Category Archives: pandemic

Cooking During The Pandemic

I grew up at a time when it was OK for parents to be uninvolved with their kids.  Yes, some dads and moms liked to spend time with their children, but a lack of such interest was not frowned on. If I wanted to spend time with my parents, I had to do this on their terms.  This was nearly impossible with my father but more workable with my mom.

My mother was a brilliant person who spent her adult life as a homemaker. Just about anything that she did, she did well.  One of her jobs was that of the household cook. We had seven people in our family, and we never went to restaurants. The vast majority of the food that we ate was made at home, and my mother made most of it. 

I can recall watching her cook as I ran the logic of her decisions through my mind. She was an effortless cook who knew her craft so well that she rarely had to consult a cookbook or use a measuring spoon. Despite her expertise, my mother loved watching cooking shows, and by far, her favorite one was Julia Child’s “French Chief.”  I would watch the show with her, and this is a fond memory. I loved the precision and focus of Julia Child. She treated cooking as a science, and I liked science.

I believe that all of that cooking exposure left me with kitchen confidence.  Making food was not a mystery to me; it was just a series of logical steps. Once I understood the stages of one process, I could translate that information to another. 

As a single man, I put my cooking knowledge to good use, especially during my residency.  At that point, I was divorced with a child, and I was penniless. I could stretch a can of tuna into two meals or turn two chicken legs into dinner one night and lunch the next day.

I finished my residency and started to make more money as a practicing physician.  My new economic status shifted me from cooking at home to buying food in the hospital cafeteria or (worse yet) buying fast food burgers. Eventually, I remarried, and my wife Julie took over most of the cooking jobs.

I transitioned back to meal prep when Julie returned to the paid workforce, and in that process, I taught my kids how to cook as we planned and made meals together. We would decide what we wanted to eat and go to the store to buy it.  There was never a worry about cost or shortages. 

When my kids went off to college, I traded off cooking meals with Julie, and our overall needs changed.  I could make a pot of soup that would last us four days, or grill a single steak that we would split. I tried to be less wasteful during this time, as I was now retired and ever more aware of both the sin of wastefulness and my fixed retirement income. I had no idea that this frugality would further benefit me during the pandemic of 2020.

We were flying back from New Mexico when I got a text message that my daughter Grace’s college had closed down; then, I found out that my son’s in-person classes were suspended.  A short time later, I discovered that my daughter Kathryn was flying back from her Peace Corps job in Africa. We had just adjusted to being empty nesters, but in short order, our household was going from two to five adults.  As soon as I returned to Naperville, I went to Walmart to buy food and discovered that the shelves were bare. A quiet panic hit me.

Something strange happens when I panic.  I calm on the surface, and I instantly start to plan solutions in my head.  This is not a doctor thing; it is a survival thing that I have done my entire life. I quickly went down each aisle to find those things that I could make meals out of.  I moved my mind from what I wanted to what was available. A can of chicken, two cans of crushed tomatoes, some weirdly shaped pasta that no one else wanted… The purchases went on. Years of watching my mother make meals from what was on hand flashed in my brain.  I recalled my residency years of making a can of tuna fish stretch. I remembered the summers of making simple meals when I camped and hiked. I knew I could make it work, but would my family eat what I made? In the past, we made food that everyone liked, and when someone didn’t like a meal-offering, they would eat something else.  That could no longer happen with food shortages and a limited larder.

I was surprised at how exhausting cooking meals had become for me during the crisis.  I’m sure that managing my stress had zapped most of my psychological energy. I decided to involve my kids; we would cook together.  It is more enjoyable to prepare with them, and I also wanted to teach them this “new” way of cooking. The waste-not-want-not way.

Our current meals go back to my poor roots.  I try to make enough food without excess, and when we do have leftovers, I reuse them or incorporate them into other meals.  I now have a better understanding of my mother’s choices when cooking and the economic benefit of the casserole. 

We have made everything from enchilada soup to a giant frittata baked in our 12” cast-iron skillet. The kids have been happy to help me cook, and they don’t complain about the results. They have been real troopers. 

