soup.

If I would have taken pictures I could share the recipe with you.  But I didn’t so we will all have to wait.  Maybe next week.  Fingers crossed.

It’s getting pretty scary out there.  Scarier than it was when we were all in lock down the first time.   Please be safe and take care of yourselves.  Protect your neighbor.  Protect yourself.  Wear your mask.  Until next time friends…