Whenever I go to Trader Joe’s (not much, lately!) I make sure to get two things: Cheese and Wine. Their selections and prices are the best! I usually get the Toscano with Syrah cheese (my favorite!), some type of blue and a goat cheese, as cheese board gurus suggest a “hard, a soft and a blue” for a well-rounded spread. I go a little crazy on wines- Rose, Pinot Grigio, Prosecco- but here are some other suggestions to get you started.

Best 5 Wines from Trader Joe’s under $10 from Real Simple

Floriana Veltiner Gruner (white from Hungary)

Cecilia B Spumante Rose (Sparkling Rose)

Susumamiello Ruggero Di Bardo (Red)

Espiral Vinho Verde (White from Portugal) $5

Corvelia Zinfandel (Red from California)

The only one of these I can personally attest to is the Esprial Vinho Verde, which I usually buy every time I visit Trader Joe’s because it’s good and super cheap. My in-laws once bought this type of wine for a Fourth of July weekend at Ocean Reef; the wine guy suggested it as the type of wine to pour over ice, with a squeeze of lime, to enjoy while sitting by the pool. It’s also delicious just cold and straight from the bottle, if you like wines with a little fizz; the perfect summer wine.

Speaking of Trader Joe’s, they are reconsidering changing the names of their ethnic foods, as they had previously announced. So, for now, Trader Jose, Trader Ming and Trader Giotto are staying on the shelf. I always thought these names were tongue-in-cheek (you know- a joke) but apparently someone started a petition to eliminate the “racist packaging”, which got Trader Joe’s to rethink their branding choices. Is it possible to be too politically correct?

“The World is changed by your example, not by your opinion.” Pablo Coelho

Another thing I often get at Trader Joe’s is their Almond Butter, but it usually has a layer of oil on top when I go to use it, eventually leaving a solid layer of not-very-easy to spread gunk underneath. The solution? Store it upside down in your pantry. Also, if you buy cheeses, take them out of their plastic wrapping and rewrap them in parchment paper before putting them in the fridge. I guess they are kind of alive and the plastic suffocates them, so let your cheeses breathe, people!

If you buy herbs, such as parsley, cilantro or basil the best way to keep them fresh is to snip off the ends and stick them in a glass of water. And you know how those delicate raspberries you buy go bad, like right away? Soak them in a 1:10 mixture of vinegar to water to get rid of mold spores. Rinse them well and store in fridge. I got these tips from food52.com.

I just returned from Publix in the Keys and there was no 409, no Fantastick, not even the pricey Mrs. Meyers lurking on the shelves. What to do if you need a disinfectent spray? Make your own. You will need a spray bottle, easily recycled from an old 409 bottle or purchased at the dollar store. The nice thing about this recipe is you can customize the scent to whatever you like and it doesn’t have that heavy, artificial floral scent. It’s also considerably cheaper than the store-bought stuff. I can’t testify to the germ-killing quality of the this mixture but it will clean and smell good. From the thefrugalgirls.com.

Homemade 409

2 TBLS Distilled White Vinegar

1 tsp Borax

1/8 cup Dawn Dishwashing Liquid

1 cup Hot Water

8 drops of essential oil, your choice (I like lavender or lemongrass)

Pour vinegar, borax and hot water into a spray bottle. Continue to fill with cool water. Add Dawn last, gently tilting back and forth. Add essential oil, if desired.

Random Ramblings
Sexiest Foods ( a question Ellen asked Diane Keaton during a game of Burning Questions) She gave the answer of: “A Creamy Soup.” It got me thinking about My answer: Oysters on the half shell, sushi, lobster with melted butter, chocolate covered strawberries, champagne and caviar, heart-shaped creme brûlée.

Should you get a hankering to “get out of Dodge” and visit Key Largo (only an hour from Miami), here are some restaurants I feel comfortable dining at right now. All have outdoor seating.

Key Largo Restaurants

Sharkey’s Bar & Grill Great food and beer, fun atmosphere, on a canal.

Snooks A little touristy and pricey, but live music, good food, a killer Bloody Mary.

Lazy Lobster A big chickee hut out back, by the same people who own Lazy Days.

The Pilot House Started by two pilots, on the water, good happy hour, live music.

Skippers By the Holiday Inn, oceanside, live music. Get there early to get a seat outside.

Mrs. Macs II Reliably good food and service, like diner food with a Keys twist.

For Take Out, it’s all about the Thai, ’bout the Thai, no pizza… for me.

The Key Thai & Sushi for: Drunken Noodles, Tom Kar Soup, Thai Papaya Salad.

Num Thai for: Crispy Duck, Green Curry and Stuffed Tuna.

And since I’m being really random, this has nothing to do with food, but everything to do with how I spend my Friday and Saturday nights. This poem is dedicated to Zeke, my partner in crime watching.

