One of the practically inescapable impacts of sheltering in the house, typically with members of the family who normally do not spend 24/ 7 in the house, is the requirement to make meals. Add to this obtaining the food, a difficult situation if we want to prevent grocery stores as much as possible, and after that the relatively limitless planning of what to prepare. As someone texted me, “It’s as if we are going back to a Leave it to Beaver household.”.
She was describing a popular television series in the late ’50 s and early ’60 s, in which the four-member home (2 parents and two kids) consumed dinner together every day. The Beaver home meals were not from regional take-out restaurants, or partially prepared semi-gourmet dishes delivered weekly in containers, nor were their treats got en route to a late afternoon practice or night meeting. Although the series did not typically define what was being eaten, the audiences might assume that, as in their own households, the meal would have consisted of an entrée, typically beef or chicken, a starch, and a vegetable.
Pre-COVID, much of us in the nutrition field constantly regreted the absence of household dining any day of the week, and certainly, the lack of home-prepared meals in general. Consuming away from home seemed to be the standard, whether in a sit-down restaurant or bring a meal back to the workplace, getting it from a food truck at a construction site, or cobbling together a meal from a vending device. We may have complained about high school cafeteria food, what passed for meals on a plane, or an unsavory catered lunch at a conference, however eat it we did, because we were not house.
Now, despite the fact that there is the possibility of purchasing food as take-out from some community restaurants, and some restaurants have actually opened for internal dini
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