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| My Giant Microbes Covid, February 2022 |
I do.
I was at Chuy's - sitting outside because the weather was nice
- not because being outside was safer -
on the last Friday in February of 2020. My husband and I were having dinner with my niece (an emergency room PA in Seattle) who was in town for a professional training. We were talking about cases of a weird virus that was showing up in the Pacific northwest...
...we now know that was the beginning of what has become two very long years of dealing with this pandemic.
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| All the ingredients for morning glory muffins |
I've always cooked, but until the pandemic, I've never been much of a baker...the occassional batch of chocolate chip cookies, brownies from a box, and challah (but I made the dough in a breadmaker). Like so many other things, that's changed.
There were two baking camps in the beginning - sourdough and banana bread. I was definitely in the latter group.
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| Samin Nosrat's focaccia with salt and rosemary |
Like most folks, I started by using up the bananas I had in the freezer. Then I moved to muffins - and began adapting recipes - changing up the fruit, and adjusting the flour mix...flour that I started getting mail order, ten pounds at a time (remember there was a flour shortage!?) and have been ordering ever since.
I looked back over two years of Penzey's orders - I've used 4 cups of cinnamon and over 3 pints of vanilla - and have acquired bottles of numerous other spices, the most exotic of which is probably cardamom seeds.
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| Niloufer Ichaporia King's cardamon cake |
it's hard to be in a bad mood when the kitchen smells like butter, sugar and spice...
January was a rough month for me, and I definitely responded to the stress by pulling out the mixing bowls and turning on the oven...which is just fine as long as I balance all the sweets with healthy meals, sourced largely from the farmers market.
