What’s Cooking?

The new surge in the pandemic combined with winter cold weather has us staying inside. Our coping strategy is to try some new or newish recipes. 

Home made granola.

From the first covid wave in March 2020, we remember the terrible shortages and challenges for shopping; also for the early months of the pandemic, until we were immunized, we stayed in and ordered all food and other things for delivery or curb-side pickup. We aren’t as fearful this time, so I’m still doing in-person grocery shopping. 

This week at Whole Foods, the shelves were just as bare as I remember them when everyone was hoarding. The current problem, however, is different: so many store employees are out sick that they can’t stock the shelves. Yesterday a dedicated produce clerk wrote down what I was looking for and went to the stock room  — she came out with boxes that had just been unloaded from a delivery truck, and I therefore bought very fresh mushrooms for a raw mushroom and celery dish, cucumbers for salad, eggplant (see below), and more. In short: I managed to get everything on my list, despite the empty shelves and bins, thanks to a willing employee. I told her that she was a hero. 

Here are some examples of this week’s menu items —

Roasted eggplant with lemon and browned onions.
Recipe from Ottolenghi’s book Jerusalem.

Slicing vegetables for the eggplant garnish.

Prep for another Ottolenghi recipe for squash with oranges. I used delicata squash and satsuma mandarins.

The finished dish. Recipe from the Guardian (link).

Len cooked a red snapper using a recipe from the very old Time-Life Fish Cookbook.

The origin of the recipe:
The Complete Book of Caribbean Cooking
by Elizabeth Lambert Ortiz.

The delicious result: whole fish garnished with parsley and bell pepper.
On the side we had a garlic sauce called Salsa Esmeralda.

Simple lunch: avocado and tomato sandwich with green bean salad.

The situation for all businesses right now is very challenging — my observations at Whole Fooods are obviously just one small example. The Washington Post, in an article “Mounting omicron infections force businesses to scramble, threatening economic recovery” writes:

“The growing toll of sick workers — Capital Economics says more than 5 million Americans are in quarantine — is hammering employers that already were struggling to secure enough labor. Yet even as pandemic fatigue deepens, there are hopes that omicron will prove to be a punishing but short-lived squall.”

Blog post and all photos © 2022 mae sander.