I’m Sarah Cahalan, and I’m having a weird year.

When the pandemic came along last spring and uprooted all of our lives, I was six months into an uprooting already underway. I’d chosen in August 2019 to quit my job and go back to school, and by the fall of 2020, I planned to emerge as a lifestyle journalist with a shiny new Medill master’s.

I got the master’s, and, though it’s temporary, I even got a journalism job — but it’s not exactly the fun-focused role I had in mind.

In a desperate attempt to cling to joy, I ramped up my baking habit under lockdown. So when Sarah Kieffer’s 100 Cookies landed under my Christmas tree, an idea was born: I’d bake my way through it and document the process online. With this Julie & Julia for the quarantine era, I make no promises I’ll get through every recipe, and I wouldn’t put money on all my efforts succeeding. (The world is ending, after all.) But I hope to prove to myself and my future employers that, despite our COVID-induced separation, the lifestyle beat and I can still hang. Stay tuned for sparkling-wit-infused commentary, the okayest food photography the iPhone 8 has to offer, and somewhere in the range of 100 cookies.