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Cooking Was My Jam, but Quarantine Is Ruining My Favorite Hobby
Lockdown has drained the joy from cooking
I was born to cook. My mother started teaching me how to properly bread chicken cutlets when I was a child, and why the best way to test red sauce was with the heel of a loaf of Italian bread. I grew up in an apartment in Queens that rested above my grandfather’s butcher’s shop. As I got older, my parents took over a grocery store where they sold produce and prepared food that my mother made in the back room.
If you look at my Instagram account, it’s peppered with various, sometimes elaborate, meals I make for my family. A bolognese on a Sunday. A panzanella salad in the summer. Roasted cauliflower with whipped feta, or homemade aioli for dipping fresh vegetables and grilled fish. On Christmas Eve, a seven-course meal of crab legs, clams, and caviar: the Feast of the Seven Fishes. I even developed a small line of kitchen tools to raise money for an abortion fund.
It’s a lot easier to feel good about cooking when you don’t have to do it three meals per day, seven days a week.
Cooking is more than a hobby for me — it’s therapy. Being able to do something with my hands other than type…
