I have always enjoyed cooking for more than one reason. Satisfaction from seeing people whom I care for eat meals I prepared has been one of my biggest motivators. I suppose it is because I can see actual proof of my ability to help others fulfil one of our core needs – a happy stomach.
After getting married, I solely commanded the kitchen in our home by choice and with a great deal of effort placed on nutritional value. Thankfully, I have a partner who welcomes dietary change and routine. Though some days I would prefer to just not see it, due to laziness, the majority of the time I am locked away in it being as happy as I could be.
With the current pandemic confining most of us to our homes and infrequent supermarket/ market visits, cooking has become an overnight hobby for many. With more spare time and limited chances to eat take out or dine out, the pandemic has pushed us to depend on our own culinary skills to ensure safety and survival. Kitchen chores once seen as a burdensome and tiresome to complete the day before or in the early morning, have been embraced in a way I hope we can all maintain when the dust has settled.
Among the things that have been scarce in the supermarkets in Germany, apart from toilet paper and hand sanitizer, are yeast and flour. There has been an unpresented demand for these items with children now at home and parents looking for screen-free activities and more people just looking to experiment with recipes they had no time for.
Cooking and baking do something relaxing to us when we are not in a rush and have ample time to enjoy it. I once catered for my husband’s family weekend visit on a two-burner electric stove. While part of it was extremely physically exhausting, the level of satisfaction I felt from having managed to complete everything I set out to do soothed the pain in the strangest of ways.
According to Michael Kocet, a licensed mental health counsellor and department chair of the Counselor Education Department at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, baking gives of a sense/feeling of accomplishment, “especially in this period of angst and unknowns”. Additionally, Kocet lamented that baking can give us something concrete to create, control and enjoy when we have the finished product. With specific aspects of the process geared to teach appropriate lessons for day-to-day life, it can lead to a state of mindfulness, he added. Key aspects require patience, such as waiting for the dough to rise, and kneading gives us time to reflect and helps us to feel focus and centred.
Life before the pandemic, even though I kept a fairly balanced diet, was sometimes hectic and there were times when cooking brought frustration due to physical exhaustion. Cycling everyday can wear you down in good way, but sometimes leaves little or no energy for anything else.
This pandemic is awful in every way possible but a forced and abrupt change has also been a period of reflection to remind us that the very tasks that we once rushed through and sometimes dreaded due to exhaustion have been the key ones to sustain us physically and emotionally.
