Every evening, Dan Zanes and his wife, Claudia, release a video on Facebook. Last night was #128. They sing songs like “Brown Girl in the Ring,” “Loch Lomond,” “We Shall Overcome,” “Deep Blue Sea,” and “Welcome Table.” They usually put the song in context, and then launch into their rendition. The songs are so familiar, and they sing so beautifully… They’re this tiny bright spot at the end of the day.

Sometimes, I’m just trying to get through the day to see which song they choose.

Sometimes, they’re a happy pause from worrying.

Sometimes, they’re a celebratory dance after a productive day.

They are always two welcome faces on my screen. I’m so grateful for the people using their talents to keep us all together during hard times.

I’ve entered the phase of sheltering at home where you try to recreate all of your favourite restaurant recipes. (Though we followed Da Mario’s recipes months ago when he posted them on YouTube.)

This week, we re-created Bueno y Sano in my kitchen. I even made the charred red peppers they used to have on the menu back in the late 1990s. And thinned the sour cream and put it in a squeeze bottle so it could be drizzled across the burrito. It would have been a more authentic experience if I had pretended that I didn’t notice all the people in the room and read People magazine while I ate. (That was my Thursday night routine in grad school. Bueno for dinner. People magazine on the table. Pretend I didn’t notice students trying to catch my eye so they could ask me a quick question.) But apparently that is anti-social, so I spoke to everyone as we ate.

I also re-created our favourite rice paper summer rolls from the Vietnamese restaurant at the beach. They were so close to accurate that the ChickieNob whole face changed as she chewed, and she looked like she wanted to cry and laugh at the same time. We’ve been making them every day for lunch.

It’s the stuff that we can’t reheat that I miss the most. The only takeaway we’ve gotten has been stuff that can be popped back into the oven and returned to high temperatures. That’s not recommendable with sour-cream-filled burritos. And it’s really not possible with the summer rolls or sushi.

I miss restaurants. This is a good second-best option until we can get back to restaurants again.

Have you recreated any restaurant recipes?

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Stop procrastinating. Go make your backups. Don’t have regrets.

Seriously. Stop what you’re doing for a moment. It will take you fifteen minutes, tops. But you will have peace of mind for days and days. It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week. In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Independence Day, Freedom, and Koshari” (A Half Baked Life)

Okay, now my choices this week.

No Kidding in NZ has a powerful post about the “it won’t happen to me” mentality, and how having it “happen to you” changes the way you approach the world. She writes: “Since infertility and loss, I’ve felt my mortality much more keenly, and feel very far from invincible. I’ve lost my default setting.” And maybe losing that default setting is a good thing if it reminds you that things won’t be okay so we need to do X, Y, and Z. Pass this one along to anyone who still believes they’re invulnerable.

By the Brooke is back with a life update. She managed to make me laugh many times, even while talking about the weight of the world. Like this nugget: “Zuzu also let Coco cut her hair recently. Longtime readers may recall that Coco has a long history of making poor choices when it comes to scissors and hair.” Fair warning: You’ll have the Hamilton soundtrack stuck in your head by the end of the post.

Kmina’s Blog has a heartbreaking post about her neighbour who died from COVID-19. She writes: “My kids remember how he would stop and tell them stories about butterflies. Until they won’t, it’ll be just a thing we retell but don’t remember exactly.” And finishes with this thought: “It is a very weird year to grow old. I’ve already aged 2 to 3 years by now, and it’s only July.” A very moving post.

Lastly, Infertile Phoenix has a post about her current two week wait to move. The amount of time is not lost on her, but noticing it brings out a fantastic reaction: “I loved it. It made me smile. A concept/time period that used to always be on my mind has totally slipped from familiarity for me. It made me happy to realize that my thinking has naturally changed over time. I no longer feel controlled by a two week wait. I no longer even think about it.” Cheers to better.

The roundup to the Roundup: My kitchen restaurant. Your weekly backup nudge. And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between July 10 – July 17) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week? Read the original open thread post here.

As I say every month, I’m shamelessly stealing this idea from Jessica Lahey. She has a recurring monthly date where she reviews all the books she read that month. Book reviews are important for authors, and I want to get better about doing this.

So. I’m going to review them here and also online, but I’m going to do it a little differently. I’m only going to review the stuff I really liked. I don’t see a reason to spend my time writing about something I didn’t love; it’s just using up more of my energy. So only positive reviews.

These are the books I liked (or mostly liked) from June.

