Spinach and Brown Rice Casserole sounds like something my mother would have made for our family circa 1981, during our vegetarian dinner phase.

Frozen spinach, chopped mushrooms, cottage cheese, brown rice. Even the word casserole evokes the white laminate dining table and vinyl print wallpaper of our 70’s era kitchen.

I was searching for recipes featuring cottage cheese, because several weeks ago, when I first started Covid bulk buying, I grabbed a four-pound tub, not realizing I already had two smaller, normal size containers in the fridge. The expiration date approaches, and while I know that the cottage cheese won’t suddenly turn green at midnight, I also know that as soon as I open it, the clock begins ticking.

I can’t imagine throwing it out. And so my hunt for cottage cheese rich recipes.

Spinach casseroles and sweet noodle kugels came up frequently. Creamy dips. Cottage cheese pancakes. Cottage cheese with cantaloupe. Also references to Richard Nixon, who ate it with pineapple or ketchup.

If I make both the casserole and the kugel, I can use up five cups and put half of each casserole in the freezer for future meals.

That alone is enough to convince me.

To round out tonight’s dinner, I have lots of choices: a bag of fresh shiitake mushrooms, a head of cauliflower, black beans, my oldest child’s pickling experiments. Have you tried dandelion capers? Pickled magnolia blossoms? Turmeric garlic?

Or sourdough something. We have starter in a jar on the counter, and last week I successfully baked a loaf of bread using yeast water, which took a week and a half to establish: figs, water, sugar and salt, much shaking and resting, and a good bit of sheer faith. Would it work? No idea, until the dough actually bubbled and rose, and the loaf emerged from the oven looking like … well, bread.

Sunday I baked rhubarb custard bars, which are kind of like lemon squares, but pink. My book club will be meeting on Zoom this Thursday, and when I tasted one, I thought perfect book group snack, while simultaneously realizing I could not share them with these friends, some of whom I’ve been meeting with on the second Thursday of the month for 30 years. I briefly considered drive-by drop-offs, but our crew is so widely dispersed – Ypsilanti, Oakland Township, Rochester, Saginaw, Bay City, Bloomfield Hills – it would have taken all day to visit everyone.

As you can tell, we’ve been cooking a lot. My youngest requested tart cherry juice, a key ingredient in a future baking project. Last night she made chocolate pudding from scratch. My middle child is a master of tempeh, which shows up frequently in his weekly dinners.

I am not sad to be cooking or eating well. I am just tired of the focus on ingredients – using them, finding them, evaluating if we have enough onions and milk; splurging on spice mixes and gummi bears.

Tonight, spinach and brown rice casserole. Maybe I’ll save some for my parents – a little nostalgia trip for all of us – and drop it off on Saturday, when I bring them their produce box from Detroit’s Eastern Market. We’ve been ordering on Mondays for Saturday pick-up – another change to our grocery habits. I’ve become attached to the tortellini and spinach and tortilla chips.

More goodies coming. More dinners. More snacks.

We’ll be cooking all week. And occasionally we’ll forget that we couldn’t go out if we wanted to, that we won’t be running to the store for that missing ingredient, that we’ll be eating at home together, again, all five of us in our familiar spots, seated around the dining room table that was a gift from my parents when we moved in 20 years ago – the table with the big scratch at the head and the inlaid wood diamonds and the spot the puppy gnawed at the base.

Today. And tomorrow. And the day after that.