What Do I Make With the Beans I Panic-Bought, and Other Burning Questions

On adding a “wow” factor for family dinners – I love making the slightest adjustment to our otherwise routine dinners and seeing my boys’ reactions when they come to the table! Gingerbread shaped pancakes, two gummy worms on spinach leaves next to their hot dogs, milk served in a mug rather than a glass (“cold white hot cocoa”!). It’s not every meal, but it helps brighten the mood when we are (once again) all coming together for the n-th time that day!

Flipped perspective: I’m in a rural area with woefully underserved medical infrastructure. Even to treat pneumonia folks have to be medivac-ed 45 minutes away. We certainly don’t want even one person driving here “to the middle of nowhere” and compromising our entire community, which is already in such a precarious position if even a few people get sick enough to be hospitalized.

It sucks for everyone. It may suck differently, but it sucks.

I’m in the middle of decorating for my almost 7-year old Zoom party tomorrow. I emailed a few moms, asked that the girls wear hats or tiaras and the big surprise- their teacher is going to join in for a while. They have no idea and I just know they’ll go bonkers when their 1st grade teacher’s face is on the screen ?

I bought a bag of mung beans like three years ago when I read an article about how nutritious they are. They are still sitting in my pantry.

“Just because someone has it worse from you does not mean your problems are not valid.”

I’m not trying to say that someone feeling like they have to wow others with dinner at night is a huge problem, but people are allowed to have small concerns such as these while the world is in a pandemic. It doesn’t make them self-centered and it doesn’t mean that they are not worried about bigger things. The lack of empathy I’ve seen from people over “first world problems” during these past few weeks is astounding. We are all trying to get by as best we can here. Less judgment and more kindness make a world of difference.

For me cooking is how I relax, how I feel like me again when my kids both have a fever and we haven’t left the house in weeks. It’s how I breathe.

Sometimes one’s mind pops to the only thing they can control. I am an elected official of a city and logistical head of a family with 7 people over the age of 70 all suddenly with inadequate income and varying levels of ability to protect themselves in their homes. I am desperately trying to keep everyone safe. Thousands and thousands of people. And I’m also a wife and I am fighting the societal pressure to deliver a dinner party for my household every night. I absolutely understand why you’re focused on negative externalities. You’re right to do that. And everyone will panic in a different way. And that’s ok too. I’m very grateful to come here for a moment and remember that you’re all out there doing lots of things to keep your families safe now too, including feeding them.

I see your points disagreeing with me, but I guess I just disagree with you. Of course, I think it’s totally fine to worry about eating (the beans question is why I clicked on the link) or what to do with food or lots of other concerns about daily life in quarantine.

But yeah, I think it’s scarily small-minded to worry about wowing people with dinner during a pandemic — and definitely expressing it out loud! — when the NYT points out today that experts are predicting that literally millions of people to flat out starve to death in India. Starve — not wow! I think pretending it’s OK to think about these things just shows how out of touch we are the actual insecurities of the world, not just the instagram kind.

So I suppose I agree with you in part Zoe — just because someone has it worse than you does not mean your problems are invalid — of course that’s true. But it makes me cry to think that worrying about wowing someone with dinner could be seen as a valid problem anywhere in the world right now.

As someone who grew up dirt poor (like actually poor, not just middle class) and who is now struggling to provide for my family on solely my retail salary – I hear you. There is definitely a class divide in *how* a person is struggling right now. But you know what? We are all in this together, rich and poor. We have all lost something (or, god forbid, someone) to this, and we are all struggling with an abnormal timeline, in which we don’t if we will ever get back to the old normal (most likely not). And we are all human. Don’t compare your struggles. Don’t put yours or anyone else’s struggles on a top ten list, it isn’t worth it. That we are ALL struggling at all is worthy of compassion. If someone is buried in beans, that’s their story. If someone else is feeling pressured to be an all-star chef, that’s their story. If someone else can’t worry about anything other than basic survival – that’s their story. We all have one, and they’re all valid.

