Chicken Barley Stew with Vegetables and Kale

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A Mediterranean Diet friendly meal.

Chicken Barley Stew
Veggies, whole grain, and lean chicken. What could be healthier?

I blogged recently about going on the Mediterranean diet for my health as I’m getting older. I’ve got a few cookbooks with recipes, but after a while you get a feel for what you can come up with on your own. This quick stew is my own concoction.

Ingredients

  • 1/2 tablespoon olive oil
  • 2 ounces chopped carrots
  • 2 ounces chopped celery
  • 2 ounces chopped onions
  • 1/4 cup uncooked pearl barley, rinsed
  • 1 1/2 cup low sodium, low fat chicken broth
  • 3 ounces cooked chicken
  • 1 large kale leaf, stem removed, chopped
  • salt and pepper to taste

If you don’t have a scale, 2 ounces is about 1/4 cup; 4 ounces is about 1/2 cup. If you don’t use low sodium chicken broth, you won’t have to add salt. I buy roasted “pulled” chicken at the supermarket. (Thanks, Bill, for the tip!) I only used 3 ounces of chicken because it looked like enough and I’m trying to keep calorie count down.

Steps

  1. In a small saucepan, heat oil.
  2. Add carrots, celery, and onions. Cook for 5 to 8 minutes on medium heat until soft.
  3. Stir in barley and cook for another minute or so.
  4. Add chicken broth. Bring to a boil, then turn down to simmer and cover. Cook 30 minutes or until barley is soft. It will absorb much of the liquid.
  5. Add chicken and kale. Simmer until chicken is heated through and kale is wilted.
  6. Serve with salt and pepper to taste.

Yields one very generous serving or two small servings. Total calories is about 450. You can reduce the calories by using less barley (1/4 cup is 163 calories) or less chicken (3 ounces is 142 calories). I’m thinking I’ll make it with 2 tablespoons of barley, 2 ounces of chicken, and 1 cup of broth next time. That’ll chop off 100 calories and yield a single normal serving.

-o-

Oh, and isn’t it refreshing to read a recipe on a website that doesn’t bombard you with a million pictures and a long, boring story about making the recipe? Seriously: what are some of these food bloggers thinking? When I look for a recipe, I want the recipe, not details of the blogger’s intimate relationship with it.

Traveling in COVID Times

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Almost surreal.

This past Monday, I headed out for a six day trip to California and back. The goal was to deliver my helicopter to a friend in the Los Angeles area. He’ll be leasing it for the next two months and I’ll get it back in mid May. I flew my helicopter down, accompanied part of the way by my friend, and took an airliner home. It was the first time I’ve been in an airliner in about two years.

I thought I’d blog briefly about the hotels, restaurants, and airports I stopped in along the way, mostly because the experiences were so unlike what I’ve had in the past.

The Hotels

The trip required a total of five nights in hotels. Across the board, all hotels required masks in the lobby and other public areas.

The first two nights were in McMinnville, Oregon, where I had stopped to get the helicopter an annual inspection prior to delivering it in Los Angeles. I stayed at a Comfort Inn for about $100/night. The room was comfortable, with everything I needed to get some work done while I waited.

On one full day of my stay in the area, I went to the Evergreen Aviation Museum, which I hope to blog about elsewhere. Afterwards, I went into town to grab a bite to eat — more on that later.

Evergreen
The Spruce Goose at Evergreen Aviation Museum was one of the highlights of my trip.

When I got back to my room, I was surprised to see that it had not been freshened by housekeeping. I later discovered that housekeeping services for stay-over guests is something I shouldn’t expect these days. I’m not sure why; maybe they are trying to reduce the exposure of housekeeping staff to potentially infected rooms? I wouldn’t have minded so much, but by not freshening the room, I came back to the same full garbage pail I’d left with the added aroma of that garbage and no coffee for the morning. While I like clean towels and a made bed, not getting those wasn’t a hardship at all.

The breakfast room was pared down beyond reason. They didn’t want you sitting in there, which I could understand, and they made it easy enough to take food to go (and add to your in-room garbage collection). But they lacked a lot of the easy (and safe) basics, like instant oatmeal, cereal packages, or a toaster for the bread, which was placed, unwrapped, in a self-serve lucite box. So yes, you could get a piece of bread or English muffin that everyone may have breathed on, but you couldn’t toast it.

