Breaking New Limits
By Emily Huang
Ever since this new life of COVID-19, quarantine, and social distancing popped up, new limits have been popping up left and right as well. Access to supermarkets and grocery stores has become scarce to none, and as a result, I have been missing out on the one joy of my life: snacks!! That’s right: food, snacks, delicacies of all sorts that used to be readily available to me anytime from the morning time for breakfast to well past midnight to snack on while I (procrastinate) work. Though it’s been a challenge to undergo several food-related adjustments along the way, I’m proud to say that I’ve been hanging in there with some creative modifications to my lifestyle.
First off, (obligatory) commendations to my mother! As someone who is an incredibly late bloomer who still has yet to bloom in the world of cooking, I hold a great appreciation for my mom’s cooking creativity in these past few weeks. She’s in charge of three meals a day and has still found a way to concoct a diverse array of dishes for an entire month thus far. Though her original plans of providing me and my dad with a full on menu for every day have not quite been carried out, she has provided us with scrumptious, nutritious meals of green bean rice, chicken noodle soup, fried yams, stir fry noodles, and more. The culinary arts seem to have blossomed as my mom’s new “Coronavirus side hustle,” as I’ve heard it popularly referred to. Much to my surprise, these fancy quarantine meals also seem to have dissolved my previous affliction of feeling prematurely stuffed; this is possibly personal information, but I’ve often found myself — for lack of a better word — quite legitimately wolfing down my food at every meal. Alas, perhaps this is also in part due to the fresh lack of snacking options as of late.
With no easy access to our local stores and a paranoid distrust for shipped goods, I have only been able to budget out the food that remains in the household. Rationing was something I only joked about in the first week of spring break, but now, it is honestly my life. I have not much experience with rationing, and my voracious appetite for snacks has not helped my case. As such, my food habits have been forced to change; I can no longer, as my mother puts it, “ask for snacks 24/7,” as there are not enough snacks to sustain the household for long enough should I consume all of them in one go. I have been working to improve my self-discipline in this respect, while my mother hides the snacks somewhere in the garage for good measure.
The snacks aren’t the only food items that need to be rationed, however; within the first handful of weeks, we realized that even with all of the staple food items we’ve collected in the house, we probably don’t have enough to last us for an indefinite amount of time (obviously) should we consume them at a normal pace. So, my mom and I decided to grow our own scallion plants. Indoors. I know, it must sound chaotic, but hear me out: we removed the roots from a pre-bought scallion and submerged them in a cup full of water — a worthy cup sacrifice — and placed said cup on the windowsill, where the plant may be drenched in ample sunlight. Though I was skeptical about raising this plant to adulthood without any nutrients and materials of any kind except water, the plant actually began to grow! Over the course of a few weeks, the bundle of scallions grew tall and strong, and I have to say, it is a truly majestic sight. The only problem we ran into was when they kind of began to wilt, wherein we attempted to save them first by submerging them in sugar water (did not work, the YouTube tutorial failed us), and then by laying them out on dry plates. I believe the latter method worked, and soon enough, our windowsill became filled with cups of varying sizes and contents — our very own awkward indoor garden — and I was attempting to cook my first batch of scallion pancakes with our homegrown scallions. The late bloomer finally sort of bloomed! Though this was the only time I showed any latent signs of cooking ability, and the only other item I’ve “cooked” recently is pre-made cookies, which I just did the grand work of heating up in the oven, I believe in the concept of cooking also becoming my side hustle this quarantine. Wishing all the best to everyone in your cooking and fooding during this time, because I have certainly had my eyes opened to new possibilities!
