The Covid Food Chronicles

Over a year has passed now since the first Covid-19 case was detected in my state (Washington), which was also the first recorded in the United States. I don't know about you, but I haven't eaten a meal inside a restaurant since March 12, 2020.

There's been a lot of cooking going on. 

I've also gotten numerous takeout meals to support some of my local, independent cafes, bakeshops, and restaurants as best I can. But the cooking has increased.

I know that I'm fortunate to have a home and enough money to eat healthfully and well, albeit not extravagantly. I recognized in my impoverished, liberal arts graduate twenties that one didn't need to be wealthy to eat just as well as someone of great affluence. (Can you say fresh from the garden? Or my friend Becky's caramel chocolate brownies?)

Initially, everything was closed during the first lockdown last March, with no takeout food at all. Out came my cookbooks, and I tried a classic Better Homes & Gardens American comfort food dish: tuna noodle casserole. I did what I could to lighten it up a bit (low-fat milk, less cheese, more veggies). 

My friend Matt, who was parked in my guest room for the first 3 months of the pandemic, raved about it, so it was a repeat dish. 

Since no bakeries were open and I was cooking for someone else much taller and hungrier, I tried baking my "Mock Croc" spicy chocolate chip cookies. Given that my oven only had one setting (way too hot) before it died in May, I was lucky to not burn every cookie.They tasted better than they looked.

Since then, the bakeshops/bakeries reopened for takeout. I've left most of the baking to the pros except for the huckleberry galette I made from berries I picked in the mountains last fall.

While cooking for two, I cooked more elaborate dishes than I normally would. This roasted chicken (from local Stokesberry Sustainable Farms) for Easter Sunday was as good as anything at a fancy restaurant, IMHO.

And stewed spring rhubarb with yogurt and homemade granola was my staple breakfast for over a month.

For the first few months of the pandemic, our farmers markets were not allowed to open here in Seattle. Some farmers came anyway and set up stalls on the street, so I snuck out there too to buy spring local veggies. By summer the farmers markets were able to reopen. I feel safer shopping outdoors and supporting our local farmers anyway.

With the months-long closure of Golden Gardens Park last spring, food vendor Miri's, a tiny cafe in the park's historic bathhouse, lost most of their business, so I've ordered their home delivery. They offer excellent Mediterranean fare and mini Dutch pancakes called poffertjes.

In late spring and summer, my vegetable garden kicked into full gear. (Last year more people took up gardening since most of us stuck closer to home. Did you?) 

There's nothing quite so splendid to eat as a salad or veggies freshly harvested from your own garden. Here west of the Cascade Mountains, we do battle with slugs and snails who also love the fresh greens, but still, we manage.

 

By late June, my raspberries began bursting out a bumper crop. There's really nothing as splendid as eating freshly picked raspberries. Besides plucking and eating them to excess, I made freezer jam and froze several bags to use for smoothies.

Later in the summer, a few heads of cabbage in my garden survived the relentless attack of the slugs. Smaller heads of just-harvested cabbage are surprisingly tender.

Spring and summer were about the garden, but with fall came soup season. I could live on salad and good, flavorful soup. I have a rotation of soup recipes, and added a few this past year. A lemony split pea (below) is a new favorite.

And it hasn't been all garden fresh and homemade. A classic Seattle burger chain is  just 2.5 blocks from my home, the closest place to get food. A couple times in the last year I've gotten their so-so cheeseburger and locally made ice cream scoops (maple walnut is my fave). (We all indulge sometimes, right? No?)

During the dark winter months, my afternoon ritual of fika has become increasingly important to me. Perhaps because of my Scandinavian ancestry, I've embraced this Swedish tradition, loosely defined as a coffee and cake break (for me tea and a cookie).

I suspect the pandemic plays a role in my need for this ritual, but these 10 minutes or so each afternoon while I sip fine tea out of my grandmother's china and nibble a baked treat are a balm, a mini-vacation from the day's stresses. I blend silver and jasmine pearl teas in a teapot and then reheat the cookie (usually a buckwheat fig bar, but in the shot above a madeleine) to just crispy. 

There have been hits and misses as I work my way through new recipes and revive old favorites. I've rediscovered old cookbooks I stopped using years ago. I've gotten a few new ones. 

Some sources I've used a lot are Deborah Madison's cookbooks (mostly vegetarian classics), Danielle Walker's Eat What You Love (paleo forward), Terry Walter's Clean Food books, farm-to-table Dishing up the Dirt by farmer Andrea Bemis, the 1980s classic Silver Palate by Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso, and various magazines like Eating Well and Bon Appetit.  Plus numerous websites.

 I didn't get on the sourdough baking bandwagon that was a craze early in the pandemic. But I've expanded my repertoire, saved $$ on eating out, occasionally indulged in too many sweets, eaten healthfully, and generally enjoyed eating better.

How about you? Have you been cooking more the last year? Trying new foods? Would love to hear in a comment below!

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