The next night was spent at a Red Roof Inn in Susanville, CA, which was also about $100 for the night. That hotel didn’t even have a coffee maker in the room. And since the hotel consisted of multiple buildings, getting coffee in the lobby in my lounge clothes was not an option. Fortunately, there was a Starbucks across the street, which we hit on our way back to the airport. I’m a sucker for their double smoked bacon sandwiches and can tolerate their lattes.

The last two nights were spent at the Los Angeles Airport Hilton on Century Boulevard. At $125 per night for a 12th floor room that overlooked runways 25L and 25R, I really enjoyed just sitting in my room in the morning and evening, watching the planes go by. (I even live-streamed the action for about 90 minutes.) This is one of the old, soundproofed hotels between the runways on Century, built in 1983. As one Trip Advisor reviewer said, “This is a Hilton, built when Hilton’s were top of the line.” If you stayed in Hiltons back in those days — as I did for my business travel in the late 1980s — you know exactly what he’s talking about. The Hilton name used to mean quality and this hotel is from that era, although it was renovated in 2013. Solid rooms with nice furniture. Giant mirrors for checking your image before going out to that business meeting or a show. Hell, even a lighted makeup mirror in the bathroom. It did lack a few of the amenities you’d find in a modern business hotel, such as additional outlets and USB ports. And it didn’t have the microwaves and fridges I’d had in the other two hotels I stayed in. But my room was large and there were enough towels for both nights of my stay.

View from my Room
I paid $10/night extra for a room facing the runways. Does that make me an #AvGeek?

What was weird, however, was the cold emptiness of the lobby, with minimal furniture — basically a handful of high-top bar tables and chairs — and no lingering people. The second floor, which probably gave access to the pool and hot tubs I could see from my room, was closed. One of the restaurants was closed; another had opened for the first time in a year that very day. Room service was not available. Even that notebook full of hotel information, menus, and area details was missing. Stickers on the elevator floor instructed you to stand in a corner if you were riding with someone else.

Yet the airport shuttle service was completely packed in the morning with so many people waiting that I actually walked a block away to the Marriott to get on their shuttle, which quickly filled up. I guess social distancing only applies when it’s convenient.

Eating Out

I fully expected to do all my dining outdoors or in my room. I had no desire to eat in an enclosed space — and yes, that includes tents erected in parking lots — with a bunch of maskless strangers. (Eating in contributed greatly to my in-room garbage collection.)

I went for a wine tasting in downtown McMinnville. It was outdoor seating and very pleasant. Afterwards, I found a restaurant with outdoor dining in little pods (for lack of a better name). They were small, individual tents, open on one end, with just a single table and four or six chairs in each. I felt pretty safe in there with my mask off, especially since I ate early in the day and may have been the first person in there since lunchtime.

I ate a ton of fast food before getting to Los Angeles. McDonald’s breakfast, Starbucks coffee with breakfast, KFC dinner. Okay, so maybe that’s not “a ton.” But it’s a lot more than I usually eat in a week.

The only time we ate indoors was at the airport restaurant at South Lake Tahoe. We were two of only six customers when we arrived. The server wore a mask the whole time. We didn’t linger.

For dinner at the Hilton, I had to go to the restaurant in the lobby, order my meal to go from the limited menu I was permitted to look at, wait at one of those high top tables in the empty lobby, and take the food upstairs with me. I discovered that my food wasn’t as described on the menu, but it tasted okay. I wish it had been hotter and I was glad I had wine with me. I could have eaten in the restaurant — there were hardly any people in there — but why take a chance?

I had breakfast and lunch at the Los Angeles Farmer’s Market the next day. The last time I’d been there was in the late 1980s and I could not believe how much it had changed. Yes, the charming, closed in area of vendors still existed. What surprised me about the area is how they’d built an entire shopping center around the old Farmer’s Market. I had coffee and a french pastry for breakfast and later had empanadas and an Italian pastry for lunch. In all cases, I found a table off to itself, unmasked, ate, and masked back up. Everyone in Los Angeles was wearing masks inside and out. They apparently get it. (I admit that it took me a little while to get into the habit of wearing a mask outside.)

LA Farmer's Market
At the LA Farmer’s Market. This part is what I remembered from 30 years ago, but I remember it being a lot busier.

I had a snack later at the Santa Monica pier. Again, I ate outside. It was pleasant.

