Students explore baking and cooking

Many students cooked and baked due to coronavirus break

Making guacamole can be a bit of a struggle, especially when you end up going to the hospital. During the digital learning days of the Coronavirus outbreak, junior Annika Sabers was trying to de-pit the avocado for guacamole. The knife slipped through the avocado and into her finger. Sabers went to the hospital to get stitches but then it turned into surgery.

The Coronavirus outbreak: a time when everyone was forced to stay home. We all went through some of the same struggles. We weren’t able to go out for dinner, toilet paper and some foods were running low and everyone felt disconnected to someone. During this time, many people were trying new recipes and experimenting with new ways to go about cooking or baking.

“We’ve been doing a lot of tacos…pico de gallo…corn salsa,” said Sabers. “Other than that, we’ve done fried rice a couple of times.” She made many things she enjoys, and, “just really whatever we feel like.”

Many people have had more time on their hands because a lot of the businesses are closed. Baking and cooking have been filling those times.

“I did cook a while before this,” said Sabers. “I have just been doing it a little bit more because we have so much time now.”

This has been the reality for a lot of people for the past month or two.

Sophomore Ella Quale has been baking a lot over this break.

“I have a lot more time and I don’t want to watch tv all the time or do homework or go outside,” said Quale. “Going outside is nice, but I really like baking more.”

“I like that it is super precise,” she said. “A lot of the time, because you have to measure out the ingredients you put in because either it’s a one to one ratio or it’s a one to two ratio. If you get that mixed up, it doesn’t come out the right way…I like the whole science part of it where you have, one thing is one cup, one thing is one teaspoon. But then with cooking, I like that you don’t need to be that precise, you just add a little and eyeball it a little more and you can make really great flavors that don’t have to have as much work into it.”

Quale has made many things such as pumpkin bread, chocolate chip cookies, cinnamon oatmeal apple bars, cinnamon rolls and cupcakes. Her favorite thing she made was the chocolate chip cookies.

“What I did was I had a whole bag of just regular chocolate chips, because that is what you regularly put in,” said Quale. “But then I also had these mini ones, so I added those in because I love chocolate. It was so chocolaty but they were also big. My favorite part was after baking it they were soft. But even after they had cooled off and a day or two after, they were still soft.”

Another student that has been cooking is Chinese exchange student, Delancy Ma. Her and her host family made Chinese dumplings.

“We thought it would be fun, We wanted to start a YouTube channel…For me like how living with an American host family is going,” Ma said. “We are doing like the experience to host a Chinese student.”

They decided to start this over break because they have more time. Their first video was making Chinese dumplings.

“I made a special pancake with green onions and flour [over break]. It’s a Chinese dish,” said Ma. She wasn’t able to make this for a while because there wasn’t any flour or green onions at the grocery store. Ma said they ended up getting flour from her host family’s grandparents.

“I cooked from time to time because I think it is kind of a long process to make food,” said Ma.

Everyone had different experiences during this time of uncertainty, but many of them involved baking and cooking.