Coronavirus food advice: Keep calm and make these soups
Out here in Seattle, we’re just washing our hands down to nubs, Googling “can drinking alcohol kill coronavirus” (answer: sadly, no, but can help with nerves), definitely never touching our faces again and encasing all older relatives inside protective bubbles for the foreseeable future. Yet among all the talk of “social distancing,” a collective end-of-days bacchanal spirit may still be readily found. “HAVE A NICE COLD PINT AND WAIT FOR ALL THIS TO BLOW OVER” suggested the sandwich board outside my neighborhood favorite Bait Shop a week and a half ago, and the place was standing-room-only packed with a loud, festive, low-risk-category crowd doing exactly that.
The citizenry’s panic-grocery-shopping seems to have subsided, the ransacked shelves all restocked. Still, with parts of the city ghost-town quiet and the news just getting worse, the anxiety gnaws. At its root, it’s a real terror: Will this be the end of the world as we know it? In times of deep uncertainty, our thoughts turn to our stomachs: Food is comfort we can engulf, and instinct tells even urban types to lay in some supplies.
A project that occupies the hands and the mind, taking plenty of time and bearing the result of lots of very delicious food — enough to eat now and also freeze for whatever the hell the future might bring — seems like a bright idea for one of these awfully strange days or nights. Two excellent Seattle chefs were kind enough to provide us with recipes for constructive distraction. Keep calm — soup’s on.