How The COVID-19 Pandemic Sparked My Passion For Food
It gave me time.
Food is one of my favourite things in life. After my fiancé, family, friends and a good panoramic view, food is one of the things that brings me the most joy.
Until 2019 food brought me joy because I loved to eat delicious things. Maybe a little too much, but that’s a different story.
And then the pandemic hit, and along with more than 7 billion other people on the planet, my life changed somewhat.
I am incredibly fortunate that my life didn’t change dramatically and tragically like it has for so many, which is why it is easy for me to pull this silver lining out from the very dark cloud that is COVID.
Over the course of 2020 I fell in love with food from a different perspective, as the preparer, not just the eater. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve cooked and baked my whole adult life, but out of necessity.
I think there were a couple of things that instigated this renewed passion.
At the beginning of 2020 I enrolled in a nine-week course called “Weight Loss For Women”. Yes, I am that twenty-something who is perpetually trying to lose weight. I attribute this to a very over indulgent few years at university, followed by finding my independence as an adult and acting like a kid let loose in a candy shop.
Rather than significant weight loss, what I gained from doing the course was something else entirely. It’s not 9 weeks of calorie counting and a PDF meal plan. It’s education. I learnt so much about nutrition of food, how my body depends on whole, real foods for fuel. I learnt to read ingredient lists and make an educated choice as to what I actually put in to my body.
As a result of doing that course, I was inspired to cook more from scratch. I didn’t want to fill my body with synthetically produced ingredients if I didn’t have to. I didn’t want to consume ingredients that I couldn’t even pronounce.
As the course was coming to a close, so too was the world closing down. Lockdown had begun. Which means that toilet paper hoarding had begun, along with bulk buying of flour, pasta, tinned tomatoes and so on. Add to that I suddenly had a lot more time on my hands without having to commute to the office, and not being able to go anywhere on the weekends.
So I got creative.
I spent so many hours in the kitchen throughout lockdown, googling alternatives for flour, for yeast. How to make my own pasta. How to make my own pizza. From scratch.
And do you know what I discovered?
I love to cook.
Cooking, baking and making food brings me so much joy. With hours to fill as we were confined to our small two-bedroom flat during lockdowns, and no restaurants open to eat at, I turned to experimenting in the kitchen. I tried new things, I made a ton of mistakes, and I created a lot of tasty food (confirmed by my fiancé).
I also learnt that making delicious, and often nutritious, food isn’t that hard, and it doesn’t have to be expensive either.
We are being sold convenience in the supermarket shelves, but in all reality making many of these things ourselves isn’t that difficult. Making a tomato sauce (that can be used on anything from spaghetti Bolognese to pasta bakes to slow cooked stews) can be as simple tomatoes, onions and some herbs.
Not everything I made was super simple. I decided my one main goal in life was to make authentic Italian pizza (as authentic as I could make it without actually being Italian and/or in Italy). This is a time-consuming process, especially compared to the 0.00001 seconds it takes to consume the pizza.
But I loved it. I do love it. Using your own fair hands and basic ingredients to make something delicious is so rewarding. Seeing other people enjoy the food you made from scratch is so much fun. At least it is for me.
I love to create meals that are completely hand made. I like to find ways to incorporate as many vegetables as possible to increase the nutrient value of the food. That said, I also love to bake treats that are just decadent. (I have tried to make chocolate brownie using kidney beans as a replacement for flour. My advice? If you’re going to make brownies, just make proper brownies).
The pandemic was something we never saw coming, and it has torn across the globe leaving a wake of tragedy and heartbreak in it’s path. That is something I never want to downplay. But I am thankful that I was afforded an opportunity to slow down, get creative in the kitchen and discover a new passion.
