One of the most notable effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on our daily routines is that we have been forced to return to cooking. Cooking, that basic human skill, which our busy schedules, along with the abundance of cheap takeaway and convenience food opportunities, had been hampering in recent decades.
After the pandemic broke out, the initial closure of restaurants and quarantine has forced many people who were used to eating out or getting takeaway, to go back to their stovetops. In Spain, restaurants are a huge part of the culture, and there were plenty of options to eat out on a budget, which made it convenient for workers during their lunch break. The traditional diet has been suffering setbacks due to the appearance of convenience foods and fast eats, and younger generations know nothing of the kitchen ways of their ancestors, who cooked because they had to.
On one hand, coming back to our kitchen stoves denotes a return to the past, to slower ways of cooking, which we now have time at home for at home. However, technology is not divorced from this back to the past phenomenon: social media have exploded with images and recipes of people cooking, and especially baking at home. Sourdough, until recently reserved for a small sect of geeky aficionados, is now a worldwide staple again, from what it looks like on the internet. People post their photos of bubbly starters as if they were showing off a new baby.
But let’s not forget that until not that long ago, until the industrial ways of making white bread on a large scale, with no nutrients but a long shelf life came along, sourdough was just our daily bread. It was how bread was done. Bread also became the staple food in the UK during World War II, and in 1942 they created the National Loaf, an epitome of industrialized stuff, in opposition to our homemade sourdough babies. Bread, one of the most symbolic and basic foods known to civilization, had in recent fallen out of favor, with the recent diet trends of eating less carbohydrates or gluten free.
This pandemic has made us return to older ways, and it’s not just nostalgia of a pre-Covid time. Cooking the traditional way is economic. Which were the ingredients that people hoarded first (apart from toilet paper)? Dried legumes and flour. Both are inexpensive, and both require cooking techniques that take a significant amount of time (even though much of it is hands-off, you have to be home for it), something we were lacking pre-quarantine. Beans, in most homes until recently, came from a can; baked goods were purchased ready-made. Shop owners were not ready for this newfound high demand, and their shelves were understocked and emptied faster than it takes a loaf of bread to proof.
Let’s not forget that traditional cooking in the Mediterranean comes from peasant ways of life, in which home cooks had to find resourceful ways to be and make do with the little they had. This includes not waste any edible parts of ingredients, as well as find cooking methods to make the most out of ingredients, because this way of cooking also means cooking on a budget during challenging financial times. Baking sourdough is an inexpensive endeavor; time is perhaps its most valued ingredient, a long time at home very few of us possessed pre-quarantine.
Moreover, in times of crisis, the need for self-sufficiency increases; during World War II, mushroom foraging was all the rage. Baking and cooking at home are ways to be self-sufficient, but also ways to exercise control, in a time in which most of us have never experienced this degree of uncertainty. I know that I can create something manageable by combining these ingredients; I can calculate timings, and expect a result; no matter whether it tastes a bit better, or not so great, I more or less know what to expect.
Moreover, cooking at home has created ways for people to connect. And I’m not just referring to the very basic form of connection that is sitting down at the table together with one’s family (something that, more or less, fortunately still happens in Mediterranean countries, though certainly more often these days as meals are prepared and consumed at home). Many newfound (or re-discovered) home cooks, especially those who live alone and don’t have families to sit down to the table with, have found solace in cooking, as a way to connect to others via social media while practicing physical distancing. From sourdough to focaccia gardens to birthday cakes (with celebrations on Zoom), many people have claimed to find solace, sanity and connection in cooking at home. Traffic to cooking and recipe websites has surged, and online cooking classes have become a thing. It’s clear that more people are cooking and eating every meal at home, which is definitely an improvement.
But I wonder: have people’s diets gotten better with the pandemic, or are we overdoing it on the consumption of sugar and baked goods? The fact that we are going shopping less often means that we need to buy foods that will last longer in our homes, and those tend to be the more processed ones, which are overloaded in unhealthy fats, sugar, and preservatives. Due to the stress the current situation causes, some people turn to overeating for consolation, others to alcohol. No matter how many workout videos we can find on Youtube, our lives are more sedentary now. I am interested in seeing some studies show us whether the positives outweigh the negatives, or whether all that baking is making us outweigh our previous selves.
Now that this week, here in Spain, restaurants are starting to slowly reopen, though at lesser capacities, and with the cautions, restrictions, and regulations the pandemic still calls for, what will happen with home cooking?
