It’s March 12th, 2020, just after 5PM. My hair is in perfect, curly ringlets, fresh from the salon, when I pull into the rather frenzied Stop & Shop parking lot. I usually didn’t bother with an elaborate finish from my stylist, but I let it happen today. I’m feeling spontaneous. I’m also completely unaware that outside of the other harried patrons at the grocery, nobody will get to see my new ‘do.
I cruise the grocery store in a mild panic: the country is shutting down tomorrow, with no definitive end date. And I don’t know if we have enough food at the house to get us through the weekend.
I push my nearly empty cart (because touching them didn’t bother me much back then) up the aisles. I can’t think straight. Do I grab a box of cereal? My fiance and I don’t drink the same kind of milk. What about just plain pasta? We’d surely get sick of it after a while. I shove whatever boxes of penne that are left on the shelf into my cart anyway.
There’s no time to think about recipes, which makes me anxious. Just grab and worry about it later. I feel like I’m playing a really dark version of Supermarket Sweep.
I’ve always cooked in a way to avoid food waste; if I buy a package of peppers, I have to transform those peppers over several meals before they go bad. I think it’s a holdover from growing up poor, though we usually only ever ate frozen things as kids, so who knows. Having access to a kitchen throughout college found me cooking much of the same way: very little fresh food, shelf stable starches, pre-made frozen dishes, shredded cheeses and lactose free milk that lasts just that extra bit longer in the fridge. If I had some extra cash and some free time, I would spring on some tomatoes and eggs and whip up shakshuka and eat that throughout the day.
When I graduated and moved in with my then-boyfriend (now fiance, soon to be husband), I discovered very quickly that he had no idea how to cook. So I was now tasked to not only cook for myself, but to care about the health of someone else. He never pressured me to do so, but I was worried about us both being well and eating well. It was fine if I ate like garbage, sure. But the guy was left to ramen, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and GrubHub if left to his own devices. I couldn’t subject him to that.
So whenever I had the time, I would experiment with new vegetable combinations, like spaghetti squash roasted in the oven, sauteed quickly alongside some red peppers and spinach, finished with some feta cheese. If it grew out of the ground, chances are I roasted it, playing around with different seasoning combinations to never allow it to become boring. I carefully stirred risotto from scratch, let orzo cook in a simmering sauce until it reached perfection. I zested lemons for chicken picatta and limes for tacos al pastor, transforming the pre cooked, and expensive, pork belly from Trader Joe’s. Our house was just shy of a shack, disproportionate with a low ceiling on the first floor and horrible lighting. And add two other roommates who were pleasantly scarce but never did the dishes. But that was the closest thing we had to our own home. And it’ll always be fond to me, because I think I did my best cooking between those 4 walls.
We’re now living with my Bachelor dad, who is used to cooking for just himself regularly. I don’t take it personally, and never will; one less mouth to plan to feed is a relief.
In a fog, I pay for my groceries. I can’t even focus on the total; I lost my job 3 weeks prior to the end of normal as we know it. Money is running out for me, and I had never before applied for unemployment.
The whole ride home I’m trying to concentrate on the road, but the issue presses at me, nagging. Can I make us enough good food until this all passes, without making food waste? It’ll only be two weeks, and then we’ll be okay. I think.
It’s enough to make me stop breathing at times.
My fiance has no idea what will meet him when I walk into the house, but he’s known me long enough to see the distance in my stare. I’m stuck in my head, and he has to pull me off the ledge.
He puts the groceries away and pulls up his email: we subscribed to a meal kit the week prior. A box with ingredients for 4 dinners would be arriving tomorrow, guaranteed. It’s a salve for my frazzled brain; yes, a pandemic is upon us, but at least we won’t go hungry and I won’t burn out trying to plan it all.
I didn’t set foot into a grocery store again until September 2020, spurred by a trauma-based decision to cook for our 1 year old dog, Ruby. My fiance did the shopping for the odds and ends, milk and olive oil and eggs. But my blessed meal kit, already portioned with exactly what I needed, was my pandemic MVP.
Gone were the days of lists with corresponding recipes, sticking to singular culture’s cuisine for a week at a time because I couldn’t think of any other way to use soft tortillas. The recipe cards kept me from having to constantly check my phone so I didn’t miss a step. But most importantly, everything I needed was in the box, which fit neatly under the cheese drawer in the fridge.
I never thought I would become someone wholly dependent on a box of food arriving every week. I was from a working class family! We made do with what we had, we bought what we needed and went without what we didn’t. It took becoming an adult and a pandemic to realize I was allowed to have fresh tomatoes and kale and za’atar in my dinners. I didn’t have to use the microwave on something frozen. I could take my time and build a meal from scratch and take pride in all of the extra steps it took to get there.
I sharpened my knives and my chopping skills. I bought a kitchen scale and a brand new peeler, then a new frying pan and a bigger cutting mat with my unemployment. I turned on the range and I clocked out from the pandemic, from the loss and the despair, and I just cooked.
I became that 22-year-old again, in my small kitchen of my tiny house, with only one counter to work on next to my electric stove. I kept us fed. I calmed my brain. I found a way to survive.