How one Toronto woman is cooking up a quarantine-meal marathon without repeating a single recipe

How one Toronto woman is cooking up a quarantine-meal marathon without repeating a single recipe

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I started posting photos of our meals in 2017 as a way to document what my husband, Alex, and I ate while travelling—which at the time, we were doing a lot of. I always had a must-eat list for each vacation destination. That’s how I ended up ordering eight desserts in a single sitting at a restaurant in Vienna—they were all on the list! Taking pictures and posting them online was a way for me to share those experiences with our family and friends.

When Toronto went into lockdown in mid-March, we had to reassess our grocery-shopping habits since we could only go to the store once a week. At first, Alex proposed buying more prepared food, but I was against that since those items tend to be high in sodium, fat and sugars. I grew up in a household where everything was made from scratch, partially because as a Chinese immigrant family, we didn’t really understand the culture of prepared foods. I’ll occasionally buy frozen food because it’s convenient—especially after the birth of our twins, Samantha and Callum, last September—but I’ve often found that it doesn’t take much more time to make something from scratch. It just comes down to thoughtful planning, and that’s something I happen to be an expert at.

I’m a social worker at a rehabilitation hospital in Leaside, and I’ve worked there since 2010. Since we’re chronically underfunded but also in high demand, I’ve become adept at organizing and multitasking. These skills have really come in handy during my maternity leave. I often have only 15-minute spurts of time to get things done when the twins are content and playing in their playpen, or when they’re asleep, so I try to look for meals that are quick to make or prepared in advance.

 

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It all started around day 25 of the pandemic. I was planning out meals for yet another week at home, and I asked Alex if there was anything in particular he’d like. Searching for inspiration, he pulled up my Instagram account, where I had been posting photos of our dinners since the city went into lockdown. He realized that no two posts were the same. I was on a non-repeating meal marathon in quarantine and I didn’t even realize it.

On the weekends, Alex takes over cooking duties and also does our weekly grocery run, so that’s when I plan the next week’s menu. I post my meal photos every Monday to Friday, and share recipes that come out particularly well on my website so that others can make them. I wanted to make sure I recorded my version of these dishes so that after this marathon is over, my husband or I can make these meals again.

Last week—days 66 to 70—I made jambalaya, mushroom soup, Smitten Kitchen’s pizza beans, lu mian, which is a northern Chinese variation of the more familiar lo mein dish found in most Chinese restaurants, and kimchi pancakes. Sometimes I base our menus on recipes from my favourite food bloggers, and sometimes I base them on what produce in our crisper needs to be used up. Some weeks I stick to a theme, like the weeklong homage from day 46 to 50 to my hometown of Xi’an, China, which featured steamed buns, Biang Biang noodles and cumin beef.

 

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Making new recipes every weekday has challenged me to cook outside of my comfort zone. I’m exploring my pantry, using spice mixes and unique ingredients like nigella seeds, and recreating some of our favourite restaurant meals that are unavailable to us right now. They’re not all winners—for instance, I will never make the carrot ginger soup from day nine again—but this project has added lots of new recipes to my family’s repertoire. My husband loved the cauliflower tacos (day 34) and ratatouille (day 6), while I was pleasantly surprised by the falafel (day 51), something I’ve always loved but was too intimidated to make at home.

Getting back into the kitchen after the birth of my twins was a major milestone; it felt like I was reclaiming a bit of my soul. Being at home on mat leave can be pretty isolating, and because of the pandemic, I haven’t been able to take the twins on outings or to visit family. My husband says I have “Covid FOMO.” I channel all those feelings of uncertainty and longing for normalcy into cooking, and that’s part of why I’ve been able to keep this up for so long.

 

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As of right now, I don’t have an end goal. I might try to get to 100 days of non-repeating recipes, but I’m taking it week by week. Every time I sit down to plan my recipes, I have a moment of panic: will there be enough new recipes to try? But after a few minutes online, I always find dishes I’ve been meaning to attempt for years. Even though we’re not able to travel right now, this approach to quarantine cooking has given me a way of tasting and enjoying foods from different cultures and cuisines.

To me, food is joy. It brings me so much happiness to eat and cook; the process is therapeutic and the results can be rewarding—It makes me feel great when followers tell me that my posts and recipes encouraged them to make something new. Before Covid-19, my husband and I loved hosting dinner parties for our friends and family. Doing this non-repeating marathon has given me a new way to share food with my loved ones, until we can all be around the same table again.

—As told to Ishani Nath