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Making do in the kitchen during the coronavirus


During the past two months, phone conversations with friends and family have generally turned to the subject of toilet paper and food on hand or the lack thereof.
We’re all used to cooking up any culinary delight we desire and, if we don’t have a particular ingredient, we just run to the store. Such is not the case during these times. Just this past week I was finally able to make some cookies and pumpkin bread for two of my widowed neighbors. My main missing ingredient was sugar as my swarm of hummers return year after year and drain two or three feeders a day, thus quickly depleting my sugar supply. To my good fortune, I found a 25-pound bag of sugar at Lowe’s grocery in Comfort. Chocolate chips and brown sugar were found at the Dollar General in Center Point, and a bag of off-brand flour was purchased at Lowe’s grocery in Bandera. I was finally set to bake!
My sister-in-law Mary Kay, who lives in Georgia, celebrated her 73rd birthday on April 5th, but this year her children weren’t there to present her with a birthday cake, so she decided to make her own. Fearful of using all the butter she had, Mary Kay substituted sour cream which turned out to be a bad idea. “It was absolutely horrible,” she commented, “so I drizzled it with Hershey’s chocolate syrup, and it tasted pretty good!”
My good friend Ethel lives in Johnson City. She, too, is a baker and loves to bake homemade bread. Unfortunately, she had plenty of flour but no yeast. There was none to be found at her Lowe’s or the H-E-B in Dripping Springs. Ethel’s granddaughter, who lives in Rosenberg near Houston, was asked by her husband’s co-workers to make them some cookies. They offered to pay her, but she said she would do it for free if they could just find her some flour. They did find flour, but it was bread flour. Not a good idea for making cookies, the granddaughter quickly found out.
That being said, I recently wanted to make a cherry cobbler, but it called for self-rising flour which I don’t keep on hand. Just by Googling, I discovered that baking powder and baking soda can be added to the regular flour, and the results will be the same. If you’re in need of something you don’t have on hand, check the substitution lists which are often found in the back of your cookbooks.
Our daughter Melissa, who lives in Austin, has been on a cooking spree, cooking up all kinds of dishes, as well as treats for neighborhood kids and a birthday cake for her neighbor’s daughter. Each night, Melissa sets the table in the dining room with the china and the silverware that they received for their wedding back in 2003 and sit down to a formal candlelight dinner.
“I’m finally getting to make use of my beautiful china, “ she said.
Melissa recently received a request from a friend who is now in assisted living.
“I’ve got to have some wine,” the friend said, “so would you bring me two bottles? Someone will meet you at the front door to get them.” The friend was most appreciative.
My other sister-in-law Linda, who lives in Deer Park, decided to try her daughter’s soup recipe which called for ingredients which she fortunately had on hand. Unfortunately, however, Linda didn’t pay attention to the text she received from the daughter. There were actually two texts with two different recipes. “The thing just grew and grew,” Linda remarked. “I started with the basic 11 cups of chicken broth and started adding all the other ingredients, unaware that there were two separate recipes. I kept transferring the soup to bigger and bigger pots. Now I have enough for the next six months!” Linda is calling her new invention the coronavirus soup.
We always have plenty of ground venison on hand, so I can make anything from tacos and hamburgers to spaghetti sauce, but, lately, I’ve had a hankering for my mother’s meatloaf. The problem was finding green bell peppers, so my husband set out with his mask, gloves, wipes, and anti-bacterial soap to find me a bell pepper. There were none in the grocery stores, but he did find two at the local Mini-Mart of all places. Fearful of not finding any more, I cut the remaining bell pepper in slices, froze them, and placed them in a plastic bag.
To me, it is refreshing to know that stoves, and not just microwaves, are once again being used to cook. If yeast is missing from store shelves, that’s really a good thing as people are actually baking bread. If dried beans are missing, they’re cooking up a pot of beans, and, perhaps the best thing of all is that, once again, families are sitting down together to eat a meal.

Allene Mandry was born in Uvalde where she attended elementary school before moving to San Antonio. Now a retired teacher, she has a Bachelor of Arts and Master of Education from Trinity University. She spends her time doing genealogy research and giving presentations on genealogy. Mandry and her husband, Arthur, live on a ranch near Camp Verde.

Allene Mandry

Allene Mandry

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