If being in a lockdown has surprised me with one mood or desire, it is literally moving into the family kitchen and wanting to cook. Before all the crazy stuff happened, I never wanted to cook my own meal or help out with the family cooking. One thing I've learnt from my autism diagnosis over the months is that I'm easily prone to freak out and over-stress using ovens and food preparation. Call me a baby if you want, however, since I am home 24/7, my parents gently suggested that I cook for them first with some supervision and then on my own.
At the time of writing this chapter, I still feel comfortable having one of my parents in the same room as me and giving me advice. My Mum has always been overprotective of me since birth and sometimes, tries to rush me a little with the chopping of vegetables or checking that the pasta is soft enough to drain then serve. One of my favourite meals is smoked bacon pasta with tomato/garlic sauce and onions. It's a simple dish and truthfully should be really relaxing to do. It's not for me haha.
From the minute I put oil into the frying pan, my brain goes into a massive overdrive. I find myself having to ask my parents if I have enough water or if the gas is too strong etc. Basically every little task I do, I have to double-check that it looks fine. One of my massive fears is accidentally giving everyone food poisoning. If that ever happens, I definitely won't want to cook again. My boyfriend likes to cook and when together, he does the majority of the work himself while I stand in a corner and look pretty (that is a joke, I'm not pretty) and try to watch his every move while not getting distracted with Instagram.
The other day, I did the simple smoked bacon pasta dish and kept wailing that the food didn't look cooked and that my presentation was sloppy. Mum was waving her finger about and trying to calm me down. Note to reader- I was not calm throughout the entire session, even though I asked my parents if I could cook. Was my brain trying to pull me out of some kind of boredom spell? I reckoned so. Yet within twenty or so minutes, the pasta was served and we all cleaned our plates. Yay.
Washing-up is also such a chore. I know it has to be done and done well, since leaving germs on knives and chopping boards is dangerous. I'm never keen to do it since, over the years, lots of close friends and former boyfriends have joked that I never do it properly and bring my moods down. The flashbacks of those memories come back to me more often than I would like, so I often leave it by the side and get someone else to do it.
Call me lazy if you will. Talking to anyone I know physically about my flashbacks and fears is never easy. It scares the crap out of me. In the past, my fears have been dismissed as not caring enough which hurts. My family has a dishwasher, so most of the washing is done through that. The saucepans, however, can't go in it so in the bowl they go to be washed.
I recently found a cheap cookbook online called Tin Can Cook. It contains recipes across lots of different food groups and all from using canned food such as soups, veg, fruits etc. It was only 99p to purchase and once in my library, I started to browse through. It was a crazy reading experience. It shows that you don't have to rush out and spend a ton of money on a variety of ingredients to get the job done. It only costs a couple of pounds on tins and that can make a meal for a group of people.
In the current lockdown, we've had major food and toilet paper shortages. At one point, store shelves were bare from top to bottom. No eggs, flour, crisps, bread. The list goes on and on. We've had to slightly alternate the meals we've cooked and eaten and to be honest, my diet has changed too. I prefer routine and in particular when it comes to food. Having struggled with food anxiety for over a decade growing up, the normal snacks and lunch meals I relied on to keep me going were suddenly unavailable. There were new things I had to find. That in itself was a huge challenge, however, my parents were helpful and I was able to find some new healthier products to try.
Lots of fruit and veg in my eating daily pattern now and also smoothies! When the warm weather hit my country, my Mum found an old blender in a cupboard and after a quick clean was found to still be in good working use. So using lots of fruit (strawberries, bananas and blueberries) I created an ultimate power smoothie which all of us really enjoyed. Most of the fruit we used to purchase before the lockdown often went rotten and wasn't used. Now, we have a new use for it!
I miss the social time with my boyfriend regarding cooking. There's lots of dishes that we did together, but we hoped to do some more. We both love our curries, steak and chips and even making our own pizza base and putting whatever toppings we wanted on it. I'm hoping to start up again our little cooking supply stack, with all the ingredients we need to cook some of our favourite dishes again. Maybe I'll do more of the work after this lockdown ends... could make a fun comedy movie of mishaps I guess.
There hasn't been any chance to bake bread or cakes sadly since there are low supplies of baking equipment across all the major supermarkets. I really miss flapjacks right now. I guess watching old re-runs of Great British Bake-Off will be the closet thing to baking!
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