When the pandemic first hit my radar, before lockdowns started in the U.S., before most of us had any inkling what a big deal this would become, I had the sudden urge to watch the movie Julie and Julia. It had sat on my To Be Watched list forever, but all of a sudden, I had this gut sense that I needed that kind of movie in my life.
So, while my husband was flying to pick up my son from New Orleans, where he’d been visiting his grandparents for spring break, I turned off the news, curled up on the couch, and watched the film adaptation of the memoir. What I realized while watching is that the story (particularly Julie’s), at its heart, is about healing from grief and finding something to anchor you, to ground you. Julie is answering phones at a call center for victims of the 9/11 attacks—a job laced with grief and grimness. She’s unhappy and unmoored, so she turns to something she can control—the Julia Child cookbook. She can’t control the world, but she can try to learn these recipes one by one. It’s a focal point.
This week, I started reading Ruth Reichl’s My Kitchen Year: A 136 Recipes That Saved My Life which is a hybrid memoir and cookbook. Ruth was the editor in chief of Gourmet magazine, and this book documents her year after finding out that post-recession, Gourmet magazine was shutting down for good. I haven’t finished it yet, but the memoir is a journey of grieving over that loss and healing via the act of cooking, turning cooking into almost a meditation. It’s exactly what I need to read right now because I feel that sentiment in my bones.
Cooking has involved a mix of emotions and has gone through a number of iterations during this pandemic for many of us. First, there are all those pics on Instagram of homemade bread and baked goods. We are making things that we usually don’t have time for and that give us comfort. What’s more comforting than a slice of warm buttered bread or a gooey brownie fresh from the oven?
Then there’s the flipside, the resurgence of processed foods from our childhoods—orangey boxed mac and cheese, Spaghettios, canned cinnamon rolls. The things that remind many of us of the easier days—after school, eating on the couch while we watch TV and our parents take care of the hard, adult stuff. Now we’re faced with new challenges—warnings of meat shortages and things we never thought we’d have to worry about. (And I know many out there have worried much earlier about food because without an income, many people can’t afford it. So I know I’m very lucky that I can still buy food, whatever kind of food that is.)
Cinnamon crumble cake
For me, I’ve gone through most of these steps already during this lockdown. It started with all the baking. The world is going to hell in a hand basket, who cares about dieting, let’s have dessert every night!
Canned soup and toast
Then the fatigue of having to cook three meals a day for everyone. Your choices are frozen pizza or canned soup, deal with it!
But now I’m in a new phase. I started to feel physically bad with all the not-so-healthy eating, and I began craving fresh, from scratch food. I’ve had an interest in cooking for most of my adult life. I walked into my marriage at 21 years old only knowing how to make three from scratch things, two of which involved a crock pot. So I taught myself to cook via the Food Network and my growing collection of cookbooks. There was something grounding about being able to cook for my new little two-person family that made the concept of being an actual adult (I was still in grad school at the time) seem less scary. In our tiny apartment kitchen with literally only enough counter space to fit a George Foreman grill, I learned how to feed us things not from a box.
Life, of course, gets busy and my cooking and meals fell into a bit of rut as I ventured out into the world and got my first career-type job. We moved from Baton Rouge to Austin, and we spent a lot of time in restaurants because…Austin. But then I found Central Market, the gourmet grocery stores here in Texas, and my interest in learning to cook new things was renewed. I branched out and got more adventurous. I bought more cookbooks. The process helped me settle into a new state where I knew no one but my husband.
When we moved to Dallas and I had my son—a world-shaking event if there ever was one, becoming a mom—I leaned on preparing homemade baby food while I was home with a baby who WOULD NOT SLEEP. A lot of my friends thought I was crazy with the homemade stuff. Why go through so much trouble? But I think it was less about the “benefits to baby” and more about me finding a way to have control in a world that was suddenly ruled by a not-so-benevolent dictator, an infant.
So, it makes sense to me that, right now, when the world feels very unsure and looks nothing like it did a few months ago, my instinct is to find my way back to the kitchen. I can’t control what is happening in the world. I’m living with constantly humming anxiety (like most of us) and can’t answer my son’s most recurring question: “When will things get back to normal?” Now there’s also meat shortages to contend with.
Roasted brussel sprouts
So, this week I found myself with the urge to take back some sliver of control. If there’s a meat shortage, then okay, do I really need that much meat? The answer is no. So, I’ve decided to try to go vegetarian six days a week. (I’m still getting smaller amounts of meat for kidlet who is a happy carnivore.) Yes, it’ll be much better for my health than all those brownies and hot dogs, but also, it gives me a reason to pull stacks of cookbooks off my shelves and find new recipes. It gives me a reason to cook because I want to instead of because I have to because we’re on lockdown.
Creamy mushroom toasts and Goat Cheese Arugula Pasta Salad
Vegetarian cooking takes a lot more prep and chopping, but I’ve realized that’s what I need right now. Putting on music and slicing a pile of mushrooms really can be meditative and calming. Seeing my family get excited about what we’re having because it “looks like fancy restaurant food” is rewarding. (Granted, I’m lucky to live with adventurous, non-picky eaters so I know not everyone would be quite so excited by new dishes.) We’re not just slogging through dinner, we’re experimenting, we’re on a culinary adventure. It feels more special.
Cooking can be an anchor in the storm. That’s why we have memoirs like Julie and Julia and My Kitchen Year. And looking back, I’m finding that throughout my life, it’s been one of mine. If I can put a great, satisfying meal on the table, see my family devour it with smiles on their faces, then the ground feels more solid beneath my feet. The warm light over our dinner table is chasing away the outside darkness. At least for one more day.
And all we can do right now is one day at a time. So, on to the next meal…
Have you found anything interesting about what activities or things you’re gravitating toward during this pandemic? What grounds you?
