Elana's 5 Tips For Cooking During Quarantine
No reason a quarantine can’t be delicious! Here are some ideas that can help you feed your family without having to go to the market for a few weeks.
Stock Up! One of the best foods to eat during the flu season is soup. Since viruses can’t usually survive the heat, eating hot foods is good immunity practice. Make a huge pot of chicken stock and freeze it in batches. Then to make soups, prepare a soffritto (the french call it a mire poix) by sauteing chopped carrots, onions and celery in olive oil. Add whatever your main soup ingredient is (lentils, white beans, squash, mixed veggies) and top with your defrosted stock, add salt and let simmer until done. You can make big batches of soup and freeze them, too.
Meatball Mania: Fill your freezer with your favorite types of ground meat (dark meat chicken and turkey, beef, lamb, etc), keep lots of onions (anti-microbial, thank you!) on your counter and, if possible, fresh herbs like parsley and cilantro in your fridge. Make easy meatballs by finely chopping onions and herbs and adding your favorite meat. (I don’t add breadcrumbs or egg but you can to bulk them up.) Add salt, pepper, spices and/or flavors to your likings, such as cumin or clove or lemon zest and cook the meatballs in olive oil until browned or in a tomato sauce.
Squash it! Squashes like kabocha, butternut, and acorn (and yams too!) will last weeks on your counter without filling up your already packed fridge. So, they are a great food to stock up on! They are great plain with some butter and cinnamon or to make a soup (see above). Just bake them whole; then cut and half and remove seeds.
Say Cheese! Cheese is an already fermented food so it won’t go bad after weeks of quarantine. Cheeses offer calcium and protein. A small fun meal can be made by a simple cheese board with crackers and jam or grilled cheese on your favorite bread you’ve stored in the freezer.
Pizza Party! Fill your freezer with your favorite regular or gluten-free pizza crusts. I like to top mine with olive oil, salt, chopped garlic and then any vegetable I find in the house cut small for a “pizza in bianco.” I bake at 450. You can also top with a sauce, cheese and any toppings of your choice!