Cooking Every Meal at Home

While we've thus far been fortunate during this challenging pandemic and lockdown, we are very concerned about people throughout the world who are less fortunate in any number of ways. We are very grateful to all the workers who produce and package our food and work in all the essential shops.

Question: where do we get food to cook our kitchen?
Answer: We do curbside pick up at a small local market called The Produce Station. They have been great!
We also rely on friends and relatives, other curbside pickup places, and amazon.com

In my kitchen this month, we have prepared every meal, three per day. We have obtained our food without entering any market or other public space since March 13. It's now the end of April and time for a backward look at what's been going on here, to share with a group of food bloggers from many places throughout the world who document what's happening in their kitchens each month. These posts documenting the past month should be very interesting, as everyone has the same challenges in avoiding infection and dealing with erratic shortages during the pandemic.

You can find links to this collection of posts here:

http://sherryspickings.blogspot.com/

Nothing much is new in my kitchen this month -- only one water pitcher, ordered online.

Food is our focus! We've received several grocery orders by doing curbside pickup from The Produce Station. as in the photo, as well as from a bulk food store called By The Pound. Wonderful friends and relatives have bought us needed items while shopping for themselves, as they were already committed to stand in the long lines at big supermarkets. A few amazon orders have supplemented our larder contents.

During this time of isolation, I've been especially grateful to fellow bloggers who described their own challenges and documented the foods they made to cope with one or another of the inconveniences of the lockdown. As I collected images of the foods that I've made in my kitchen this month, I have tried to give a shout-out to bloggers that inspired me, entertained me, comforted me, or that featured similar recipes.

Passover: A Family Holiday without Family 

In mid-April, we managed to celebrate Passover, as I wrote a few weeks ago. Passover is a family holiday, celebrated at home with a ritual meal. For most families, it's a communal celebration, often with one's dining table extended to the max, and maybe another table in the living room. This year throughout the world, many families had to celebrate with only a few or even one person present, though there were large numbers of electronic gatherings. Here are a couple of photos of our Passover food.

Our Seder Plate for Passover.

Matzo ball soup -- extreme close up!

For the Seder plate, we had most of the symbolic items on hand: salt water, horseradish, a bone, fresh green herbs, an egg, and apples for charoset. We had no matzo, but we received one in the mail just as we were about to celebrate. Matzo balls are made from matzo meal, which we did have in the pantry. Matzo ball soup is not part of the ancient ritual (as written down around 1000 years ago), but has become an expected part of the celebration, almost as much as the ritual items.

Many bloggers described how they celebrated Easter during lockdown. Blogger Johanna in Melbourne described her Easter cake that she shared with her daughter, unable to join her extended family as usual. Jeanie from Lansing, Michigan, blogging at The Marmelade Gypsy described her imaginative Easter decorations as well as how she celebrated; see the post Easter Week.

Baking

To continue with a description of our kitchen activities this month -- Len has been baking twice a week. Originally this "In My Kitchen" blog post included photos of a number of his bakes, but the result was too long, and has now been published as a separate post. Read it here: Baking Bread in April.

Kaiser rolls, a real treat!

New Recipes for Curry

The taste of curry powder, hot pepper, cardamom, coriander, cilantro, cumin, fennel seeds, and more appeal to me enormously, and I've been trying new recipes with this array of flavors. 

Naan bread, served with the red lentils, and cucumber in yogurt.

A different red lentil curry, with eggplant and coconut milk.

Hard boiled eggs with curry sauce. Yes, I have been
experimenting with curry flavors a lot! I've also made
a couple of curried chicken dishes.

At the blog Almost Italian, blogger Francesca, who lives in Australia, has been posting about her curry recipes throughout April. In the post Muttar Paneer, My Favorite Curry, she discussed the meaning of the word curry, which she begins by defining as: "the anglicised form of the Tamil word kaṟi meaning ‘sauce’ or ‘relish for rice.'" Very interesting reading!

Chutney from By The Pound, to go with the curries.

Many More Flavors!

All through the lockdown, we have been cooking new things for fun, trying different spices and recipes, and in some ways forming new eating habits -- never going out to a restaurant, obviously! I made several of my standard Mexican-flavored dishes, which I've featured before, as well as some new ones.

Carrot soup in a tureen; apple slices for dessert.
Inspired by Shaheen at A2K blog (link).

My carrot soup contained orange juice, chicken broth, and dried tomato.
It was garnished with raw tomato and parsley. 

Soup is great for times like these, especially as our weather in April was often cold and dreary. At the blog Kahakai Kitchen, blogger Deb in Hawaii hosts a blog event called Souper Sunday. See this post on her Hungarian Mushroom Soup with links to other bloggers' soup adventures. Another blogger, Judee at Gluten Free A-Z has many interesting posts on vegetarian cooking; see her tempting recipe for Carrot Cumin Soup. Tandy Sinclair's Lavender and Lime from South Africa and Iris Flavia's oddly named blog Double-Half or One Ten without Ham from Germany are also among my go-to blogs. And each Saturday, I enjoy following a number of bloggers who link up at Weekend Cooking on the blog Beth Fish Reads.

Ready to roast: a chicken. I spatchcock the chicken and use the backbone for stock along
with celery tops, parsley stems, etc. Stock from one such chicken went into the carrot soup.

Sesame noodles with tuna and all the vegetables in the crisper drawer.
This was a makeshift lunch the day before one of our orders was ready.

Red cabbage and carrot salad: a recipe that I make often. These ingredients
keep well, so they're good for this time of limited food shopping.
I used up the red cabbage and bought a huge head of green cabbage!

Mushrooms, sautéed and seasoned with ras el hanout,
a Moroccan spice blend.

Mushroom omelet with the ras-el-hanount mushrooms.
Dessert: tangerine and avocado salad with rose water
and a touch of cinnamon.

Well, even after breaking this into two posts, I did write a lot this month, didn't I? I hope you don't mind! Next month, besides cooking, we hope to order take-out from some of the interesting restaurants in our town, which will give us some new flavors. So I'll have some new foods to write about.

Sherry's New In My Kitchen Logo.

Blog post and all photos © 2020 mae sander. 
This is published at mae food dot blog spot dot com. If you read it elsewhere it's been pirated.