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Renee Horton has spent a lot more time than usual in her kitchen this year.
Horton, a NASA engineer from New Orleans, has been working from home almost exclusively since March. With her desk just steps away from her home's kitchen, she often tries out new vegan recipes and also makes her classic comfort food staples in between video meetings.
For Horton, cooking during the coronavirus pandemic has meant consistency at a time when everything has changed.
"I think I ate chicken and waffles at the beginning because that was, like, my true comfort food," Horton tells NPR.
I’m coping with COVID by cooking. Today it was fried oyster mushrooms soaked in vanilla almond milk and seasoned, a mixed green salad and baked sweet potatoes. Paired with fresh juices watermelon, lime and ginger juice.
My guest was vegan and I’ve been trying new things. pic.twitter.com/xnLxYmpv5R
Horton is single, but she doesn't cook like it, she says. She's always sharing dishes with family and friends — and now that they can't eat together, people regularly drop by to pick up the extras.
She's not the only one who got acquainted with their kitchen this year. Many people who found themselves at home more started to cook more. And they took to social media to chronicle their attempts at making family dinners, learning to bake bread, trying out new cooking tools and gadgets and finding new uses for the forgotten items at the back of the pantry.
Like Horton, the Coker family in upstate New York has been busy trying new things in the kitchen this year. Rachel Coker tasked her two teenagers with regular dinner duties.
"School wasn't really happening at all, so we kind of joked that this was like a home ec class," Coker says.
We're trying a new meal delivery service for this week's Homeschool Home Ec. Here's @DinnerlyUS' One-Pot Tortelloni Florentine, as prepared by my teens! Recipe:
— Rachel Coker (@rmcoker) August 18, 2020
The kids used guided meal kits, and they introduced some new favorites to the household. Risotto has become a new staple, and they've enjoyed making Thai food at home for the first time.
Other home cooks have used food as a way to feel closer to faraway family this year.
Lauren Sklba lives in Colorado, but her family is in Wisconsin. When she couldn't safely get home for Thanksgiving, she dug up her great-grandmother's stuffing recipe.
Pandemic pastime level up: 16-year-old and I made fondue for dinner! pic.twitter.com/kXfQgcUcmv
— Rachel Coker (@rmcoker) December 7, 2020
"I had no idea if I was actually doing it right, but then it turned out great," Sklba tells NPR. "It just tasted exactly like I wanted it to taste like, and I wanted it to taste like the stuffing I'd grown up with."
Many at-home chefs also couldn't get to the store as regularly this year or felt uncomfortable going out as much as they used to. That's why pantry staples, like beans, had a moment in the limelight, says Washington Post food and dining editor Joe Yonan. He's the author of a cookbook called Cool Beans.
"Probably the biggest thing we've seen is people wanting more flexibility in their recipes and looking for ways to substitute things," Yonan says.
Doing it all from home also became more of a norm during a year of economic hardship, when many families couldn't afford to eat out as much and were looking for cheaper ways to get dinner on the table.
Yonan says that's probably not going to change anytime soon.
"People will still be looking for frugal ways of cooking, I think, for a while to come," Yonan says. "Beans certainly fall into that. Making your own bread certainly falls into that."
Oh man, this broccoli casserole has two cans of cream soup, 1/2 cup butter, and a cup of cheese. COVID cooking is going to end us all, but so good. pic.twitter.com/H8hXjBK3Av
— Matthew Gratton (@mc_gratton) December 21, 2020
