Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 110 Read online

  So yeah, I wasn’t going to tell you about that when I sat down, I was going to tell you all about the things I’ve been craving that I’m going to make when all this is over but I guess what I really want to say is that the top ten things I want to make when all this is over are ten different flavors of cupcake for Kat, because Kat loves my cupcakes, and if you’re into prayer or good thoughts or anything like that, please send some her way.

  There’s still time to donate to Melissa and choose something to have me make. But, seriously, you’ll want to wait until this is over because there’s just not much in the house.

  Kale Juice Smoothies (Not Really)

  Dear crazy people who read my blog,

  I know—well, I’m pretty sure—that you’re trying to be helpful.

  But telling me that all my sister-in-law (the mother of my nieces!) needs to do to recover is drink kale juice smoothies with extra wheatgrass and whatever else was supposed to go in your Magic Immune Tonic? Not helpful. First of all, she’s sick with a disease with a 32% fatality rate. Second of all, even if kale or kelp or whatever it was was magic, have you actually been reading my blog? We are eating rice, with flavored olive oil, for fully half our meals now. Today we mixed in some dry Corn Flakes, partly for the textural variety but partly just because we could make less rice because we’re starting to worry that we’re going to run out of that, too.

  I can produce a kale smoothie for Kat like I can pull a live, clucking chicken out of my ass and make her some chicken soup with it.

  Also, this is a food blog, not a conspiracy theory blog. If you want to try to convince people that the government is infecting everyone on purpose toward some nefarious end, go do it somewhere else.

  No love,

  Natalie

  Rabbit Stew

  There are these rabbits that live in our yard. I swear we have like six. They’re the reason I can’t grow lettuce in my garden. (Well, that plus I’d rather use the space for tomatoes.)

  I am pretty sure I could rig up a trap for it with items I have around the house and bunnies are delicious.

  Pros:

  Fresh meat!

  Cons:

  Dominic thinks it’s possible we could get influenza from eating the bunny. (I think he’s being paranoid and as long as we cook it really well we should be fine. I could braise it in wine.)

  I have no actual idea how to skin and gut a rabbit, but I have sharp knives and the Internet and I’m very resourceful.

  Jo is aghast at the idea of eating a bunny.

  We’d probably catch at most one rabbit, and one rabbit split between all these people isn’t very much rabbit.

  It’s even more people now, because we’ve added another kid. (You can feel free to make a Pied Piper joke. Or a crazy cat lady joke. We are making all the jokes because it’s the only stress release I’ve got remaining to me.) Arie is twelve, and came really close to being driven back to his cold, empty apartment after he suggested we eat Jo’s rat. (If he were just out of food, we could send him home with food, but the heat’s also gone out, the landlord’s not answering the phone, and it’s February and we live in Minnesota.)

  Arie is Andrea’s cousin. Or, hold on, I take it back. Maybe he’s her cousin’s friend? You know what, I just didn’t ask that many questions when I heard “twelve” and “no heat.”

  xxoo, Natalie

  This is no longer a food blog

  This is a boredom and isolation blog.

  Also a stress management blog. Normally, I manage stress by cooking. Except we’re out of some key ingredient for like 85% of the recipes I can find, and also out of all the obvious substitutes (or nearly) and I’m starting to worry that we will actually run out of food altogether. I’ve pondered trying to reverse-engineer flour by crushing the flakes of the Raisin Bran in my food processor, like some very high-tech version of Laura Ingalls grinding up unprocessed wheat in a coffee mill in The Long Winter.

  My cute little bungalow is very spacious for me and Dominic. For me, Dominic, and five kids ranging in age from three to thirteen, it’s starting to feel a little cramped. Monika brought a laptop and she, Arie, and Andrea all want turns using it. (Jo doesn’t ask very often, she just sighs a martyred sigh and says no it’s fine she understands why the big kids are hogging the computer.) We are thoroughly expert on the streaming movies available on every online service but the problem is, if it’s appropriate for Tom to watch, the big kids mostly aren’t interested. We did find a few old-timey musicals that everyone could tolerate but now Tom wants to watch them over and over and Andrea says if she has to listen to “the hiiiiiiiiiills are aliiiiiiiiive with the sound of muuuuuuuuuusic” one more time she might smash the TV with a brick.

