Items

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  2021-08-07

  Diane Ramirez Oral History, 2021/08/07

  How one Hispanic female dealt with the cooking challenges that took place in the early months of the pandemic. In particular, one meal she prepared on September 26, 2020.
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  2021-03-21

  A tale of the babka

  If you had asked me if I was a baker prior to the year 2020, I would have unequivocally said no. A cook? Yes. But a baker? Absolutely not. But that was before the global Covid-19 pandemic. I worked in the cruise industry prior to the pandemic and I travelled a lot for my job. I was not home enough to really jump into and try to master baking. Following mandatory quarantine in March 2020, I suddenly had extra time on my hands. Further, I was laid-off from my job in early June and ended-up with even more time on my hands. Like so many around the world during quarantine, I took up baking. But unlike the many who tried sourdough, I started with making standard wheat breads and then went straight to enriched breads like babkas or challahs. The photos I am attaching here show my progression as a baker. My first babka was fine and tasted great, but as you can see, I have improved in technique and in flavor over time. My favorite babka recipe comes from King Arthur Flour. As a new baker, I relied on the King Arthur Flour website for flour and yeast tips, baking tools, and recipes. I was too hesitant to add walnuts the first time and I accidently used a quick-rise east instead of standard yeast. As time went on, I felt more comfortable adding walnuts and raisins. I also felt more comfortable working with the dough to perfect the twisting technique of the babka. I relied on trial-and-error for most of my recipes, but I also watched all episodes of the Great British Baking Show and found some videos that gave me the basics of flour, yeast, and water. My family were very surprised by this newfound baking skill. But they enjoyed tasting the results. I have enjoyed bringing people together over food – and I have enjoyed giving loaves as gifts. I am still trying new bread recipes and plan on continuing to bake even as life slowly returns to our new normal.
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  2021-08-07

  Food Is Not Always Comforting

  This is a story of my family's experience with food and the pandemic. For us, it was a reflection of another difficult time in our lives.
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  2020-05

  Food Shortages During a Pandemic

  While most people tried new recipes during the pandemic, what I remember most is the food shortages that forced me to constantly change what I was planning to make and how I made it. I began using grocery pickup before the pandemic, and since I am a full-time caregiver to my mother who is high-risk for COVID, we continued to use grocery pickup as much as possible to limit any exposure to the virus. Unfortunately, this meant that I could not get halfway through the store, realize that I could not make what I was planning due to unavailable items, and put stuff back and try to buy something else. Though I do have the store substitute most items when they can, especially during lockdown sometimes they couldn’t provide any substitutions, which would leave me without one or two crucial ingredients and unable to fix anything to eat. To combat this, I started getting enough food for two separate dishes for every meal, so if plan A didn’t work out, hopefully plan B would. I also started planning for meals that could be used with the same ingredients, except for one or two, and then get both options just in case one was out of stock. Beef and noodles and chicken and noodles would be one example of this, where the main recipe and ingredients are mostly the same, the only difference being the frozen chicken with chicken broth versus prepackaged beef tips with beef bouillon. Due to their minimal ingredients and their easiness to make, these two interchangeable recipes to me most represent the pandemic and what I fixed the most of during the lockdown and food shortages. I have attached the recipe for both.
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  2021-07-02

  1. Missing Breakfast

  During the pandemic, we were kept at home and therefore had to cook many of the foods that we normally would have gone out to eat. For my family we normally went out to have breakfast and one of the main things that we would have is pancakes. They taste so much better when they are served in a restaurant, with the warm syrup and butter. At home we tried to replicate them however could not find a syrup that we really like and had to buy a griddle to cook them. It was something that for my family we really missed and the taste and smell of fresh pancakes is now something that we cherish when we are able to go out and get them.
• 
  2020-05

