March 12, 2020 Lunch – Miso Chicken Noodle Soup. Dinner – Sashimi with Sushi rice and Japanese Pickled Vegetables

It was like “Today Everyone finally got the memo about how serious and out of control the Coronavirus is”. The Dow dropped 2300+points after the President’s TelePrompTer read speech last night and the Fed’s injection of an additional $1.5 trillion of liquidity into the economy.

All major sports are shutting down, Disneyland, Broadway shows are shutting, and schools are closing.  There is a lack of testing so there is still no way to determine how serious this pandemic will be, but the WHO has now labeled it a worldwide pandemic.  It became apparent that the President’s comments that it was a small problem that the government had control of was wrong and counter productive.  Good luck Donald.  I do not think your usual ill informed BS is going to stop the spread of this virus.  It the absence of effective testing to monitor and slow  the spread of the virus, all large gatherings of people will stop..

I went to an exercise class at 8:00 and ate a bagel with cream cheese, red onion slices and whitefish at 9:15,

At noon I started making Miso Noodle Soup. I filled a 2 quart pot 2/3 full of water and added dehydrated chicken stock, seaweed, and three kinds of noodles (wheat, 40 mm rice sheets, and bean thread), two diced chicken livers, two gizzards, some chicken white meat, cooked green beans, 1 heaping T. of red Miso , and a handful of baby spinach leaves.  I ate two bowls and put the other half in the fridge for tomorrow.  I will add sliced mushrooms and sliced green onions to the soup next time.  I flavored the soup with lime juice and hoisin sauce and enjoyed its warm rich flavor.

After lunch I made teriyaki sauce by heating 1/3 cup each of soy sauce, Aji Mirin, and sake plus 1 T. of sugar until the sugar went into solution.  I then cut a filet of salmon from the whole filet that I bought yesterday so it fit into a gallon freezer bag and slid the salmon filet into the bag and then poured the now cooled teriyaki sauce into the bag.  I sealed the bag and put it into the fridge to marinate.

I had a flurry of phone calls between 5:00 and 6:00, so started cooking dinner at 6:00.  I started by making 1 ½ cup of white rice.  After bringing 3 cups of water to a simmer I added 1 tsp. of dehydrated chicken stock and 1 ½ cups of rice to the pot and turned the heat down to its lowest setting and simmered it covered for 30 minutes.

While the rice was simmering I sliced 1/3 lb. of the leftover salmon filet, four scallops, and 1/3 lb. of fresh Aji Tuna, plus ½ of an avocado and lay those ingredients on a large platter with a container of pickled ginger.

I fetched the Japanese pickled vegetables from the fridge to allow them to warm a bit and made the sushi dressing to flavor the rice by heating 3 T. of rice vinegar, 2 T. of sugar and 2 tsp. of sea salt.  When the rice had completed cooking I added the sushi dressing to the rice although you are supposed to let the rice cool first because we were ready to eat.

We filled dipping bowls with soy and wasabi and rice bowls with rice.

I heated sake in a pitcher in a pot of boiling water and made a cup of green tea and we enjoyed a lovely dinner of fresh fish and scallops.

Suzette drank her scotch with the meal after another harrowing day at the Center during which she radically limited access in accordance with a request from the State.  These are trying times.

Billy sent me guidelines on how to tell if you have coronavirus.  I loved the Japanese doctor’s test of whether you can hold your breath ten seconds without coughing.

After dinner we ate the last of the desserts from our Zinc Sunday night dinner and I drank another cup of green tea and the last of the sake.

Another precaution is to gargle with salt water.  Suzette said eating the Japanese pickled vegetables probably had the same effect.

I took a Tylenol and my vitamins and got into bed to blog and read around 9:30.

Bon Appetit