02.07.22 Time in a bottle...or a jar

My Giant Microbes Covid, February 2022

Do you remember when and where you were when you first heard about Covid?

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.

All the ingredients for morning glory muffins

Time has been very strange during Covid - and I'm marking it in ways that would never have occurred to me before - in particular, the consumption of baking supplies.

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.  

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.

But, what struck me the most, was the rate at which I was going through spices!  

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.

I'm also going through dozens of eggs, and pounds of pecans - because in addition to a couple dozen muffins every three weeks or so...

Niloufer Ichaporia King's cardamon cake

I'm baking Samin Nosrat's focaccia with wheat flour,  a cake that Food 52 touted as Alice Water's favorite dessert...and next month for my husband's birthday...a German Chocolate cake. 

Turns out baking really is theraputic...

it's hard to be in a bad mood when the kitchen smells like butter, sugar and spice...

or when you turn the cake out of the pan and it looks just like the photo with the recipe.

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.

Honestly, February hasn't been much better so far...it's still cold, and we've had an ice storm (although not like last year)...but we are headed towards spring, and hopefully to the end of this Covid wave.

Until next time.