As apparently was the case for many people, my relationship with food underwent several transformations throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly in the initial months of isolation. I think the first time the pandemic got me thinking about food was in the early days of the first lockdown in the city I lived in, in early 2020.
What was the first story ever like? Impossible to say with certainty, but we can make some safe assumptions about the location and the topic: around a shared meal, about how our most pressing biological imperative was met that day. For all animals, food is both the reason to wake up every day (or night) and the fuel for all metabolic processes needed to live.
Cooking has been a work overwhelmingly done by women. According to Douglas Bowers, in 1900 time spent in domestic work was equivalent to that of the paid labor force in the United States: 44 hours a week.