Items

• 
  2020-10-14

  Time to Cook

  Before the onset of the corona virus and the lockdowns and quarantines that followed, I had a pretty routine schedule. I would wake up around 7:15am and I would not get home again until about 7pm. Normally I would make something easy for dinner that I could have at least another night in a row. Usually it would just be a meat and a vegetable with fruit for dessert. I would cook the vegetables and the meat in the same pan to save myself the clean up time later as I would normally go to bed around 11pm and not want to waste any more time cleaning than I had to. I also would not stray too far from recipes that I was comfortable with. I would be very upset if I made something terrible after a ling day at work. However now with quarantine, I work from home and my schedule has become quite different. I am able to sleep in a little longer as I do not have to commute anymore. As soon as I am finished work I am already home and can start making dinner as soon as I want. This extra time gives me more flexibility to try new recipes and take chances on foods I may not have tried otherwise. On my lunch break I am able to go food shopping so I am not limited by what ingredients I have on hand. For this meal that I made and posted pictures of, it would be a rare treat to get this on a worknight before COVID-19. This meal took longer, used more ingredients, involved more pots and pans, and took longer to clean up than any pre-quarantine meal that I would make. Yet the payoff was absolutely delicious. To have pan seared scallops in a creamy garlic sauce over wheat spaghetti on a random Wednesday night is one of the few bright sides of quarantine. I am looking forward to the day when all restrictions are lifted and life returns to normal but I will surely miss all the extra time I have to try new recipes, to have my kitchen filled with new and unique scents and for my taste buds to experience diverse ranges of cuisines that my normal schedule precluded.