Santa Monica Pier
I killed some time at the Santa Monica pier on a gorgeous day.

By the way, I used Uber to get around Los Angeles. I had to agree to wear a mask before confirming my ride. All the drivers were masked and most windows were open. I didn’t share a ride with anyone.

(And seriously: how do Angelinos deal with all that freaking traffic?)

The Airports

I was at two kinds of airports during my trip: small general aviation and large commercial.

Mask use was hit or miss at the small airports, most of which were in rural areas where folks tend not to worry too much about the virus. But everyone I saw in Tahoe and Los Angeles was wearing a masks, inside and out.

At LAX, announcements warned that if you didn’t wear a mask in the terminal, they’d kick you out. I had to wait 15 minutes (at 6:30 AM) to get into the Alaska Air lounge — I think they were trying to discourage visitors by making us sign up and wait. When I got in, I was asked to stay masked unless I was eating or drinking and then to mask up afterwards. There was plenty of space between groups of guests. At one point, about half the people in there weren’t masked; they made an announcement and then followed it up with a person going table to table to remind people. This was my first visit to an Alaska Air lounge and I enjoyed it.

On the plane, it was the same thing: wear a mask or get kicked out. Of course, they couldn’t kick you out during the flight, but I can only assume that a troublesome passenger would be met by police on landing. I was flying in first class, which included a meal. (I could swear I ordered a sausage and egg wrap, but what I was given was an egg salad wrap. At 8:30 AM. At least it tasted good.) We were told to mask up as soon as we were finished eating or drinking.

I did notice that some of the first class services I’d come to expect were missing. There were no drinks before takeoff while the plane loaded. The flight attendant didn’t offer to hang up my jacket (although I wound up wearing it during the fight anyway.) There were no hot towels before the meal. There was no alcohol other than beer or wine — this seriously bummed me out because I really look forward to bloody marys with breakfast in first class. Besides, who drinks beer or wine in the morning?

Everyone wore masks at SeaTac and, again, there were regular announcements telling you to do so. It’s a federal law. (Thank you, President Biden.)

I had high expectations for the Alaska Lounge at SeaTac, which is, after all, Alaska Air’s hub. I was disappointed. I had the worst bloody mary I’d had in my life — seriously, bud, you only need a drop of Worcestershire — and the only food choices were apples, oranges, a salad, or tomato soup. Service was definitely lacking — I got the distinct impression that the staff simply didn’t care. (The LAX staff was worlds better.) Access to the lounge had come with my First Class (not upgraded) ticket, but I can only imagine how bummed out I’d be if I’d paid the $25 day fee for the privilege of getting that horrible bloody mary.

My flight from SeaTac to Wenatchee was the same as usual, but with masks. They used to offer a beverage service but had stopped long ago. Hell, it’s only a 20-minute flight. Is it really worth handing out cups of bottled water on a flight that short? I don’t. The only drawback is that Alaska had cut the flights to Wenatchee to just two a day and the other one arrives near midnight. This early afternoon flight was packed. I sure wish they’d add back a few flights.

Vacationing During COVID

I should remind readers that this was not a vacation for me. I made the trip for business. I would not have gone if I didn’t have to.

But it wasn’t like that for a lot of the folks on the airport shuttle from hotel to LAX. More than half of them were going on vacation with their kids in tow. At least one family was going to Hawaii.

The only thing I can say to that is WTF? After spending nearly a week sweating behind a mask every time I was in public — which was nearly all the time — I can’t imagine going on a vacation for more of the same. Why not wait until the pandemic is over or more people are vaccinated?

Are people absolutely nuts?

Anyway, I’m glad to be home with my pups and the projects that keep me busy here. I’ll venture down into town once or twice a week as necessary. I have no plans to travel again until May — when it’s time to bring my helicopter home.

Flying M Air Extra: About Maria’s Obsession with Fire Towers

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A video from the Flying M Air YouTube channel.

I flew from Wenatchee, WA to McMinnville, OR on March 15, 2021 and, along the way, made a tiny detour to check out a fire tower on a little mountain. In this video, I show you the fire tower and explain my weird obsession with fire towers on aeronautical charts.

Helicopter Flight Up the Salt River

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A video from the Flying M Air YouTube channel.

Here’s a cockpit POV view looking out the front window between me and my buddy Woody as we flew from Falcon Field (FFZ) in Mesa, AZ all the way up the Salt River to Roosevelt Lake. The cockpit intercom audio did not record [insert eye roll emoji here] so I wound up narrating it in the editing process.

