A Life Update / Quarantine Kitchen

Hey everyone! 👋🏻

It’s now mid-September, but to me, it feels as if time really slowed down, and I’m still stuck in April or May. Ever since we’ve been quarantined, it’s like the days are slowly blurring together and I’ve completely lost track of the concept of time itself.

I am lucky enough to have a work-from-home situation, but I’ll be honest, it’s been a little difficult juggling different kinds of work. For context, I work in my room. My room doesn’t have windows, so I completely rely on a clock and unnatural light for the passing of time. (That, and the times when I would have my meals, lol.) I’ve read how seeing actual sunlight and watching the day pass by provides a subliminal message to your body and your brain, telling you “hey, it’s time to wake up and work” or “stop working, it’s time to sleep.” Alas, I ended up ruining my already messed up body clock. There are days where I work until 4AM and wake up at 8:30AM a few hours later just to attempt to reset my body clock back to “normal.”

Honestly, I’ve been pretty calm at home. I’m an introverted person, so I thrive on alone time. I’ve been keeping myself busy by getting back into my hobby of baking, as well as learning new things like embroidery. The outside world is scary (and I’m not just talking about COVID), so the best we can do right now is to practice social distancing, and be responsible citizens.

I’ve always loved baking, but have lost time for doing it regularly when life kept me out and about, so I’m happy to find the time to get back to this hobby. I found a supplier online that sold all the baking ingredients staples that I needed (and at a good price, too!) so I loaded up on a bunch of ingredients and made a list of things to cook and bake during the quarantine.

One of the first things I made were buttermilk biscuits. It was my first time making them, and I’m happy that they came out great!

My brother cooked some buttermilk fried chicken as an accompaniment to my biscuits. Needless to say, it was a buttery dinner, haha!

Soon, it was April, which meant that my little sister would be celebrating her birthday at home. She was craving for pizza, and I decided that it would be fun to try to make it from scratch!

As the days past, I felt a bit guilty that my parents and my aunt were buying all the food and necessities for the house, so I treated us to a little Korean BBQ (to their surprise!)

Since none of us could (or even wanted to) eat out, I’d like to think that I brought the restaurant home.

Apparently, the K-BBQ was the catalyst for online orders, and I became the official “house bank” (at that time, I was the only one with online banking and online wallets!), LOL.

I also started cooking more and more (which was a shocker—I feel that I’m more of a baker than a chef, because I’m very precise with ingredients, and can’t cook on a fly!)

When the whole sushi bake craze boomed, I was requested by my mom to try to make it. It took me a good 2-3 hours (I can’t cook on the fly!) when I ended up with this:

I got so invested in this quarantine kitchen frenzy going on, I even purchased a clay pot just so that I can make a lot of clay pot chicken at home (Tim Ho Wan who? Or should I say Tim Who Wan?)

Now, one of the things I can’t stop baking is mini loaves.

I can’t help it—they look so cute, smell absolutely wonderful, and taste great too! And, the best part is that (if you freeze them), they can last up to a month (and without preservatives too!) My family ended up loving my mini loaves, and I have tweaked the recipe here and there every time I make it. Now, I make them on a bi-weekly basis.

I even brought it a step further and ordered some fresh local strawberries from Sadiwa to make some strawberry bread!

I absolutely love strawberries, and I’m so happy to find these delicious and affordable local strawberries!

It was only after making this pudding and a small batch of banana muffins did I run out of the ingredients I initially bought! (Talk about a great investment.) I’m now off to place a new order.

I feel like I’ve spent the majority of the quarantine working (a lot, whew), baking, cooking, eating, and playing Animal Crossing (and more recently, Rune Factory 4!)

I hope that you’re all doing well and are safe wherever you are. What have you been busy doing while at home? Do you have any dishes that you could recommend that I do next? Leave a comment below! 😊

‘Till the next blog post!
Sophie 👋🏻

(Also, wow, if the spacing of this post is a little wonky, I apologize! I’m still getting used to WordPress’s new block editor—which just confuses me a lot, lol.)