Amidst all the negativity spread by Coronavirus, people surely know how to make the best of the situation. Are you wondering why we say so? Pause for a few minutes and please check your WhatsApp chats and groups or the social media and you might get the answer. Haven’t been able to solve the mystery yet? Read on to find out the answer.
You would agree that the lockdown had forced all of us to enter the kitchen as a gesture of helping our partners or parents. However, now we have started enjoying the activity and are looking forward to trying out new recipes each day. Not even the common man, but the celebrities too have turned chefs cooking delicious meals while in quarantine.
We have resorted to cooking and baking to sail through the quarantine phase in the most productive way. Since everything is shut; we have transformed ourselves into cooks, golgappe wale bhaiya, baker, halwai, or even the next Haldiram’s and Aggarwal sweets shop. So what if we can’t step out to eat or order in, we can prepare the dishes and savor them in our comfort zone- is what we are living by now.
This trend was highlighted by Google Trends a few days ago. It mentioned that apart from asking Google to solve our queries, or keeping ourselves updated about the coronavirus rising cases, we are also searching for different kinds of recipes. While there were memes across the internet that Indians have adorned the chef hat and there will be a huge line for MasterChef auditions post quarantine; our social media and our phones are the proves that people are increasingly spending time in their kitchens- whisking, whipping, baking and sautéing! Each time we access our Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp, we see someone posting their ‘dish of the day.’ Recipe search is on an all-time high with cake, samosa, jalebi, momos, dhokla, pani puri, avocado, chocolate cake, etc. just to name a few are actively looked upon in our search bars as per Google trends. (You can check Google Trends for the same)
Dalagona coffee which became the new fad was of course there in our search list and our kitchens too. However, since, it is the mango season; we have also requested Google a lot about the various mango recipes like mango pudding or mango ice cream. Baking search has also witnessed a surge especially ‘how to make bread in the microwave’ along with cakes. It won’t be wrong to say that cooking new dishes every day and relishing them together with our loved ones is giving us an opportunity to spend quality with them.
Quarantine snacks seem to be the new trend now. The aroma of the samosa being fried, the multi-grain bread, the home special pizza or the cake being baked in the oven, the smokiness of the grilled veggies, the fragrance of the spicy momo chutney have filled our nostrils and our homes and have been a source of joy and adventure in our mundane ‘stay at home’ routine. Our tasteless and black and white life seems to be painted with colors, flavorful taste, and succulent aroma of our victuals. We are preparing these tempting dishes with a lot of hard work and sweat. Cooking is giving us the required strength and optimism to keep going and is helping us to sail through this unfortunate phase.
To take our culinary skills to the next level, some of us have even taken our first baby step by creating our YouTube channels, social media pages, groups, etc. Expressing her views on the same, Priyadarshini Mazumdar, a Communication professional from the luxury goods and jewelry industry says, ‘’The current global crisis that we are going through has put each one of us under tremendous mental pressure. We all are battling with different levels of emotions on a daily basis in this unfamiliar situation. It was difficult and depressing for me to adjust to this self-isolation time away from family and hence I needed to focus my energies on something apart from my job. Since long, I was planning on starting my food channel on YouTube (Sweet and Chilli Peppers) and the lockdown was the perfect opportunity to invest my time on the same. I am happy that I was able to take this small step towards my dream that gives me creative satisfaction and keeps me sane.’’
Various studies suggest that cooking is therapeutic, stimulates our creativity, boosts our confidence, and helps provide relief from stress. And well in our case, the myriad of colors and the whiff of our feast are uplifting our mood and making our mouth salivate too.
It seems we are beating the lockdown stress by gorging on different items from the menu. However, during the pandemic phase, since we are gobbling a lot on the scrumptious meals, burning those calories, staying fit, happy, and positive should be on our essential items list too. While the food would be completing our happiness quotient, fitness and optimism can be achieved via exercise (along with yoga and meditation). As Joey’s character joked in the Friends series, ‘a moment on the lips, forever on the hips.’
Burning those calories is important too!
Sharing my friends’ culinary skills, some of them have honestly taken cooking to the next level. They are preparing diverse delicacies, be it chaat, north Indian, continental, Italian, Mexican, fusion or the healthy stuff, the list is indeed endless. Stay tuned as my next blog post will be focusing on my friends cooking mouth watery dishes and updating me over WhatsApp.
If you wish to share your special Lockdown recipes or Quarantine special meals recipes with us, then please write to me and I would be glad to share it with everyone through my blog.
The Scribbler's Dais 