The Comforts of a Cooking List

Turns out, they’re inspiring, too

Sara Cagle
Heated

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A handwritten list of “Culinary Desires” and a pen on a woven rug next to a calendar turned to the January page.
Photo: Sara Cagle

In 2021, I’m looking forward to a tentative trip to Italy in July. Or maybe a birthday party with more than one guest in March. I guess just a martini at home next Friday.

Though we’re nowhere near close to being able to make post-Covid plans, What I can do is march purposefully into the kitchen and make an amaretti crumble with mascarpone cream. Or stir-fried celery with peanuts and bacon or something with the ‘nduja I bought on sale.

These are my only plans for the foreseeable future. I am so excited by them (and by my ability to do anything at all) that I have written down a list of 16 things-and-counting to cook over the next several weeks.

I call it my cooking list: It lives on my fridge, and I can already tell that it will be one of my greatest joys of the new year.

My cooking list lives on my fridge, and I can already tell that it will be one of my greatest joys of the new year.

A cooking list has many obvious, practical benefits. It helps me avoid grocery shopping without direction, hurriedly filling my cart with the usual rice and eggs to be topped with chili sauce and scarfed down before a shift at work.

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