Also skipping the The Return of Sherlock Holmes because, yes, I love Sherlock Holmes, but no, you don’t need a review of each short story collection. But since I technically liked it (vs. felt meh about it), I’m mentioning it.

The Silent Patient (Alex Michaelides): This was a very quick read, and I mostly loved it. I figured out the ending early on, so reading became more an act of “am I correct?” vs. “where is this going?” I prefer the latter to the former, so it falls into the solid read zone instead of the exceptional read category. It was the Diet Coke of mysteries: Easy going down and thirst-quenching, but… you know… it’s not a handcrafted, small batch soda.

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder (Holly Jackson): So much fun. I almost didn’t read this book because people said that the writing mentally took you out of Connecticut. (The writer is in the UK.) I didn’t find that at all. I thought the writer did an admirable American writing accent. If you liked the first season of Serial, you’ll like this book, too.

Catherine House (Elisabeth Thomas): This book is a hard one. I filled two pages in a notebook listing plot holes in this book, BUT I enjoyed the experience of reading it more than I’ve enjoyed some books that I’ve given four stars. So I read it quickly and was always engaged, but I can’t say that I thought it was a good book. But maybe people will feel otherwise.

Ghosts of Harvard (Francesca Serritella): The paragraph for Catherine House perfectly describes this book, too. I enjoyed reading it, and I’ll give it four stars for keeping me engaged. Life stuff distracted me while reading this, so it took longer than it should have. I’m keeping it on the list, even though I also entertained not finishing it at certain points. But in the end, I’m glad I did.

A Deadly Inside Scoop (Abby Collette): It would be hard to love a book more. This is a case of right book at the right time. It’s light—a cozy mystery—set in an ice cream shop. It’s adorable, I liked spending time with the characters, and it was a joy to pick it up at the end of the day. The next book in the series doesn’t come out until March, which is a bummer because fun book + ice cream recipes = excellent summer fun.

What did you read last month?

The New Yorker has an article about the future of restaurants, suggesting that restaurant-less kitchens will become more popular, with multiple businesses sharing the space.

Over the past few years, delivery has been on the upswing, and delivery-only kitchens—referred to as “ghost kitchens” or “dark kitchens”—are having a moment. Reef operates kitchens across eighteen cities in the United States, in seventy-odd parking lots.

The meat of the article is this business model of placing pods in unused or underused city spaces, such as parking lots. But the question of restaurants has been on my mind lately. How will we return to restaurants. I know people who are eating at restaurants—usually outside—but we’ve barely done takeaway. We are not ready to eat at an establishment.

The article points out why ghost kitchens may become the way of the future:

Opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant is high-risk and expensive, whereas ghost kitchens are lower-risk, offering a more affordable way for entrepreneurs to enter the business. In most cities, opening a brick-and-mortar restaurant requires a gauntlet of permits and inspections; restaurateurs waiting on permits might find themselves paying months of rent for space they aren’t yet allowed to use.

And yet, part of the joy of eating out isn’t the food itself. I mean, of course, it’s partially about the food. But it’s about the space and decorations and the people at your table and the people around you. Ghost kitchens remove four of the reasons for dining out while only providing a single counterbalance to the loss: It’s safer.

We don’t do delivery at all (pre- or during-COVID-19), though we’ve gone to two restaurants two times each to do takeaway. We’ve started setting aside a day every two weeks to pick up at one of the two restaurants. They are places we associate with takeaway, so the experience feels normal. We haven’t yet ventured to places where we haven’t done takeaway in the past.

We may head in this direction for a few years—ghost kitchens and hiding away in our homes to consume food—but I hope we swing back to brick-and-mortar spaces. To sitting at a table and chatting with the waitstaff. Meeting with friends. Peeking at the other tables to see what others are eating. Encountering the food while it is still hot; straight from the kitchen.

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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Erin McKeown wrote in her latest newsletter about an experiment she did with Instagram. She started only posting images where she was in the photo. So sunset photos, but only if the sunset was behind her. River photos, but only if she was by the river.

She writes: “Posts with my face in them are seen by an average of 5 times more people than posts without my face in them.” She explains how this impacts what she wants to say, especially her anti-racist work. And I’m sure it’s true for the Instagram algorithm—this isn’t the first time I’ve heard this fact. But I don’t follow people on Instagram. I mostly only follow places. And I only like/bookmark images that do not have people in them. (With the exception of nieces and nephews because they’re adorable.)

It’s a photo site, so it’s an interesting question: What type of photos interest us? Clearly, in my feed, it’s only places I’ve been and places I want to go. What do you look at in your feed?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.