  We have a back yard and from an influenza infection standpoint it’s reasonably safe to play back there, but it’s February in Minnesota and we’re having a cold snap, like yesterday morning it was -30 with the windchill. (The good news: the cold temperatures might slow the spread of the virus.)

  So here’s what we did today: I had some craft paints in the basement, and brushes, so we pulled all the living room furniture away from the wall and I let them paint a mural. The good news: this kept them happily occupied all afternoon. The even better news: they’re not done yet.

  xxoo, Natalie

  Birthday Pancake Cake

  Today is Jo’s birthday, and everyone almost forgot. In part because she clearly expected that everyone had more important things on their mind and wasn’t going to bring it up. Monika, bless her cranky thirteen-year-old heart, remembered.

  I thought at first we were not going to be able to bake her a cake. (Unless I really could figure out a way to turn cereal flakes into usable flour, and probably not even then.) But—when I went digging yesterday for the craft paint in the basement, I found this small box of just-add-water pancake mix with our camping equipment. If I’d remembered it before now, I totally would’ve turned it into breakfast at some point, so thank goodness for absent-mindedness. We also still had a package of instant butterscotch pudding mix, un-used since you really can’t make instant pudding without milk.

  The other kids took a break from painting the mural and instead made decorations out of printer paper, scissors, and pens. (They made a chain-link streamer.)

  I think there’s got to be a way to turn pancake mix into a proper cake, but all the methods I found online needed ingredients I didn’t have. So I wound up making the pancake mix into pancakes, then turning the pancakes into a cake with butterscotch frosting in between layers. (To make butterscotch frosting, I used some melted butter—we still had a little left—and some oil, and the butterscotch pudding mix.)

  And we stuck two votive candles on it and sang.

  Jo did get presents, despite my cluelessness. The mail is still coming—some days—and her father remembered. A big box full of presents ordered from online showed up late in the day, signed “with love from Mom and Dad,” which made her cry.

  We’ve been getting updates on Kat, which mostly I haven’t been sharing because they haven’t been very good. We’re just trying to soldier on, I guess. And today that meant celebrating Jo’s birthday.

  It Feels Like Christmas

  You guys, YOU GUYS. We’re going to get a food delivery! Of something! Maybe I should back up and explain. The local Influenza Task Force arranged for the grocery stores with delivery services to hire on a whole lot more people, mostly people like Melissa whose jobs are shut down, and they’re now staffed well enough to do deliveries nearly everywhere. Everyone was assigned to a grocer and since we have eight people living here (oh, did I mention Arie also had a friend who needed somewhere quarantined to stay? We are full up now, seriously, the bathroom situation is beyond critical already and we’ve been rotating turns to sleep on the floor) we’re allowed to buy up to $560 worth of stuff and it should arrive sometime in the next few days. They’ve instructed us not to go out to meet the delivery person: they’ll leave it on our doorstep and go.

 
Of course, the problem is that they are out of practically everything. Minneapolis is such a hot spot, a lot of delivery drivers don’t want to come here, plus things are such a mess in California that not much produce is going anywhere at all, so there was no fresh produce of any kind available. I was able to order frozen peaches—though who knows if they’ll actually bring any. Of course there was no milk or eggs but they had almond milk in stock so I ordered almond milk because at least you can use it in baking. They also warned me that in the event that something went out of stock they’d just make a substitution so who even knows, see, it’ll be totally like Christmas, where you give your Mom a wish list and maybe something you put on it shows up under the tree.

  I did include a note saying to please, please, please make sure that we got either coffee or something with caffeine. If I have to drink Diet Mountain Dew for breakfast, I will. I mean, we had a two-liter of Coke and I’ve been rationing it out and it’s going flat and I don’t even care. Well, I do care. But I care more about the headaches I get when deprived of my morning caffeine fix.

  Some of you were asking about Kat. She’s hanging in there, and Leo has stayed healthy. Thanks for asking.

