I was still positive on the Thursday after Thanksgiving, albeit with a really faint line. Which could mean nothing, but both Megan and Pia had the really faint line on the last test before their negative test that marked the end of quarantine.
So, Mark went to Chicago for the day Friday without me, and I’m still sleeping downstairs with the kittens.
Happily, Saturday I finally was negative, and also felt a lot better.
No symptoms, except my smell and taste are not all the way back which is really a drag for cookie season (more on that in a minute). I mean, one of the main pleasures of cookie season is opening the oven and getting blasted with cookie smell. And as the vestibule fills with buckets of cookies, you can smell them in there too. That is, you can – I can’t, at least right now.
Mark continues negative, although he does have some cold symptoms. So we didn’t come fully out of quarantine, even after both testing negative Saturday.
We went to the indoor Farmers Market together, in the car. Then we walked over to the Capitol to see the state tree. It’s a chubby one this year – wide, fills up the whole hallway.
Mark walked home and I went to get my pick up farmers market order – extra eggs, and some bacon, and a ham for the cookie party that I intend to put out with biscuits & Jarlsberg – and also over to Willy Street for milk.
Then came back and I baked (more on that in a minute) and eventually went out for a little walk and eventually made mac&cheese* for dinner. We risked eating together and we watched the finale of the Great British Baking Show together but then I slept downstairs again. We’re going to test Monday and decide for sure if quarantine’s over.
Meanwhile, cookie baking continues.
Fruit & nut balls without their chocolate tops
Almond chocolate stars, real stars this year. Last year they were half kisses & half stars because there must’ve been chocolate star supply chain issues
Cranberry-pistachio biscotti. I think I will dip one end of at least some of them in white chocolate
Extra big batch of ginger creams
Linzer thumbprints
World peace
Raw springerle
Cooked
I think my sense of smell started decreasing on the Saturday after Thanksgiving when I made turkey broth. I kept thinking man this Whole Foods bird really doesn’t have as much aroma as the local turkey I usually get from Matt. And, I am a disgusting person – at the end of the day when I get undressed I smell my clothes (doesn’t everyone?) – like the armpits of my shirts – to see if I should hang them up to wear another day or put in the laundry. I wore this one long sleeved purple shirt for three days ‘cuz it kept on smelling ok to me. I mean I thought it was a little weird, I’d been working, but attributed it to cold weather and not sweating. Ha. I’m getting kind of flashes of smell now. When I was baking the linzer thumbprints, walking from my bedroom to the kitchen I could smell them, and when I left the springerle in the sunroom for their 12-hour rest, I could smell the anise when I walked in there. And food tastes ok. For awhile everything had a bitter after taste. Terese said maybe all the cookies might get a little extra cinnamon this year – could be.
*I tried this recipe from the NYT that I think they put out there as a Thanksgiving side, a classic creamy mac&cheese. But I realized as I was making it that it’s a ton of sauce – for a pound of noodles, 6 cups of milk, a pound of cheddar, a cup of Parmesan or Romano, 8 oz. Velveeta, a roux with a stick of butter … my normal mac&cheese uses 2 1/2 cups of milk. So instead of dumping the macaroni into the pot where I made the sauce, I put it into a bowl and ladled sauce over until I thought there was enough. And I used half the sauce. And froze the rest so now I have a pretty easy way to make a future batch – thaw out the sauce and boil the macaroni and walah – dinner.