#QuarantineCooking Recipe Exchange!

I was weary when I saw a “#QuarantineCooking Recipe Exchange!” email in my inbox. After reading the first two lines, I thought: Uh-oh, chain letters are making a comeback. I remembered them from my teenage days — I was an active participant then. But in my adult years, I view them as silly and cumbersome (and I especially disliked looking at the hashtag and the word quarantine on this one). I participated nevertheless.

As recipes from strangers started coming in, I grew fond of them and was glad that I didn’t turn my nose up at it. Every time I see the subject line in my inbox, I rush to see what people are sharing. The recipes have also given me a new game to play during idle time, which I have aplenty these days. I’d imagine the person behind each recipe and their lives — where do they get the recipe from? What does their kitchen look like? What type of cook are they? Who are they cooking for? It fills the time and it’s fun :). Perhaps you’d like to try it.

I’ll be sharing the recipes I have received. This one below is not from a stranger but it is the first of many from the #QuarantineCooking Recipe Exchange! series.

—
Maggie’s Korean Spinach Salad

Ingredients:

• water

• 1 lb spinach

• 1 tbsp toasted sesame seeds

• 2 tsp low sodium soy sauce

• 2 tsp sesame oil

• 1 clove garlic - minced

Steps:

• Bring water to a boil, add spinach and cook for about 2 mins. 

• Drain spinach, let it cool then squeeze all the water out of the spinach

• Coarsely chop up the spinach, place it in a bowl and mix in the rest of the ingredients.

The World on Pause

Everyone was fairly tired from last night but none of us were hung over. No hangover — a good sign. Yasss, 2020. The night before, on December 31, 2019, all the Wiryadinata kids, mom, and our families and friends, celebrated New Year’s Eve together for the first time in over 10 years. The complete Wiryadinata set. My sister Veronica and her family received their Canadian citizenship and passports. We had been planning for this reunion the moment they became Canadian citizens. The American embassy kept turning down their visitor visa applications when they were still using their Indonesian and Mexican passports.

On new year’s eve, we had an Indonesian feast. Indra made his grilled chicken and oxtails. Mom made coconut rice and lalapan (Indonesian dish of fresh vegetables and shrimp paste sambal). Our friends brought different beautiful Japanese fish cakes and Swedish saffron pastries eaten during each culture’s new year’s eve. We had confetti, champagne, and sparklers to ring in the new year. We played Nitendo and danced to close the night.

—

Lately, I have been going back to the memory I had of my first moment of 2020. So much good will and excitement. I had so many plans, dreams, and hopes… and I was not the only one. Everyone else seemed to have the same enthusiasm and the myriad of plans for the year. Unbeknownst to us, coronavirus had been insidiously creeping from one part of the world to another until it finally took over the world — turning many lives upside down, and putting everything to almost a grinding halt. As a result, for the past few weeks, we feel listless, yet restless. Has our unbridled and unsubstantiated enthusiasm for 2020 made these times especially difficult?

—

To quiet the chatters in my brain, I listen to podcasts so that I can sleep. The habit had started even before most of the world had an inkling a pandemic was imminent. It’s not always a surefire methodology if the desired outcome is sleeping. Some episodes would keep me awake and compel me to send text messages to myself at 2 A.M. on all the thoughts, ideas, projects, or lists of people to google the next day.

One such episode was the first episode of Cheryl Strayed’s Sugar Calling. In the episode, Cheryl called her mentor from graduate school, the author George Saunders, and conversed about the uncertainties of our current time. George read the letter he wrote to his students at the start of the lockdown. A paragraph in his letter struck a chord.

“… this is when the world needs our eyes and ears and minds. This has never happened before here (at least not since 1918). We are (and especially you are) the generation that is going to have to help us make sense of this and recover afterward.”

“Are you keeping records of the emails and texts you’re getting, the thoughts you’re having, the way your hearts and minds are reacting to this strange new way of living?”

George Saunders’ A Letter to My Students as We Face the Pandemic

Well, this is the start of my attempt to keep records of mine and our collective thoughts — the different ways we are, adjusting and readjusting to the new world, the memes and jokes that make us laugh, the recipes we exchange, and the pictures we capture — as we cope with the uncertainties of 2020. Having this thought has made it easier for me to train my brain to see our current situation with a different perspective — a less apocalyptic, more positive outlook of the future — and still hold on those hopes and dreams.