Years later, the thought of a sourdough starter still brings on pandemic flashback

It’s hard for me to believe that the pandemic was five years ago. At times it feels like it happened in another life, but whenever I feel crappy I immediately think COVID, panic, then talk myself down after realizing it’s allergies.

Like everyone else on planet Earth I learned a lot about myself during the pandemic, and I also leaned into a lot of pandemic tropes — like baking sourdough bread from scratch.

Ugh. If I never have to hear someone talk about their sourdough bread starter like it’s a member of their family, I’ll live happily ever after.

In 2020, if anyone eavesdropped on the intense conversations people were having about the constant feeding demands of their “finicky starter” you could easily assume that they were talking about a newborn baby, not a mixture of flour and water.

I’m going to admit that I think the pandemic ruined cooking and sourdough for me. Being an empty-nester and then going back to having the nest filled and cooking three meals a day to occupy my anxious mind was kitchen overload.

I’m a decent cook, but churning out that many meals zapped my kitchen joy. I don’t care how many cookbooks you have or internet searches you do. At some point you just get tired of finding new recipes for cooking chicken. To this day I’m still mystified about how I managed to make a chicken tikka masala that tasted like soap.

Another trope I embraced was the Marie Kondo organization frenzy, which focused on cleaning your home of things that “no longer spark joy.”

Maybe a worldwide pandemic isn’t the time to assess what sparks joy, because the only thing that was sparking joy for me was keeping my family from getting COVID. This meant I was donating items with what I’m going to call utter recklessness.

Now five years later I’m still mad at myself for cleansing my closet of things like a lovely gray cashmere sweater with velvet ribbon detailing. This winter I must have thought about that sweater at least twice a week.

Then there’s a lamp I was looking for recently in my basement. I even assumed that one of my kids might have it because it’s a great lamp. I was about to text both of them a very stern “who took my vintage lamp” message until I remembered it was another victim of my pandemic purge.

One trope I didn’t embrace was losing my mind being with my spouse 24/7. Candidly, I thought I would. I was definitely a believer that too much togetherness can be a bad thing. It doesn’t help that I’m an extroverted introvert.

For me that means I’m a surefire delight for about half the day (OK, maybe make that a third), and then I need my alone time. To be trapped with my spouse for months on end with no means of escape except solo car rides to the McDonald’s drive-thru for a Diet Coke sounded like a blueprint for a divorce.

And yet a miracle happened. I discovered that having a husband around all the time was actually great. Selfishly because he did stuff for me.

The guy loves a Costco run and excels at doing laundry. When he fixed the dishwasher by watching a YouTube video, I actually swooned.

That all seems so long ago, yet whenever I see a loaf of sourdough bread in the store it jolts me back to 2020 when in a quest to seek normalcy I fixated on feeding a sourdough starter.

Reach Sherry Kuehl at snarkyinthesuburbs@gmail.com, on Facebook at Snarky in the Suburbs @snarkynsuburbs, on Instagram @snarky.in.the.suburbs, and snarkyinthesuburbs.com.