  Someone also asked about the rabbits. So far I have not murdered any of the local wildlife, because maybe I’m slightly squeamish, and Dominic is definitely squeamish.

  xxoo, Natalie

  Rice Krispie Treats

  So, here’s what came in the box from the grocery store. In addition to a bunch of generally useful items like meat, oil, pancake mix, etc., we got:

  12 cans of coconut milk

  1 enormous can of off-brand vacuum-packed ground coffee THANK YOU GOD.

  3 bags of miniature marshmallows

  2 large cans of butter-flavored shortening

  1 enormous pack of TP THANK YOU GOD. I am not going to tell you what we were substituting.

  1 small pack of AA batteries

  A sack of Hershey’s Miniatures, you know, itty bitty candy bars like you give out on Halloween.

  14 little boxes of Jell-O gelatin

  1 absolutely goliath-sized sack of knock-off Rice Krispie look-alikes

  Most of this was not stuff we ordered. In a few cases, I could make a guess what the substitution was. I wanted flour, I got pancake mix. (That one’s not bad.) I wanted chocolate chips, I got Hershey’s Miniatures. (Again, not bad.) I ordered some grape juice concentrate because we’ve been out of anything fruit-like for days and days and although technically you can’t get scurvy this quickly (I checked) I’ve been craving things like carrots and I thought maybe some fruit juice would help. I think the coconut milk was the substitute for the almond milk.

  I have no idea why I got the Crispy Rice. I didn’t ask for cereal. We still even have some cereal. But! They also gave us marshmallows and butter-flavored shortening (if not actual butter) so you know what it’s time for, don’t you? That’s right. RICE KRISPY TREATS.

  I made these once when I was a kid without a microwave oven, and let me just tell you, they are a lot of work when you don’t have a microwave oven. You have to stand over a stove, stirring marshmallows over low heat, for what feels like two hours. They’ll still give you stovetop directions but I highly recommend microwave cooking for these.

  What you’ll need:

  3 tablespoons butter (or margarine or butter-flavored shortening. You can even use extra-virgin olive oil! But, I do not recommend using garlic-infused extra-virgin olive oil.)

  1 10-oz bag of marshmallows (or 4 cups of mini marshmallows or 1 jar of marshmallow fluff.)

  6 cups rice cereal (or corn flakes or Cheerios or whatever cereal you’ve got on hand but if you decide to use bran flakes or Grape Nuts I’m not responsible for the results.)

  Put your butter and your marshmallows into a microwave-safe bowl. Heat on high for two minutes. Stir. Heat on high for another minute. Stir until smooth. Add the cereal. Stir until distributed.

  Spray or oil a 13×9 inch pan and spread the marshmallow mixture out in the pan. Not surprisingly this is incredibly sticky and you’ll want to use waxed paper folded over your hands, or a greased spatula, or possibly you could just butter your own hands but be careful not to burn yourself. Let it cool and then cut it into squares.

  Dominic came in while I was spreading the stuff out in my pan and said, “What are you doing?”

  I said, “I’m making Coq au Vin, asshole.”

  He said, “This is why I can’t have nice things.”

  Maybe you had to be there.

  For dinner tonight, we had minute steaks and Rice Krispy treats. And there was great rejoicing.

  xxoo, Natalie

  Katrina Jane, March 5, 1972 - February 20, 2018

  I’ve got nothing today. I’m sorry.

  My brother was coughing when he called to tell us the bad news, but said he wasn’t sick, didn’t have a fever, and definitely hadn’t caught the flu from Kat.

  Thanks for everyone’s thoughts and prayers. I know I’m not the only person grieving here, so just know that I’m thinking of you, even as you’re thinking of me.

  You Still Have to Eat

  Leo had Kat cremated but he’s going to wait to have a memorial service until we can all come—including her kids. Monika was furious and insisted that she wants a proper funeral, and wants to go, and thinks it should be this week like funerals normally are, and of course that’s just not possible. They can’t actually stop us from having gatherings but there are no churches, no funeral homes, no nothing that’s going to let you set up folding chairs and have a bunch of people sitting together and delivering eulogies.

