Kitchen Criticisms

I don't mean to disparage anyone with this post (not that the people I'm thinking of will read this).

The SARS-Cov-2 pandemic has led to the Great Confinement, as some internet users call it, an international shelter-in-place that has led over a billion people to stay at home. People are advised to stay home and limit their interactions with others, except for necessary activities like grocery shopping. Working professionals in health care, warehouses, shipping and transportation, groceries, etc. have to work and therefore put themselves at risk of infection. The least we can all do, in the meantime, is to stay put and limit the rate of infection.

What do people do when they have to stay at home? Well, I've noticed social media (socmed) become a larger portion of my life. Frankly, this bothers me. The news feed curated by algorithms--as of lately--shows me lots of grim predictions and embarrassing speculations related to the virus outbreak. I honestly could not care less. Especially when my college's alumni association is fraught with conspiracy theories and computer models from scientists with no background in biology. I get it, people are cooped up at home and they need an outlet. With strong education in sciences, they think they can offer the world something new and so they put their efforts into research, to understand the virus and its spread and then share their findings with like-minded people. Looks noble on its surface, narcissistic deeper within. Meanwhile there are some folks in the peanut gallery admonishing these folks, saying that they should leave this kind of work to the epidemiologists, that physicists and computer scientists don't need to reinvent the wheels. And then the previous group retorts saying that there's nothing wrong with free speech and expression on a public forum owned and operated by a private corporation. And then they share conspiracy theories. Socmed can really bring out the worst in people.

I'll loop back around to socmed but first I want to express some fear I have about what the current crisis will do to the STEM community. In most people's cases, the best thing to do is to stay at home. Some people have taken it upon themselves to volunteer in their communities, such as food distribution or health care or manufacturing. Some with sewing interest are making cloth facemasks. Some employed at industries such as automotive or aerospace are manufacturing healthcare equipment like ventilators and respirators. Some with more political acumen are coordinating between manufacturers and health care organizations to ensure a sufficient supply of masks, ventilators, and respirators. What I fear may happen is that such activities during this Great Confinement will be considered de facto for future hiring conversations. I'm imagining a situation like:

"What did you do during the coronavirus pandemic?"

"I sheltered in place."

"That's it? You have an engineering background and you didn't help with the respirator shortage?"

"No, because I don't have any expertise in medical devices. Instead, I spent my time at home working on my skills including self-sufficiency."

"That didn't stop Elon Musk. I'm sorry, but we will have to move forward with other candidates who demonstrated more initiative."

Hopefully this scenario will just stay in my imagination and not turn into the reality. I mean, it's great that companies with the means to manufacture necessary medical equipment stepped up to do so. Thinking longer term, this may be meaningless. After all, just because the current pandemic involves a respiratory infection doesn't mean the next pandemic will necessarily involve a respiratory infection. HIV infects immune cells and hepatitis infects liver cells. Today companies scramble to manufacture respirators and ventilators and facial masks to help deal with the current pandemic, tomorrow we have an oversupply of these devices. So there's no point in shaming people from not participating in the medical relief effort. I hope tomorrow's execs and managers don't make this mistake.

Okay, back to socmed. Everybody has a different relationship with socmed. Some people share memes, others post their feelings, some people share photos of friends, family, pets, nature. Some people love to rant, others like to read others' rants. Different strokes for different folks. Because most folks are cooped up, socmed takes on a greater portion of life for many of these folks. They may end up reading more, some may end up posting more. Some participate in "social media challenges" in which they're essentially making socmed chain letters by tagging friends to continue the task. Some are cute, some are funny, some are stupid, pretty much all are pointless. One socmed challenge that caught my attention--for the wrong reasons--is "Post your quarantine meal."

Never before had I realized that I am an above-average cook. I don't cook every day. I don't follow recipes, nor do I weigh out my ingredients. I eyeball, I approximate, I craft template-based dishes. What I mean is that I have learned enough cooking to understand that there are a finite number of dish templates. Each template can tolerate a wide set of ingredients, and each combination makes a slightly different dish. For example, in Indian food, vegetable dishes usually fit just one template. Sometimes a template is varied enough that it becomes its own, and then there's maybe 3 or 4 templates. Like how Italian, Spanish, and French languages descend from Latin, these templates can be traced back to but 1 classic template. Knowing this, I can experiment in the kitchen and make some decent foods. When I say decent, I mean that they're edible and sometimes delicious. I'd never call myself a professional-grade chef.

Yet I look on socmed and I see some really pathetic recipes shared as people's "quarantine meals." Some are decent but nothing to write home about. A turkey sandwich with fried egg and spinach. A rice bowl with egg and tuna. Some are just sad. A boiled egg. A grilled cheese sandwich (as Gordon Ramsay pointed out, the recipe is in the name!). Potstickers that come frozen from the grocery store (not even a recipe!). What I find even more sad is that these people are engineers. Cooking is science!

Granted, it's easy for me to imagine how this situation came to be. Companies like Google and Facebook feed their staff in cafeterias staffed with professional chefs. They also pay their engineers enough for them to not only live in expensive communities like Palo Alto and Menlo Park but also to dine out in those cities. As a result, (mostly software) engineers indulge in a bourgeoisie lifestyle. Eating out in restaurants or eating in with food delivery apps, people nowadays can enjoy such variety of cuisine. It just costs a minimum of $20 per serving.

To break down the cost of eating out or eating in with delivery, I have to make assumptions. I can do this because I'm a physicist and gross approximations are part of my trade. A $20 plate takes less than 1 hour to prepare, so let's say the labor is $12. Ingredients might cost $3. The remaining $5 is overhead for the restaurant to stay profitable. For delivery, slap another $10 onto it, with $5 going to the driver. But wait, you might say, even if I buy the same ingredients for $3 and spend 1 hour cooking, I have to do all this cleaning plus my food isn't as good as the restaurant's. And I say, sure. That's why I enjoy eating out occasionally also. No cleanup, a reasonable standard of quality, and the ability to eat dishes that I simply can't cook myself. And maybe I'd get paid enough that it only amounts to 20 minutes of work to buy the meal. Still, I think it is unreasonable and even irresponsible to rely on restaurants for meals every single day.

Food is science. Depending on who you talk to, you'll get a different answer. Me, being a physicist and materials scientist, I say cooking is materials science. Chemists, chemical engineers, biologists, they'll all say something different. Nevertheless, cooking is the basic principle of mixing ingredients into physical and chemical reactions. It's the original experimental playground. Recipes are the prototypical programs. An engineer cannot go through life without learning to cook, because that is akin to living without the knowledge of experiment or without the understanding of control structures or feedback loops.

Cooking is also really fun! It's interesting to see, hear, feel, smell, and taste how different ingredients change in different stimuli. Cooking connects one to the process of preparation, to the ingredients themselves, to the very earth from where the ingredients came. Cooking is satisfying, bringing a sense of completion and enjoyment upon finishing and tasting a meal. Cooking is a learning process where the home chef improves upon every iteration. Cooking is collaborative, with people across the world sharing their techniques and preferences over information superhighways. Socmed offers resources, with cooking channels on Facebook and YouTube instructing amateurs to mastery of certain dishes. Socmed provides a platform for chefs from all levels to share their crafts. We should follow their lead and explore creatively on our own.

In conclusion...

Social media can bring out the worst in people, especially during a crisis like this SARS 2 pandemic. While people can respond to the current crisis in many ways, improving self-sufficiency will serve beneficial in future crises as well. Learning to cook at home is one component of self-sufficiency. Cooking is a fun, creative, experimental hobby which social media encourages. I will share some more recipes on this blog, so send me requests if you have any.