Pandemic Dinner of Gluten-Free Orange Chicken is a Sensory Reminder of Evolving Grocery Shopping and the Effect on My Mental Health

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Media

Title (Dublin Core)

Disclaimer (Dublin Core)

DISCLAIMER: This item may have been submitted in response to a school assignment. See Linked Data.

Description (Dublin Core)

Pre-Pandemic, my small family of three went shopping altogether at our local Frys Grocery every Sunday. As the type of person that lives inside their head and has difficulty multi-tasking when distracted, this was usually an overwhelming experience. It involved avoiding people parked sideways in aisles, answering questions from my wife and daughter (somehow usually at the same time), and being interrupted by loud intercoms. To me it was sensorial overload every week of my hearing and vision to the point where I wanted to leave.
When the pandemic really started up in April of 2020 my wife and I decided that my daughter should stay home and we would take turns shopping every week individually to decrease the chances of affecting the employees, the other customers, and ourselves. Along with this was my increased effort to come up with meals and recipes on my "turn." The recipe attached, gluten-free orange chicken from https://www.evolvingtable.com, reminds me of this interesting evolution in shopping that still takes place, as it is my turn to shop today. While my wife looks upon the idea of shopping individually as a loss and misses it...I am able to shop without being overwhelmed. Between less customers in the store (due to ordering online and pick up), the store progressing to using handheld radios, and being by myself, I can really focus and no longer am stressed and overwhelmed to the point where I just want to leave. Every time I make this recipe and taste the delicious orange flavor and smell that hot sesame oil that I had never used before the pandemic, it reminds me of how a stressful pandemic has strangely (and selfishly) made one recurring weekday of my life less stressful.

A text story about how a certain recipe's taste and smell reminds me of how the pandemic changed my family's grocery shopping from a weekly family outing to taking turns individually and somehow lowered my stress. I have also attached the recipe as an object to study.

Date (Dublin Core)

April 9, 2020

Creator (Dublin Core)

London Brazil

Contributor (Dublin Core)

Jason Inskeep

Event Identifier (Dublin Core)

HST515

Partner (Dublin Core)

Arizona State University

Type (Dublin Core)

text story

Link (Bibliographic Ontology)

https://www.evolvingtable.com/instant-pot-orange-chicken-paleo/#wprm-recipe-container-7603

http://web.archive.org/web/20210303114059/https://www.evolvingtable.com/instant-pot-orange-chicken-paleo/

Publisher (Dublin Core)

Evolving Table

Controlled Vocabulary (Dublin Core)

English Consumer Culture (shopping, dining...)

English Food & Drink

English Home & Family Life

Curator's Tags (Omeka Classic)

Arizona State University

HST515

#foodislife

stuck

sensory

grocery

family

recipe

overwhelmed

shopping

outing

mental health

Contributor's Tags (a true folksonomy) (Friend of a Friend)

ASU

decrease stress

mental health

orange chicken

evolving table recipes

hearing

Pandemic shopping

HST515

FOOD IS LIFE

selfish sundays

vision

sensory history

Collection (Dublin Core)

Foodways

Linked Data (Dublin Core)

HST 515 ASU assignment prompt

Jason Inskeep Biography Sheet

Date Submitted (Dublin Core)

08/08/2021

Date Modified (Dublin Core)

08/09/2021

05/25/2022

Date Created (Dublin Core)

05/26/2020

Item sets

Covid 19

Arizona State University

This item was submitted on August 8, 2021 by Jason Inskeep using the form “Share Your Story” on the site “A Journal of the Plague Year”: https://www.covid-19archive.org/s/archive

Click here to view the collected data.

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