One Day, One Cup Of Tea At A Time
The simple joy of being home and getting to enjoy avocados when they’re perfectly ripe.
Name: Alanna Lauter
Age: 27
Occupation: Architect + Program Executive
Location: Brooklyn, NY
No. of days in quarantine: 27
Quarantine happy hour drink of choice:
I find that with the days and nights melting into each other my exploration of my tea cabinet has been my greatest comfort. You know, that cabinet where you store all those exotic teas and spices that you’ve collected while traveling and seem to never really know what to do with once you return home? A seemingly simple way to pass the time waiting for the water to boil and the tea to seep.
Ideal quarantine partner (real or imagined):
A blessing and a curse to be living on my own in a Brooklyn studio apartment during a time like this. It’s times like this that I wish I could be spending it cuddled with with a kitten, if only my allergies agreed with that.
Most ambitious cooking project attempted:
While I haven’t tried it yet, I think this would be a great time for me to try and make some fresh pasta. After hours of watching episodes of Chopped and Iron Chef, it only seems appropriate that I try! (They always get such raving reviews for their pasta dishes they’ve cooked up in 30 minutes).
What has being in quarantine taught you about cooking? Describe a typical day of cooking in quarantine, your favorite meal that you’ve cooked, your failures, attempts, and the lessons you learned (or didn’t learn)
I know it seems like such a cliche these days, but I seemed to just not ‘have the time’ to make myself a full breakfast, lunch and dinner everyday. The thing that I have actually enjoyed about this time inside right now is the creativity and space that I have to create full and delicious meals all day! Since I have that extra hour in the morning that I am spending not getting ready and commuting to my office I have been able to replace that time with putting on a pot of water for tea and scanning my fridge for inspiration for my morning meal. My go to favorite breakfast seems to be a tofu scramble (mashed tofu, onion, garlic, peppers, mushrooms, flax seed oil, nutritional yeast, turmeric and other spices) and avocado toast…since I am finally home long enough to make sure these little suckers don’t go brown on me. I like to throw in either a yogurt, fruit salad or some dates to snack on while I check my morning emails from my team.
I have been a vegetarian my whole life so I have always spent a lot of time in the kitchen to try and create new and innovated dishes that all vegetarian and vegan friendly! I can’t even count at this point how many times I’ve been asked “but what do you eat if you don’t have meat” and so I only work that much harder to come up with food combinations and flavor profiles to show that a plant based diet can be more than a salad. I think the most tasty thing I’ve made so far are honey and lemon waffles, with an Amarula, date and coffee sauce. (Wasn’t planning on having the coffee in the sauce but I needed a liquid and I had extra coffee leftover in my french press!)
Since I am cooking for one I’ve been using this opportunity to not only make delicious food but make a dish that looks beautiful too! I’ve been sharing these plates on my Instagram to show that vegetarians can have fun too! It’s also been pretty therapeutic to take the time for myself to really set my meal time up and enjoy each and every bite.
My favorite way to come up with new recipes is to think about the foods I already love and try to think of 1 or 2 flavors that I could add to it to make it just a little bit more special. A strawberry smoothie? I like to add lemon and mint! Avocado toast? Add a little pickled red onion, feta cheese and chopped pistachios!
I am excited to get through the list of dishes that I have saved in my notes and see how they come about!