Agreed, Annie. The comment seemed ridiculous and ill-timed to me. The replies you received were a bit harsh, in my opinion. This is an adult blog, and I don’t think everything should have to be so overwhelmingly “sunshiny” all the time.

Fair point, and I never meant to hurt anyone’s feelings. But I’m not really worried about lack of empathy for “first world problems” right now. Is that where we should be putting our empathy right now? And are all problems really valid? Is that what has brought us to this point of crushing inequality — distracting ourselves with minor issues and validating them as actual problems? Maybe some problems are WAY more valid than others and I think it’s OK to say that too.

I do actually like this post, and totally get that we all need to spend time figuring out what to do with ourselves, including cooking, but I think it’s OK to also get annoyed that people are spending their time worrying about impressing other people right now.

I don’t get the point of any of this. It’s just dinner, and it’s a blog post about beans. It’s not a mandate, and it’s a big leap to turn it into judgement about character. You still get to choose how you fix dinner, so just do it how you want to do it. We are all tense and worried, nobody needs to freak out over beans.

Annie, this is such a complicated question. Because we (most of the readers of this blog) live in a time and in countries where life is better than it’s ever been, we can be unaware of the suffering of others, both in our own wealthy countries, and more often, in other, faraway countries. We should be paying attention and trying to make the world a better place. But I could just as easily say, “Annie, people were starving and being slaughtered in Syria long before COVID-19 and you were thinking about frivolous things during that time because it wasn’t affecting your life directly.” I’m not saying this to give you a hard time. It is so understandable that you feel deeply empathetic to the suffering of others at this time, but there is always suffering. The answer to “How is this possibly on anyone’s mind today?” is that there is still beauty in the world and love is real and how we show love to one another is more important than ever. Feeling pressure to express that love during a time of great upheaval through fancy dinners or crazy birthday parties or making rainbow crafts (or any number of other “frivolous” things) is good and right.

This reminds me of my favorite poem: “We must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of this world. To make injustice the only measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.” It is hard not to be overwhelmed by the suffering in our world right now. Sending love to you today.

A Brief For The Defense by Jack Gilbert

Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because that’s what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their deprivation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil.
If the locomotive of the Lord runs us down,
we should give thanks that the end had magnitude.
We must admit there will be music despite everything.
We stand at the prow again of a small ship
anchored late at night in the tiny port
looking over to the sleeping island: the waterfront
is three shuttered cafés and one naked light burning.
To hear the faint sound of oars in the silence as a rowboat
comes slowly out and then goes back is truly worth
all the years of sorrow that are to come.

I read this article earlier today about a seven-year-old boy whose whole neighbourhood celebrated his birthday as well. It made me cry too! Worth a read:
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-finding-new-ways-to-celebrate-birthdays-amid-a-pandemic/?fbclid=IwAR178wi4RUzP2FXV_UX-UDxvkTpE-piqNWzTdh5NUVNlfz8KSn8H_yTIjwM#_=_

That Shepard’s pie recipe looks amazing! Thank you!

Immediately pinned the shepherd’s pie recipe to my “Things My Husband Wouldn’t Eat” board. Thanks for sharing!

I just had my birthday, and my family joined for a video call which was nice, but I also live on my own, and I would be lying if I said it wasn’t a bit of a hard birthday.

This was the first year in a long time when I had actually made plans for my birthday, so I was joking that I will make sure never to do that again, so as not to cause any more global catastrophes just to cancel my birthday plans.

I’m looking forward to having a big party when this is all over. In the meantime, I’m sending all my hugs and good wishes for your birthday!

I was just saying to my husband tonight that there are going to be SO MANY birthday parties once this eases up. Two of our three kids are spring babies, and with the steady pace of birthday invites from school etc, there’s going to be an explosion of celebrations in a few months (which I both sincerely hope for and also dread a tiny bit haha!)