Cooking Over Quarantine
How the COVID-19 has Affected Businesses and Cooks around Austin By Wyatt Saydah
I
t is March of 2020, you pull out a pan and crack an egg. As the egg sizzles in the pan you turn on a radio. The first thing you hear is that the first case of the Coronavirus has been reported in America. The next thing you know, businesses are shut down and nobody goes outside in fear of being infected. Meanwhile, businesses don’t know what to do as people are losing their jobs because of the lack of customers. To get through the madness of this pandemic, you decide to start cooking. Cooking brings joy like almost nothing else. Having the ability to express yourself through the making of delicious food and then being able to eat and share your creation, and really enjoy what you have just done is unlike anything else. Since the start of COVID-19, sharing your creations with other people to taste has been nearly impossible. Judge Baskin is a sophomore at LASA Highschool. He was working, cooking at restaurants before the pandemic started. He also cooks extravagant meals on
his own. Baskin said that what he likes about cooking is that he can have a vision and then within two hours, he can put that vision on a plate and find out what he can change next time to make the dish even better. Baskin has a business called Biome Restaurant. They make a variety of ever changing meals for people to enjoy. Unfortunately, the pandemic has stopped them from being able to continue for the moment. Baskin said that the way he got interested in cooking is that his friend introduced him to Gordon Ramsay’s show, Hell’s Kitchen. After that Baskin said that he got interested in cooking and discovered many different recipes and tutorials on YouTube. Finally, he started testing recipes on his own and discovered his passion for cooking,
“But when you get a chance to cook, everything is in that moment. Everything is in the kitchen. You can forget about the world for an hour and a half.” - Judge Baskin “I think now, it’s just kind of
an escape. Because I mean, everything’s pretty messed up, you can tell. But when you get a chance to cook, everything is in that moment. Everything is in the kitchen. You can forget about the world for a solid hour and a half.” Baskin said. According to Baskin, there were different phases of cooking during quarantine. “Remember, in the first month, wherever people were saying, guys, I’m starting a sourdough starter, I’m gonna make bread, and I did the same thing. I had had a starter for a while, but I never really started making bread.” Baskin said. “People just kind of were saying, alright, I have all this time, and then they just kind of stopped. And I think that’s what I found, too, school has run through a lot of my time, you know? So I’ve cooked very little over the past few months. But over the summer, I tried really hard and made a bunch of new dishes.” “I think that because people had more time at the beginning.” Baskin said. “They didn’t know how to spend their time being
