2020

I don’t think I have enough adjectives or paragraphs full of hyperbole to begin to describe this year so far.

Unreal. I think that is the best word to describe it. If I had to pick one word, I think that would be it.

The first few weeks of shelter in place in California I just focused on figuring out how to do my job from home, get groceries, and not just stare at my cats all day. More recently I have been thinking about how I want to spend the rest of this SIP. I don’t see it ending anytime soon, and from what I have read and seen, I don’t think it should. That isn’t why I’m here though. I am here to share more food and recipes from the F1 Race Calendar.

Testing in Spain took place, and as per usual, I made tapas. I’ll share some fun ones with you in a post soon. The Australian GP almost happened, I don’t have any recipes from that weekend, life was a whirlwind for us too and cooking was not on the table. The next two weekends fared the same way, though sad to not have cooked for China and Vietnam, I was so looking forward to the return to the Netherlands and a Dutch GP, I just couldn’t NOT cook. Although I have little Dutch cooking heritage, it is my genetic heritage, so I feel like it was a must cook race weekend. In fact I have so little Dutch cooking heritage, I asked my Dad if he had much Dutch food growing up and he told me, “My mom used to make hot German potato salad. No mayo, and cut up hotdogs. Don’t know the secret ingredients but we loved it. Also she had a Dutch oven.” Yup. That’s that then.

So to Google, as usual, I went and found a majestic Dutch Apple Pie and a hundred recipes for Hutspot. And just like that I found myself back in the kitchen. I realized I was missing this ritual. The research, the recipe exploring, the ingredient hunting, making a disastrous mess of the kitchen, and trying new foods. Hearing F1 in the background while whisking or chopping, I hope, will always be a part of my personal happiness regimen. Without actual races, the internet has come to our rescue in a variety of ways. E-sports has taken up the mantle of race Sundays with virtual GPs, the F1 Youtube channel has posted collections of races gone by, and we’ve even been watching some historical races to tide us over. In fact for this Dutch GP weekend we watched the last F1 race to have been held at Zandvoort back in 1985.

So here we are. It is 2020, we are stuck at home, Ted has resorted to walking around central London parks with a selfie stick, and I have resorted to cooking for non-existent races. All in all, I think we’re going to be okay.