There is no doubt that COVID-19, and the need to isolate for the common good in the face of the bug, has changed how we eat.
While many restaurants have stayed open to take out and delivery, being shut in our homes, many laid off from work, has afforded time to home cook meals more than has been normal.
In my case, I just turned 60, and having grown up on a Saskatchewan farm in an era where my mother did not work off-farm, I was used to home cooking being on the table for three squares a day as they say.
That has not been the norm in the latter half-plus of my 60-years of course.
Evenings when my son had Scouts or baseball, my daughter Girl Guides, or myself and newspaper assignments often meant a trip through a drive-thru for a burger, or pizza. If not a restaurant offering, it would be something quick from the grocery store, a lasagna that could be heated in the oven in short order.
My grandmother and mother would have generally looked at a heat and eat meal from a grocery store as a shirking of their duties.
The difference is of course the time we have for something often seen as mundane as cooking food.
There are a lot of demands on our time today, with parents almost always working, and the need to chase children to a wide array of athletic, and culture endeavours as we try to offer our kids the greatest range of opportunities possible.
Now, suddenly because of COVID-19, families have the time to return to home cooking. There is little in this world that is better than the aroma of homemade bread baking in the kitchen. It is frankly a purely joyous thing.
And the meals my better half is making, from ham and bean soup to a curry meatloaf with a handful of sweet raisins mixed in, have me not missing restaurants, although a take out burger occasionally is thought about.
It is a good thing that people enjoy the family time a homemade meal can offer a family.
It is a situation that has shifted food needs, flour is often sold out at stores, and that is creating different opportunities for farmers.
The question is what happens post-isolation? Will we maintain an increased interest in home cooking?
The short-answer is probably not. The demands on our time will mean mixing flour and yeast, kneading dough, and watching bread rise will fall off the list of things we have time for, even though fresh bread smells fantastic and tastes that way too.
Calvin Daniels is Editor with Yorkton This Week.
