My Corona Diet: An Ex-Mormon’s Guide To Eating Non-Perishable Food Without Going Insane

So we’re in quarantine.

Or self-quarantine.

Or isolation.

Who knows?

Because my teenage son and I have probably been in contact with the coronavirus, that saucy little minx with those adorable little crowns, we’re hunkering down for the duration. I got a lot of questions about what and how we’re eating, so I’ve assembled some tips to make it more palatable.

But first, some background…

I grew up Romani and Mormon.

Romani means the way polite people say “gypsy”.

Mormonism means people who belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. While I no longer practice Mormonism, their way of life was a hugely influential part of how I grew up. One of the things they are particularly known for (aside from that unfortunate period of Church- and State-mandated bigamy) is their prepper mentality. Mormons keep one years’ worth of food for their family at all times. (I have about eight weeks’, which would make me the worst Mormon who has ever lived. But I’m told this is still unusual for Normal People.)

Other than those people in the mountains with a penchant for plaid, long beards and stockpiling guns, there are probably no people on earth who trust their government less than the Roma people and Mormons. So I have a pretty solid background in, “Screw you, I’ll look after myself, thank you very much.”

Caveats:

I am a part of the one-percent. At the beginning of the year, I sold the company I had spent 13 years building to take early retirement. I am a single mother with money and time and no responsibilities other than keeping my tiny family safe and happy. I am ALL privilege. Privilege puffs around me like those green stink clouds around cartoon characters. You can see my privilege from space. So if any of my suggestions offend you because not everybody can do them? Um, yeah. I know. You don’t have to tell me that I don’t get it. I’m quite aware of that already.

I am working off of the assumption that you have mostly non-perishable food, but a portion of your diet can be perishable. You perhaps have cheese, or tomatoes, or cream. You bought mushrooms a few days ago and they’re still good. That sort of thing. These suggestions will not work in an all-out apocalypse. This is not three years in a bunker to avoid the zombies; this is a “for the love of biscuits, how am I supposed to eat this crap without going insane?” scenario.

I do not have a chest freezer. My freezer sits on top of my fridge. It’s pretty good for a rental, but that’s all it is.

I live in Canada. Nothing is in season because Canada is a frozen wasteland for 13 months of the year.

With that, we shall commence.

Organize your food in order of perishability.

First, look in your fridge and your pantry and just see what’s there. Make a list if that’s the kind of thing you dig, otherwise just line it up on the counter. (Yes, you can line it up on the floor instead if your counter is full of all that canned soup you just bought.)

Eggs last a while. Cream lasts a while, especially if it’s high fat. Cheese lasts a while.

Milk shrivels up and dies like an angry lilac.

Plan to eat your perishable stuff first. Take the three to five most perishable things in your house and plan to eat them very soon. Do whatever you normally do with them, or Google “what to do with extra [bananas / plums / celery].

Google “how to store…” for every piece of produce you buy from now until the rest of your life.

It’s probably too late to store last week’s produce properly, but the next time they let you go to the grocery store, you’re going to want to treat those tomatoes very kindly indeed. Otherwise you’re going to end up with 12 tomatoes on the brink of death and not a clue how to use them. This is depressing, and we cannot afford to be any more depressed than absolutely necessary.

Shove dill in the fridge and you won’t recognize it in 12 hours. Do this with them and you’ll get 8 or 9 days out of it. That is the difference between the best coleslaw you’ve ever eaten and crying over your compost bin.

Google is your friend, yo.

Whatever you’re about to make, ask yourself: How can I add one thing?

The difference between restaurant food and cafeteria food is that restaurants tend to add one extra thing.

Tuna fish sandwich on Wonder Bread, sitting on a plate? That is what I ate when I was in a homeless shelter and buying groceries with government vouchers.

Add a wafer-thin slice of tomato and cut the sandwich presentably? They sell that for $12 in pretty decent restaurants.

I had pasta the other night, and about six sad-looking mushrooms were looking at me pathetically from the fridge. I didn’t have nearly enough to make it a mushroom pasta, but they could make one hell of a topping. I sliced them up, sautéed them, added minced and powdered garlic and some Kraft parmesan at the last minute, and put them on top of the pasta.

It was a freaking work of art. Jack actually said, “Wow. That’s FANCY.” This from the child who saunters in to dine at the Park Hyatt Tokyo like it’s his basic human right.

Adding one thing is the difference between food and rations. My homies from the British school lunch program know what I’m talking about, right? 

Crowd source your recipes.

This is especially important with the basic foods you don’t think about.

When you Google a recipe for something, most major recipe sites have very active comment sections with modifications their users have made.

Take something easy, something you already know how to cook. (I did this with grilled cheese sandwiches.) Google “how to make a grilled cheese sandwich” or “grilled cheese recipe”. Find something with at least 4.5 stars and 500 reviews. Ignore the recipe itself – you probably don’t need it. But scroll down to the reviews and comments to find the gold.

