The NYT Cooking App

I started cooking during the pandemic. At first, it was instinctual; when one must survive, one must be prepared with food. We ordered it. We horded it. And when my school got a license to the New York Times, I started reading about cooking.

Now I use the New York Times Cooking app. I have a digital recipe box, and my ingredient interests have stretched from ketchup to truffles. Actually, I’ve yet to include truffles in anything I’ve cooked, and I feel like my attachment to ketchup is what still grounds me among the huddled masses of a Super Walmart food aisle in the midwest. My son and I bought ice cream cones at McDonalds this afternoon. I can only imagine that most truffles are sold in backlit cases coastal elite towns where Whole Foods flies in fresh ingredients, marks them up, and sells them to desperate post-pandemic survivalists who’ve spun their obsession with staying alive into privileged indulgences.

We made celery and tofu stir fry the other day. In Chile, celery is plentiful; tofu is not. Before that we made Greek Goddess dip with a bar of feta that cost a small fortune. Yesterday we grilled Chilean chorizos and topped our choripans with hotdog fixings. My relationship with food continues to evolve, and my app recipe collection expands. Cooking no longer seems a matter of life and death, but it does feel like a small way to say I’m alive. I can eat with best of them. And one day I’ll be able to talk truffles with the worst. Until then, I’m willing to go out on the end of a Chilean hot dog and say that I’d put ketchup on my truffles if that’s all the meat that is fit to eat.