March 13, 2020 – my school had just gone on Spring Break. COVID-19 had made its way into the United States and things were slowly getting worse (nothing like what we would see months later). There was a case of a man in the Westchester area of New York who had contracted the virus and had unknowingly passed it around his community that put my school on alarm since we have students traveling from that area, but we had made it to spring break without closing or any cases. We were none the wiser, that March 13th would be our last day on campus with students for the 2019-2020 academic school year.
My professional development in Madrid, Spain and trip to Prague, Czechia to meet up with friends in March fell through, and rightfully so because had I gone a few days earlier I would have had to turn back around or buckle down in Europe as countries began to swiftly close.
With nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no one to see (I was on spring break but didn’t want to go home and expose myself or my family to the virus) – I turned to cooking. I had learned to properly cook around the time I was in college, not too happy with my choices of food in our college’s cafeteria. Missing Puerto Rican food in Vermont drove me to perfect making rice and beans and later living in Madrid and later alone here in the United States forced me continue cooking which I gladly accepted. Except, I was caught up making the same recipes over and over. The typical arroz con habichuelas y pollo frito, espaguetis con carne molida, carne guisado con arroz blanco, were all recipes I knew how to make. I learned to incorporate some new ones like beef stir fry with rice, and others I’m probably missing, but I wanted to learn to make some more Puerto Rican dishes. So what better time than the present pandemic?
I dedicated my two weeks off for spring break to cleaning my apartment and learning/trying a few new recipes, mostly ones I had learned from my grandmother.
This is great. And yes, I too spent so much of my early quarantine experimenting and testing recipes in the kitchen. I have never thought of food when I thought of genealogy but you make some great points. Excited to get together with my mom, learn some traditional recipes and start a book to pass on.
Me disfrute tu experiencia, tanto como los platillos visualmente! Si, la cocina es parte fundamental de la genealogía. Felicidades.