As you know, I am an advocate of making the HEART of your home the place to connect with family and friends – and that is in the KITCHEN! It is the place where family members and friends come together, catch up, and create memories together.

To me, home cooked meals also mean family budget savings and they enhance the family’s nourishment from the fresh and more nutritious ingredients you can use.

I used to encourage parents to take their children for grocery shopping, it not only helps building bonds and relationships with the children, it also encourages learning in kids.

However, during the Covid lockdown time, many things changed.

People started working from home; children were home schooled for many months; there were restaurant restrictions and grocery shopping restrictions. So many families had to start cooking from home on a full-time basis.

For some families, they started to enjoy each other’s company and even find the joy to reconnect with their kitchen by cooking their favourite dishes from scratch, which they may not have had the time to do so previously.

However, for other families it was a very hectic and stressful time trying to juggle work and home schooling, especially if they had a very young family.

In addition, during that time, many innovative eateries were making their menus available for home deliveries, and many food-deliver services became available to fulfill the families’ needs at that time. Some parents also resorted to using prepacked frozen food from the supermarkets and ordering take out more often.

So, now we are post Covid lockdown. All restrictions have been removed and restaurants are now back to full swing.

With this back to ‘normality’, have you changed your eating habits? Or have you grown accustomed to the comfort of having ready cooked meals being delivered to your home and enjoyed the luxury of not having to cook so often?

Or have you taken the opportunity to reconnect with your kitchen and rediscovered your long-lost kitchen appliances and started to enjoy creating meals from scratch? Have you started to reconnect to all your childhood dishes, or maybe started a herb or vegetable garden? Are you putting more time into learning how to cook your favourite childhood dishes? Are you investing in more cooking appliances and utensils?

How has Covid lockdown and post Covid days changed your eating and cooking habits?  Have you been cooking more or are you doing more take away and eating out instead? What path have you taken?