I was the absolute worst over the whole epidemic. Ask my husband. But we had something precious we had to protect, my elderly father in law, who was in the midst of a pretty severe mental health crisis. On top of that I have allowed myself to become not the healthiest person in the world, and was struck with the terror of the horror stories I read early on, of people being in care for months and perishing.

I suppose that is as good a place to start as any. the Hubs and I were, and to a degree still are, my father in law’s sole caregivers, and that was a huge undertaking just on it’s own, but with the whole world lockdown, we had to pool resources, figure out doctor appointments, medications, all kinds of caregiver things that neither of us ever thought we would be tasked with, being childless by choice.

When things started to ease up a bit, I kept the terror deep in me that we would still, somehow give him “the cooties” and it would be catastrophic. Or, that one or the both of us could responsible for that. Even worse that we would have it ourselves and not be able to care for him. As the restrictions lifted, he got better, and now almost 6 months later, things are in a place we never thought we would be again, he is healthier both mentally and physically, much more self sufficient, and our caregiving is mainly making appointments and driving him there, and the occasional food run. My remaining big task is cooking hot food for him to eat during the week. And that’s where this story can mesh with the other blogs I have written for the past 15 years, what do I cook and how do I do that? I had to be creative when supplies were low, shop the sales to stock up, and generally cook in a fashion I never had before! It was a lesson in how to make food appealing for someone with highly challenging physical issues (i.e., inability to taste or smell food, needing highly seasoned meals, all packaged so that all they had to do was to put it in the microwave and eat it, no portioning out). As his taste and smell started to come back, but the supply chain was still fairly stalled, I started to see all these stories on Instagram about “Alabama pot roast” and things I would never ever have cooked previously, me being the make it all from scratch devotee, became easy. Using the slow cooker, long slow braising, cooking lots of meat dishes again, all of this was setting me back to an old way of preparing food, mainly for someone we were not eating with!

I was struggling to start a new blog, having lost 10+ years of writing and subscribers of the past blog I wrote, Detroit Foods. So this first post is to start me on the new path, find old recipes and update them, and mainly get my original premise, cooking isn’t hard, and it’s certainly not rocket science. If I can cook it, you certainly can too!

So, here I am again my friends, be patient whilst I get my old writing muscles back into shape, and lets set to cooking and enjoying each other’s presence again!

I hope you all join me, and enjoy what I can offer!

Elizabeth (also known as “E”)