COVID-19: Quarantine Cuisine and Beyond

From Worldometer,  COVID-19 new deaths:

           DAY USA   WORLD   Brazil   India   South Africa

May     27    1535     5283         1148     190         28

            28    1223     4612         1067     177         25
            29    1212     4873         1180     269         34
            30    1015     4084           890     205         32
June      1      638     3189          480      223         40
              2      730     3053          732      200         22
              3    1134    4669         1232      221         50
             4     1083    4928         1269      259         37
             5     1031    5511         1492      275         56
             6       975    4906         1008      286         60
             7       706    4253           910      297         44
             8       586    3157           813      266         82
             9     1093    4732         1185      246         82
           10       982    5163         1300      388         48
           11       904    4951         1261      394         74

Summary:  So so day for Humanity.

I'm still eating, and these photos are clogging up my desktop.  A series of them in chronological order, from my quarantine days to freedom.

First, one can get complacent about how good life is until something bad happens.  I slept for ten hours last night after an arduous day at the Makalena Golf Course, when I had to quit because my conditioning was just not there.  I was still exhausted after dinner and went to bed early.  The final stretch was six hour long, and I awoke with a sore throat.  My initial reaction was COVID-19, then, maybe only the flu, or, perhaps a cold.  Then, after breakfast, my throat was fine.  Apparently, my body is not used to sleeping that long, and my throat dried up to cause this discomfort.  Now that I feel fine, euphoria is back and life remains terrific.  So on to food.

In one of my final quarantine meals, 15 Craigside supplied the braised chicken and rice, but I added some ikura (salmon eggs) and fried egg, plus tsukemono (Japanese pickles).  You can speculate on what I was drinking.

Next, 15C provided the lasagna, garlic bread and salad.  I chopped up the pasta and fried it in butter, adding onions, tomato and basil, plus a dollop of Carnation cream.  Something about dairy products significantly enhance pasta:

As you can see, I was watching those protests.  As release from quarantine was to be the next day, I celebrated my final jail-time meal with a 2006 Stanford Ridgeline Cabernet Sauvignon.

Then, we were allowed to leave the premises.  Note that I went prepared, with not only a mask, but a face shield.

My first stop was Marukai.  In addition to the usual assortment of needs, I selected a piece of Miyazaki wagyu beef, plus a small lobster.

The meat can age a bit, so my first big home meal was lobster:

Protests were still prominent on television.  This was a totally different kind of lobster.  The body was relatively small, but the claws were large and tough.  The nut/lobster crackers did not work.  Couldn't put any kind of dent no matter what I did.  So I had to resort to kitchen shears.  One other problem was that I had to grip the claw, and pricked my thumb and index finger, leading to bleeding from those spots on my left hand.  It occurred to me that these injuries were where I gripped a golf club.

At least the wagyu beef was safe to prepare.

Then, an artichoke plus goose liver pate meal, with a bottle of Stanford Chardonnay:

In my further adventures into this new jungle of coronavirus, I also got a haircut, losing a pound of hair.  I don't recall ever letting my hair grow for three months.  I'm practically bald now, but am not aggravated anymore by hair touching my ears, and won't be for another month.  Next door to my barber shop in downtown Honolulu is Lucky Belly, so I had a belly bowl, the best ramen made, with a glass of sparkling wine:

I then had my taxes done.  I thought I'd be paying $8000 this year, but instead got a refund.  So I reveled by having lunch at Rokkaku Hamakatsu:

The beer was Orion and the flight of sake came from Niigata.  A truly outstanding combination of tonkatsu and torikatsu.  In Hawaii, the second one is called chicken katsu.

Someone sent me this clip:

   Giant and mini sushi by Hiromu Inagaki at  Umewaka Restaurant in Anjo City, Japan.

That's an 11-pound sushi.

The Year is 2011, and a couple of trips highlighted the year for me:

• A visit to the island of Kauai with my college freshman roommate and his friends.  My first attempt at photographing a moonset from my room at the St. Regis in Princeville.
• In February I left on one of my most memorable journeys:

Anyway, I'm on to Bangkok, will catch the Eastern Oriental Express to Singapore, then on to Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul, back to Tokyo, then Shinkansen to the Cherry Blossoms throughout Japan.  I will stop by the River Kwai Bridge that Colonel Nicholson, played by Alec Guinness, tried to protect.  The Colonel Bogey March was the theme song, but real Colonel Bogey had nothing to do with the movie or plot.

• I caught the Eastern Oriental train from Bangkok to Singapore, and stayed at the Marina Bay Hotel.
• The Great Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami struck Japan on March 11, but I nevertheless flew to Narita the next day.  Big mistake.
• Things were so bad in Tokyo that I luckily found a flight to China.

• A couple of days later, it was safe to get halfway back to Japan, so I flew to Seoul.
• Just another meal at Robuchon.
• The Peace Park also has a replica of Fat Man, the A-Bomb that fell over Nagasaki.
• My experience with a 7.1 earthquake in Tokyo.
• I took the one week cruise on Norwegian to the major Hawaiian Islands.
• On October 3 I took another around the world trip:

Today I begin my final ash scattering journey.  I'll be stopping through Bangkok, Tokyo, Zurich, Amsterdam, Stockholm, London, Sao Paulo, Rio, Buenos Aires, Lima, Cuzco, Machu Picchu, Las Vegas, Reno, and San Francisco.  Let me know if I'll be stopping by your city.  Perhaps we can have lunch or something.  My first leg takes 18 hours, so, maybe I'll break my Rome-DC record.  Hopefully, it will be less stressful than my Delhi to Barcelona adventure.

• Between Honolulu and Bangkok I had 24 drinks.  Yesterday I reported  on my hairy journey from Delhi to Barcelona.  I should have sent you to my HuffPo reporting on this ordeal, which also featured a high imbibition rate.
• London to San Paulo.
• Rio.
• Machu Picchu.
• Around the World in 43 Days.
• 2011 was a good year.

The Year 2011:

• The Great Tohoku Earthquake, Tsunami and Nuclear Disaster.  While the radiated water pollution looks ominous, turns out that the Atlantic and North Sea has a lot more actual nuclear wastes.
• USA assassinates Osama bin Laden.

• Neptune completes first orbit of the Sun since discovery in 1846.  Takes 165 years.
• Final Space Shuttle flight.
• Occupy Wall Street protests begin.
• Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi killed.
• World population reaches 7 billion.  Today, 7.8 billion.
• Kim Jung-un's father dies.

In 2 minutes, the #1 songs of 2011.  Adele's Rolling the Deep is the top song of the year.  Rather mundane way to end the work week, but yes, these are my heroes of the quarantine lockdown...snails.

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