Back in May, we were a household of three. We engaged in quite a bit of cooking from scratch, making sure to use all of our groceries. No wasting food! was my motto. That motto has since been slightly relaxed, but it was in full force in May.
One day our Younger Daughter volunteered to make dinner. I instructed her to make zucchini pie, because we had fresh zucchinis and a spare pie crust that needed to be used up. And I told her that we had to have the leftover roasted butternut squash and sweet peppers.
After YD put the zucchini pie in the oven to cook, she exclaimed, “This dinner is full of food I don’t like!”
Me: We’ll be having that sweet potato bread that I made. And there is cheese in the zucchini pie.
YD: The bread is the only part of this meal that I like.
Me: But you can learn to love zucchini. It’s part of adulting.
YD: NO, IT’S NOT!
I believe she found the zucchini pie was not too awful. Good thing, because No Wasting Food!
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Sometimes adulting takes other forms during a pandemic.
Me, reviewing recipes: Oh, look! Cranberry and Rosemary Sangria! We could use some of that right now.
YD: Would you like me to set up a distillery in the back?
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I have yet to tell you about our family’s Pandemic Dessert Baking Series. That will have to wait for another time. The Dessert Series has ended because Younger Daughter moved out. But our series led us to discuss desserts many times in the past few months. Here are the Common Household Husband’s deep thoughts about blueberry pie.
Husband: Let me tell you my issues with blueberry pie. One: usually the person preparing it doesn’t take the time to take off the little stems. Two: Then, you don’t know if they are using those tiny blueberries or normal ones. So blueberry pie is very hit-or-miss.
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| A pre-pandemic set of blueberry pies, using normal blueberries. |
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A few nights ago, I was reading the news. It was completely depressing. And that was before the UFTOO-POTUS* allowed his pusillanimous convicted guilty crony The Penguin to escape justice. In this country, laws are for the little people to follow.
Me: America is not going to make it. It’s going to be anarchy.
Common Household Husband: But that can’t last long.
Me: You're right. Some power will take over. Probably private militias.
Husband: If the French take over that wouldn't be too bad. We could have baguettes, and French pastries . Wine would be easy to get. Especially those pastries with the chocolate inside. Very excellent. But if the British take over, it would be bangers and mash, kippers and herring. Breakfast would be excellent, but dinner might not be as good. And tea all the time. Lots of tea.
Me: That wouldn’t be so bad.
*Unfit For The Office Of President Of The United States
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| Tea Time, as depicted on a quilt. Maybe anarchy could be like this! |
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In the past few months, our use of paper towels has diminished, but lately we had been running low and found them difficult to find. Toilet paper, on the other hand, has returned to the grocery stores, although in limited amounts.
Today I went down to the basement to check on the laundry. My husband was there, already folding the clean laundry.
Husband: I got you a present.
Me: !
Husband: It’s there in those grocery bags.
Me, looking in one of the bags: Toilet paper! And paper towels!!!! Thank you so much!
Husband: Actually, the present is in the other bag.
Me: Skinny Pop Popcorn! Yay! Oooh - it's kettlecorn flavor!
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As The Anarchy approaches, we must learn to appreciate the simple things.
2 comments:
I think we've been doing the same thing--eating down the pantry and trying to be more thoughtful and less careless with our food. I just picked our raspberry patch again and made a lot of jam. I learned how to make a new recipe with canned beans (cheap! yummy! easy! nonperishable ingredients!).
Maybe because we live in a less populous area (populated? anyhoo...) the shortages are nearly over. Funny enough, if we go to the SUPER small town grocery stores we can find almost ANYTHING that the bigger stores run low on. For example, the Sure-jel I needed to make jam. Pick n' Save had none, but Freedom Foods had plenty. This surprised me because I assumed more people in Freedom would be making jam than in Appleton. Shows what I know, right?
Zucchinis. Mine have just bloomed. I do love them young;)
You are a better woman than I if you can get your kid to eat zucchini. My son came home from college in the U.S. (we're Canadian) mid-March and I have to have more food on hand and cook more meat when he's home. I've gone in fits of being super prolific in the kitchen and completely losing my cooking mojo (along with my will to live). When we were trying to minimize grocery trips because of the lines and the risk there was stuff piled up everywhere which was extremely anxiety-producing. I still don't go on a whim, but it's not quite as fraught now. I have discovered a couple of good new recipes and my daughter and her friends have all baked and shared stuff once every couple of weeks. The pretzel bites made from the Greek-yogurt and flour dough have been the biggest hit.
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