Three Beautiful Things 11-17-20: Everett Returns to Kellogg, Walking with Laurie Garrett, Start with Canned Tomatoes

 1. Today, Everett was transferred out of acute care at Kootenai Health in Coeur d'Alene to the Shoshone Medical Center (SMC) in Kellogg. This was exactly the next step Christy hoped for. Things are calm, quieter at SMC and SMC allows Everett one visitor a day, so Christy can be with him each day until she leaves the premises. Had Everett been admitted to Cascadia's facility across the street, Christy could not have visited him. Everett's room gives him a view of Cameron Avenue -- he can see Sam's, his favorite breakfast spot -- and Christy looks forward to bringing Riley to Everett's window. As Christy wrote, "there's still work to be done" -- rehab, building strength, and healing. 

2. It was windy, not rainy, and the temperature was mild this afternoon when I walked to the Avista office to leave off my monthly payment in the outdoor drop box. On walks like this, I enjoy listening to either books on audible or to podcasts. I follow science writer Laurie Garrett on Twitter, not only for any daily comments she might make about the pandemic, but also because she always posts when she'll be appearing on television or as a podcast guest. Today I learned that she spent over an hour talking with John Helleman on his podcast Hell and High Water, here, and I listened to about half of this conversation while walking and finished it when I returned home. 

Laurie Garrett has been researching and writing about public health worldwide, epidemics, and pandemics for over thirty years. If you'd like to read more about her educational background and her career as a journalist and public intellectual, you can always read her profile at Wikipedia and you can explore her website, here, where her books are described in detail as is her work traveling the globe, writing about viruses (HIV, Ebola, SARS, and others), government's responses, and public health, both in the USA and globally. 

3. When Debbie returned to Kellogg from Eugene, she showed me how she'd been fixing meals based on sautéing chopped onion and garlic, adding a can of diced tomatoes (preferably fire roasted), and then other ingredients and eating it served over rice. On Monday, I made one of these mixtures and added garbanzo beans to the mixture and seasoned it with salt, pepper, basil, oregano, and fennel seeds. I had some of that mixture left over. I sautéed more onion, added cubes of drained tofu to it, seasoned it much the same as Monday's night's mess, with the addition of garlic powder. Both nights, I served this mixture over rice. I didn't eat the entire batch tonight and when I do reheat it, my next move, if I remember, will be to add in green beans. 

After dinner, I read more of Heather Cox Richardson's book, How the South Won the Civil War.