Food and Covid-19

Fork in hand, I mashed four thawed bananas—on the advice of the internet, I’d taken to freezing them in plastic bags—into about four ounces of applesauce. Vanilla extract entered next.…

“I portioned that so we’d have enough for tomorrow,” John says. “It’s just a few pieces of broccoli.” “But we’re having salad tonight.” “It’s not enough,” I snap back. John…

(or, How a Year with Covid-19 Shaped My Czech American Family, One Meal at a Time) It’s 7 a.m. on Tuesday morning; I’m sautéing onions and fresh spinach while calling…

My hands don’t look like my own. They remind me of my mother’s in her wedding photos. (Are wedding photos taken for the sole purpose of perfecting the image of…

Orchard Grove is a squat windowless building with a green shingled overhang beveled around wooden soffits. I used to walk there from Gerry Rushlow’s farm. Or was it Sally Rushlow’s…

A couple of weeks before COVID-19 closed down all the restaurants in NYC, Paul the server was standing in the kitchen, waiting for a pasta course to be plated. Paul…

Before we could identify both its virus and disease names. Before our painter, Mark came and fingered the hairline cracks in my office walls, not erasing, but following their lead…

When I make bread, I focus on the feel of the dough, the windowpane test for gluten elasticity, the delicate question of adding a pinch of flour. Will it turn…

When my daughter Magda was four months old, we flew to California for a vacation. We were living in Rochester, New York, where it was still icy, gray winter, and…

i. The tea ceremony lessons had been my husband’s idea. I wanted to take up a martial art, like kendo or karate. “No, he said, “You are already dangerous enough…

We have no neighbors across the street, save the red fox and the gray fox, the mulberry trees, and the bunnies. This spring, rather suddenly, the mulberry trees fruited in…

Sifting under strawberry vines each week, I lift their long, leafy tendrils with god knows what on the end. Various shapes, colors, and stages of rottenness, or not. I’d planted…

Blackberry Vines Quarantine Poem #12 They say that in these times to soothe the fragility of our egos we should “control what we can” so on the days the anxiety…

Curbside Pick-up Menu Family dinner for 2 Half smoked chicken w/salsa verde Roasted carrots with pistachio butter Caesar Salad Biscuits and honey butter Chocolate Mousse The phone rang and a…