Journal of the Plague Year 5

When the pandemic began in earnest in March 2020, and it seemed as if we were going to be house-bound by mandate for some time, I went out one morning, even before masks were required, to the local coop and spent $150.00 on frozen foods and goods. I suppose that doesn’t seem like a great deal of money—on a good day I never depart from Whole Foods with less than $100.00 in the bags. But the latter consists usually fresh (even organic) produce and some cheeses and always potato chips. Perishables for the most part.  I already had sufficient toilet papers and napkins for a good while.
     On the same day and unbeknownst to me Elizabeth, too, took herself to the supermarkets and purchased $150.00 of frozen foods and goods in anticipation of the lock-down. She, too, already had a good year’s supply of toilet papers and napkins. And so in our respective homes we stored in our freezers a great quantity of supplies. 
     Now, neither of us were terribly fond of frozen food or instant dinners. For the most part my mother prepared cooked meals for us children with an occasional frozen chicken pot-pie surreptitiously brought in to what was supposed to be a strictly kosher home. Elizabeth grew up on frozen Swanson TV dinners and was loath to continue that practice. Besides, she enjoyed my cooking. And I have for years enjoyed the ritual of cooking accompanied to music, a glass or two of wine, beer or a tumbler of scotch. And I enjoy being alone in the kitchen making dinner. I am not a gourmet cook but I would say an honest and simple one. I am willing to devote up to a full hour to preparation. For the past almost 40 years I have been a vegetarian and require fresh produce for most of my dishes.
     I think I still eat too much like a peasant for whom food is mere sustenance and dinner not a calm, delicate social event: in the absence of a scheduled dinner party I gobble my cooked food down, usually to excess because I do enjoy my cooking, drink another glass or two of wine, and rise immediately from the table. I have been fortunate that over the past several years Elizabeth engages in clean-up, though I attempt as I cook to keep dirtied dishes to a minimum and to tidy up as I move along. 
     Despite the rush to eat and rise from the dining table, there is something about the preparation that settles me. Perhaps it is the isolation and the time to focus without interruption. Perhaps it is the energies devoted to the care of self that is involved in preparing a dinner. Perhaps it is the feeling of joy when the food prepared tastes well, good enough usually and even excellent at times. 
     But bringing frozen food to the table does not satisfy those joys that accompany the whole process of preparing, cooking and bringing meals to the table. Frozen food is taken from the freezer, removed from its packaging, placed in its disposable trays into the microwave oven for a zap of four to five minutes and voilá, there is dinner ready for the table, to be gobbled quickly down the entire process taking place inside of fifteen minutes. But it’s not the arriving, goes the cliché, but the journeying! And so when it became possible we shopped at the local Lund & Byerly’s during the early morning hour reserved for folks 65 years of age and older or at the older shoppers reserved early hour. And for the most part I cooked, and we ate well. For the most part the frozen foods languished in the freezer.
     Last night, fifteen months after it all began, we prepared the final package of frozen food—a cocktail hour portion of cheese-stuffed mushrooms, and Elizabeth commented that having been fully vaccinated it was fitting that our freezers were now empty of the foods purchased when the fears were at their height back then when no one knew what was to follow the early warnings. It might be a sign of something but of what we are not yet sure.