This has been an odd year for food lovers.
Weirdly, there have been some positive outcomes for those who care deeply about the quality and provenance of food.
More people are cooking at home. More people are making things from scratch (hello, sourdough starter craze). More people planted vegetable gardens. More people signed up for CSAs (we resumed a CSA share, and I am SO PLEASED to report that I was able to find a local farm owned by a Black woman and operated by a team of women). Commercial suppliers enabled consumer accounts (well, they ALWAYS allowed anyone who wanted one to create an account - they just dramatically reduced the minimum order requirements, and more about that in a minute).
It's also been a very hard time for food lovers.
There have been shortages, both due to supply chain issues and due to panic buying. A woman in my larger circle, a long-time, serious baker, got savaged on social media for complaining that dilettante bakers were sucking up the entire flour supply. OK, sure, "flour privilege," but I also understood her frustration when MONTHS went by without being able to find flour of ANY type ANY where, when we all know significant amounts of it were sitting unused in the cabinets of people who moved on to learning French the following week and crocheting the week after and Peloton the week after that.
Beloved restaurants and bars have struggled mightily. More casual places that always did significant carry out/delivery business mostly pivoted reasonably well and quickly, but the high-end places foodies dream of and plan for eating at had to radically and creatively re-tool their business models. And as cold weather closes in and the pandemic, which in the vast majority of the US was never successfully contained, ramps back up again, many of those beloved places will close, perhaps forever. That will throw a lot of people out of work and result in the hollowing out of a lot of business districts.
Food related travel has ceased. And this was going to be a big year of that for your faithful Food Labbers. Chef Spouse and I were headed to Northern California once again in April, for a semi-regular conference speaking engagement I have, and this time we were were extending for a few days and heading to Napa because Chef Spouse had finally figured out the trick to landing a reservation at The French Laundry. He and I were also headed to Maui and the Big Island for a milestone birthday, with stays at a high-end eco resort, and in cottages on a coffee farm and a pineapple farm, with lots of diving (for him), snorkeling, kayaking, hiking, and, of course, eating planned.
Most notably, 2020 marks ten years of Food Lab, and the core team - Chef Spouse and I, Mad Kitchen Scientist, and The Executive Committee - were headed to France for two weeks, with a week dining and sight-seeing our way through Paris (which I believe was to be a first for MKS and TEC), then a train hop to Avignon to pick up a rental car and another week at a gorgeous villa in Provence, repeating our Piedmont, Italy trip from a few years ago - farmer's markets, bistro lunches, hiking, and LOTS of cooking and wine drinking in the evenings.
And the biggest hardship of all: one of the great joys of cooking seriously is sharing what you've created with people you love, and that's been right out for months.
When DC passed into Phase 1 reopening in June, Chef Spouse and I were able to resume seeing friends in person - one household at a time and only one per week (to simplify contract tracing in case anyone did contract COVID-19), outdoors and physically distanced, and with everyone BYO everything. After three months of only interacting with other people via Zoom, it was a relief and major mental health boost.
During the past months, we've worked hard to incorporate some special food-related things, like ordering the most elaborate carry out dinner I've ever had for Chef Spouse's milestone birthday, figuring out how to get oysters direct from a local commercial oyster company, and setting up a consumer account with one of DC's top food purveyors. At the time, there was literally no other way to find flour and there hadn't been for months. Thankfully, they allowed a minimum order of $250 (rather than the more typical $5,000). On the other hand, you're still mostly buying commercial quantities, so we split our 50 pound bag of King Arthur Sir Galahad with MKS and TEC (of course). We've continued to order from them for access to ingredients generally not available at the local Teeter (40 lb of pitted, frozen sour cherries? Why yes I will, thank you!) and to very high quality meats - and after butchering two entire lambs, breaking down an entire tenderloin of beef is really not a big deal.
But no Food Labbing, no parties, no dining out, no Supper Club (the brain child of another friend of ours). Sadness.
Well, that is about to change.
Health experts are recommending that people create small "pods" (or, as Chef Spouse prefers, "bubbles") to help us all safely get through the coming dark, cold months, when it will not be feasible to be together outdoors - at least not for very long - and when being locked in for months with just our own households just might make us all go crazy.
Last weekend, as we were enjoying a lovely fall afternoon in Mad Kitchen Scientist and The Executive Committee's backyard and toasting "Next year in Paris!", we proposed creating a pod with them and, after consideration, they accepted.
Our first indoor, no masks, shared meal since, I think, our Super Bowl party, will be Thanksgiving - we all liked the symbolism of that, and it will be more than two weeks past MKS and TEC's in person votes on Election Day (Chef Spouse and I voted early by mail) - after which....WE'LL BE RESUMING FOOD LAB!
So watch this space.....
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