Pandemic Cooking

Since I pretty much live by myself, cooking...

Well, normally I might make something special on the weekend, that lasts well as leftovers and I can eat over the next week. Since my work office is next to a park, I generally brought something I could grab and go (and play pokemon during my lunch break. Except Friday, when I went out for lunch with some of my coworkers). And dinner was thus either the leftovers from whatever I made on the weekend, or something quick and easy I could alternate with it. See - here's the thing. When you live alone, well. It's a lot of work (and dishes) to make food for just one meal, so I'm more likely to cook a lot... but I can't eat all of that, so I tend to have leftovers. So I mostly try to pick foods that do well as leftovers. Like chili, which tends to get better as the flavors meld. 

Now, because of the pandemic, I'm home all day. I had seen posts discussing homemade sourdough bread, and initially resisted the idea of making my own, but the more I kept seeing the topic the more it sounded like a good idea. I didn't have any yeast (I think. I might, but I couldn't find it when I checked, so it might just be hidden away somewhere. Probably got old and bad by now, too) and the store was all out, but no worries! The internet shows you how to start your own. I happened to have a small thing of raisins, so I just had to get them wet and add some flour and patiently wait a day or two and voila! Yeasty bread starter.

I had been worried the first day, 'cause it clearly wasn't acting like it had any active yeast in it. Looked more like a flour paste, without any of the rising or bubbles it's supposed to have. But later on the second day I could definitely see the yeast in action. I went ahead and made some bread (not sourdough - sourdough has to be fed and maintained for a while, to get all the flavorful soury yeasts more time to produce), and put the rest of it in the fridge to slow the growth. I can only eat so much bread at a time, and one loaf was going to be plenty. I'll bring out the refrigerated one and start another round when I'm ready.

Bread was tasty, and turned out pretty good. Not perfect, but good.

Anyways, I normally do a weekly grocery trip, mostly for the fresh fruits and veggies since they just don't last all that long. Or, these days, I do a weekly order for delivery...

But I decided not to do that this week. It feels like this is a good week to take advantage of the stuff I already had, you know?

It's kind of interesting trying to figure out what to make with what I already have on hand... normally when I do decide on something big, I'll run out to the store to get whatever I don't normally stock, and so there's things that have been on my shelf or in my freezer for quite a while.

Like, this weekend I decided to make a chicken broccoli macaroni bake, and use up the half a box of macaroni. It turned out pretty nice, though I made two pans and froze the second one for later. It also makes for something quick and easy I can heat up for lunch, though I don't really need anything 'quick' when I'm just chilling at home, I guess.

Anyways, I'd also had some ground beef and I was trying to figure out  what to make with it. I wasn't feeling any of the more standard dishes... the chicken bake had enough pasta in it already, I didn't want to make more. I had debated making a dirty rice of some sort, but really that'd be better with fresh bell peppers and onions or something, and I didn't have it on hand.

But while looking at the rice options, I noticed an almost empty box of barley, and it had a nice recipe on the back for a beef and barley soup. I didn't follow the instructions exactly, of course, but I'm pretty pleased with the way it turned out. :) I had some beef broth, a bag of frozen carrot slices, half a bag of frozen spinach, diced tomatoes, some onion, and various spices and seasonings. All in all, worked out well.

Finished off the last bit of my homemade bread, too. Maybe I'll start prepping another batch this weekend, depending on the weather - it's always nicer to bake when it's cool out. Seems silly to bake in the summer. Having the oven heat up the house when you're running the air conditioner is a bit counterproductive.

As for the news - well, it's all still pretty awful, though there are many people who still refuse to believe it. I don't know, I find myself second guessing myself and hoping they're right.

Like that stupid hydroxychloroquine the president keeps pushing. The science behind it seems mixed, with some case studies showing no real effect, and others reporting that it helps. I'd prefer to leave it up to the scientists, of course, but I get that people are worried and desperate and really want to have some sort of hope.

It just seems all too typical, though, that this medicine can have some serious side effects (heart and eyesight), and pushing it when there are other promising treatments will divert resources from those other options, and I find myself hoping that Trump is lucky enough to be right about it... because the idea that people who need the medicine for things like lupus might suffer, and at least a few people will suffer those side effects out of desperation, all for a treatment that doesn't actually work and takes up resources that could have been used to find something else, faster... is just too awful to bear.

There's trying to bring hope, and then there's totally bullshitting people. I have my suspicions about what is what, but right now everything is a mess of information and misinformation. I guess I can't blame those who want to believe there's a treatment, I just hope it's more effective than that case study indicated.