USA TODAY International Edition
Brown is cooking up new ‘ Good Eats’ season
Going stir- crazy in quarantine? You’re not alone. Celebrities are cooped up in their homes across the country just like the rest of us. As we collectively navigate this uncharted territory, USA TODAY presents Quarantine Diaries, which give readers a peek into how our favorite stars are spending their time at home.
Today’s diarist is Alton Brown, who is at home outside of Atlanta with his wife, Elizabeth, and their two dogs. Despite Georgia beginning to reopen, their quarantine “hasn’t been affected” much, he says. Outside of masked trips to his nearby test kitchen, “we’re making the decision to remain as isolated as we possibly can for the near future.” As Brown’s show “Good Eats: Reloaded,” returns to the Cooking Channel, peek in at a day of Brown’s quarantine. –
6: 40 a. m. Well, things have been weird. I’ve been going to bed later and later and getting up later, but Tuesday I got up at 6: 40. I’m very careful when I get out of bed to try to not wake either Elizabeth or either of the dogs, who sleep with us, including one that snores like Winston Churchill. One of the only things I do every day is make Elizabeth celery juice, so I get out the juicer.
6: 50 a. m. Like most people, while I’m drinking my coffee, you do the first media check of the day – email, social feeds, Twitter, all of that stuff that people in the media now have to do all day, every day, no matter whether we want to or not.
6: 57 a. m. I look at a kettle weight that wants me to come lift it, but I resist. I decide not to lift the kettle weight. I’ve been exercise fasting. Well, we ride bikes. But it’s really hard to ride a bike with a mask on.
7: 30 a. m. I’m getting ready to do another season of “Good Eats,” a show that I do on Food Network, which is a completely scripted show. So I wrote until almost 9 a. m. and then that’s when everybody else came downstairs.
9: 10 a. m. My wife and I walk the dogs to a small coffee stand in our neighborhood, where people are very good at social distancing. I got another coffee, she got an almond chai. Our dogs are pretty good at the whole quarantine thing. I mean, let’s face it, this has been the best thing that ever happened to dogs because we’re home all the time now. When we go back, there’s going to be, like, a mass dog depression kind of thing.
11 a. m. I skipped breakfast; I was tanked up on too much coffee. I wrote until 11 here at home. My home office is my dining room table. The “work” end looks really, really bad. And then ( the other) end has all the crafts and games and puzzles that we were going to do when we were locked up – and we haven’t even opened one of them.
On his new YouTube show “Quarantine Kitchen“: That was a complete accident. Just one night ( we) decided to turn the camera on while we were making dinner. It’s like, “Hey, let’s just turn on YouTube. What the hell?” And now people want us to keep doing it after this is over. So we’ll see.
Noon We had breakfast for lunch: a scrambled egg and some canned sardines. We eat a lot of canned fish and that’s very, very good quarantine food cause, you know, it never goes bad.
1 p. m. I went to my office ( about two miles away) because we’re fermenting hot sauces. That’s where all my test kitchens are, the “Good Eats” set – editing, everything’s there. So I went to a hot sauce tasting session and it’s funny, ‘ cause we’re all wearing masks and then we put all the hot sauce on crackers and we lift up our masks and shove the crackers in our mouths and then put the masks back on. There’s nothing like getting Sriracha burps when you have a mask on because it doesn’t dispel out into the atmosphere. It stays right there with you.
2 p. m. I set up all the livestream stuff for our YouTube show that night.
3: 25 p. m. I have a check- in with my culinary researcher and my culinary director that runs the test kitchen because we are gearing up for another “Good Eats” season. We’re still working on recipes and also on research, but they’ve been working from home.
4: 25 p. m. I steal some food – from myself – at the office to bring home for “Quarantine Kitchen” because Elizabeth and I realized, “Holy crap, it’s Cinco de
Mayo.” And our whole thing about our show is we don’t know what we’re going to cook. We don’t plan anything. So I had to steal some avocados from the office and some tortillas and then rushed home to try to concoct a new margarita recipe, which I did. And drank three margaritas in the process.
What I’m reading/ streaming: I’m reading a book called “Hawksmoor” by Peter Ackroyd, an English writer. I stole this off of my mother- in- law’s bookshelf. I’ve been doing more reading than I have TV watching, actually, during this time. Everybody’s like, what are you streaming? We’ve streamed very little. The only show that we’re addicted to is “What We Do in the Shadows,” the vampire comedy on FX.
7 p. m. That’s when “Quarantine Kitchen” goes live on YouTube. It was a fun show because I’d had three margaritas before we even started. My wife made her pico de gallo and I made guacamole and then I burned some corn chips. And then we ate it.
10: 10 p. m. We walked the dogs around the block and then I washed the kitchen up. ( Corrects himself loudly.)
washed the kitchen up. I would never claim to have washed the kitchen up by myself. And then ( after my wife went to bed) I stress ate a pint of ice cream.
2: 15 a. m. To do penance, I came back to the table and wrote more script from 11: 30 to 12: 15. And then I went to bed, but I couldn’t sleep. So I got up and read ‘ til 2: 15 in the morning.
How I’m feeling: ( Brown calls out to his wife) How am I doing right now on a scale of one to 10? ( She calls back) Six and a half?! Wow. I thought I was doing better than six and a half. Apparently, I’m in worse shape than I thought. As a couple, we’re doing great because of “Quarantine Kitchen“because we have a project to do together that involves bringing Elizabeth more into my world.
What I’m looking forward to: I am looking very forward to being able to go out and not have my wife yell at me about not wearing a mask and reminding me that I need to put my mask on, because if you wear glasses – I spend all my life fogged up now. And going out for dinner sure does sound wonderful.