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Back to the stove: the annoying simmer in permanent lockdown
Was it nice when you could still go to the restaurant!
© Kar3k4 / Shutterstock
For over a year we’ve been simmering in a half-baked lockdown. My cooking skills are also half-cooked. Although something seems to be going on there.
I was allowed to turn 53 to receive my first household item as a present: on Christmas, my son gave me a coated pan. That worked out well, I had the book from my brother after all “Cooking less crappy – The ingenious cookbook for everyone who has failed in the kitchen so farWhen I thanked my son, he said: “The pan won’t burn anything.” What I heard was: “You can’t cook, mom.” I know, I don’t want to. But I have to keep going now, because of Corona.
The school and cafeteria have been closed almost continuously for over a year, and so has the publishing canteen. Just like all the restaurants that had settled around my apartment, because they knew very well that I would keep them alive. But in the simmering lockdown I have no choice but to swing the pans and pots myself – and of course scrub. I don’t like it at all.
It is incompatible with my dignity as a mother to let a minor cook for me every day
Sure, the son has to work too. And he gets really sensational pancakes and tacos, but with a real meal a day it’s not enough when you’re 16 and growing faster than bamboo. In addition, it is not compatible with my dignity or with my self-image as a mother to have a minor cook for me as standard. In the end, the neighbors blacken me for child labor. There is so much talked about again now.
Cook? My personal corona curse
I know it’s a luxury problem in these times, but cooking is my very own corona curse. Travel, cinema, concerts? There would be something again, but the most annoying thing for me is the daily provision of warm, tasty and healthy food. As soon as I open my eyes in the morning, I start to chew my brain about what I could cook again TODAY. My recipe repertoire has more than doubled in the long pandemic year, from around five to twelve dishes, but that’s not enough in the long run.
Brooding, searching for recipes, agreeing with the child, shopping, preparing, the mountains of pots and pans in the kitchen, which day in and day out, giggling stupidly, compete with the leaning tower of Pisa to see who will tip over first and then who will Garbage to be carried out – all that would be enough work for the whole day. But there is still the home office where I earn the money for food, all the other to-dos of everyday life, and you want to have a little something fun in life.
My first hard-earned compliment at the kitchen table: “You’re developing, mom”
But it happened yesterday: When we ate the egg curry I made from the Jamie Oliver cookbook that I had given my son for Christmas, in the hope that it would also be To expand the recipe repertoire, he said, “Wow, yummy! You’re developing, mom.”
And it wasn’t the first time. Lately I’ve noticed an occasional appreciative chew at the kitchen table. And so this damn virus is good for something: I’m still learning to cook in my old days.