The Corona Challenge: For how many weeks can you go without grocery shopping?

Last food delivery from Costco : March 29th, 2020

  The governor of Georgia announced a Stay in-shelter order. My wife and I decided to try for how long we can go without going grocery shopping. Before the lockdown, we went to Costco, Trader Joes, Aldi and occasionally to Whole Foods every weekend. So definitely it is a challenge for us! So let’s see how it will turn out.

If you read this blog, then you know that my wife is following a religious lent.  Unfortunately, I neglected my website for some time as I was busy with home improvement projects.  I intended to write and publish a new series of recipes for this year lent, but then with COVID-19, everything changed fast. My souly is now working from home, and we are happy to be close together.   

Because we are creating our dishes on the spot, we will describe them and give our verdict. Keep in mind that many of them are spontaneous and may lack the precise measurements. Cooking is a matter of practice and experience that should be fun.

For evenings, we decided to make a culinary trip around the globe and dress up as if we go to a restaurant. So let’s enjoy our journey together.

April 10, 2020

Keeping up with the blog is slower than expected. Because I was inactive for almost a year, many programs changed and I need to learn them. Although we have hundreds of recipes that we have cooked, we don’t have photos for most of them. Besides, people looking often inspired by a beautiful photoshopped Picture than the actual recipe. So bare with us.

Usually, we cook in the evening a large portion which we warm up the next day for lunch.

So for the first 10 days, we were predominately cooking with the fresh produce from the delivery. Because we had many potatoes that were older I shredded them with a Swiss cutting tool to a Roesti (kind of Swiss hash browns; the tool produces longer chips. ), which I cooked and froze.

Also, we had too many bananas. Katya peeled and froze some of them for smoothies and I freeze-dried the est of them.

April 13th

Still, behind in my blog. My wify is working from home, and I am retired. I ordered a bunch of stuff for making a walkway and a smaller concrete slab. On the weekend we moved 2 tons of gravels around. Nice workout!

April 24th

Well, what to say, I was busy. Believe it or not, it takes a long time to write a recipe. I was baking a fitness bread with sprouted grains, and I thought I did a post about sprouting, but of course, I did not, plus I had no pictures. Besides, I am obsessed with reading about wood fire pizza ovens. I want a furnace that is great for pizzas plus has enough heat retention for baking loaves of bread. My original idea to buy one of these stainless steel pizza ovens. As it turns out, they work pretty well for pizzas and some meat dishes but lose their heat considerably fast and thus would not work well for making bread. Other classic brick ovens are expensive and very heavy, and there is the option to build them yourself. There are modular kits available that are prefabricated like Lego blocks, and one has to assemble the oven. Some providers deliver a set with all the material for the oven, but they are not too cheap. Besides, one has to build a concrete table which adds up to the costs plus it takes time. The final option is to create an oven from scratch, but that is not too easy without masonry experience. Also, it requires special heat resident building materials that are not necessarily available at your local hardware store.

Ok, back to the post. Great news. Last Sunday, my dear Katy celebrated her Easter, and thus there is for now lent, which means she will eat fish, eggs, and some dairy products. Still, she defers as much as possible because she seems to be sensitive to dairy products.

The photo shows what we had for brunch. Katya made a dessert that is usually made from a farmer’s cheese. We had only Greek yogurt at home and gelatin. This dish contains raisins and is poured into a mold.

Then we had hard-boiled eggs which we cooked. Surprisingly, they have a shorter shelf life than fresh eggs, which can be kept in the refrigerator for five weeks. (These are the guidelines from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) for storing eggs before they go bad or lose flavor).

We still had frozen caviar in the freezer, which is a tradition at least my wife is following.

Last year I made panettone for Christmas, and we froze some of them for Easter, but this year we bought some of them when they were for sale and kept them in the pantry. All the commercial products such as German Christmas Stollen and Italian Panettone are made in hygienic conditions plus contain preservatives and high sugar content, which keeps them consumable 4 to 6 months past expiration dates. We never had any mold, or they were dried out. If you don’t feel comfortable, then simply freeze them.

For dinner, we had on this Easter Sunday, sous-vide grilled salmon with vegetables (from the freezer).

Since then, my wife was cooking more, and we had great dishes. We usually cook for dinner and eat leftovers for lunch, where we make our variations. I eat early lunch at 11 am while my wife has hers closer to 1 pm. During lunchtime, I make have sometimes some meat, like my homemade sausages. I will write about this soon in another section and in the health section about the dangers of curing salts.

Here are some of our dishes: a black bean stew with Cheddar cheese and avocado.

On another day freshly made pasta with spinach and goat cheese.

Fresh made wholewheat sourdough bread

Brazilian cheese bread