This morning I realized that I have skills and experience relevant to surviving this apocalypse without losing our minds. Namely, cooking all your meals for yourself in your home without having it take all your time and energy. For most of my adult life, I’ve been limited in what I can eat out. For the first decade, because I was a vegetarian. Then my body took a turn and progressively stopped tolerating the majority of the foods I used to eat, requiring me to start cooking for myself just about everything that touched my lips.
With a child whose system is as reactive as mine, I have years of preparation for what we’re facing. In our family, I’m the cook because I have the most experience cooking with food restrictions and experience translates into speed in preparation. I also hate cleaning, so I’d much rather be the cook. In the spirit of helping everyone not freak out, I offer up what works for us.
Eat the same thing for breakfast every day. Each of our family members eats the same thing for their breakfast, although not the same thing as each other. I eat yogurt with raspberries and honey. My partner eats cereal with milk. My child eats turkey sausages with buttered toast or oatmeal. All of these things are easy to get out of the fridge and prepare when you’re still mostly asleep.
If you love scrambled eggs, bacon, and pancakes–and let’s be real, who doesn’t–I recommend making those foods as a breakfast-for-dinner meal. Frittatas are also a nice way to get eggs and vegetables.
Keep your other meals simple. This is a necessity for us, since we can’t eat a lot of the things that make sauces delicious (onions, garlic, peppers, tomatoes).
Dinners consist of rice (or rice noodles, although those don’t reheat as well), meat (or occasionally lentils), and vegetables. Ideally, we have two vegetables per meal, sometimes three, and sometimes the vegetable is pickles. Most of what we eat is roasted, as I like the flavor and it’s the easiest way to prepare them (in my opinion).
For lunch, I have the same thing as dinner, and my partner and child choose between dinner food or PB&J sandwiches with a side of chips, popcorn, or pretzels. Snacks are a choice of carb plus fruit, and nuts or cheese for me. (I seem to have the only child alive who doesn’t really like cheese.) We keep a stock of all the snack food my child can eat and then I try to bake something a couple of times a month for snack food, usually muffins.
Plan to use your microwave. The biggest shift in our style of cooking has been to cook everything ahead of time and reheat portions as needed. Basically, we are constantly eating leftovers. We always have rice in the fridge, as I make a large batch at a time; I feel less bad about this since reading that cooling and reheating rice causes the oil to bond with the carbs and improves the nutritional content.
On the days I have the energy for vegetable chopping, I prepare and roast or sauté three vegetables at a time. Most commonly, I roast cauliflower, broccoli, rutabaga, brussels sprouts, butternut squash, and sweet potatoes, and sauté chard, bok choy, cabbage, and mushrooms. When I can get good green beans, I steam those.
We cook meat as needed, most commonly bratwurst-style sausages or roast chicken. I have a ground beef dish I made up that doesn’t meet anyone else’s standards for food but I like it. (Brown ground beef in a covered pan with garam masala spice and salt, add finely chopped zucchini, cook until the zucchini is mush, eat with rice. Yes, this was originally a way to get zucchini into my food, but now I have come to like it.) I bake chicken thighs which my child and partner then slather with Adobo salt (green, natch).
All of this goes into the fridge and gets assembled into individual bowls of foods that each of us can and will eat for dinner and then heated in the microwave.
Make a double batch of anything that requires extra effort and freeze half of it. About once a month I make soup, lentil or squash, and put half of it in the freezer. We do the same with meatballs. Then when the rest of the family is tired of eating chicken and rice, we can pull something different out for a few meals.
Baking definitely requires extra effort and most families will devour baked goods in less than 36 hours. In our case, my kid really likes muffins for snacks but also runs out of steam for them after a few days. I always freeze half the batch and then (wait for it) warm them individually in the microwave for 30 seconds. Cookies and brownies freeze well too, if baking for relaxation is something you like to do. I’ve never tried to freeze cake or bread, but I hear it can be done.
Rely on processed food when you just don’t have it in you. Sometimes I want to eat cheese for dinner and don’t have the bandwidth to cook. On those days, my child gets chicken tenders and fries, or tuna salad and a bread and butter sandwich, with pickles as a vegetable. My partner loves those days because he can eat all the food we can’t, like frozen pizza and burritos. Normally I’d suggest mixing in tacos or pizza out if you can, but since all the restaurants in our state just closed, we’re going to have to rely on our wits and our homes.
Lastly, just make sure you eat. The most important thing is to just make sure you get fed. I can tell you from experience that your adrenal system is not going to love subsisting on fear, coffee, sugar, and alcohol. All of those will probably play a role in our lives in the weeks and months to come, but food is necessary too! Be fed, be safe, stay well.