Before I went to bed last night, I made an enormous pot of rice.  For dinner today, I’ll fry it with some leftover pork, some frozen vegetables, eggs, as well as scallions pinched from my friend Tom’s garden.  Add to this a little garlic and ginger, plus a splash of soy sauce and dinner will be served. Simple and filling.

There isn’t a shortage of food; there is a shortage of some types of food. Perhaps I can’t get a kind of potatoes, but I can likely find a different variety.  The cold cereal may be off the shelves, but I might be able to find some pancake mix. I don’t worry about the type of olive that a dish requires, I wonder if I have a random can of olives in the pantry.  It is about being flexible and creative.

I’m going to try to limit my grocery trips during the next two weeks, which means that we will mostly eat from our in-house supplies.  It may get a bit dicey as our options become more limited. However, we will not starve; life will go on.

As I have said in the past most things in life are neither bad nor good, they just are.  We are the ones who add a positive or negative valence to life events. It is a good thing that our home is returning to a less wasteful cooking style.  It is good that my kids are seeing the benefit of being flexible and adaptive. It is good to be grateful to have food on the table.  

Life is more comfortable when you train yourself to see the positive in things.  Our family will get through this, one economical meal at a time.

Boiling some potatoes that will be shredded and added to a frittata.
Involving the kids in meal prep. (note the spray bottle of homemade surface disinfectant next to William).
Cornbread and enchilada soup (made from leftovers).

I don’t want to die so my daughter can have a new iPhone.

I am not a political person.  I am a truth, equality, and justice person. The stock market is the primary source of the money that I live on.  I am being hurt by the deflating economy, likely more so than many, as I am no longer in the paid workforce. Also, I am a medical doctor who has advanced training in microbiology; It is with these facts that I write the following.

I am 67 years old, and I have been horrified by what is being promoted by some politicians in high office, as well as popular conservative commentators. There are two prongs to their comments.  The first one is that the economy needs to be restarted in a few weeks. The second is that it is OK for high-risk individuals (those over 60 years old) to sacrifice their lives by returning to work early so that the next generation can live in a prosperous America.

The above statements are not only incredibly insensitive, but they are patently false.  Let me expand on this.

There are over 50 million Americans who are over the age of 60.  Many of us still do paid work, and many others do unpaid work. In this last week, I fixed my sister’s Mac (over the phone) and fixed my daughter’s Windows computer that had a Trojan virus. I shopped, made dinners, cleaned the house, offered support to those close to me via Facebook, Facetime, and the phone, and did countless other useful things.  My housekeeping work has allowed my wife (who is a practicing Clinical Psychologist) to continue to work with patients who need her support and counsel. I don’t see my 67-year-old life as being useless. However, because I’m older and a male, my chance of dying from Covid-19 is tremendously higher than younger individuals.

We have had other times in our history where we “sacrificed” others for what we claimed was the greater good. We enslaved Africans to provide cheap labor. We infected Native Americans with Cholera by giving them infected blankets. During the Great Depression, we forced Hispanics Americans to move to Mexico to open up jobs for whites.  Many of these individuals didn’t even speak Spanish. During WWII, we forced Japanese Americans into concentration camps and claimed their property and possessions. These are just some examples of how easy it is to devalue life, especially if that devaluation doesn’t impact us. Apparently, the secret is to take away from those who are most vulnerable as they are less likely to put up a fuss.

Dying from Covid-19 is not a peaceful and romanticized “Soylent Green” death.  In many cases, the virus, combined with an overactive immune system, destroys the lungs.  This results in a slow and painful suffocation death. When your breathing starts to shut-down, the only recourse is to use a mechanical breathing device to assist you.  In other words, a respirator. A respirator can’t save everyone, but it can save many. Naturally, it can’t resolve the lung damage that is resultant from the illness. Many who require respiratory support will likely have permanent lung damage, even if they fully recover from the virus.

