It is a weird time to be alive. Whatever your perspective on the current happenings, we can all agree that 2020 has been challenging. With so many days of the same, everybody is looking for ways to get outside of the bubble and try something different. Our family has embraced this idea to the fullest, so I thought it might be fun to share our distractions. Chronicled below are my efforts to maintain sanity and keep things interesting around the Chapman house.

Costco Bacon Bits

Love is a hard thing to explain, especially when it is between you and a very large package of meat crumbles that are somehow perfectly safe at room temperature.

My introduction to this wonderful product came at the Chili Cook Off. Playing to the potential needs of the crowd, our team stocked up on the Costco double pack of bacon bits, as they complimented our southwestern chicken chili. The stinging disappointment of going home award-less wore off quite quickly when I was sent home with 5 pounds of unused bacon bits.

They were a revelation. The days following were certainly a “where have you been all my life?” honeymoon. Omelettes, salads, sandwiches, pizzas - you name it. Bacon, if you haven’t figured it out yet, goes well with just about everything. Easily accessible bacon that you don’t have to cook is a full-on heart attack enabler.

After about a month of delightful overindulgence, we had a family intervention after my children demanded a side of bacon bits with their dinner.

Making Bread

For the record, I was cranking out Sourdough weekly before it became the hobby du jour for everyone who was stuck at home with nothing to do. Rather than bore you with how fulfilling it is to bake homemade bread, we’re going to talk about what I do with it: create some amazing sandwiches.

Alton Brown is a saint for many reasons, but his directive of applying mayonnaise to the outside of the bread was a particular game changer for me (and my waistline). It’s way better than pan frying with butter. Precisely at 11am, nearly every weekday, I bounce up the stairs and make a variation of the following.

I slice off some thick rounds of my honey sourdough and apply mayo to one side of each while an array of delicious deli cuts (usually smoked turkey + ham) and cheese get cooking in the pan. As the cheese starts to melt, all of the contents are folded together in order to mirror the shape of the bread.

At this point, both pieces of bread are added, mayo side down, to the pan. Working quickly, I pile the meat/cheese party onto one of the slices, topping with banana peppers and mustard. Once the naked slice of bread starts to brown a bit, you complete the sandwich and turn everything over to cook for a few more seconds. Slice that sucker in half, enjoy, and report back with how much I’ve altered your sandwich worldview.

Excessive Pacing

After reading the previous two sections, you must be wondering how I’m still alive. After all, we’re on month four of this lifestyle and I appear to be consuming a wild amount of saturated fats. I’ve found that the counterbalance for an iffy diet and 4pm happy hours is NEVER SITTING DOWN. In the last week, I’m averaging well over 10 miles per day on my feet…and it’s almost entirely in circles around our living room. Frankly, I have no idea why Allison hasn’t killed me yet. Our house isn’t huge (100 laps ~ mile) so you can hear every stab reverberate across the floorboards. This 717 mile challenge seemed daunting at first (average of 5.2 miles/day) and then I realized I go completely bonkers when cooped up inside all day.

Planting Things

This hobby had all my attention for the first two months of shut-in life. We were going to live off the land. I was reading up on local chicken law. Much was accomplished in the days of clearing hillsides, filling up planters, and germinating seeds. It was all good fun for our entire family. But then we got to the part where we’re just watching it grow. Can’t they grow any faster!? I was beaming with pride when our first potato popped up…and then some cherry tomatoes appeared…a little bit of lettuce…yeah that’s about it. With any luck, we’ll have two ears of corn by 2021. Hey, at least I’ve got a sweet compost pile going that occasionally occasionally wafts the worst smell in the world onto our back deck.

The oddest part of this whole experience is that my oldest child, who would prefer to live her life on French fries, has taken to making daily snacks out of the herb garden. I like cilantro, basil, oregano, mint and rosemary in my food, but handfuls of the raw stuff wouldn’t be my preference.

This could potentially be a potato I put in the ground and forgot about.

Purchasing New Friends

COVID-19 has made us so bored with one another that we needed someone else to play with. We are officially cat people now, because there are two of them. They outnumber the dog, who is less than pleased with her current situation. Petrie McFluffins Chapman made his debut almost three weeks ago now. He’s already slacked my entire company, played music through my headphones while I was on a call and decorated himself with a pink marker.

Cultivating Fungi

I’m filing this under its own section, simply because it was a separate (and stranger) operation. When you tell someone you have a box of mushrooms sprouting in a basement closet, their mind usually doesn’t go to Portobello. But here I am, giving a daily spritz to a musty cardboard box full of dirt. Unlike my outdoor farming efforts, I had detailed instructions with this kit, and it was basically dummy proof. Once the little white nubbins started appearing, they got huge in a hurry. Did they taste amazing and fresh, you ask? A mushroom is basically natures death sponge, so I’m having a hard time picturing the freshness. It was pretty excellent popping some of my homegrown sautéed mushrooms onto a super delicious sandwich, though.

Update - we have realized that the box, with its second growth of nubbins emerging, is starting to attract a large quantity of flies. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

Rock Crystals

Our first “how the hell are we going to distract our children?” impulse purchase was a rock crystal growing kit. This sounds fancy and scientific, but it’s basically some volcanic rocks and a sugar solution that grows in different colors on each. Gratification was nearly instant, as the colorful crystals sprouted almost immediately. Being our first family project of the quarantine, it was prominently featured on our countertop. That is, until I decided to touch a few crystals (after telling my kids not to). They crumbled all over the place. Daddy ruins all the fun.

Cup of Caterpillars

Gotta love this concept. Company ships you a cup with 5 tiny caterpillars and enough food to get by. Until time comes to take the top off and prop up their attached cocoons, you and your children simply stare at this cup of caterpillars on the counter. What they didn’t show us in the promo picture was the unbelievably gross web of poop that envelops these little creatures gorge themselves. It got to the point where the cup was disallowed from dining areas. Anyone that caught a glimpse of the mini poop factory was guaranteed to lose their stomach.

Our girls were quite interested from the start, and we were a bit distressed to leave the chrysalises dangling from their stand as we left for a quick getaway to the lake. Not one to let 5 emerging butterflies loose in a cat-populated house, I left them to break free on the back porch. When we returned, they were all gone. Having not actually seen any butterflies matching their description as of late, they either took off on a migratory path somewhere else, or they made for a nice bird snack. I guess we’ll never know.

Hope you find plenty of enjoyable new distractions in this interesting time. I’m off to load up an Amazon cart full of bird watching accessories.