  In 2020 We Ate Certain Foods Because We Stopped Buying Fresh Produce and Meat

  In late spring 2020, we begin to realize that it was too dangerous and too expensive to buy fresh produce and meat. The fresh produce was often out of stock for weeks at a time. Then other times the produce just seemed difficult to trust. The grocery store often had people without masks and the COVID numbers were rising. We really couldn't trust any fresh fruits or vegetables unless we cooked them. Eventually as the prices began to rise on fresh meats, we stopped buying those too. Eventually we found that the pandemic had completely altered our day to day eating habits. We didn't always trust restaurants for takeout since they had COVID outbreaks also. Living in a small rural town, we had limited options. This left us trying to buy a few canned foods at stores or ordering delivery of shelf-stable foods in bulk from online retailers. One of the things that I remember the most is how I began to struggle with my blood pressure. We were eating too many boxed and canned foods; not enough fruit and vegetables. My sodium intake was high and my potassium was low. We then decided we would start buying dehydrated vegetables and fruit. We tried not to buy canned versions that were preserved with salt. The main thing I remember is that one of the first meals that seemed so good and healthy was a meal of Anazazi beans. We had bought some in New Mexico the year before and really liked them. This time we bought a 10 lb bag and assumed that we may have to stock up as the pandemic continued on. We also bough dehydrated onions, dehydrated jalapenos, and other dehydrated mixed vegetables. We did an instant pot of the beans and what ingredients we had. We really enjoyed it. For the first time in weeks, it felt like a real meal. And this was a hot meal during a warm time of year, something we would normally never cook before 2020. Here is the instant pot recipe and with the ingredients we had, leaving out the ones we didn't have. We adapted as best we could. The original full recipe is linked for comparison. The recipe we found: Instant Pot Anasazi Beans Ingredients 2 cups. dried Anasazi Beans 6 cloves garlic, peeled and smashed 4 c. low sodium chicken stock 1 c. water 1 fresh bay leaf (or 2 dried) 1 t. cumin 1 t. dried oregano 1 t. dehydrated jalapenos 1/8 c. dried onion salt and pepper to taste Instructions: 1. Place dried beans, crushed garlic cloves, chicken stock, water, cumin, oregano, bay leaves, dehydrated jalapenos, and dried onion in instant pot. 2. Close lid and pressure cook at high pressure for 25 minutes, then pressure release for roughly 15 minutes. Open the lid carefully. 3. Switch pot to soup setting. Stir occasionally for about 10 minutes. Taste and season with salt and pepper. 4. Serve. http://eliotseats.com/2019/01/27/instant-pot-anasazi-beans/
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  2021-08-06

  Covid Gardening Story and Okra Recipe

  I chose to focus on my garden and our chickens that we began right before the pandemic hit. I never realized how lucky I was to live in a rural environment until Spring 2020, when living in the country meant having a bit more freedom than in the city. Our garden and chickens provided us with foods that sometimes were out of stock in our small, local store. However, we also faced other things in our community that made the psychological aspects of the pandemic really hard, such as living with those who deny the reality of the disease and mitigation efforts that people like my husband promoted, as an ER physician. I suppose this story is a bit of a love letter to our little property out in the country, despite the differences in values that we have with our town.
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  2021-08-06

  Emily Brignone Oral History, 2021/08/06

  While working from home I started snacking a lot as I frequently missed breaks and lunches due to the increased workload I also tended to work later than before so while I had no commute I stopped working around the same time I would have gotten home if I had been in the office most of June and July. I found snacking was a way to stay present in the physical world while living almost exclusively online during work hours and frequently replaced or at least supplemented some very hurried lunches. My favorite snack I had never tried before but it was suggested to me by someone who later passed from Covid and so now reminds me not only to be grounded but of them. My favorite snack is really simple but was new to me: wheat thins with light veggie cream cheese. It tasted like what the summer should have been instead of what it was. It was also a shift for me since I didn't eat a lot of convenience foods before COVID I took the time to make food so the idea of creating little snacks to replace generally more nutritious and regulated food was new to me.
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  2021-08-06

  Pressure Cooker Comfort Food

  The COVID-19 pandemic brought about many difficult changes to people’s daily lives, including self-quarantining. In 2020, I bought a pressure cooker. The pressure cooker is a device that has made cooking for my family easier. When we couldn’t go out to the store, it allowed us to use ingredients we had at home to make easy and hearty meals. Beef stroganoff quickly became a loved recipe in my house, and we would make it whenever we could not go out to the store. It required little effort and always tasted delicious. This was the perfect dish for when we were sick and stuck at home, and we felt rejuvenated after eating it.
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  2020-02-01

  Starbucks Egg Bites @ Home?

  While this may be a trivial struggle, the pandemic minutely affected my morning traditions. As someone who wakes up with just enough time to get ready and run through a drive-thru before work, the closure of my go-to Starbucks caused an abrupt halt in my morning routine. I could no longer grab my morning coffee and signature egg bites or great my favorite baristas as I headed off to work. After the swift investment in an Instantpot, I read through numerous recipes in an attempt to get my mornings back to "normal." As I located a sous vide egg bite dupe for those made at Starbucks, I quickly began experimenting with numerous combinations of veggies and meats for my sunrise snack. After several attempts and failures, I eventually mastered the egg bite, and now I consider them a staple of my repertoire. While my mornings were still far from "normal" due to the numerous restrictions set because of the pandemic, a little piece of me felt the comfort that stemmed from the creation of these little egg bites and my coffee in the morning. This experience that spawned out of the events caused by the pandemic forced me to become a better cook and an ingredient-conscious one at that! I've found the kitchen to be a place of comfort and artistic expression now that I know how to appreciate my ingredients, tools, and desire to learn more about cooking!
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  2021-08-02

  Macaroons

  The COVID-19 Pandemic led me to try a new and challenging recipe of Macaroons. This is my experience.
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  2020-11-30

