When I’m feeling a very particular combination of helplessness and rage, say, the kind I felt the day Christine Blasey Ford testified, my coping strategy is to cook.

I don’t mean that I pick a new recipe and cook an elaborate meal. I don’t mean that I bake decadent treats to self-soothe by sheetcaking. I mean that I cook like your great-grandmother who lived through the Depression. I cook like a pioneer farmer’s wife. I make huge vats of stock from scraps and bones. I cook beans in that stock and make stew. I fill the freezer with enough dinners to last weeks.

So anyway, after our family got some upsetting news about someone important to us, tonight I took out a vacuum-sealed bag of homemade meatballs from the 5 pound batch I made the day Bill Barr’s half-assed summary of the Mueller Report came out, simmered them on the stove for half an hour in some crushed tomatoes, garlic, and herbs, and fed my family homemade meatball subs for dinner.

Because cooking is how I remind myself that I always have my own back.