The process itself was a balm: Buy the right ingredients, follow instructions, and voilà, an edible creation (so much better than an edible arrangement) would appear. One of the things I’d always disliked about cooking were the rules, but I came to see the rules as a kind of security blanket, and once I became more comfortable, I realized that the only true rules were the ones you made for yourself — you could go as gonzo as you wanted, though you might be stuck eating the results. There was also an odd kind of prepper appeal to cooking. Sometimes I pride myself in squeezing out every last little bit of toothpaste; similarly, actually using the groceries I had on hand made me feel like the next Laura Ingalls Wilder. Not only was it economical, it was empowering. In a world that had gone mad, I could depend on this.

I made a pumpkin pie. Everyone wanted more. I cooked eggplant Parmesan for my boyfriend, who went back for seconds. “I really like that you’re cooking more,” he told me. “Don’t get used to it,” I said, but grinned, thinking to myself that I was already getting used to it. I roasted delicata squash, then made a quiche with the leftovers. At night, when I couldn’t sleep, I’d pore over recipes, screen-grabbing ingredient lists that I could refer to when I did my grocery shopping.

On a cooking high, I said something I never imagined would come out of my mouth: “Should I cook Thanksgiving dinner?” It didn’t even sound like a terrible idea. Yes, others would eat, but at the heart of it, all of this cooking was for myself, a way to make my heartache and anxiety and fear into something worthy and good. And that made it a feminist act, one that Hillary with her scrambled eggs and Yvonne Brill with her beef stroganoff would, I think, have related to. It wasn’t that we cooked, it was that we cooked along with everything else. And it wasn’t cooking, but the power to feed ourselves, literally but also metaphorically, which is something we need now more than ever.

Of course, my apartment is way too small to host a large party, so the idea was promptly quashed. But sometimes just knowing you can is what matters. There’s always next year for Thanksgiving, but first: chocolate pie.