Week 4 - This is still going on?

Day 20 - Monday, March 30th: Pita and Falafel

The problem with the 4th week of sheltering is that at this point, everyone was kind of over it. Let’s be real, you love your friends, and your family, but it’s not like anyone has done anything since you last talked to them other than make bread and order a Peloton. And yes, the Health app on your phone says you walked 3 miles a day, but those 3 miles were mostly spent on the phone talking during your lunch break walking in the middle of the street, choosing to get run over by a car rather than possibly catch COVID-19 from the dog on the sidewalk (and by lunch break, I really just mean the 2 hours in the middle of the day that you decided to leave the house because you needed a break from pretending to be productive WFH). At this point, the house was running low on flour, and I was running low on creativity and energy; so if you’re reading this blog to hear about me creating complex, food-network style dishes, this is definitely not the week to read (though, to be fair, if that is what you’re looking for, this just isn’t the blog for you).

Thankfully, I had planned Monday’s adventure a week earlier. It was falafel and pita day, take two. The first step was making the pita dough. When I originally planned on making pita, I found a recipe online that made me excited (read: content). Monday morning, however, I logged into my work computer and saw that my coworker had used that same recipe over the weekend. Obviously, that meant I couldn’t use it. It’s like when I am at a restaurant and my dining companion orders the dish I was eyeing. I have to order something different because two people can’t go to the same restaurant and only order one dish. That would be absurd. Did my coworker say the pita recipe was bad? Nope. He said it was great, and the pictures he posted actually looked beautiful. Yet, it was back to the drawing board to find another recipe.

I quickly found one that seemed pretty straight forward. As a person who had recently completed the sourdough bootcamp, I am an experienced baker. When I was finished with all the ingredients, though, it seemed more like ooblek than a nice dough that would magically turn into a pocket. Since I was determined to actually follow recipes this week, I didn’t add any more flour (even though I really wanted to). Then, it was time to make the falafel batter. In case anyone was curious, I did NOT cook the chickpeas before I made the falafel (if you didn’t read my week 3 blog, just pretend this is funny. If you did read my week 3 blog, still pretend this is funny).

After mixing together all of the ingredients and an unidentifiable combination of spices, my work was done.

Now I don’t know if you’ve ever tried falafel hours after it has been made, but it’s basically the same as when you order UberEats and you’re debating whether or not you should get the fries on the side. The argument is that, when fresh, the fries are absolutely delicious. But, when do fries ever show up in a delivery order fresh or crispy? Never.

Nonetheless, you convince yourself that maybe this is the time they will be worth it, so you order the fries, and, lo and behold, they show up sad, soggy, and gross. I mean, let’s be real, you still eat them, but they taste as if they are drenched in your own tears from when you watch that scene in Marlee and Me when the dog dies. (Oh! Sorry. Spoiler alert. The Golden Retriever in the movie doesn’t outlive Owen Wilson. I know. Shocking.) Thus, I did not want to make the falafel during my lunch break only to have them turn into soggy balls for dinner. So, after frying just a few (read: six) to taste test the batter, I put the rest in the fridge to fry later.

About an hour before dinner, I returned to the kitchen to cook the pita and falafel. Look, I generally like to minimize my consumption, but the fact that we haven’t been able to get flour or yeast in over a month has me feeling like I need to find a way to hanukkah our oil supply and make it last as long as possible, because you never know, maybe falafel will become the new sourdough and oil may suddenly be sold out everywhere (Yes. I did just use hanukkah as a verb). Thus, rather than fill up a big pot of oil only to throw half of it away later on, I used a much smaller pot and spent a more time frying the balls.

Now, trying to fry a massive batch of falafel in a pot that maybe fits 5 balls takes a long time. Add in a house full of people constantly picking, and noshing, and it takes forever. (If you’re thinking “woah, woah, Shai, that must be so annoying that everyone in the house just constantly comes into the kitchen and picks at the food that you’re making for them”...well, yeah, it is quite annoying. I may happen to have been the only one picking, but it was quite annoying of me.) Regardless, it was all worth it in the end. The pita was fluffy, the falafel was crispy and tear-less (just like me #EmotionallyRepressed), and the hummus was smooth.