We do not have a medication treatment for this illness, despite what you may be hearing from unqualified individuals. Medical professionals are exploring many options, but none have enough data to suggest that they should be used in treating this illness.  Promoting false information has resulted in shortages for patients who need medications to treat diseases that do respond to these drugs. A man in Arizona died, and his wife is in critical care after taking industrial chloroquine to “protect” himself from Covid-19.  It is easy to believe false information when it comes to an influential authority figure. No one made this couple foolishly ingest aquarium cleaner, but the seed of the idea started from those most high.

We can assume that those individuals who are promoting the “sacrifice” of an entire generation will be protected by their wealth and status.  They claim to be on the front line, but is that true? If they are working, it can be assumed that they are doing so in safe and shielded spaces.  If they somehow succumb to the illness, they will be guaranteed testing and hospitalization. If they need a respirator, one will be found. The same cannot be said of millions of others. 

There are also the utterly false assumptions that younger people are immune to Covid-19, or that Covid-19 is just another flu.  In situations where the health care system is operating efficiently, the lethality rate of Covid-19 is about ten times that of the flu. In countries where the health care system is overwhelmed (such as Italy), it is over 100 times more lethal.  Let that number sink in…ONE HUNDRED TIMES MORE LETHAL. This is NOT the common flu. 

We are told that more people die in car accidents than will die from Covid-19. This is probably false. Besides, the same statement could be made when looking at the number of people who were killed during the 911 crisis.  Should we have ignored that crisis based on a comparison to motor vehicle deaths? Of course not.

Since we have no currently known effective treatments for this disease, we are left with only two options.  The first is to reduce the number of active cases in the system. This is accomplished by reducing the number of infections, and we are all familiar with the drill… socially isolate, shelter-in-place, wash your hands.  The second is to provide supportive medical care to give our bodies a chance to heal themselves. This is where hospitalization and possible ventilator treatment comes in.

The above actions buy time to explore which of the many proposed treatments help (so that beneficial protocols can be established).  And the time to develop a vaccine against this coronavirus. Also, they reduce the number of patients being admitted to the hospital, which hopefully will keep the death rate around ten times that of the flu, instead of 100 (or more) times. 

To relax social isolation, shelter-in-place, and other epidemiological protocols early WOULD (not could) cause a devastating increase in the number of infections, which surely would overpower our medical system resulting in a many-fold increase in the deaths of not only seniors but all other age groups. 

To think otherwise is to ignore historical facts. During 1918 Spanish flu, the city fathers of Phillidelphia decided to continue with a war-bonds parade/rally despite the powerful objection of health officials. At the same time, St. Louis followed medical advice and shut down the city.  Within weeks of the parade, 4,500 Philadelphians were dead from the virus. This death rate was over twice as high as in St. Louis. Social distancing does work… why can’t we learn a lesson that was proven in our own country over 100 years ago? This is not a time in history where we should rely on a “hunch,” we have facts.  By the way, why are we not seeing the CDC… the Center For Disease Control being more active? They should be as prominent as our president during this crisis.

This is a challenging and trying time for our entire planet. However, I do believe that we will develop effective treatments and a vaccine for this virus.  Just as importantly, we will (hopefully) reinstitute the roles of science, logic, and common sense so we can contain the next viral outbreak, which will surely come. 

I am not willing to sacrifice my life for a temporary bump in the economy (and, most certainly, a crash when an exponential increase in Covid-19 cases crushes our population). We are not sheep; we need to use our minds and real data to make decisions that help both ourselves and our country.  And yes, it will be hard times.

So am I being selfish by wanting to live and to continue to contribue to our country?  Is having a consumer oriented country more important than 50 million older adults? I asked my daughter this question, “Would you rather have me around or the latest iPhone?”  Thankfully, she choose the former.

We are all high risk, but very much alive and contributing. Photo was taken well before the Covid-19 outbreak.
Me with my wife and two of my three children who are now back home. I’m doing most of our domestic chores so my wife can continue her work as a Clinical Psychologist.
A flower is seen on a recent socially-distant walk shows that life is resilient.
Celebrating my 67th birthday. Hopefully, more to come.