The BFF sent me Stanley Tucci's article published in The Atlantic on May 15, 2020 titled 'Cooking Your Way Through The Pandemic', described as 'An hour by hour account—with recipes'. I don't scan The Atlantic often, so it was nice to have stuff sent my way.
Stanley Tucci is holed up in London with his current wife Felicity Blunt and their two young kids, and three older teenagers (one is a friend of the daughter) for six weeks and counting. Imagine cooking dinner for eight people every night. OMG. I don't particularly care about the recipes. I enjoy reading about the decisions taken to cook what they need to cook, and what drives them to the final dinner menu.
The Tuccis's typical day at home won't be anything like mine. I don't need to relate to his life, although I'm glad that I have fewer responsibilities than he has; I don't need to think about feeding a whole troop of fussy kids besides the persnickety dog. But I kinda like Stanley Tucci's work (never mind his personal life and marriages), so I didn't mind reading what he had to say in lockdown. The humor of this article is in its details, completely personal, private, yet a necessary touch when written for public reading.
9:45 A.M.
When the session ends, Felicity and I go over what food items need to be restocked. With four people ages 18 to 20, the amount of food, beer, and wine consumed is staggering. If there is a shortage of avocados at the local stores, it’s because we’ve eaten them all. If there is no Kerrygold butter left in the United Kingdom, it’s because it’s either in our freezer or we ate it. All of it. Just fucking ate it. Probably without even spreading it on anything. I saw a neighbor hungrily eyeing our cat yesterday and it occurred to me that the woman probably hadn’t eaten meat in a week, because my gluttonous family had devoured all of the fucking beef, lamb, veal, chicken, oxtail, pork, rabbit, and game in Southwest London. Still gasping for breath from an unnecessarily grueling workout, I rummage through the fridge.
Given our short supplies, I decide to make something simple tonight: pasta alla Norma and sautéed lamb chops. I reckon that these two dishes should satisfy everyone’s palate and nutritional needs. However, I know that my middle daughter will eat only the pasta dish, as she is now a vegetarian. What timing.
12:15 P.M.
The older generation of children awakens. They enter the kitchen and make quick work of an entire loaf of bread, two pints of cherry tomatoes, four avocados, six eggs, two pints of blueberries, four bananas, 20 rashers of bacon, one liter of almond milk, six Nespresso pods, and a liter of orange juice before retreating to the TV room or their bedrooms, where they tell me they are doing their schoolwork. I believe them, even if I don’t. Felicity comes down and serves the little ones lunch after I have changed their waterlogged clothes. I am off to clean a bathroom or two, do some more laundry, or vacuum something that I just vacuumed three hours before.
Stanley Tucci is a neat freak and is cleaning house a lot more during this lockdown. Me too, buddy, me too. Toilets gotta be washed daily now, because we don't have the benefit using toilets at the office and at the gym. Haha. I've got dog hair all over everything, a dog who's entering a mild coat blowout, and vacuuming twice a day seems to have become the norm. The writer didn't neglect to acknowledge the privileges of his situation. Many of us in similar circumstances should. The frontline workers bearing the full brunt of COVID-19 risks, deaths and mental anguish. They're literally fighting this war for the rest of us sequestered at home.
But no matter how frustrated we all are with the situation, I know we can’t help but think how lucky we are to have one another, a roof over our heads, food in our bellies, and no symptoms of illness. Only a couple of miles away in any direction there are hospitals chock-full of ill and dying patients who are being attended to by overworked and overwhelmed National Health Service doctors, nurses, and support staff. Other than sending checks and raising money for charities and the NHS by making videos at home, we are helpless to do anything for fear of infection. As we eat in silence, we are all hoping this will end soon without too much more suffering, that our leaders will get at least one thing right along the way, and that the next time we are all sequestered together it is by choice.
No comments:
Post a Comment