The choir I belong to, The Metropolitan Chorale, sent out this prompt for the choir members as we begin our first virtual season:
In this time when we all feel that our home base has been a little displaced or reimagined, we are creating a project around what elements create community and home. We are asking chorale members to write their sense of what it means to be “at home” in this time, either in their actual home life or in their sense of community as singers. Through writings and poetry you submit, we will be working with composer Steven Sametz, who will create a new work on this theme that can be recorded by us.
I’ve cycled through every feeling of what it means to be home the last 6 months. Just what the HECK have I done? I ask myself that at least five times a week. It just never seems like I have anything physical to show that I really have worked my butt off (both at work, and at home).
Well, actually, I have photos of over 50 meals that I’ve made over the past 175 days. And while those meals may have only lasted for the time it took me to shovel them into my mouth, I would say that this is indeed a physical representation of what I have been up to during the weirdest 6 months of my life.
So, in response to that prompt, I give you:
Home, in 2020.
The stress-cooking started with bean soup and a ham hock.
Then there was bread–and crackers, and crumpets, and sourdough-starter-goodies.
Once-a-week-pizza-night.
St. Patrick’s Day corned beef; soda bread; leftover hash.
Hand cut french fries with back-of-the-freezer pork chops. Carrot salad.
Turkey soup (from the frozen Thanksgiving turkey parts.)
Soft-boiled eggs. Chili-crisp. Bok choy.
A salad, more fixings than greens.
(What is in the back of the pantry?)
Dutch babies for breakfast. Mac & cheese for lunch. A spread of dips for dinner.
Chapati, tacos, angel hair & tomatoes, ramen.
More cuisines to travel through.
Foods for celebrating (because even through this, there are things to celebrate):
Like birthdays (with cake and chocolate ice cream), and Easter (with pistachio-chocolate-orange-buns), and even a wedding (virtually attended, with cookies as my stand-in).
Soup on a rainy day.
More bread.
Less stress cooking, more cooking for joy.
Spring arrives through food.
Asparagus and arugula and tender greens.
Ricotta gnocchi, patiently hand-rolled.
Stir-fried chicken, extra celery.
Bivalves, fresh from the boat. Clams, oysters, mussels, scallops. Butter.
Slurped while staring at a cloudless sky.
The hottest week of the summer, and a broken fridge.
Grilled peaches, and chicken, and mackerel, and mushrooms.
(Cooking inside is beautiful. Cooking outside is magic.)
The last of the summer berries–galette, cobbler, by-the-handful.
A first-year-anniversary-cake (and the one from the freezer too).
Ripe tomatoes. Salt. Good olive oil.
I’ve done nothing during quarantine…
But cook to nourish my soul.