Christina's blog

I was reading the New York Times this morning, as I do every morning before I begin my work. It’s my go-to source for news and has been for most of my adult life.

I read two articles this morning about climate change and they left me feeling bereft for the future we might leave to our children and generations after them.

The days became weeks; became months and here we are. The days roll into each other. We savor small changes, small freedoms as we continue to navigate this pandemic. We see each little advance as a triumph as we try to keep our loved ones and ourselves safe.

My grandfather, my mother’s father was the greatest man who ever lived. Period. Coming from Castellemare di Stabia outside of Naples, he knew poverty. He knew want. He knew hardship. He also knew ambition and desire.

I know that times are hard for so many of us. We struggle with everything from cooking three meals a day, seven days a week to juggling home school or some hybrid of education for our kids. We are working from home, not working or working tirelessly in essential roles to keep society and life moving in some way or another.

So we are stressed and very close to the boiling point at any given moment of any day.

Ah, the pandemic. 2020 has been such a delight (she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm). As the weeks and months of COVID life drag on, I find solace where I usually do: in the kitchen, at the gym (for hot, sweaty outdoor workouts) and in the love and companionship of my husband.

I know what you’re thinking. You all come to me for my thoughts on food and wellness, not politics. Well, take a deep breath. This isn’t about party or politics. It’s about food, women and the fight we fight every day.

It’s been months now of living and working at home, working unmentionably long shifts as essential workers out in the world or living at home and not working at all. We may be surrounded by family or on our own. We nervously wait in lines to get into the market, the post office, the bank and the gas station. We wear masks. (We do wear them, right?) We have learned to fear other people being in close proximity. We protest injustice, risking close proximity to others in the quest for equality and peace. We search in vain for a way to make sense of this crisis within which we live.

As sheltering in place continues with only some relief, I found myself feeling a bit worn out by my own home cooking. Look, I love to cook and play with food. I do. I make my living with food; my mission in life is completely driven by food and cooking.

It hit me the other day, as I was making lunch. It wasn’t the work of cooking that was wearing on me; it was the familiarity of the dishes I was making, the predictability of my own cooking habits. I don’t know about you, but I wasn’t feeling like I wanted to experiment or cook with an adventurous spirit.

I continue to cook three meals a day.  Even though there has been some movement in restaurant openings here. I just don’t feel comfortable eating outside our home…not quite yet. It’s a good thing that I love to cook.

Watching an hour of television at night makes me feel sick. There. I said it out loud. It’s not the programming so much as it’s the Big Pharma ads during the programs.

If they’re to be believed, every single person struggling with one disease or another is well, frankly, living their best lives. If these ads are to be believed, (and trust me, they want us to believe them), people struggling with every ailment from psoriatic arthritis to type 2 diabetes to metastatic breast cancer are having more adventurous and robust lives than any healthy person could dream of having.