Matthew Zadow's opera blog: ... and back at home again

That didn't last very long... home again...

Duncan is upstairs awaiting the results of his most recent COVID test, and Maggie and I are stuck in the house until it comes back negative. As we don't have symptoms we don't have to publicly quarantine, but the school has asked us to stay home.

Duncan was feeling poorly beginning on Thursday, and his cold had already been going on for a week. Then on Saturday morning he awoke with a mild fever, and so that meant that he had to miss karate, and then we had to try to get a COVID test, which he did yesterday.

We are trying to stay clear of him, giving him his meals in his room. Fortunately his appetite is very strong, and he's been eating and drinking a lot, which is a good sign. The only symptoms are just the fever (which has now disappeared) and a mild cough that sounds to me like it's caused by upper respiratory congestion. We should get the results by this time tomorrow, and if they are negative, then I can go back to school and continue with the rehearsals and my private lessons.

Meanwhile we've also had to have Malcolm tested, as the roommate of his girlfriend Camille tested positive. Malcolm stayed over there the Friday before last, and then he and Camille were here overnight on Saturday, and I drove him back to his apartment. Fortunately both he and Camille have both tested negative, so that's good news.

As far as infections at school have been going, Maggie has had only one positive case in her class, but that was three weeks ago and seem to have been no transmissions by that route. One of our principal actors in the show has tested positive, and has been out since last Wednesday, but she emailed me today and seems to be ok, with only minor symptoms.

I can't help but feel that we are all dog-paddling in a kind of COVID whirlpool, going around in circles, trying to keep our heads above water but not sure if we'll get sucked under... I have collected yet another student to that brings my total to twelve confirmed, and maybe more to come, so it's very frustrating to not be able to get into the school to teach them. One of the things that I think I will do is to try to set up a dedicated room with a good microphone, a monitor and a hard-wired ethernet connection, so that the kids can go there and have an in-person lesson if (when!) this happens again.

From what I have heard so far, the October 25th Bach cantatas concert is going forward, and I am still being asked to do paperwork for Japan in January, so who knows?

In the meantime household things continue. We harvested a lot of tomatoes from the garden, and so decided to make our own ketchup! The whole house smelled like Leamington, Ontario, for a while, but the six or seven litres of fresh roma tomatoes ended up reducing down to two 750ml jars of ketchup.

I have continued with bread baking, and my rye and wheat starters - which had slowed down a bit - are back up to higher activity levels. I've been playing around a bit with using slightly different amounts of levain and water, and I'm happy with the results. Today's loaves are made from rye starter that I did a triple feeding / fermentation, so it's going to have quite a strong flavour. Also I ran out of 000 organic wheat flour, so had to use half organic kamut. This is a relatively new flour, made from Khorasan wheat, which has been cultivated in the fertile crescent (the Levant) for millenia, but has only been commercially grown since the 1990s. It has a buttery yellow colour and is quite high in nutrients... I find it really quite delicious when used with the 000 wheat and a larger-than usual amount of rye starter (I sometimes use as little as 140g of starter for two loaves, but in this case I used 450g so it has a much more pronounced "sour" taste). One nice thing about sourdough bread is that it lasts for a very long time without drying out or getting stale or mouldy. It's not uncommon for us to be eating bread that is a week old but still perfectly good, and sometimes in the case of rye breads they are actually better if left to rest a full day after baking before you slice them.

I'm also going to be baking a birthday cake today, so that Maggie has one for her birthday tomorrow! The celebration will be small, just the two of us, plus Duncan if he gets the all-clear (fingers crossed).

Here are some photos of our most recent little projects... Happy Thanksgiving, and stay healthy!