- Cooking is underrated.

  - Canned food gets a little boring and stale, but if you know how to cook, that means better meals for yourself and everyone.

  - You’re not just surviving—you’re living a little.

  ---

  The bookstore started to feel... safe.

  Not “ignore-the-bloodstains-on-the-sidewalk” safe, but the kind of safe where you could drop your shoulders and not feel like something was breathing down your neck.

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  I’d go out. Scout the area. Check out what stores were worth breaking into, what streets had the freshest roadkill shambling around. Then I’d haul my loot back—tins, seasoning packets, some expired rice, the occasional hidden gem like canned corned beef or powdered cheese.

  Alex? She turned it into food.

  Real food.

  She used salt like magic. Knew how to mask the metal taste of cans, how to stretch a single onion like it was liquid gold. Her hands moved with a kind of focus I hadn’t seen since before the world collapsed.

  She made a soup one night that almost made me cry. I didn’t even like soup.

  We ate at the front counter, flashlights hanging from coat hooks, books surrounding us like quiet company. She was relaxed. Not smiling exactly, but... at peace.

  I realized something then: a warm meal made by someone who gives a damn? That’s a kind of morale booster no speech can beat. A reminder of normal. Of comfort. Of the good life, even if it’s just for fifteen minutes before the next shitshow.

  So yeah, learn to cook. Or find someone who can.

  The world’s already flavorless enough without you eating straight out of a tin for the rest of your life.