Cooking through COVID

On Monday, March 16, I launched into a full-on cooking frenzy. I had left New Orleans, where I live part of the time, for the Mississippi Delta to avoid the end of Mardi Gras. As the world now knows, I avoided a lot more than that. On the same day, the New Orleans mayor more or less locked the place down; on Friday one of my oldest and closest friends came down with COVID-19. She is now fine, but within two weeks cases had exploded across the city. Feeling helpless and isolated (well, not completely—I had the ever-trusty Henry the beagle and a veritable bird sanctuary for company), I ordered a ton of food online. If I am honest, I was driven at least as much by the desire to never ever set foot inside Kroger or Walmart again, or at least not for a very long time. And then, you know, the food arrives in all these coolers and boxes and you feel compelled to cook it.

Included in the stash