I don’t know about you, but I find these miserable months at the start of the year are the prime time for indulging in comfort food. All the culinary fanfare is at its loudest at Thanksgiving and Christmas, but it is the time that comes after when a food-based pick-me-up is most needed. If you insist on doing some kind of diet, leave it until spring! You do not have to make the bitter cold feel even colder by restricting yourself and losing that important layer of insulation just when it is coming into its own.

If anything, we should be taking that burst of motivation that comes with something new and channeling it into figuring out how to make the tastiest dishes that give us something to look forward to on the dullest of days. The internet is not short on places to give you ideas, whether that’s some recipe blog with a long-winded story preceding the instructions or a mildly grating TikTok influencer. If you want to be a little more unconventional with your inspiration, you can also look to cooking memes. There is plenty of them, and it cannot be denied that they get pretty creative with the definition of food.