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Day 21 - Tuesday, March 31st: Mango Sorbet

I don’t know if you know me (I mean, this isn’t some viral blog so obviously all of you know me), but I have a sweet tooth. When I was a kid, I used to put mike n Ikes at the bottom of my Sprite and let them sit there until all of the color and individual ‘flavors’ had leached out into the soda, leaving just these translucent sugar blobs that tasted like a very artificial type of sweet. More recently, I decided to limit the amount of processed sugar I was eating (which, at the time, was like 75% of my entire diet) and actually went through an intense withdrawal, including some brutal headaches and major crankiness (which may or may not have appeared right after waking up from my daily nap). But because I love sugar, I decided it was time to make a dessert. As much as I would love to take four paragraphs to tell you how I made a mango sorbet, and how I actually followed the recipe, I am going to save you the play-by-play because you don't actually need that much detail. A summary of my experience: I made sorbet. It tasted good. I learned that you shouldn’t put large frozen mango pieces into a 1980’s food processor because you will break it and your girlfriend will be upset.

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Day 22 - Wednesday, April 1st: Japanese Eggplant

I feel like COVID Wednesdays are like the ultimate slump day. I just could not think about what to make, so I decided to walk into the kitchen and start cooking something and with that hope that I had all the necessary ingredients. It’s like the time when my brother and I were young and we made pizza dough. After rolling it out, we went to the fridge to look for tomato sauce. Thankfully there was some left, so we spread it on the crust only to find out that there wasn’t any cheese. We went searching throughout the house for an alternative, and all we could find were individually wrapped reese’s peanut butter cups, so….we added those on top and baked it. Ok, as I am writing this, I realize that this is a bad reference because that pizza was gross and very much not a good idea from the beginning. Please excuse the prior few sentences.

During my lunch break that day, I walked into the kitchen, determined to let my imagination run wild… only for Leora (a roommate) to be there and ask me if I would be willing to make eggplant as a side dish for that evening’s dinner.

Now, I hate eggplant. I don’t know why, since I am absolutely obsessed with that orange eggplant dip from Trader Joe’s. It may be one of my top 3 TJ’s items. I don’t feel like that is a hot take, but maybe after posting this I’ll find out otherwise. For some reason, eggplant just doesn’t do it for me. It’s the cottage cheese of the nightshades - which is apparently a food group that includes tomato and potato. I like feta cheese, and I tolerate ricotta cheese, but somehow I really really hate cottage cheese. It’s like someone let milk sit outside for 4 months, and then decided if they gave it a cute little name like “cottage” people would forgive the clumps and enjoy it. Similarly, I love potatoes (obviously), I tolerate tomatoes, and eggplant just seems like zucchini’s smelly, bloated cousin. (I really tried to make this reference more about whatever family zucchini and eggplant are both in because they are obviously related. Upon further research, however, they are not actually related. Who knew?)

Anyway, given my hatred, I was a bit hesitant to make it. But, I wanted a challenge, so I said yes (Well, it wasn’t just for the challenge. People somehow have this idea that I’m picky and I thought refusing to make eggplant simply because I hated it would perpetuate that idea, so I decided to make the eggplant to prove a point).

Since dinner was Japanese themed, I looked up an eggplant recipe with Japanese seasoning and (actually) followed the instructions, which said to “cook for 25 minutes.” So, after 25 minutes, I turned to Leora, all excited, and said, “Look, check it out!” I was clearly feeling proud of my first eggplant dish.

“Looks great so far. I would estimate another 15-20 minutes.”

“Oh, yeah yeah, of course. I was just saying look at the progress. I obviously knew it wasn’t close to done...”

15 minutes later:

“Hey, do you wanna check this out? I personally think it could use some more time, but it is your dinner, so I wanna make you like it.” *I obviously still had no idea how to tell if eggplant was cooked.*

“Yeah, I still don’t think it’s done.”

“Great great. Me too. Me too. Glad we agree. I was just asking...”

10 minutes later:

“How’s it going in here?”

“Good. I turned off the eggplant since it was definitely done.”

“Ok, good good. Glad you turned it off. You clearly like eggplant a bit less cooked than I do…”

I had officially made my first batch of eggplant (well, I had put it in the pan and Leora made sure it was cooked). As everyone else in the room was like, “Yumm, this is so good,” I genuinely couldn’t tell if they were just being nice or if they really liked it, because I hated it. Could not eat more than a couple bites. Eggplant is still gross to me. Sorry… to my taste buds for making you eat that. I will now feed you lots and lots of chocolate to make it up to you.

As everyone was busy enjoying (read: lying to themselves about) the eggplant, the roommates decided to have a slumber party for lease holder individuals only. They asked me if that was ok since I am not a leaseholder, and was thus being excluded. Ok? Ok to have all the roommates in the house upstairs without me for an entire evening so I could do whatever I want and not feel the need to socialize or do some group activity? Sounds perfect to me. What would I do with my evening? Cook something elaborate? Do further research on what graduate school to attend? FaceTime with some friends that I hadn’t gotten the opportunity to speak to yet? Finally binge Tiger King? I had four hours to kill, what was I going to do? The possibilities were endless (and by endless, we all know that it would not involve leaving the house or seeing anyone, because that is illegal).

