Dinner tonight was an old favorite (or at least a dish we started making early in the pandemic), Slow Cooker Spiced Lentils with Veggies, but it didn’t taste right – it was dull, lacking something. This was the first time we’d used the induction cooktop for this recipe, and I don’t think I got the oil hot enough before putting the mustard seeds in (they didn’t pop), but that didn’t seem to be sufficient to explain the dullness.

Diane took out the recipe and asked me if I’d put in the chiles (yes), the chili powder (yes), the garlic (yes), the turmeric (yes) – finally, she asked about the salt and I realized I’d completely forgotten it (I got distracted because we nearly ran out of lentils and I had to put them on the right shopping list).

We are not big salt users – we don’t have a salt shaker on the table, and we usually reduce the amount of salt in a recipe by half (including this one) and omit the extra salt for “season to taste” (except for baking, because chemistry). But there’s a big difference between a little salt and no salt!

It was another quiet Sunday. We took our usual morning trip to the Farmers’ Market followed by a long walk. I decided to wear a mask on the first half of the walk because there was a cold wind blowing – I knew there was a reason I should always carry a mask!

This afternoon, we went to the test site at Union Middle School for a Covid test; even though the theatre yesterday was fairly empty, I felt like it wouldn’t be a bad idea to get tested. They did both a rapid test and a PCR test; we got the results (negative) from the rapid test before we left the school, and I felt happier.

Tonight’s dinner was another new-to-us recipe, Spaghetti Aglio e Olio adapted from Ina Gartner’s recipe. It was easy to make, fairly quick, tasty, and filling – what more could we want?