Dateline

A baseball bat by the side of the road A knife ditched in a bush A gun tossed in an inky lake These are the instruments of death, But who committed the crime?

Bum, bum, bum.

First take a close look at the boyfriend or girlfriend Husband or wife, Significant other Disgruntled lover, then the Ex-husband or wife, always prime suspects Sometimes, it’s even a Random Stranger.

Bum, bum, bum.

Not very likely, though But I did see one the other night A guy pretending to buy a house strangled a perfect stranger to death and left her on her own bedroom floor.

Bum, bum, bum.

Now, in prison, he’s a Preacher Proclaiming his innocence, of course Despite insurmountable evidence to the contrary. Why is this the way I spend my Friday nights? Giddy at each bloody clue.

Bum, bum, bum.

But when I hear those opening notes… And that Baritone voice beginning “It was a perfectly sunny Colorado morning the day Shelly Wong accidentally fell off a cliff. Or did she?”

Bum, bum, Bum.

Up Next: Still, who knows?

What could we have done differently to prevent this whole fiasco? Plenty, methinks. I have heard so many people who THINK they already had the virus in January or February, even though they weren’t tested, because it was before COVID was a news item. Is this paranoia common in 2020? Or is it justified? I also know of a lot of people, who have suddenly decided to move from their house, city, state, job, you name it. The self-reflection forced upon us in Pandemic quarantine has brought plenty of radical changes.

My favorite neighbor Maggie has moved to Coconut Grove. I’m happy for her as she embarks on this new chapter of her life, but I will miss her. I didn’t get a chance to really say goodbye, since I’m down (up?) in the Keys. Not that I could’ve hugged her, at any rate. And after being in the Keys alone for so long, I’ve started to veer into a weird territory- growing scallion ends and succulents, researching recipes for pickled watermelon rind and taking photos of mushrooms growing in my condo development to see if they’re edible. If the Pandemic doesn’t get me, the mushrooms may.

And Wyatt’s gone for a week, so I miss him.

It seems people are divided in our country on many fronts. One example is the working vs. not working camps; this even comes into play in my own family. My son Christopher is a welder in Tallahassee, his wife Courtney a Labor and Delivery Nurse in a hospital. When I Face Timed with them last week, Christopher told me he only worked 25 hours the week before. Courtney, on the other hand, is working more than ever. Her hospital has always been understaffed, but added to that now is people out sick with COVID or awaiting results from COVID, and they’re severely understaffed. She’s working her a** off and she’s pregnant! My son wants more work, but it’s not there. The situation is frustrating and it seems, no one’s happy.

My friend Katy is a server at Disney World and was one of the “lucky” ones hired back recently. But instead of her normal 6 hour shifts, on different days, she now has 12 hour shifts, four days in a row. And she has to wear, not only a mask, but a plastic face shield while serving Disney diners- she’s on her feet all day and she’s my age (60). Not easy! But when the 7000 Disney employees who got hired back complained about the working conditions in an online chat group, the 12,000 who haven’t been hired back said: “Stop complaining. At least you have a job!” And the $600 a week unemployment boost by the government, to help citizens in the Pandemic, ends at the end of this month.

Apparently, lingerie sales are up 50% in the Pandemic. Not in this household. Mumus and yoga clothes are still in steady rotation. We’ve been looking into buying a boat this summer (a dream of ours for a while), but apparently they’re a hot commodity right now, since everyone wants to be out on the water, socially distancing. Since being in the Keys for a month straight, I’ve started noticing things here that need to be fixed/organized/replaced, so I’ve made some Amazon purchases, delivered to the Keys. All my kitchen appliances are original, from the 90’s, so I’m thinking about replacing them, especially my Hotpoint microwave, which I feel must have been a prototype for microwaves. There’s no turntable that spins and when I put my coffee in to heat it up, the mug comes out hot, the coffee cold, so besides being ineffective, I worry about getting zapped with radioactive waves.

At home, our roof is still not fixed, but they have found the leak, thank God. The deck guy I got to install our deck was cheaper than the rest (originally), but he underestimated the size of the deck, so I had to pay him $2000 more. And when the contractor pulled up the deck, they found he had screwed the faux wood panels into the roof, which caused our roof to leak, so my “cheap” deck is going to end up costing me a fortune. Lesson learned.

My week of meals down in the Keys ended up being (at least somewhat) the way I envisioned them. Monday I made shrimp ceviche, a Cotsco recipe (Ceviche Salad with Avocado, Cilantro and Green Chile) since I had all the ingredients already. I wanted to give a little oomph, so mixed a simple mashed avocado sauce to put on top, along with sriracha (for color and heat). I also wanted a little crunch to my salad, so heated a flour tortilla in the cast iron skillet to go with it and sliced it into wedges. Yummy and pretty healthy.

