Monotony of 150 days in quarantine leaves me bored to tears, fearing long food lines

EXCUSE TO LEAVE THE HOUSE: To break the monotony of staying home during the Covid-19 pandemic, I pack up all of the plastic bags and food wrapping we accumulate and take them for recycling at the ShopRite in Paramus, a few miles from my home.

Plastic in our food and water

 adds to worry over coronavirus

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

HACKENSACK, N.J. -- As an older American, I know the quarantine is blurring time when I have to check my pill organizer to know what day it is.

The Covid-19 death toll continues to climb, but all my family and I can do is try to eat healthy, stay safe and limit our trips outside our home.

Still, with our quarantine nearing 150 days, the monotony, broken mostly by food shopping, is getting to us.

Our days and nights at home have a sameness to them -- punctuated only by horrifying news of the devastation and death caused by the coronavirus.

The United States has passed 5 million confirmed cases of the virus, more than any other country, The New York Times reported.

Food shopping

I've developed an unnatural fear of lines.

Lines that double, triple and quadruple, such as those I saw in mid-April at Costco Wholesale in Teterboro.

Or, even the long, single line of masked shoppers I once stood on at the H Mart in Ridgefield, a Korean supermarket offering a large selection of fresh, wild-caught fish for our Sunday dinner.

Now, I go to the smaller H Mart in Paramus, where there is never a line to get in on weekends, but lately a short line to check out with my fresh fish and prepared dishes like stewed tofu or pollock with sweet and hot peppers.

I've encountered other long lines, especially for returns, at Lowe's and Kohl's, both in Paramus.

Weight gain and loss

In the 5th month of the quarantine, food shopping -- my only form of exercise -- has become a chore instead of something I delight in.

Still, I am trying to buy more and more organic and non-GMO food that is free of pesticides for my family of 4, not only at Whole Foods Market, ShopRite and H Mart, but at Costco Wholesale, where an increasingly large variety of organic products and produce are available.

In the first few months of the quarantine, I gained 6 pounds, but I've been able to lose them and a couple of more by eating only breakfast and an early dinner, and watching my carbs. 

MAY 24, 2020: The line to get into the H Mart in Ridgefield, above, brought wartime rationing to mind. The line continued inside the store, below. 

PROTECTION: The H Marts in Ridgefield and Paramus consistently provide disposable plastic gloves to customers.

APRIL 23, 2020: Customers of Whole Foods in Paramus lining up to enter the supermarket after the hour reserved for shoppers who are 60 years old or older.

Shame on news media

Having spent nearly 40 years as a reporter, copy editor or food writer for 3 daily newspapers, including The Record of Hackensack, I've been so ashamed of the news media's surrender to President Trump.

In only the last month or so, it seems, reporters who cover the White House have started pushing back against Trump's endless stream of lies about the pandemic, the Obama administration, the environment, and Joe Biden, the Democrat who is running for president.

Meanwhile, Biden put his foot in his mouth a couple of times last week, including when he referred to CBS correspondent Errol Barnett, who is black, as "man." 

He also compared the reporter's  question about the candidate taking a cognitive test to asking Barnett if he "used cocaine." 

"Are you a junkie?" Biden said.

So, it's best to focus not on the candidate, but on what he stands for, and I'll take Biden's progressive platform over Trump's destruction of our democracy -- fueled by racism and greed.

A cartoon about President Trump by Steve Sack of the Star Tribune in Minnesota was among the most popular of the week (Aug. 1-8) on Cagle.com.

Plastic and food

After reading the June cover story in Consumer Reports magazine -- "How To Eat Less Plastic" -- I've replaced all of our plastic food-storage containers with glass, and stopped using a cheap coffee maker made mostly of plastic.

Now, I brew coffee in a Farberware Superfast Fully Automatic Percolator that my mother used about 30 years ago in our old Brooklyn home.

If Covid-19 doesn't get you, microplastic in our food and water likely will.

To make matters worse, the vast majority of plastic with a recycling symbol never gets recycled -- it ends up in garbage dumps, leaching into our reservoirs, or pollutes the ocean, where it is consumed by fish and other seafood.

The widespread notion most plastic is recycled is false, part of an elaborate, multi-million dollar ad campaign by the same petrochemical industry that pollutes our air and profits from the widespread use of plastic to bottle water and wrap food.

Watch: "Plastic Wars" from FRONTLINE

TWO MENUS: I'm a pescatarian, but the 3 other members of my family are dedicated meat and poultry eaters, so our food bills are unusually high. And we always have leftovers, such as this Atlantic Halibut Filet from Costco Wholesale I poached in Roasted Chipotle Salsa, and had for breakfast over leftover organic quinoa.

HEALTHY TAKEOUT: Wild Salmon BBQ Turmeric style was one of the 5 meals I ordered from Planted Eats, a health-food cafe in Hackensack.

Daily routine

I'm usually up before 6 a.m. to brew a pot of coffee, then shower (and shave every two days) before putting on my summer outfit -- shorts and a T-shirt, plus flip-flops around the house or a pair of Vans, red to match my Tesla Model S.

Breakfast is leftovers or I'll make a stuffed egg-white omelet with grated Parmesan cheese, smoked wild salmon, Mexican-style salsa and organic arugula or baby spinach, cut into 3 pieces so my wife and mother-in-law can have some, too.

If I don't have food shopping to do, I go online to print out credit cards statements or buy something at AmazonSmile.com or another site (nearly every day, it has turned out), and monthly spending on my Amazon Prime credit card has doubled during the quarantine.

I'll putter around the house or snip fresh herbs from the garden, read leftover sections from The Sunday Times under an awning on our deck, then go upstairs for a nap in the early afternoon, with my phone in my pocket to count steps.

I can easily do a mile or more around the house.

In the early months of the quarantine, I tried to walk in my Fairmount neighborhood every day, but that ended when I tripped over an uneven sidewalk and cracked or broke a rib. 

Early dinner

One of us cooks dinner and when my wife does, I usually have leftover fish or prepare a large dinner salad with raisins, slivered almonds, pitted Greek olives and fresh fruit.

We've been eating dinner as early as 3:30 in the afternoon, then settling down in front of the TV, having tea, roasted almonds, fresh organic fruit and no-fat yogurt until 8:30 p.m., when my wife goes upstairs to sleep.

I usually try to stay up until after 10 p.m., but TV, Netflix and Amazon have become so boring I barely make it.

I did double our Netflix DVD plan to 2 discs out at one time, and movies like "1917" and "Bombshell" have helped.

During the night, I get up 3 times to go to the bathroom, and start all over again before 6 a.m.


What's ahead?

In June, we started picking up takeout food from restaurants, including Lotus Cafe and Art of Spice, both in Hackensack.

And we spent a delightful evening enjoying dinner with wine and a pair of cabaret singers on the patio outside the Papermill Playhouse in Millburn.

Also in June, we drove into Manhattan to visit public statues and sculptures.

But only a Covid-19 vaccine will start us back on the road to normalcy, and allow me to volunteer again at a major hospital twice a week, as well as return to the gym, both for more exercise and the social contact.

I can't wait, even though I've always felt the definition of a "volunteer" is an older American who has nothing better to do with his or her time.