A tart made with the author’s backyard figs, before the birds and squirrels gnawed on the rest.
Photograph by Anna Traverse Fogle.
Like massaging a poem into a demandingly specific form, and finding that the sonnet or sestina grants your idea more incisive, lovelier expression, cooking in those early days felt like a discovery of restraint’s benefits: How can I coax maximum flavor out of whatever’s kicking around in the produce bin? How long will our flour supply hold out? I baked bread (and wrote about it in this magazine); I baked tarts with backyard figs and hazelnut crusts; I baked chocolate-chip cookies to melt our brittle edges. We experimented with new recipes, rehashed old favorites, riffed and improvised and generally created night after night of meals that provided comfort, pleasure, and balance. A few months into the pandemic, we started to think it might be nice to take a break from the stove now and then — but on the other hand, we were setting some crazy personal records as the days and weeks ticked by, and we doggedly stayed in the kitchen.
Cooking yields opportunities for improvisation; baking is closer to guided meditation.
In pre-pandemic times, we were the sort of people who visited the grocery store, like, a lot. We told ourselves this was because we took a “European approach” to food shopping. It would also be fair to say that we were disorganized. Now, we’ve hung a blackboard on our kitchen wall, and each week we make a menu, then provision accordingly. Some days I find freedom in the planning: fewer daily decisions! Other days, I resent the version of myself who stood there on Saturday morning and felt that an elaborate baked pasta could possibly be the right idea for a weary Thursday evening.
Cooking has yielded opportunities for improvisation; baking is closer to guided meditation. After 150 consecutive nights (mid-March to mid-August) on which my husband and I cooked every morsel of food our family consumed — no carry-out, no delivery, no packaged meals, just all home cooking, all the time — we were both burned out. (We weren’t alone. Helen Rosner nails pandemic kitchen burnout in her essay, “The Joylessness of Cooking,” published in The New Yorker this past November. “I am so bored,” she writes. “I am so tired. In theory, I love to cook. But I am so, so sick of cooking.”)
We finally broke our home-cooking streak with carry-out from Pho Binh. We have some stir-fry skills, but their lemongrass tofu puts our home attempts to shame. After that, we branched out to other favorite spots, focusing on the neighborhood restaurants that we most want to support, come what may. Each week now, I write “takeout” on the blackboard for at least one night’s dinner plan. Something to look forward to.
We all need a little something to look forward to, don’t you find? Even in these short, dark days of late winter, the holidays finished and the soil still cold, there’s pleasure to be found in food — not just in the eating, but in the planning, the cooking, the sourcing, and especially in the sharing. That’s not frivolous; it’s fundamental.
This month's food-centric issue includes some familiar ingredients, and other new tastes. You’ll find the results of our annual Readers’ Restaurant Poll. We’re also excited to share our first-ever A-Z selection of quintessentially “Memphis eats.” Further on, it’s nothing to do with food, but you’ll find that our annual CEOs of the Year all have more in common this year than any other: Each runs an area hospital, with all that has entailed over the past 11 months. Over the next few weeks, you'll be able to read all these features online. But perhaps it’s time for you to subscribe, if you haven't already, and we'll make sure each month's magazine is delivered to your mailbox.
Our hope this month is to inspire you to find pleasure in food, and especially in local food. Whether you’re cooking for a family of one or ten, whether there’s money in the budget for carryout or not, feeding yourself and your people nourishes more than the body. It makes everything just a little bit better. But let’s not call that a silver lining.