Inclusion All Year Round

 Today we remember those who were lost nineteen years ago. We came together as a country. There was a sense of unity and fidelity to our country and neighbors. We are apart now, thanks to beliefs , prejudices and Covid 19. Yet there are ways of coming together and standing as one. That involves one of our  most basic needs - cooking and nourishing each other,

We can still cook and bake for each other despite social distancing . Isolated neighbors will appreciate a loaf of homemade bread or a casserole. It's even easy to create a meal box , full of ingredients and instructions and leave it on a neighbor's doorstep. You could add fresh produce from your garden along with spices and extras. Keep it simple. A jar of homemade sauce and a box of any kind of pasta is simple enough to make and reheat but nutritious and filling for a lunch or dinner. You could also include the ingredients for a tasty hero, with cold cuts and cheeses along with a small container of dressing. Have a dessert of some fruit , whether an apple or pear. You could also include a baggie of grapes or cherries too. For fun, add a small jigsaw puzzle , puzzle books and magazines. If the person is celebrating a birthday, find out their favorite meal and make that. Include a small cake or cupcakes along with a small gift.

Inclusion also means bringing kids together despite the social distancing. There can still be get togethers but  on Zoom . Parents can get together and create the same dinner that everyone can share on this modern meeting medium. A truly inclusive idea is having Thursdays or one day of the weekend saved for different recipes from different groups. It could be a Nigerian beef and spaghetti stew or chicken with plantains. It's a great way of expanding family palates as well as the family cookbook. Cooking other classmates' family recipes brings new spices and flavors to the kitchen pantry. Parents can also write down their recipes in a class cookbook that can be published on Nook or Kindle. How to photographs  can be included too to show how a dish is made. Stories of everyone's ancestry and homeland can also accompany the recipes. Of course there could be virtual lunches too with everyone enjoying a shared peanut butter and jelly sandwich or a tomato soup in their individual houses. 

We need to be more inclusive despite our distancing. If we can honor the ones we lost, and our country, let's try to be more unified. It can easily be done through cooking and baking for each other.

The State Of Food Now

It's been a little over three months that our lives, and our eating habits have been changed. Not only that our shopping has also been altered. Have we adapted? It's an interesting question.

The Corona virus has  upset everything and definitely changed the whole modern food chain, from how our food is grown and caught to how we eat.  The New York Times Food section this past Wednesday ran an article about the salmon industry and how the virus impacted it. Julia O'Malley wrote about how out of staters come to the Naknek area for the work. They either work fishing or processing. The businesses have to be shut down meaning there's no work and no products going out to the stories and buyers. It has hit hard for Brian Nicolson, a Brooklyn winemaker who returns to his family business in this Alaskan outback. Farms across the country are also affected.Some will prosper. Some will not. Thanks to the restaurants closing down or limiting their services, many farms have suffered. Many crops have had to be destroyed. Now with bans being lifted, the farms can make a comeback. It's just a matter of keeping the workers safe, despite the bad workplace conditions and the lack of medical benefits for them.

Thankfully the shortages have more or less stopped. It was bad, with farmers killing off livestock because they couldn't sell the meat. It seemed they were more catering to the restaurants because home chefs were stockpiling every kind from frozen nuggets to fresh hams.The flour shortage due to people going wild for home baking is also over. We realize that we have the capacity to be hoarders, especially when it comes to such essentials as milk , bread, eggs and cold cuts. Yet we also have the hidden capacity to be fearless home chefs and bakers. Being quarantined has retaught us to read through cookbooks that have been collecting dust for years and use such gadgets as corers and ravioli cutters that have been sitting idle in kitchen drawers. There has also a down side. As people binged watched their favorite shows and movies they also binged ate. Snack sales went up tremendously. People wanted comfort foods, from Oreos, and their counterparts (try the Acme's Tuxedo brand of sandwich cookies) to potato chips and pork rinds. Home bakers indulged on frosting rich cakes and butter laden cookies. Hopefully this is over and we can appreciate the fresh fruit and veggies of the season for a quick bite.

How have we adapted? How has our country adapted? The answer varies depending on who you talk to or what you read. We did relearn to cook and bake which is always good. Yet we also discovered our dark side when it came to hoarding and binging.