day 7: no rest for the chef — Monsters vs. Dinner

Washing dishes this morning for the nth time in days I realized how much my kitchen feels like a restaurant. I basically don’t leave it for large parts of the day—cooking, eating, cleaning, repeat. So today I wrote some specials on the chalkboard: egg tacos for breakfast, cauliflower soup for lunch (there was actually some left!), and plant-based bolognese with spaghetti squash for dinner. I also badmouthed some recent customers who asked for and then didn’t eat a buttered bagel—and then left a lovey on the table. Unfortunately the same customers are coming back today, and tomorrow, and…

Last night I dug into the forgotten drawer of weird asian noodles and seaweed that I don’t really know what to do with but they never go bad. I found a package of dried shiitake mushrooms and reconstituted them in some water to make a recipe I made years ago and still had in my Paprika app: The New York Times version of vegan MaPo Tofu. I prefer the meaty pork version, I think, but this is way healthier and did I mention that Michael recently became a vegan? (We were trying to eat more plant-based and then he saw the movie Game Changers and boom, he hasn’t had meat or dairy in over a month. It’s a bummer.)

Anyway, I used dried instead of fresh shiitakes and a fermented black bean paste that I had from Hmart, along with a little Gochujang It was tasty and filling, and I served it over quinoa just to hippy-ify it even more. We ate it with wine in front of candles—and a laptop on which six of our friends were having their dinner and wine. A Zoom dinner party! The new normal.