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I first came to the Netherlands with zero domestic skills whatsoever. However, I quickly understood that my previous dining-out-forever lifestyle would be ridiculously expensive in the Netherlands and thus I began to learn some domestic skills. However, just a little over a month into coming back to the Netherlands permanently, the Covid19 pandemic hit. Soon after, the Dutch prime minister began his address to the nation, then social distancing and work-from-home measures came into effect. Meanwhile, back home in the Philippines, my older sister and her fiance were in 14-day home quarantine because her boyfriend came into contact with someone whose family had contracted Covid19 (fortunately my sister and her boyfriend never showed any symptoms throughout their quarantine) and my dad was in home isolation as well and was exhibiting some symptoms (which also very fortunately turned out to be just a bad cough that came with a flu). With much paranoia, I urged my partner that we must stay at home in isolation as far as possible, including avoiding going to the supermarket for fear of coming into contact with strangers. He indulged my pandemic paranoia and obliged.
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-Our first online grocery delivery with Jumbo went well without a hitch; we had two weeks worth of food. As the days passed my anxiety dissipated largely due to the fact that my dad and my sister turned out to be okay (our worst fears fortunately did not actualise). Whatever residual anxiety and frustration I still had was mostly channelled into sending donations back home to my university alma matter's public hospital (a Covid19 referral hospital) and some other great Covid19 relief initiatives of my sorority sisters and my law school classmates. My emotions having calmed down, I had to pre-occupy myself with something other than fighting the urge to yell at the people I saw outside our window who were NOT observing social distancing guidelines. I did not want to be the new neighbourhood crazy person who yells at random strangers from their balcony (not a great look for me). And so, it was best that I return to my domestic-skills-acquisition lessons.
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-As our food supplies were depleted, we tried to book another delivery slot with Jumbo but the soonest date we could get our hands on was almost a month away and all the other supermarket delivery platforms were just as far off. Still determined to stay away from any place that had more that 2 people, I scrambled to find alternative suppliers online. After hours upon hours of searching on the internet, my partner and I were able to find alternative food suppliers. We had toko4all.nl (mylittlephilippines) for asian ingredients; mushroomxl.nl for produce; beefensteak.nl for meats; boerthijsbezorgt.nl for dairy and a few produce items; and kaasmarktonline.nl (Van den Herik) for cheese. It was really interesting to find out about these small and medium scale businesses as each of them seemed to have their own story as traders and farmers. For the most part, their services felt very personal because we got to talk to them on the phone for one reason or another even if we ordered everything online. Strangely enough the packaging that their products were delivered in seemed to match our impression of their "personalities". We almost always get sweet little freebies from toko4all.nl (mylittlephilippines), and the couple that owns it even personally delivered our order to our door one time when they struggled to send our order via their normal delivery provider. They're clearly my favourite supplier discovery (I might be biased because I love getting free snacks) but generally all of our alternative suppliers really provide high-quality products and excellent customer service. My partner and I have decided to keep some of them as food suppliers post-pandemic, augmenting them with supermarket purchases only for a handful of products that are too expensive for us to continue purchasing regularly or household products we need but are not available from our alternative suppliers. I'm not really sure why we never considered getting our food from sources other than the supermarket, but this experience has definitely taught us a different way of doing things in our household.
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-But of course because they weren't supermarkets, the product options weren't as extensive. We just had to work with whatever products they had on hand and whatever bulk quantities we had to buy them in (either to meet minimum delivery requirements or to optimise delivery costs). My domestic skills lessons had become a domestic skills mission boot camp. I took over the kitchen full-time and my partner was demoted from chef to dishwasher.
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-First step was to plan a menu schedule based on what our alternative suppliers had on hand. It felt like I was on that cooking show where they had those mystery ingredient challenges - challenge accepted. I learned a slew of new recipes from my own asian background plus a lot of other culinary cultures. I also summoned my memories of my paternal grandmother's food preservation techniques and dishes. This was largely guesswork because, while my huge paternal family is almost ALWAYS EATING when we're all together (my partner can attest to this from his being politely over-fed by random family members of mine), I never paid much attention to the cooking and only pretty much took part in the eating of the food. Planning a month's worth of meals may seem overly dramatic, but it was really more to ensure that the food we ordered would not go to waste and that we would have enough food until the next delivery. We did deviate from the menu schedule on occasion and moved around some of the dishes, such as when certain ingredients were about to go bad sooner than we anticipated. Although now we know better the approximate shelf life of our food and try to arrange our fridge and pantry according to expiration date. The desserts and sweets are not projected on the menu plan and are randomly rationed based on intensity-of-craving-in-
-
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-The social distancing guidelines and the semi-self-imposed home quarantine has definitely accelerated my domestic skills acquisition, although my partner still maintains ardently that he's the better cook despite his demotion to dishwasher. Oddly enough, I've found joy and calm in this new process as it becomes our new normal and we learn to cope together.
