YOU’VE GOT MAIL: TASTY RECIPES
Quarantine chain email delivers winning recipes
When a quarantine cooking recipe exchange chain email popped up in my inbox in midApril, I first dismissed it as a waste of time. I was never into chain letters when they were a thing back in the 1990s, and I certainly was not going to get into them now.
Then I bit. What if I really get some good recipes out of this, I wondered?
It seemed easy enough. All I had to do was send out one recipe, and I would get 36 back. And the email was from my friend, Sena, who typically doesn’t forward nonsensical stuff. It also ended with Happy #QuarantineCooking instead of one of those ominous if-you-don’t-participate-you’ll-rot-in-hell threats for breaking the chain.
“Please send a recipe to the person whose name is in position No. 1 (even if you don’t know them). It should be something quick, easy and without rare ingredients. Actually, the best one is the one you know in your head and can type right now,” the email said. “Don’t agonize over it . ... It is the recipe you make when you are short on time.”
I was supposed to copy the email into a new email, move the sender’s name to the top, add my name in the No. 2 position and blind carbon copy it to 20 people within five days.
When I began to compile a list of food friends, the names came fast and furious at first. These were people with whom I have endless conversations about home cooking and recipes, so I didn’t bother to do a courtesy check-in with them.
Once I hit the halfway mark, however, I started running out of names. So I called my twin, Asha, to see if she had some suggestions. She was befuddled as to why I was perpetuating a “waste-of-time scam.” She had better things to do with her stayat-home life, she said firmly and didn’t want to be part of it.
A slight panic started setting in when I realized I was down to nine names. I realized I knew more people who didn’t like to cook. So I went through the list
of contacts on my phone, scoured my email address books and finally mustered 20 names. This time I checked in with a few before adding them to the list and took a chance with the rest.
I had barely hit the send button when I got two responses — both short and to the point: They didn’t want to have anything to do with it.
A few hours later I got a note from a friend who had initially agreed to take part but then bailed out. She said she didn’t know 20 people to whom she could send the email. My bestie from kindergarten declined, too, repeating a line from my text message that said not to feel pressured to join. I was just trying to be polite, I explained, but I couldn’t change her mind.
Another friend circumvented the whole process. Instead of sending her flatbread recipe to Sena, who was in the No. 1 position on my email, she directly texted it to me. The protein-packed green lentil bread with ginger, garlic and cumin seeds sounded interesting and is now in my bread recipe folder.
There was thundering silence from the rest.
What should have been a breeze was becoming a series of coaxing, time-consuming conversations. A part of me was also a little resentful at the reaction to a harmless chain email during a pandemic. “I thought we were all in this together?” I said to myself.
Then the recipes started pinging in. I had received six or so when I accidentally deleted the email thread on my phone. I didn’t realize it until a week or so later, but it was too late. When I contacted Yahoo for help, I was told the emails could not be restored, and the recipes were gone for good.
The worst part was that I had not even opened some of them. I had glanced at a couple, thinking I would go over them again when I caught my breath. One was a savory pancake recipe, and the other was for a spicy Parmesan chicken potpie. Both sounded wonderful, and I could not forgive my butter fingers for deleting them.
At this point, I thought this recipe exchange wasn’t meant to be. I could not remember all 20 people I had initially sent the email to and was basically back to the drawing board.
But there must have been a recipe angel watching over me. Actually there were two: my cousin, Meera, a pediatrician who was unable to go to work for a month after testing positive for COVID19, and my former housemate and good friend, Denise, with whom I made 100 pierogies in one afternoon many moons ago. They came through when I called to lament about it all.
Meera saves every email she sends and receives, which I used to think was very weird but not anymore. She re-sent recipes for a garden salad taco and a cheesy, spicy black bean dip that her friend, Carolyn, had sent to me.
Carolyn emailed that she is a stickler for seasonal food and makes the tacos regularly in summer. The dip took the place of a meal for her family as it was served rolled up in a flour tortilla, like a burrito.
“Normally I don’t like those chain things,” she wrote. “I did it because Meera had just recovered from COVID and I wanted to support her.”
After circling back with her friends, Denise texted me a recipe for cheese and crab wedges from her godmother, Virg. Featuring Old English cheese spread, canned crab meat, garlic powder, mayonnaise and English muffins, it is very pantry-friendly.
Two other friends of Denise didn’t participate in the exchange and instead sent their recipes directly to me. One was for a baked Buffalo chicken pasta with chunky blue cheese dressing, and the other was for baked beans with ketchup, onions and ground black pepper.
One of my distant cousins shared an “easy ramen” recipe with miso-dashi broth. I saved it for later because I didn’t have dried kombu (seaweed), bonito flakes or white miso paste.
Then there were the dawdlers, and thank goodness for them.
Weeks after I sent the email, I received an amazing recipe for a sweet potatoblack bean burger. The sender’s son is vegetarian, and she is watching her carb intake. She had stumbled upon the burger recipe on the blog “Making Thyme for Health” while looking for recipes that would work for both of them and could be made in bulk and kept in the refrigerator. It has since become a family favorite.
The last one I got was for an out-of-this-world ramen with red curry paste, curry powder, ginger and garlic. Julia found it on the blog “Midwest Foodie.” It is made with ingredients that she almost always has in the house, she said, and it reminds her of a curry ramen that she loves from a Japanese/Korean restaurant near her home in Massachusetts.
In total, I got one-fourth of the recipes that the exchange had promised, and half of them didn’t come through the proper channels. So although almost nothing went right, I have keepers that I will be referring to well after the pandemic is under control. If there is another recipe chain exchange, I might even share one of my new recipes.