I want to give a HUGE shout out to the channel members and Patreon patrons who made this flight possible — I had to rent this helicopter to do the flight and make the video.

You can see Woody in a tour of a King Air airplane in this video: https://youtu.be/1cylLFqhnzg

Going First Class

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Sometimes spending a little more on your comfort is really worth it.

I was brought up in a lower middle class family that, in my later teen years, was upgraded to middle class after my mom’s divorce and remarriage. I struggled financially to live on my own for a while after college, and then struggled a little less when I began living with my future wasband. It wasn’t until I was in my late-thirties that I began earning what I’d consider a very good living.

Living when money is tight — but not tight enough to actually cause you to miss meals, get evicted, or turn to payroll lending storefronts to meet financial obligations — teaches you frugality and comparison shopping skills. You quickly learn that if you need to buy something, you need to shop around a bit to get the best deal. You need your money to go further. This becomes a mindset, something you do naturally. Something you can’t imagine not doing.

Travel on the Cheap

Even when my personal financial situation started looking very rosy, I was stuck in that mindset. That was especially so when I traveled for business in my early years as a writer. I was a regular speaker at Macworld Expo in San Francisco, Boston, and later, New York. I even spoke twice at the event in Toronto.

Macworld did not cover my cost to travel to these events. Its only compensation was free unlimited entrance to the show, snacks and swag in the Speaker room, and a Speaker ribbon that often led to more swag at booths. (The Press ribbon, which I earned by writing for some tech magazines back then, actually worked better.) The cost of airfare and hotels was on me. This was a pretty big financial burden, especially when I traveled to expensive San Francisco from the New York Metro area.

So I shopped for airfare. And yes, I’d even stoop to taking a non-direct flight or redeye if it could save some money. And then I shopped for hotels, winding up with satisfactory lodging within walking distance from the venue.

The crazy thing about all this was that my travel related to the event was a business expense — no doubt about it — and I could write it all off on my taxes, which I did. (Contrary to what some people think, writing things off on your taxes doesn’t mean the government pays for it. It means that it reduces your taxable income. So if you spend $1000 on a trip and your tax rate is 28%, it’s like getting a 28% discount on that expense.) But I was still in that watch-every-penny mindset and even though I could afford better flights or lodging, I just couldn’t see spending more when I could spend less.

That all came to a head one year on a San Francisco trip.

Seeing the Light

Macworld Expo in San Francisco was held in January. While the weather in San Francisco in January isn’t nearly as frigid as it is where I lived in New Jersey, it could be cold. I’d booked a room at the Victorian Hotel — now the Mosser Hotel — on 4th Street, less than three blocks from Moscone. (I think the hotel was just beginning its name change process back in those days — maybe 1998? — because I remember the new name.) I’d stayed there at least once before, so I knew what to expect. (Or thought I did.) The hotel was popular with speakers because it was relatively inexpensive. But it was inexpensive for a reason: it was old and in sore need of renovation. (I hope it’s been fixed up since then.) It did have a good restaurant on the ground floor, though: Annabelle’s was the name. (Funny the things we remember.)

On that particular year, San Francisco was cold and so was my room. The heat — a radiator! — simply did not work. I called down to the desk to see if they could do anything and they sent up a bellman with five blankets. I slept under a pile of seven blankets for the next few nights and dreaded showering.

I remember thinking to myself: What the fuck is wrong with you? You can afford a better room that this! Isn’t your comfort worth it?

The answer, of course, was yes. The next few years, I stayed at the W across the street from Moscone, where I was introduced to modern rooms, feather beds, and other very nice treats.

Airline Travel

The airfare lesson took a bit longer to kick in.

I admit that I stopped doing flights with connections unless there was no other option early on. (My wasband, however, did not. I remember one year when he paid for his family to come to Arizona from New York for Christmas. He bought them tickets on an airline called ATA, which was really cheap, probably because it only had like four planes. The flights had a stopover in Chicago, but not at O’Hare like a normal airline. They stopped at Midway. As anyone could expect in December in Chicago, weather moved in and the plane got suck at Midway. Then there was a mechanical issue. The delay was long and when his mom and sister finally arrived in Phoenix, they were extremely travel worn and cranky — can you blame them? The punchline: he only saved $50 per ticket over a direct flight with another airline. And yes, he could afford the $50 per person.) I’d had enough experience with the problems that arise when you have connecting flights and unnecessary stopovers. Why make a trip more difficult than it needs to be?

