To me, balance is a word that should conjure feelings of calmness and safety, of natural order; it’s a word that indicates everything is in its proper place, neither in danger of tipping over nor upsetting the status quo. But it’s funny how that ideal is hardly ever attained: balance is a buzzword tossed around in arguments about ballooning federal deficits and balancing our national budget, and used to bemoan that fact that Americans are increasingly stressed out because they can’t attain a work-life balance. When I see the word in print or hear it come out of somebody’s mouth, it’s always in op-ed pieces written in indignant voices, or in serious-sounding features on the nightly news.

The word has been running through my head a lot lately, and partly because of those negative associations, I feel panicky when my subconscious starts lecturing me about living a balanced life. There are so many things that are important to me: visiting and calling my friends; nourishing my creative side by writing and taking photos; cooking and baking (so my meals don’t consist of fried eggs and toast too often); going on dates with my boyfriend; running outside with electropop blasting; leaving enough free time to rest on the couch as Koko sleeps in my lap and a movie plays in the background. Of course, though, my nine-hour workdays often drift by ultra-slowly; it’s only after work that the hours seem to slip away from me. And that’s when I’m taking inventory of everything I want to accomplish that night, to feel fulfilled enough so that I can wake up the next morning and do it all again.

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Have you ever had one of those days? You know the kind I’m talking about, I bet. They take on a different character for everyone, but here’s the gist of it: outside, the skies are often blankly gray and rainy (and you’ve forgotten your umbrella); at work or school, you’re caught unprepared by a confusing assignment or unexpected deadline; there’s usually a bad hair day and/or ugly outfit involved. And the kicker? The harder you try to rise above it all, the worse things get.

Those days are built for comfort food. And on this front, I know that you know what I’m talking about. Macaroni and cheese, baked until bubbling and topped with breadcrumbs. Those world’s-best chocolate chip cookies, warm from the oven and big as hockey pucks, chock-full of thin chocolate disks and sprinkled with sea salt. Oh—and canned chickpeas! Those’ll dry your tears before you can say chana punjabi.

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There was no experience in my childhood that prepared me for the campus dining hall. I dutifully packed my brown-bag lunch till the day I graduated from high school, only entering the lunch line for an occasional order of French fries. My parents were both excellent from-scratch cooks who inspired the same spirit in me, and the draw of mystery meat and greasy lunchroom pizza never enticed me away from assembling my own sandwiches. But thrust out of my home and into a kitchenless dorm, I found myself standing in a gigantic dining emporium filled with constantly replenishing vats of food, and I didn’t know what to do.

At lunch the first day, my initial reaction was that of abject fear. My second was hunger, so I flitted around with my new friends and tried to get a handle on how this new cultural experience worked, while also attempting to weed out the delicious from the inedible. It turned out that most of the dining hall’s food-like substances fit neatly into that second category: mushy pasta and watery tomato sauce abounded, as did equal amounts of over- and under-cooked meats, as well as far too many platters of similar-looking fried things. We’d also come to realize that the cookie platters were the most reliably satisfying items in the dining hall, and that the novelty of having our very own frozen yogurt machine never really went away. But fortunately for our blood sugar levels, we discovered the standby that would fuel countless meals that year: do-it-yourself stir-fry.

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As an ethnic Jew with no serious investment in the religion, Chanukah means one thing to me, and one thing only: latkes! In college, I had a wonderful roommate who, having also fallen from the graces of the Tribe, shared my latke-centric outlook on the holiday. One year, she suggested we spread the love to our friends, most of whom had attended Catholic schools growing up and needed to learn the way of the latke. We would throw a Chanukah party! This was all fine and good until she revealed that her proposed guest list was twenty names long. That meant twenty latke-gobbling humans in our apartment, shoveling potato pancakes into their maws as fast as we could fry them up.

It didn’t turn out to be the epic disaster I’d vehemently sworn it would be. Nevertheless, four pounds of potatoes into our preparation, I was casting evil glares in her direction as I bloodied my knuckles over a washboard grater, the pile of potatoes turning an unappetizing shade of gray as they were exposed to air. Unsurprisingly, I haven’t made a latke since.

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I find it easy to be creative with food when I’m handed a stack of cookbooks. I’m more than willing to flip through recipes and choose one that sounds delicious, even if it’s challenging and complicated—provided that this is happening on a Sunday afternoon, of course. If it’s Tuesday night, and my fridge is forlorn, and I’m trying to make something of my leftovers? You don’t want to hear the end of this story; it’s usually quite depressing.

But a minor miracle occurred when my leftovers included half a pan of oven-roasted tomatoes. (I mentioned them last week, and can’t urge you enough to try them yourself: the recipe is seasonless, ultra-simple, and deeply satisfying.) I didn’t have a recipe to guide me, but a few years of kitchen experience must have helped me piece together flavors. I was trying out an idea I’d glimpsed somewhere before: spaghetti sauce with lentils.

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