  Creating New Traditions in a Pandemic

  One of the traditions in my family is to make lefse, a type of Norwegian flatbread, at Christmas time. This tradition was started by my grandmother, because it was one of the foods that she associated with her childhood Christmases as the child of Norwegian and Swedish immigrants. Every year, no matter what was going on, we gathered together as a family at the start of the Christmas season to make lefse. If you’ve made lefse before, you can attest to it being a labor-intensive process, which involves ricing pounds of potatoes, rolling out dozens of balls of dough until they are paper thin, and frying them one by one on a hot griddle. It’s one of those recipes that works better if you have several people to help. In my family, everyone had a job to do. The youngest children of the family were put in charge of popping air bubbles that rose from the dough while it cooked. The older kids took turns flouring the rolling boards and rolling out the dough. The adults were responsible for cooking the lefse, a process that involved transferring huge rounds of dough to the hot griddle using long turning sticks. Even family members who were not culinarily inclined were put to work, folding the finished lefse and packaging it up so that it could be frozen, so that it was available for Christmas morning. It was a family affair, that filled the kitchen up with laughter and stories and more than one flour fight. Family lefse day is one of the most enduring memories of my childhood. When the pandemic made it unsafe to travel or even to visit my family, I found myself facing a Christmas without being able to participate in my family’s lefse making tradition. There were many teary video calls to family members as we all came to terms with the fact that we would be missing this tradition for the first time in nearly 40 years. At this point, after enduring months of isolation because of COVID-19, I was devastated. It didn’t feel like the holidays without this tradition and making lefse by myself felt overwhelming. I was telling my friend Mike about how sad I was over missing out on this tradition, when he offered a solution. We would both quarantine for 14 days, purchase all the ingredients we needed and have them delivered, and then he and I would make as much lefse as we could. I was stunned by his generosity. After all, this was not his tradition. In fact, he’d never even eaten lefse before. But he saw a way that he could help a friend feel better after such a trying year. So, we did just that. With only two of us, it took us about six hours, but we ended up with nearly thirteen pounds of lefse that eventually got sent to family members in four different states. The best moment came when we all video chatted from our homes on Christmas morning, just to eat the lefse together. It was different than normal, but it was a joyous moment. Mike joined us on the call and shared some of the challenges we had making thirteen pounds of lefse in a tiny apartment in the middle of a pandemic. This year, he’s been invited to my parents’ house to join in on the family lefse making day. After all, it’s tradition.
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  2021-08-02

  Chicken (or Turkey) Curry

  The attached text story is a curry recipe that my wife and I 'perfected' while experimenting with new recipes during COVID-19. With the additional time to cook it was fun to try new things in the kitchen.
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  2021-08-02

  Jared Holmberg Oral History, 2021/08/02

  When the Pandemic first broke out, I was concerned that I would catch the virus since I was working in an elementary school at the time. I thought of various ways to boost my immune system and I thought making healthy soups sounded like the best idea. I looked through the internet and I found this healthy quinoa soup recipe. I tried it and absolutely loved it. It was savory, hearty, and contained a rich blend of rustic flavors. This dish became one of my favorites throughout 2020 and I still cook it from time to time. For anyone looking for a healthy way to fight the virus, I recommend this recipe.
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  2020-08-17

  Comfort Food in an Uncomfortable time.

  In the midst of the chaos of: at home learning, quarantine, and the endless stream of commercials asking to support major corporations such Mcdonalds and Taco Bell, the epiphany that fast food could be made...slower, safer, but just as nostalgic, came to mind. No longer will you have to put your life, or an essential workers life, on the line for mediocre fast food! In order to emulate the staple dish of a CrunchWrap Supreme, the following ingredients are necessary. Recipe Ingredients: - 16 oz of Ground Beef - 4 Large Tortillas - 8 medium size tortillas - 1 head of lettuce - 4 oz of tomatoes - 2 oz of peppers - 4 tablespoons of sour cream - 6 oz of cheese - 1 tablespoon chili powder - ¼ teaspoon garlic powder - ¼ teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes - ¼ teaspoon dried oregano - ½ teaspoon paprika - 1 teaspoon salt - 1 teaspoon black pepper Steps to Make It 01 Layer skillet with oil and heat to medium or medium-high heat. Allow the oil to heat before adding the medium tortillas. Once the oil has begun to "pop" place one tortilla into the pan. It should sizzle immediately, cooking for about 10 to 15 seconds. Repeat until 4 medium tortillas have been cooked. 02 On Medium Heat place the ground beef on the skillet. Add powders, spices, as meat cooks. 03 As the beef is cooking, dice the tomatoes, peppers, and place in a small mixing bowl. *note a food processor may be used as a substitute 04 As the beef has finished cooking, set aside for 5 minutes 05 Assembly: Place 2-4oz of the cooked beef in the center of an uncooked large tortilla, 06 Apply a spoonful of cheese, and diced peppers and tomatoes, and lettuce 07 Place a medium fried tortilla atop the meat,cheese, and lettuce mixture 08 Spread ½ tablespoon of sour cream, place another spoonful of cheese, diced tomatoes and lettuce 09 Place a medium uncooked tortilla atop the fried medium tortilla 10 Begin to fold the large tortilla’s outer edges over the filling, creating a five sided shape 11 Reheat the skillet to medium heat and place the CrunchWrapSupreme, seam side down, on the hot pan. Cook until lightly golden. Flip and cook on the other side for 1-2 minutes. 12 Repeat steps 5-11 13 Enjoy!