Of course, I usually fly out of Wenatchee these days and Horizon only operates a turboprop to Seattle, so all of my flights to anywhere other than Seattle have at least two legs. That can actually work out to benefit me, as you’ll learn in a moment.

(The only trip I occasionally do that I can’t avoid three flights is to visit my sister in St. Augustine, FL. The closest airports are Jacksonville and Daytona and the last time I went there no direct flights from Seattle. That meant flying from Wenatchee to Seattle to Atlanta to Jacksonville and then doing all that in reverse on the way home. No matter how you slice it, you’re traveling for a whole day.)

A few years back, when I was still doing frost control work in California from January and into March, I had a contract where I could stay home until called out. The call would come at 3:30 PM, which is when the hyperlocal weather forecast the grower subscribed to would be released for the evening. As I talked to him, I packed. When I hung up, I booked a flight from Wenatchee to Sacramento. As I was driving to the airport, I booked boarding for my dog, Penny, and dropped her off. As I waited at Wenatchee airport for my flight out, I booked my hotel and rental car. I’d arrive in Sacramento before 9 PM, get my car, and go to my hotel. In the morning, when I was released from standby, I’d book my return flight, check out of the hotel, and go home, picking Penny up along the way.

Every time I did this trip, I earned four legs on Alaska Air’s frequent flyer program. I did it six times in one season. That put me into MVP status. Suddenly, when I started flying Alaska Air, I’d get automatic upgrades to First Class at least 75% of the time. I enjoyed that for a year and a half — and I was doing a lot of airline travel back then. It spoiled me.

First Class is the Way to Travel

You have to understand that First Class isn’t just sitting in a bigger seat at the front of the plane — although, admittedly, that’s a real bonus. It’s free luggage check in. It’s often (depending got how you got to First Class) entry into the Alaska Lounge at SeaTac and a handful of other airports. It’s boarding first. It’s having a flight attendant take your jacket and put it on a hangar (and return it to you later while taxiing to the gate). It’s not having to shuffle down the aisle, hoping there’s space in the overhead bin for your bag. It’s having a drink — whatever you want — as everyone else boards. It’s having a warm towel to clean your hands, more drinks, a hot meal, and often a warm-from-the-oven cookie. It’s not having to worry about someone’s brat kicking the seat behind you or the jackass in front of you reclining his seat so you can count his hair follicles. It’s civilized and comfortable. It makes airline travel bearable.

Honestly, if you spend enough time on long flights — which I consider any flight over two hours — in First Class, you’ll wonder how the hell you managed to fly coach all those years.

Well, that’s how it was for me.

Good things don’t last forever and eventually my status as an Alaska Air MVP lapsed. I was back in the world of regular travel and I can’t say I was happy about it.

But what I discovered is that if I buy my ticket far enough in advance and I’m flexible about travel dates and times, I can often buy a first class ticket for just $100 to $300 more than coach. Here’s a random example for Alaska Air; in this case, if I were going to visit my brother in New Jersey, I’d be buying that First Class ticket leaving Wenatchee at 6:25 AM (keeping in mind that I’m a very early riser):

Fare Example
Would you rather spend five hours and 20 minutes in First Class or stuck in coach, rubbing elbows with some guy with body odor while a kid kicks the back of your seat? Oh, and don’t forget the ability to wait in the Alaska Lounge in Seattle for the two hours between my flight from Wenatchee to my flight out to Newark. Yes, it’s worth an extra $272 to me.

While I realize that not everyone has a few extra hundred bucks sitting around to piss away on air travel, I usually do. I don’t travel by air that much anymore and I want my experience to be as comfortable as possible. I travel alone now, so I don’t have to buy a ticket for traveling companions or worry about what they might be able to afford. I’ve come to realize that my comfort is worth the extra money.

Travel in Comfort

As I get older, I’ve come to realize that my personal comfort is important to me. If I can afford going First Class, I will.

That’s why I’m flying First Class from Los Angeles to Seattle next week. (There is no First Class on Seattle to Wenatchee legs.)

If you’re in a similar situation — older, traveling alone, money in the bank — and you’re not treating yourself to First Class travel when it’s available, why the hell not?