What I've Been Making for Dinner: March & April 2020

I am trying to keep everyone's spirits up. We have dinner together every night. 

Sometimes dinner is the only real daily interaction with the teenagers. I don't blame them for keeping to themselves. Their lives have been upended so completely, much more than mine. The holding pattern is fine for me, settled into comfortable middle age. The holding pattern is not fine for them. 

More than anything, I hope for timely restoration of the aspects of their world that let them imagine and build their own futures. They need outside so they can do the essential labor of becoming adults. They need--not want, need--to go places and do things. They need their friends. They need structure. They need to interact with role models other than their parents. My college student needs to be at college. Time, for them, is of the essence.

Online-only school is bullshit. Online-only life is bullshit. This--*gestures broadly*--is bullshit.

So. I've been trying to make our favorite comfort foods as much possible. Roast chickens for Passover. Pasta trio sampler for Easter supper (Lidia's is closed). Slow-cooked pulled pork. Rigatoni with vodka sauce. This mustardy beef stew, only with beer instead of cognac, because come on. A lot of cheeseburgers. Chicken parm. Things I have not been making: Anything that's an experiment, and anything with fish. Now is just not the time.

Can food hold us together? So far, so good, but it has been only six weeks of virus jail. I don't really want to speculate about what might be coming. Hopefully only an upswing. Hopefully, hopefully.

Tonight, beef bulgogi and jasmine rice.