It is no surprise that the pandemic has limited the scale that businesses can operate. Ever since the lockdown began, many restaurants have closed up shop while others reduced their operations significantly. Amid these businesses’ successful adjustment to fulfilling online orders and transactions, Filipinos have taken the opportunity to step up and prepare their own meals.
Having been left in the comfort of our homes, it became an opportunity to explore more of the kitchen. From getting used to the fundamentals of cutting with a knife, to mastering recipes, people have started their individual journeys into culinary.
Due to the unfortunate circumstances that we are under, we are left with a longing for some control in our life. More often than not, we search for this longing within us through the hobbies that we pick up over the lockdown.
With people having such distinct tastes, our preferences are bound to clash with others but harmonize with the rest. Home cooking gives us the taste of independence—we are challenged to adapt the methods of our creations to something that is uniquely ours.
With all the recent quarantine trends on food, social media has pioneered a revolution on traditional cooking as we know it. As a community, we are able to collaborate ideas and breathe new life into new and even familiar concepts. Through social media, we are in constant encounters with more experimental approaches to food. Some people even adapted familiar methods into other creations, such as dalgona milo, ube pandesal, and many others.
As we take pride in our creations, we also naturally yearn for validation from others by sharing what we made to them. Although we cook food to satisfy ourselves, we inherently also do it for the sake of altruism. Cooking is a very intimate act—an indicator of your love and care for the other, for if we choose to spend our time for the sake of other people, it would surely be out of the kindness of one’s heart.
As a Filipino, it is true when we say that a party is not complete without the food. Food is essential; not only does it bring us the necessary nutrients, it brings along a familial and therefore a more intimate tie with it. Moreover, it has always given us a sense of comfort through the memories we form and share.
Having been limited to our own homes, quarantine has surely challenged our perception of the familial aspect of food. With mass gatherings now discouraged and cooking no longer done merely for celebrations, isolation has made cooking much more intimate. Since we are limited to who we are able to be with, our sense of family has condensed to a more tightly-knit and personal relationship.
Although the end of quarantine seems unclear, cooking has made one thing certain: Family. Similar to how the familial bond does not fade with distance, a pizza slice does not lose its flavor simply because it is taken from the whole. From the mixture of its ingredients to its heat and time exposure in the oven, pizzas go through a rigorous process in order to take shape and flavor. The same goes for the strongest of bonds—they are forged through hardships and experience.