Nearing end of 2020, we're in good health, thankful for election of sane new president

COVID-19 PANDEMIC: We've been quarantining since March, but all of us are healthy, and we toasted our good fortune on Thanksgiving with French champagne from the Costco Wholesale warehouse in Wayne, N.J. 

WILD SHRIMP SALAD: Our first course on Thursday was a salad of wild-caught Gulf Shrimp, sold frozen, peeled and deveined at the Costco warehouse in Teterboro, N.J., dressed with fresh lemon juice, Dijon mustard, cumin and ground Aleppo pepper. First, I cooked the raw shrimp in olive oil with plenty of thinly sliced garlic, and added diced sweet peppers, celery, onion and parsley.

By VICTOR E. SASSON

EDITOR

HACKENSACK, N.J. -- The presidential election is finally over, and Donald J. Trump's days as our unhinged president are numbered.

He is a loser in every sense of the word -- the worst U.S. president in history.

Happy days are here again.

And on Thanksgiving, amid a new wave of the coronavirus, just the 4 of us gathered around the dining room table, toasting our good health and our soon-to-be President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

She is the first woman elected vice president, and likely will be the first woman elected president in 2024.

Our groaning table

For Thanksgiving, we prepared too much food, as usual: 

For the meat eaters, my wife prepared turkey neck and roasted a boneless leg of Australian lamb, plus rice and peas.

As a pescatarian, I prepared a shrimp salad and ordered a 4-course vegan meal from Whole Foods Market, but didn't have room for my wife's fish course, fried whole Yellow Croaker.

I had vegan leftovers and a leftover fried duck egg for breakfast today, and will probably have more leftovers for dinner and for....

ESCOVEITCH FISH: I went to 99 Ranch Market in Hackensack on Thursday morning and picked up 5 fresh, wild-caught Yellow Croaker. My wife fried them and prepared them with a warm dressing of vinegar, pimento, sweet pepper and onion in the style of her native Jamaica.

ORGANIC VEGETABLES: My wife also prepared organic broccoli and string beans with sliced garlic and a variety of no-salt seasonings.

VEGAN COURSES: For Thanksgiving, this pescatarian also picked up a 4-course vegan meal for 2 prepared by Chef Chloe Coscarelli from Whole Foods Market in Paramus, N.J. The centerpiece was a Cremini Mushroom Roast with Mushroom Gravy. Other courses were Miso Creamed Greens, Sweet Potato Casserole, Jalapeno Corn Bread Dressing and Pumpkin Curry Soup (not shown).

 

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.

In Trump, we got an Emperor With No Brains, but news media still humor him

Essex County kicked off the 41st annual Cherry Blossom Festival at Branch Brook Park in Newark today, above and below. The event has blossomed in recent years, adding entertainment, demonstrations of Japanese cultural traditions and vendors selling everything from bonsai trees to barbecue.

-- HACKENSACK, N.J. 

By VICTOR E. SASSON
EDITOR

Did you see the one-on-one TV interview with President Trump, who enthused about a piece of chocolate cake he was served moments before telling his interviewer about a missile attack on Iraq?

The reporter was taken aback, but corrected the president, as she would her doddering uncle, reminding him the cruise missiles were launched against Syria, not Iraq.

Early reports quoted officials saying Syrian warplanes were destroyed by the April 6 missile strike, which was in retaliation for a deadly chemical weapons attack that killed more than 80 people.

But later it came out that none of the missiles hit runways, allowing the Syrian government to resume the attacks the next day.

Of course, Trump was mocked on the Internet for the chocolate-cake reference, but I didn't see much push back in the news media, including The Record of Woodland Park. 

Now, Trump appears intent on bringing us to the brink of a nuclear confrontation with North Korea.

This is a president whose grasp of world affairs, economics, health care, the environment and so many other issues is infantile.

He acts as if he is still running "The Apprentice."

Entertainment at the Cherry Blossom Festival included the James Moody Jazz Orchestra, teens who have dedicated themselves to learning the art of jazz under the auspices of the New Jersey Performing Arts Cener.

Other events included demonstrations of how to wear a kimono and how to prepare sushi.

Vendors set up their tents on the parking lot of the park's welcome center.

The media

On NorthJersey.com, Columnist Mike Kelly's reaction to all the madness in Washington is to hit the road with a photographer "to assess President Trump's first 100 days in office," which includes "a report on how divided our nation is now."

That sounds like old news to me, but none of his interviews with "ordinary people" in four states has hit the print edition yet.

On Page 1, Staff Writer Paul Berger brings us yet another report on the region's rail system, which he insists is "at a breaking point" (1A).

This is basically a regurgitation of Berger's story on the front page just three days ago.

And the big photo of wrong-way Amtrak CEO Charles Moorman looking out the back of a train is barely distinguishable from the one that ran on Thursday's 1A.

Where was The Record's outrage in 2010, when Governor Christie unilaterally canceled work on two Hudson River rail tunnels, which were scheduled to be finished next year?

Saturday's lead story quoted former Vice President Joe Biden taking a swipe at the GOP thug for shutting down the project, noting, "There's still purgatory."

Local news?

What was a story about Quest Diagnostics' 50th anniversary doing on the Local news front on Saturday?

Inside, there were two especially bad headlines:

"Paterson
man accused
of posing as 
cop in court"

No. The suspect posed as a sheriff's officer during an attempted robbery, not while in court. But he did appear in court to face the charges on Thursday.

"Ringwood woman wanted
for disposing of body found"

Actually, the woman was "found and arrested," according to the lead paragraph of the story, so the headline should have said:

"Ringwood woman held
in disposal of dead body"

Malik Williams

An editorial today claims a lump sum payment of $180,000 by Bergen County, Garfield and two police officers means Malik Williams "is finally put to rest," according to the headline on 2O.

On Dec. 10, 2011, Williams, 19, who was black, was shot five times by two white police officers who fired a total of nine rounds inside a garage where he was hiding -- a shooting that "still seems unjustified," The Record's editorial board says.

But the news story and editorial never report whether the Williams family will get all of the $180,000.

Under court rules, the family's lawyer is entitled to a third or more of the settlement -- or at least $60,o00 -- so that would leave only $120,000 for the survivors, including his girlfriend and young son.

Bergen news?

Seven news stories from Passaic County appear in the Local news section delivered to Bergen County readers today.

Inexplicably, the closing of a Wayne restaurant is reported on the first page of the section (1L).

One of the 7 Bergen stories in the section reports on deer-population control in Saddle River, a wealthy suburb that has successfully limited the number of blacks and other minorities living there (7L).