Tag Archives: covid-19

Half an Avocado

One of the things that sheltering in place has made me very aware of is how much food goes to waste. I am now incredibly aware of the expiration date on every item we own and the goal is to go through all the fresh fruits and vegetables before any of them end up in the trash. Cue the avocado. This little green berry (yup – you read that right) with an awful large seed makes its way into our home rather infrequently. My partner is the only one in our house that likes to eat avocados and never seems to finish a whole one. So I use my fancy avocado cutting/peeling/slicing tool (we love gadgets in this house) to carefully cut, peel and slice half an avocado putting it in a little plate on the dinner table way from the rest of us. The other half of the avocado normally sits in the fridge covered in plastic wrap where after a few days it inevitably ends up in the trash.

This would happen every single time with every single avocado – kind of makes me wonder why I would waste the plastic wrap and not just toss half the avocado in the trash from the start. A week ago I prepared half of an avocado, wrapped the other half in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge. It stared at me every single time I opened the fridge. I could not bring myself to let it go to waste. So after two days I took it back out, chopped it into pieces, threw in some tomato, some mozzarella cheese, a little oil and a little vinegar. When we sat down to dinner that night I was pleased to hear “Wait, is this little salad just for me? Wow…thanks” and just like that the other half was saved!

The Best Thing About Today

As of last check there were over 41,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in New York City. New York is in a state of “pause.” Many businesses are closed and the schools have moved to distance learning as my family and I enter our third week of sheltering in place. It is, at this time, easy for me to think about the things I cannot do. I cannot hug my grandmother on her 99th birthday, hold a gathering of friends and family to celebrate our daughter’s 6th birthday, or continue my tennis lessons. We’ve stopped Sunday visits to parents and grandparents. 

Given all the things we cannot do we thought it important to take the time to reflect upon the good things we could and actually did do each day. Every evening at dinner, we go around the table and each of us shares what, to us, was the best thing about today. Among these best things are coloring, dance parties, sunshine, fresh air on the patio, crafts, streaming yoga classes done together as a family, virtual playdates and long conversations with friends and family. Despite the challenging times we are in, it is surprisingly easy to identify best things each day. Doing so does not make the challenges we face any less. However, it does remind us that even in the most challenging of situations, if we look for them, there are reasons to be grateful.