This year has been tough, there's no doubt few of us if any will remember anything like it and as at this moment there's not much proverbial light at the end of the Covid-19 tunnel. For some of us in this time under lockdown, tier restrictions or the general limitations we now face in order to keep everyone safe, the time alone or with loved ones has been welcome. It's given some a chance to strengthen relationships, take time to review lifestyle, decide what's important going forward when this pandemic is over. For others it's been a lonely, stressful, worrying time that has cast a shadow over relationships, thrown lifestyles into disarray & bank accounts into the red. Some will have coped well with working from home, being able to ditch the commute to spend more time doing the things they love, creative things, or reading more, or catching up with the zillion box-sets they've missed. Others though will have had all creativity stifled by financial worries, health concerns, both Covid & non-Covid, all of which seemed unassailable.Whichever camp you fall into I have no doubt that cooking & eating will have figured large in the new normal.
I find cooking relaxing, I've never found it stressful but I imagine that if you've been faced with ingredients you're not used to due to that initial phase of panic buying or swaps to your online grocery shopping then you may well have stressed over what to cook. Apart from the strange ingredents there's also the necessity to make the shopping and the basic larder ingredients, such as lentils, stretch further, be that due to reduced economic income or simply because you can't get out to replenish supplies. Will this unusual situation make you change your cooking habits? Will you carry on cooking from scratch if you have been doing that these last few months? Will you continue to experiment with that odd assortment of spices, pasta shapes, different types of rice, tins of random beans and wonky vegetables & fruit? What about that bag of flour (or several) that you bought when news spread of a flour shortage? Did you make bread or couldn't be bothered with the time involved. Have a look at this simple soda-bread, a quick & easy way to use up some of it anyway.
Have you followed the much vaunted advice and batch cooked meals to store in the freezer? Has the mantra of reducing food waste featured in the weekly plan? Using leftovers effectively or making sure every part of those vegetables and fruits are used instead of throwing them in the bin or compost heap. In short has this period of encorced introspection changed your habits for good? Or will you revert to takeaways (why not have a bash at making your own street food), eating out and buying ready meals when this is all over?
I hope there have been some changes that you'll contine to embrace. Freshly cooked meals from scratch more often or cooking double so there's a home-made ready meal available in the freezer (clearly marked of course) and looking at ways of using up things like broccoli stems (they still taste of broccoli), potato peelings, overripe fruits and leftover rice for example. Make a few promises to make life that little bit more sustainable, growing a few chilli plants, salad leaves, microgreens and herbs in pots on the window sill for example. Small changes that may have sprung from these long months of restrictions can be continued when 'normal' life resumes.
Feel free to drop me a line on social media or via the contact form.
Have a browse through my recipes and see if there's anything that inspires you, I'd love to see photos of your results.