Die In Peace

This is a picture of death. The reason Nebraska looks so awesome is they stopped reporting in most of the state back in May. Although if you drill down in the map you can discover how many are infected at their major hospitals. What you can also see in this map, which you can’t see without a paid subscription, is a national map with every hospital, how many ICU beds available and how many COVID patients they have. I posted on Facebook some scary stats that are happening in Nebraska — Kearney my hometown. Like, The University of Nebraska at Kearney has 520 cases of COVID. Yet, the Kearney Daily Hub reports 4 cases. Hmm…who do you think is lying? Yeah, I think the Hub is lying. I trust the Times. They are getting their numbers from the healthcare facilities. Nebraska also is not doing any testing so they wouldn’t know if they wanted. I personally think that 520 college students infecting 2-10 people each will ultimately end very badly. I asked my mom how many simultaneous classes are running at the college? Not 500, which means that in every single classroom, dorm hall, sorority and fraternity there is an active case of COVID. Every person he/she talks to gets it and passes it on. I’m kind of a visual guy so seeing a red map of people infected really hits home.

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So if you are from Colorado I’ll tell you what the media ISN’T telling you. Here are some stats from our colleges:

University of Colorado Boulder Boulder, Colo. 3,725
Colorado State University Fort Collins, Colo. 3,141
University of Denver Denver, Colo. 1,310
Metro State College Denver, Colo 240 cases

Home Depot in Thornton has an outbreak 101 employees. Denver International Airport has over 300 employees across their different positions. The luggage ramp guys have it. Since they are outside they aren’t wearing masks and sneeze or cough on your luggage before it lands down the luggage ramp. Was it YOUR luggage? Did you touch your face after grabbing your suitcase? Walmart distribution center in Loveland, 125 employees. Yep, your whatever you bought might have been touched by one of those employees. In-N-Out burger in Aurora — 74 employees test positive. Yep, your hamburger might have given it to you. And look out American Furniture Warehouse in Thornton AND Englewood. 73 & 65 employees testing positive. Oh, did you touch that couch that someone coughed on and didn’t sanitize? Kings Soopers in Commerce City, 71 employees. Did you shop there? Sorry, store not sterile. The fancy Broodmoor hotel in the Springs, 64 employees. Yep, your room not sterile. Sorry. Top Golf in Centennial, 54 employees. Oh you got it from your unsanitized golf club? Darn. So when unvaccinated individuals wonder where they got it or how they got it, YOU have an uncanny idea. MAYBE these people were out in public at ONE of the above establishments and got the virus there. We still don’t know how long the virus can live on a package. We can’t SEE it so many are careless. If it led a trail of blood like Ebola you would be wiping everything down with Clorox.

You don’t have to hide in your cave like a hermit. But you DO need to wipe shit down, wash your hands, and don’t trust that ANY piece of anything is safe until you cleaned it. EVERY single person dying in ICU say “I don’t know how I got it. I was so careful.” Nope. They weren’t. But you can be. And according to abc news, 204,000 children contracted the virus in one week. Scary. Colorado is testing kids for free in classrooms, unlike Nebraska who discourage testing.

 

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Say Cheese!

Depending on your age, you may think that I am referring to the popular catch phrase people say when posing for a picture. As a photographer I love catching an authentic smile, maybe even a laugh. And then of course, get the Instagram version. I actually am about to give a scathing review, related nothing to posing for a photogram. <- that would actually be a cool app name for a photography rival app.

I recently had a big bag of “Great Value” mozzarella cheese show up in my kitchen and I am very unhappy to say that it is horrible cheese. If you weren’t aware that is the house brand name for Walmart. The cheese doesn’t melt correctly. So there must be something “in” it to cause it to react that way. Hey, I’m not a chemist or a biologist, but I am a chef and I do know when a cheese is funky when you put it on a pizza. So the other day I stopped by Target, to you know, get some good cheese, and they did not have a single package of Kraft or Sargentos. They had this off the wall house brand, and only had Mexican cheese in stock. Wow. Overall I find that Target is always a huge disappointment. They never have what I want … and the overall selection is pretty bad. Artichokes. I’m not grasping for anything fancy. NEITHER stores had artichokes.

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Artisan flour. Again, neither store had artisan flour. If you want to have delicious entrees you need to have high quality ingredients. Needless to say, my quest ultimately ended at my local Safeway. Yeah, I know, as crazy as it sounds, they carry the Red Mill brand, which has EVERY possible kind of flour you could ever dream of. I was asked what do you use all purpose flour for, if it wasn’t good enough for my kitchen. Gravy. It is good for thickening sauces and making gravy. Children paper mache projects. Yeah, that would probably be it. I mean, if you are eating something, do yourself a favor and don’t go cheap. And actually, the artisan flour was on sale, 20% off so it was just a little bit more than all purpose flour. I tried using some all purpose flour for a pizza and it was soft and chewy. It wouldn’t even crisp up when baking it alone for a few minutes.

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Last week I made Italian Runzas. If you don’t know what they are, they are basically a calzone, but with an awesome bread wrapping. They are from a restaurant out of Nebraska, which actually discontinued this version of the original runza, which is ground beef and cabbage. Artisan flour made it amazing. I don’t know what kind of flour they use in the restaurant, but mine tastes exactly like theirs. Lard and sugar in the dough recipe, instead of using butter — like what copycats use. Sadly over the years, the restaurants got cheap and used less meat/filling mixture and all you get is a mouthful of expensive bread/flour. Seriously. I think they cost about $4 a runza. As much as I love Runza, they lost me as a customer as I can clearly do it better.

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If you weren’t aware there is a massive snow storm headed to the Colorado Rockies and they predict it will be feet of snow. So of course everyone is buying tons of groceries like they are all going off grid for a month. And if you missed it, Good Girls on NBC started up again, and it is totally worth watching. Love that show. As much as some readers would like my thoughts on the British scandal, … all I can say is I am pretty naive because I don’t usually see “color”, and I had no idea she is half black. The world, our own homes have their own problems. Sorry Meghan is having a hard time. I am sure the Kardashians are rolling their eyes and laughing.

In a world of rock paper scissors, ginger trumps the skinny latte. If you want a seriously entertaining review, go watch Ben Shapiro. I did and I laughed out loud.

 

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