Tuesday, I stuck with my normal Num Thai take-out, with an order of crispy duck and stuffed tuna. I’d read about the stuffed tuna on Yelp. It’s basically a slice of ahi tuna wrapped around crabmeat tossed in spicy mayo and it was as good as Yelped about. I fufilled my fantasy of grilled teriyaki chicken and corn on Thursday night. Zeke always accuses me of trying to “man his grill”, so this was my chance to man it myself. It turned out fantastic, but prefer boiled corn to grilled, even with the wasabi butter I slathered it with, to keep with the Asian theme.

On Wednesday, I made a Grilled Cheese Sandwich with Muenster cheese, guava preserves and arugula, on fresh rye bread. My Mom always used Muenster cheese for making grilled cheese sandwiches when I was growing up; it melts perfectly. The secret to getting a golden crust on the sandwich was spreading mayo on the bread (neat trick!); the preserves and arugula took it from a Ho Hum grilled cheese to Heck, yea! I served it with some quinoa bean salad my neighbor in the Key’s had dropped off for me. It was an easy, comforting dinner.

I also made Key Lime Bars with Vanilla Wafer Crust (a NYT Food recipe), just because I felt like it. It was basically a Key Lime Pie in bar form, but the vanilla wafer crust was kind of genius. It made the crust crunchier, and unlike the crumbly, graham cracker crust with a hint of cinnamon, focuses the palate on the intense Key Lime filling. Zeke loved them.

While I’ve been hunkered down in the Keys, Zeke has been in Miami whipping up gourmet meals for Rachel and, sometimes, Lauren. When I complained that he never whipped up these creative (or basically any) meals for me, he came down to the Keys equipped with a very fancy Coquille St. Jacques recipe (Ina Garten). He sautéed shallots with brandy and cream; it smelled heavenly. Best of all, this scallop recipe can be made ahead, stored in the fridge and baked later, which is what we did. He served it with rice and it was delicious. Saturday night, Zeke grilled a stuffed pork chop and served it with a Dijon, maple sauce. I made roasted Brussel Sprouts with balsamic vinegar to go with it. Both meals were winners and much appreciated.

We ate lunch at Mrs. Mac’s on Friday, which felt like Saturday all day because Zeke came down on Thursday. We sat outside (of course) and each got a cup of their Conch Chowder and split the Superfish Sandwich with onion rings. It came with grilled yellowtail snapper, sliced tomato, Swiss cheese and 1000 island dressing, on grilled whole wheat bread. It was really good and the service is always attentive and friendly at Mrs. Mac’s, a true local gem.

I can’t really complain about being quarantined in the Keys, as I’ve always wanted to seclude myself here and just write. Now I have the perfect excuse. I’ve been walking every day, reading a Travis McGee murder mystery (Bright Orange For the Shroud) and watching Chef’s Table, the ABC Murders and Clueless (25 year anniversary) on T.V. I’d like to paddleboard but I’m deathly afraid of sharks. I realize the chance of me getting bit by a shark is one in 3.75 million, but I feel like if it was ever going to happen, this would be the year. And Natalie Wood was deathly afraid of drowning, and you know how that ended.

I’m lucky I have a pool to swim in, as it seems to be the most desirable home luxury to have this summer. I was reading an article on The Skimm about how “Inflatable Pools are the Official Symbol of America’s Lost Summer.” The article said, about people ordering inflatable pools, if this Summer has a theme it would be: “It’s Better Than Nothing.” People are making do, doing without, realizing this might be as good as it gets, especially since Americans are allowed to travel like, nowhere. The article ended with “It’s 2020. Take a nice dip in all of your abandoned dreams.”

I’d been planning a Road Trip to visit my Mom’s condo in Steamboat Springs, Colorado with my Mom, A.J. and Wyatt. We were going to drive there, fly back, but after knowing a couple people who got, or were exposed to COVID on flights, I really didn’t think it was the right time to be flying. Especially with my eighty-something year old mom. And, Zeke and I were going to fly up to D.C. with Lauren to get her set up in her apartment to start Georgetown Law School in August, but now we’ve decided to drive instead. After dropping Lauren off, Zeke and I are going to knock off three more states on my Bucket List- West Virginia, Maryland and Delaware.

The expression “There’s more than one way to skin a cat,” has been on my mind a lot lately. It’s a grisly little saying and while I have no desire to skin a cat, it’s just kind of been my theme for 2020. Because if this year has taught us anything, it’s how to pivot on a dime. If you can’t go on an Alaskan cruise this summer (like I was supposed to), vacay in the Keys, if you don’t have a pool at home, buy an inflatable one, if you can’t fly somewhere, drive and, if you don’t have a boat, paddleboard instead. Just watch out for sharks!

We’re gonna need a bigger boat!

Brody (aka Roy Schneider) in Jaws.

Up Next: Key West Food Tour Seafood Lover’s Tour and Best Melting Cheeses.