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I first came to the Netherlands with zero domestic skills whatsoever. However, I quickly understood that my previous dining-out-forever lifestyle would be ridiculously expensive in the Netherlands and thus I began to learn some domestic skills. However, just a little over a month into coming back to the Netherlands permanently, the Covid19 pandemic hit. Soon after, the Dutch prime minister began his address to the nation, then social distancing and work-from-home measures came into effect. Meanwhile, back home in the Philippines, my older sister and her fiance were in 14-day home quarantine because her boyfriend came into contact with someone whose family had contracted Covid19 (fortunately my sister and her boyfriend never showed any symptoms throughout their quarantine) and my dad was in home isolation as well and was exhibiting some symptoms (which also very fortunately turned out to be just a bad cough that came with a flu). With much paranoia, I urged my partner that we must stay at home in isolation as far as possible, including avoiding going to the supermarket for fear of coming into contact with strangers. He indulged my pandemic paranoia and obliged.
+
Our first online grocery delivery with Jumbo went well without a hitch; we had two weeks worth of food. As the days passed my anxiety dissipated largely due to the fact that my dad and my sister turned out to be okay (our worst fears fortunately did not actualise). Whatever residual anxiety and frustration I still had was mostly channelled into sending donations back home to my university alma matter's public hospital (a Covid19 referral hospital) and some other great Covid19 relief initiatives of my sorority sisters and my law school classmates. My emotions having calmed down, I had to pre-occupy myself with something other than fighting the urge to yell at the people I saw outside our window who were NOT observing social distancing guidelines. I did not want to be the new neighbourhood crazy person who yells at random strangers from their balcony (not a great look for me). And so, it was best that I return to my domestic-skills-acquisition lessons.
+
As our food supplies were depleted, we tried to book another delivery slot with Jumbo but the soonest date we could get our hands on was almost a month away and all the other supermarket delivery platforms were just as far off. Still determined to stay away from any place that had more that 2 people, I scrambled to find alternative suppliers online. After hours upon hours of searching on the internet, my partner and I were able to find alternative food suppliers. We had toko4all.nl (mylittlephilippines) for asian ingredients; mushroomxl.nl for produce; beefensteak.nl for meats; boerthijsbezorgt.nl for dairy and a few produce items; and kaasmarktonline.nl (Van den Herik) for cheese. It was really interesting to find out about these small and medium scale businesses as each of them seemed to have their own story as traders and farmers. For the most part, their services felt very personal because we got to talk to them on the phone for one reason or another even if we ordered everything online. Strangely enough the packaging that their products were delivered in seemed to match our impression of their "personalities". We almost always get sweet little freebies from toko4all.nl (mylittlephilippines), and the couple that owns it even personally delivered our order to our door one time when they struggled to send our order via their normal delivery provider. They're clearly my favourite supplier discovery (I might be biased because I love getting free snacks) but generally all of our alternative suppliers really provide high-quality products and excellent customer service. My partner and I have decided to keep some of them as food suppliers post-pandemic, augmenting them with supermarket purchases only for a handful of products that are too expensive for us to continue purchasing regularly or household products we need but are not available from our alternative suppliers. I'm not really sure why we never considered getting our food from sources other than the supermarket, but this experience has definitely taught us a different way of doing things in our household.
+
But of course because they weren't supermarkets, the product options weren't as extensive. We just had to work with whatever products they had on hand and whatever bulk quantities we had to buy them in (either to meet minimum delivery requirements or to optimise delivery costs). My domestic skills lessons had become a domestic skills mission boot camp. I took over the kitchen full-time and my partner was demoted from chef to dishwasher.
+
First step was to plan a menu schedule based on what our alternative suppliers had on hand. It felt like I was on that cooking show where they had those mystery ingredient challenges - challenge accepted. I learned a slew of new recipes from my own asian background plus a lot of other culinary cultures. I also summoned my memories of my paternal grandmother's food preservation techniques and dishes. This was largely guesswork because, while my huge paternal family is almost ALWAYS EATING when we're all together (my partner can attest to this from his being politely over-fed by random family members of mine), I never paid much attention to the cooking and only pretty much took part in the eating of the food.
+
Planning a month's worth of meals may seem overly dramatic, but it was really more to ensure that the food we ordered would not go to waste and that we would have enough food until the next delivery. We did deviate from the menu schedule on occasion and moved around some of the dishes, such as when certain ingredients were about to go bad sooner than we anticipated. Although now we know better the approximate shelf life of our food and try to arrange our fridge and pantry according to expiration date. The desserts and sweets are not projected on the menu plan and are randomly rationed based on intensity-of-craving-in-relation-to-sanity-levels because my will power (won't power) is as erratic as the Dutch weather.
+
The social distancing guidelines and the semi-self-imposed home quarantine has definitely accelerated my domestic skills acquisition, although my partner still maintains ardently that he's the better cook despite his demotion to dishwasher. Oddly enough, I've found joy and calm in this new process as it becomes our new normal and we learn to cope together.