I love to cook but after ten months of Covid-19, three squares a day, seven days a week has become tiresome.
Planning meals in advance and reducing grocery store runs is admirable organization, but not my strong suit. I could use a delivery service or order online and arrange for pick-up, but the shoppers that retrieve the order never seem to get it quite right. While I can plan seven days of meals, we won’t end up eating all of them thanks to left-overs and the days we decide to order carryout. And that leads to unused food, generally fresh non-freezable iems, that end up in the trash or yet another soup stock to keep in the freezer until “needed”.
Preparing all those meals is a challenge. Cutting, chopping, mixing, measuring, sanitizing . . . I generally enjoy the preparation, but several times a day, seven days a week — it gets to be too much.
Cooking all those meals (I am not a fan of frozen meals, preferring ‘from scratch’ cooking) takes time. Serving all those meals harkens back to my waitress days. The Mom in me takes over (though my grown children have been unseen since March). “Time to eat! Come to the table, please.” The table, properly set with serving pieces carefully selected, leads to the next issue with the seeming constancy of cooking during the pandemic.
Washing the dishes. The dishwasher has never been run so often. Then, of course, all of those dishes, glasses, serving pieces, pots, bowls and pans must be put away; a distasteful job which rivals doing laundry.
Finally, cleaning the kitchen which entails wiping the counters, the refrigerator and stove and sweeping the floor, three times a day — I can’t shut off the kitchen lights until that is all done.
When the pandemic ends, I will be happy to get back to normal cooking. But we have eaten healthy and satisfying meals during this time and I have much to be thankful for. Food insecurity is a serious issue and I have repeatedly donated funds to nonprofits helping the food insecure along with volunteering to make and deliver meals as well. .
Take a moment to look at the flip side of your complaints and daily chores. There often is a lesson to be learned with a change of perspective.
