Lascours Lockdown, Day 6

Saturday, March 21. It hasn't even been a week since our official shelter-in-place recommendations went into effect. Last Saturday, Maëva had a friend over to play. In some ways, time seems to move very quickly as between chores, work and homeschool the days are full of things that need to be done. In other ways, time seems to be moving more slowly. When I look back from one day to another, the events of the day before feel much further removed than they actually are. A side effect, I presume, of the uncertainty and daily shifts in expectations with which we're all currently dealing.
On the plus side, I'm happy that I can now manage to do the exercise bike daily for forty minutes. Next week, I'm thinking of adding the kettle bell back into my routine as well.
I often bake and cook quite a bit on weekends. I feel like I want to continue that even if a lot of baking isn't really necessary as we don't have people to share it with as usual. I'm torn between the desire to continue an activity that I enjoy and the fear of using up supplies such as eggs, cream, butter and flour on things that my family won't necessarily eat. This morning, I made pizza as per usual. Only two because that's how much cheese I could scrounge together to grate. Then I made jumbo banana muffins (thanks for the pans, Ev!) with four thawed bananas. My freezer is full of frozen ripe bananas and seeing them yesterday as I was taking inventory of the frozen goods made me want to bake something with them. I'm the only one that will eat them, but oh well, I deserve good food, too! And maybe I'll be able to convince the girls to try them again if other treats get scarce . . . And maybe Sylvain will decide he can eat them once the last loaf of the sweet potato bread he likes runs out . . .
To ensure myself some peace and quiet for my morning of cooking, I first told Maëva that she should get her tablet to answer emails. When she couldn't find it, I told them both to start looking and not come back until they had located it. They couldn't and still can't. I went downstairs and told them to organize their dress-up things. Nothing got organized, but attempting to do the task they'd been set sure kept them busy all morning! I got to do both the pizza and muffin baking with minimal interruptions and no requests to help. Score!
I decided I should probably try to save the stove gas for things that can only be made that way (like popcorn in the Whirley Pop!), so I'm heating water in the microwave for tea (doesn't stay hot as long, but oh well) and experimenting with using the Auto Cook Pro for more things like sauces, rice and pasta . . . I used it to make the tomato sauce for pizza and it turned out okay. It's hard to control the temperature and it was difficult to prevent drops of sauce splurting all over, but it worked. Perhaps I'll get better at controlling it as I go . . .
The girls were both supposed to attend birthday parties this afternoon. They've been canceled, of course. However, Maëva is going to try out a birthday video chat with her friend instead.

This afternoon, I managed to get Laureva to try a banana muffin. She said she liked it. I promised she could help me make more.