I discovered that if I grilled the sandwich on a stupidly low heat, I’d eliminate burn and maximize gooeyness. I also learned that if you use mayo instead of butter, the bread tastes better. I quit there and went on to make the best sandwich of my life, but there were HUNDREDS of other suggestions to peruse. 

If your main sucks, make your side awesome.

Last night’s pasta was pretty boring. I had a $2 jar of alfredo sauce and some penne. My fancy-ass kid wants nothing to do with that. I was going to make garlic bread to go with it, but still, it’s not exactly a culinary masterpiece.

I thought I might add some canned diced tomatoes to the sauce to make it more interesting (read: to make it go farther), when I had nothing short of an inspiration. What if I put the other half of the tomatoes… on the bread?

Bam. It’s Penne Alfredo with herbed tomatoes, and tomato and onion bruschetta.

He did not speak during dinner. All he did was eat. I consider that a success.

Add variety where it doesn’t require creativity.

If you’ve always eaten chicken breasts, today is probably not the day to spontaneously start experimenting with ground turkey. By all means, if you find a delicious-looking recipe and you want to try it, feel free to pick up some turkey when you’re at the store. But it’s probably not a great idea to see the turkey at the store, buy it, and cross your fingers.

The best places to incorporate variety is in variants of things you already eat, that don’t require changing how you cook them.

Raisin bread instead of bread.

Bow-tie pasta instead of the same old spaghettini.

Different crackers than you usually buy. (Bonus points if you incorporate the Add One Thing rule. Normally put peanut butter on them? Add jam, too. Normally put cream cheese on them? Add crushed herbs, or razor thin slices of grape tomatoes, or cucumber.)

Changing habits is hard. Learning new skills is hard. If you change the food itself, you can limit the amount of creativity and learning you have to do while you adjust to this new reality.

Your dinner can be pathetic if your late-night snack is awesome.

At the time of this writing, we’ve been in quarantine for five nights. Four dinners were amazing. Truly, they’ve been the best things I’ve ever cooked. You can tell they’re amazing because of the look on Jack’s face, and how little he speaks.

One dinner was… not amazing. It was the night I phoned it in and left it till the last minute.

My biggest priority in this quarantine is keeping Jack from going insane. As adults, we have wine and porn and refreshing fatality statistics to keep us from losing our minds – kids have none of those things. So seeing his face fall at my pathetic attempt at nachos was not a good omen.

I redeemed myself by making sugar-cinnamon-cocoa popcorn and snazzy tea a few hours later. It didn’t make the dinner any better – the dinner was a piece of garbage by anybody’s standards. But the last food he ate was awesome and full of care, which means his memory of that day was a little bit better.

“A little bit better” makes all the difference when you don’t know when you’ll be able to leave your house again.

(Also, Google “popcorn recipes”. You’re welcome.)

Use the good stuff NOW.

You know that bourgeois little bottle of truffle oil you got at Christmas? THIS IS ITS DAY.

That smoked salmon you bought when it was on sale and it’s been sitting in the freezer since November? HELLO, FISHIE!

That Casamigos you bought because, um, George Clooney made a freaking tequila? HOLA, SEÑOR JORGE!

This is partly to use up the stuff in your house so you don’t waste money. This is partly to use up the stuff in your house so you have room for all that canned soup. But it’s mostly to give your brain some novelty and some comfort.

Even when I was on welfare in a shelter, I had weird fancy stuff sitting around. (This is because people donate weird, fancy stuff to food banks.) Now is the time to use it. Don’t save it. What, are you going to take up a spontaneous interest in truffle oil when you’re back at work? No, you’re not.

Eat your smoked salt now.

Name things.

I ran a marketing company for 13 years. Now, more than ever? It’s all in the marketing.

If you are in charge of a family, you know their patterns. Your husband likes his meat ‘n potatoes. Your wife likes to think it’s healthy even when it’s not. Your diva daughter likes her Insta-worthy smoothies.

My son is a foodie who likes anything with multiple adjectives.

I ran a little experiment with Jack last week. We had pasta twice.

The first time, he asked what we were having for dinner, and I said, “pasta”. He looked like he had a thought bubble above his head reading, “What did I do to deserve a mother like this?”.

The next time, he asked what we were having for dinner, and I said, “Angel hair pasta with rosé sauce and garlic parmesan mushrooms, with slow-broiled garlic toast on the side”. He said, “Oooooooh!”

Marketing, people. MARKETING.

Now… over to you!

This is what I’ve gleaned in five days of quarantine and four decades of being a bad Mormon. I don’t exactly know every tip and hack.

Do you have any advice for your friends in lockdown or soon-to-be lockdown? Put them in the comments below – even the stuff you think is silly or obvious might really help somebody. Or shoot me an email at naomi@xxnaomi.com.