The second they went upstairs for their slumber party, I grabbed a carton of ice cream and a bag of chocolate chips, and curled up in a ball to watch hours of Grey’s Anatomy (even though I have seen the whole show before). Look, I only intended on watching one episode, but all the Mercy West people were stealing surgeries from the Seattle Grace people, so it felt like a betrayal to turn it off. Also, doing anything else seemed too exhausting. How am I always so exhausted from doing nothing at all?

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Day 23 - Thursday, April 2nd: Strawberry Lemonade

Now, Thursday, I decided to make strawberry lemonade. There really isn’t much of a story here. At camp, my campers used steal the lemon juice from the salad bar, and sugar from the coffee station, and turn it into lemonade, so I assumed it was easy. It really ended up tasting like a dirty, watered-down lemon smoothie.

Before I could figure out if someone at the table finished the pitcher of lemonade or if they poured it out when I wasn’t looking like our parents did to Elijah’s cup at the passover seder, I had to leave for a FaceTime call with my friends Shane and Ari (every night, they do a standing meeting with a different friend. I was tonight’s guest. I guess it’s nice to know that I’m 27th on their list of favorite people? More like 35th if you’re assuming that some people were too busy when asked). Regardless, as I reached for my phone charger (which also doubles as my iPad charger, and my headphone charger), it broke into many pieces. But don’t worry, Amazon is going to be delivering a new one by May 27th… So Savyon and I decided to share a charger for the indefinite future (and by decide I mean the second she falls asleep, I plug in my phone instead and when I wake up before her, I plug her phone back in so she is none the wiser). I should use the number of chargers broken as a metric to keep track of how long I’ve been sheltering in place because, spoiler alert: her charger broke like 3 days later.

Unrelated: in the middle of the day, I was on some random mid-day coffee break, which was really just a Zoom call of about 50 people where the host just kept saying “Oh my god, hi! How are you?” for the entire hour as people kept joining the call. So, I did what anyone else would do and I found my friend and messaged her through Zoom (making sure that it was a private message not a message to the entire group). She commented on my cooking and said I should totally make a blog.

“Really? You think so? I hadn’t really thought about it…”

*I say, pretending that it hasn’t always been a goal of mine to write a blog that goes viral and somehow gets me on to a late night talk show where a producer recognizes my talent and makes me the host of a gameshow.*

“Yeah! You should totally do it. I think it would be great!”

“Well, if you insist!”

After dinner, as Savyon was charging her phone (and both my iPhone and iPad were dead), I turned on my laptop for the first time in a long time (and yes, my laptop is a mac. I have sold my soul to Apple, but I don’t care because I like how well my texts integrate across my devices) and decided to start my blog. As I was beginning to write, I thought about certain questions my high school english teacher would have asked:

What is the purpose of the blog? There isn’t one.

Did I have a specific voice in mind? Nope.

Who is the audience? Definitely not my brother. No way he reads this.

After pondering the answers to these questions, it became clear to me that I had a really strong basis to write this blog. And, after having a brief moment of depth, I came up with the name “too much / too little” to represent that it just feels like there is too much you want to do and no matter what you accomplish, it feels like too little (woahhh, look at me being deep. Don’t worry, it didn’t last long. I immediately wrote my first blog post about bread, peanut butter pie, and peanut butter cups).

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Day 24 - Friday, April 3rd: Gnocchi

Friday is the holy sabbath, and what better way to celebrate than to make gnocchi, the holy grail of starches. You essentially mix potato with the normal pasta ingredients (i.e. flour and water), and boil the dough. Simple.

Or so I thought. Maybe I was distracted because I spent most of my day forcing 10 separate friends to read my first blog post, pretending they were the only person I sent it to, and asking if I should really post it online. Or maybe it’s because the recipe just wasn’t great. But other than a nice picture, something just didn't work. After consulting with my good friend Ezra, he mentioned that you really want to try to minimize the water in the potatoes to maintain a good texture (ways of doing this are by using old potatoes and baking the potatoes instead of boiling them). Unfortunately, I used new potatoes and very much boiled them. Oh well. Maybe I’ll try again with some of Ezra’s new tips, or maybe I’ll just keep gnocchi as an art not mastered - I have many other sources of pasta and potato in my life. I guess only time will tell.

Also, it was my younger brothers birthday. I would say something nice like Happy Birthday, but since he doesn't read my blog, it doesn't matter.