  We finally talked Monika down by holding our own memorial service, with as many of the trappings as we could possibly put together. We made floral arrangements by taking apart the floral wreath I had in the kitchen with dried lavender in it. We all dressed in black, even though that meant most of the kids had to borrow stuff out of my closet. Then we put out folding chairs in the living room and Dominic led us in a funeral service.

  Monika had wanted to do a eulogy but she was crying too hard. She’d written it out, though, so Arie read it for her. I saved it, in case she wants to read it at the real memorial service. Well, maybe for her, this will always be the real memorial service. But there will be another one, a public one, when the epidemic is over.

  In Minnesota after a funeral, there’s usually lunch in a church basement and there’s often this dish called ambrosia salad. (Maybe other states have this? I haven’t been to very many funerals outside Minnesota.) I was missing some of the ingredients, but I did have lime Jell-O and mini-marshmallows and even a pack of frozen non-dairy topping and I used canned mandarin oranges instead of the crushed pineapple, and mixed all together that worked pretty well. We had ambrosia salad and breakfast sausages for lunch. (I don’t know why we got so many packs of breakfast sausages, but it’s food, and everyone likes them, so we’ve been eating them almost every day, mostly not for breakfast.)

  Monika asked if she could save her share of the ambrosia salad in the fridge until tomorrow, because she really likes it, and she didn’t feel like eating, and didn’t want anyone else to eat her share. (Which was a legitimate worry.) I put it in a container and wrote MONIKA’S, NO ONE ELSE TOUCH ON PAIN OF BEING FED TO THE RAT in sharpie on the lid. Which made her laugh, a little. I guess that’s good.

  Jo sat through the service and ate her lunch and didn’t say a word. Mostly she looks like she doesn’t really believe it.

  Stone Soup

  Arie informed me today that the thing I called “Miscellaneous Soup” is actually called “Stone Soup,” after a folk story where three hungry strangers trick villagers into feeding them. In the story they announce that they’re going to make soup for everyone out of a rock, and when curious villagers come to check out what they’re doing, say that the soup would be better with a carrot or two . . . and an onion . . . and maybe some potatoes . . . and some beans . . . and one villager brings potatoes, and another one brings an onion
, and in the end, there’s a lovely pot of soup for everyone.

  I started to point out that I wasn’t tricking anybody, all this stuff was in my cabinet already, but then I realized that I didn’t just have dinner but an activity and all the kids came into the kitchen and acted out the story with little Tom playing the hungry stranger trying to get everyone to chip in for the soup and then throwing each item into the pot.

  Then they all made cookies, while I watched, using mayo for the eggs and dicing up mini candy bars for the chips.

  It was a sunny day today—cold, but really sunny—and we spread out a picnic cloth and ate in the living room, Stone Soup and chocolate chip cookies and everyone went around in a circle and said the thing they were most looking forward to doing when this was over. Monika said she wanted to be able to take an hour-long shower (everyone’s limited to seven minutes or we run out of hot water). Dominic said he wanted to go to the library. I said I wanted to bake a chocolate soufflé. Everyone complained about that and said it couldn’t be cooking or baking, so I said I wanted to go see a movie, in a theater, something funny, and eat popcorn.

  Tomorrow is the first of March.

  Hydration

  Dominic is sick. It’s not flu. I mean, it can’t be; we haven’t gone out. Literally the whole point of staying in like this has been to avoid exposure. It also can’t be anything else you’d catch. We thought at first possibly it was food poisoning, but no one else is sick and we’ve all been eating the same food. According to Dr. Google, who admittedly is sort of a specialist in worst-case scenarios, it’s either diverticulitis or appendicitis. Or a kidney stone.

  Obviously, going in to a doctor’s office is not on the table. We did a phone consultation. The guy we talked to said that yes, it could be any of those things and offered to call in a prescription for Augmentin if we could find a pharmacy that had it. The problem is, even though H5N1 is a virus and antibiotics won’t do anything for it, there are a lot of people who didn’t believe this and some of them had doctors willing to prescribe whatever they were asking for and the upshot is, all our pharmacies are out of almost everything. Oh, plus a bunch of pharmacies got robbed, though mostly that was for pain meds. Pharmacies are as much of a mess as anything else, is what I’m saying.