Why you SHOULD bake bread (and also use shortcuts)

So recently a very white Medium article was circulating.   About how people shouldn't be baking during the pandemic.   (I did not actually read the article, the post was deleted before I had a chance to).  Here's the thing.  I think we should be baking, canning, cooking, etc during the pandemic.  But I also think we need to find the shortcuts that can work for us.  A lot of people don't have the space for 50 lbs of flour or sugar.  Or the counter space.  Or the spoons to cut up and prepare everything from scratch.

I do worry that we are entering a weird food time in the US.  Cooking is exhausting and frustrating (particularly cooking for one or two) and it has been decades since we've had any kind of shortages.  (Basically since the 80s, we've had lots and lots and lots of abundance...even if its been also somewhat illusory--lots of imported produce, no abundance in food deserts).  We're going to enter into an increased time of losing out-of-season foods.  We are going to have to figure out how to preserve more foods and go back to a more seasonal way of cooking as we become more reliant on local farms.

There are so many many interconnected industries with our food.   From flour (or gluten-free flour) which needs to be grown, milled, mixed...   to the meat industry which branches into broths and pet food.   And we are going to see more reverberations from these...  We are going to see our local stores start going more local with their supply chains as this drags on.

I do think all genders should be learning how to bake, how to cook, how to make nice basic things.

How to make jam.

Because we are going to see more interruptions in the food chain.

And having yourself as a backup...  knowing you can make something delicious out of the frozen leftovers you stashed three months ago, the frozen tater tots, and the dried tomatoes you made out of the tomato glut...  is a good thing.

We also need to know how to cook with good shortcuts.  Whether we buy the shortcuts or prep them in advance and freeze (I have radish pesto in the freezer I did last summer, as well as a gluten-free tart shell). I also know people that buy a big bag of onions and prep them all and freeze them to pull out when needed.  I also know people who buy jars of curry sauce and jazz them up a bit at home.  I do always have a loaf of frozen gluten-free bread, because I'm not always going to have the spoons for baking.

You have to find the shortcuts that work for you.  That's the important bit.  Even if you love to cook, there are days when you hit your limit.

If you can microwave polenta (or oven-bake it), top it with a sauce?  You have dinner.

Learning to cook also gives you the tools to figure out good shortcuts.  (And if you know how to cook, you will also be able to look up how to cook for Fido if necessary).