During quarantine
Learning the value of our
Ordinary objects
Cookbooks, ovens, dinner plates
Become familiar
Tanka
I grew up in a time when people rarely ate out, at least those I knew. My family always ate meals at home around our big Formica kitchen table where conversation was shared along with mom’s wonderful home cooking.
I learned to cook and bake from my mom and aunt, most of my friends did also. It was just an ordinary part of life back then.
High School had Home Ec classes and Shop classes as part of our learning experience, to prepare us for living as adults.
There were some restaurants, but our family rarely ate out. A treat for us was to occasionally eat a light supper out on a Friday night shopping trip downtown at Woolworth’s lunch counter. We would order toasted egg salad sandwiches with pickles on the side and potato chips. As we waited for our food we would watch what was called the “dumb waiter” open and close as it carried food up and dish tubs down as the kitchen was downstairs from the counter above.
So cooking my meals at home during this time of quarantine has not been a big change for me at all, as that is what I usually do anyhow. I feel it tastes better and is less costly to do so, although I do occasionally like to order a pizza or sub sandwich at a local restaurant as a treat.
But many people during this time of virus, are having to learn to cook as they stay home in quarantine. It is a new experience for them as they were accustomed to frequently eating out. They are now sharing recipes and pictures of their dinner creations on Facebook. The family dinner table is being restored, and ordinary things like ovens, and mixing bowls, are being used again.
That is the good I see coming out in all of this. That is the part of this I hope has some lasting effect, as immediate families grow closer together and spend more quality time at home, and life slows down to bring appreciation of ordinary things.
NaPiWriMo Day 8–Prompt: Ordinary Things
Leonas Lines--Poetry Plus 
Like you, I grew up in a home where we never went out to eat. My father didn’t like restaurants for one thing, and it certainly was a more expensive way to eat. We did, though, pick up fish and chips maybe once a week or every couple of weeks. Otherwise my mother cooked every day. She didn’t teach me to cook, but I seemed to assimilate the ability to cook though I didn’t do much until I was out on my own. The one place I did enjoy going was the Olympia Restaurant where my mother and grandmother would go after shopping downtown, not for a meal but for a treat. I still remember the lemon sodas I used to get. I loved them and would love to taste something like it again some day. Even when we went on holidays we didn’t eat in a restaurant. My mother would take the electric fry pan and kettle to cook breakfast in the motel room then the Coleman stove to cook dinner. It didn’t seem to be much of a holiday for her.
I think you are right that families are coming together more through this as we now have no other choice that to eat at home. I have always cooked my meals and only go out once in a very long while with a friend for a treat.
Exactly. Very similar to my childhood, I forgot to mention we often did go on family picnics and to the free zoo and mom always packed us a lunch of her baked ham sandwiches on homemade bread plus baked beans, homemade potato salad and jello.
The best!
You’re making me hungry, Leona. I have been fasting today for Canada. There was another time of prayer called for today on Zoom where a lot of our spiritual leaders prayed and spoke. They also had communion. Faytene Grassechi has headed The Cry across Canada for a number of years and did her first (I think) Solemn Assembly a week ago last Saturday. That lasted 11 hours starting in the Atlantic provinces and moving across each province right out to British Columbia. It was fantastic. Today it was only 3 hours but just as powerful with much emotional repentance especially where the Jewish people are concerned and how they have been ignored to a great extent by the church. Faytene set up a schedule for a day of fasting and prayer for each province on different days of the week. Ontario was today, thus the fasting. I think I might make some popcorn before I go to bed.
That’s great news Diane! Sorry for making you hungry though 😊
Blessings to you!
No problem Leona. I didn’t end up getting the popcorn after all. I hadn’t used the popper for several years and I guess I hadn’t cleaned the oil off the last time I did use it. I tried soaking and scrubbing, but it still didn’t come off. I gave up last night as it was getting too late, so I ended up with a piece of bread and butter. Just as good. I had a good meal today.