Cooking in the Time of COVID-19

I like jam. A lot. Even though I’ve liked a good jam/jelly/fruit spread for a long time, I think my real appreciation for it began in 2015. During a graduation trip to England, I ate a strawberry jam in Dartmoor National Park that I can still taste to this day. It was fresh and easily spreadable, and just the right amount of sweet, especially along with Devonshire clotted cream. It was totally different from store-bought jams, and it made quite an impression on me. My dad's and my strawberry jam What with my love for jam, I’ve long been interested in trying to make my own. However, two things stopped me. First, I had a very traditional image of jam-making in my head: hours over a stove, little jam jars covered in checkered cloths, and enough sweet, sticky results to feed a whole town. I assumed that jam-making was both too time-intensive for a graduate student, and WAY too much for a single person. Second, as I’ve mentioned before on this blog, baking was never my strong su...

My friend Liza said something very appropriate at the pandemic’s beginning. She said, “Self-care is not optional anymore.” I think that’s true, in whatever form self-care takes for a particular person. The occasional face mask or bath, exercise, daily check-ins with friends...I define self-care in my own head as “any pleasant activity that makes you feel calm, less stressed, or good about yourself.” Some of my own favorite self-care activities include going outside for a walk, reading a good/favorite book, and baths with a nice face mask. But there’s a specific self-care thing I do that has become much more important these days: healthy cooking. Cooking in general, as this blog attests, is one of my own ways of self-care. But let’s be honest: not everything I make leaves me feeling exactly healthy afterwards. For example, the Red Lobster biscuits I made are wonderful, but after actually trying them, I have classified them as a very occasional treat! Healthy recipes, on the othe...

Many folks have compared COVID-19 to probably the scariest bacterium I can think of: Yersinia pestis . Its other name is “the plague.” The Black Death of 1347-1352 is the hands-down winner of my Worst Time to Be Alive Award. Anywhere between ⅓ and ⅔ of Europe, and just shy of 25% of the world’s population - you heard that right, the world - died as a result of the Black Death. It’s no wonder a lot of folks then thought they’d reached the End Times. Speaks for itself, I think. But here’s the thing. The mid-1300s weren’t the End Times, we recovered, and humanity learned some valuable lessons from the Black Death. The ones that strike me most live on in danse macabre art. These art pieces (including music! ) show us that death is everyone’s lifelong companion, and can come calling no matter your age or social standing. That might be a scary thought at face value. The fact that people started representing that fear post-Black Death suggests, to me, that they’re confronting the fea...

My hot garbage Recently, due to a greater abundance of spare time, I’ve been listening to a lot of videos and audiobooks on Tudor England. Now, I have some experience self-educating on this time period (late 1400s-1603). Though I read books and studied Shakespeare at age 10, I primarily attribute the interest to Showtime’s The Tudors , which my parents watched a couple years later. I was enchanted by the glittering jewels, lush music, brightly colored and regal costumes, and two actresses in particular, Natalie Dormer (Anne Boleyn) and Sarah Bolger (Mary Tudor). I watched the series through once I was older, and it quickly became a guilty pleasure. To this day I tell people, “Everyone has their own guilty pleasure entertainment. The Tudors may be some hot garbage, but it’s my hot garbage.” And the show led me to read/view many more (shall we say) historically accurate accounts of the Tudor period. I love exploring this fascinating time, and I can always learn something new, no...