November 20, 2020

Food and cooking in 2020...

What a wild ride the last 8 months and counting have been!  Like everyone else, we've been staying home as much as possible, taking things day by day.  There are far too many emotions boiling just beneath the surface to address properly here but for what it's worth, keeping busy, focusing on basics like food and our meals, has been a much-needed distraction, particularly during the early days of the lockdown.

That said, I have to admit that cooking/baking fatigue set in by around week 12 for me.  Cooking three meals a day, plus snacks and treats, for three straight months got a little exhausting.  Nevertheless, I can't express enough how grateful I am to be able to get groceries, and to have the luxury of cooking for my family and myself, during this time.

Luckily, businesses began to open up and the occasional takeout became part of life and provided a reprieve to the non-stop cooking.  I also learned to ease up and get back to basics more often.  Because in the early days of mid-March through April and May, meals were more elaborate than normal, as a way to both comfort and distract us.  I was doing things like making fresh crepes for afternoon snack (the recipe Dominique Ansel shared online was a hit at our house).  If it wasn't crepes, cake, or cookies, I was making things like chouquettes dipped in chocolate sauce...

...and craquelin-topped cream puffs - some of which were filled with chocolate cream and others made into profiteroles stuffed with ice cream and topped with chocolate sauce.
Like a lot of other people, I was concerned about my store of yeast (and flour) because I was baking bread and making English muffins...

I had a successful attempt at making soft, fluffy Japanese milk bread for the first time. 
There was even a session of pretzel-making in my kitchen. Back in April, I finally made my almond crunch pretzel daydreams come true.  They were an homage to ones my husband and I would often get at the mall back in the day.  I was happy with how well they turned out.

LinkWithin

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...