One more reason to make a muffin

A friend from my writing group brought homemade chocolate chip cookies to our meeting last night, saying they were a coping mechanism for managing the stress of egg prices, airplane crashes, and global unrest. In truth, we all looked a bit puffier than we did a few months ago. Food is so often a source of solace.

I'm not much of a baker, but there's something deeply satisfying about mixing up a dough or a batter, popping it in the oven, smelling the smells, and then biting into the warm rewards of those efforts. Our home is currently low-carb for health reasons, so defaulting to an afternoon of baking is more challenging now. 

As an alternative, I went on a hunt for vintage political cookbooks, but the results were disappointing. I did however stumble down a rabbit hole which I'll now invite you to enter: an explanation for why baking is such a comfort.

There are a ton of these little guys wafting around the internet. Most follow this model; a vintage kitchen with a female in period garb looking varyingly happy or deranged. Here are a few more examples.

But a few took a different spin, featuring gadgets, hedgehogs, sloths, and an unsurprising clutter of cats.

I didn't find the cookbooks I was looking for today, but I did discover these treasures, proving the paraphrased wisdom of the prophet McJagger:

One can't always get what one wants (like eating the rich), but one often finds that one does receive what one needs.

Ta-ta for now, I'm off to buy some flour.