A common joke is that the chore of pandemic cooking has reduced us to eating piles of slop. But for a weird, specific, tertiary reason, I actually was. In May, I burned my esophagus. My doctor prescribed a soft food diet, for which there is no clear definition. Finding a truly soft food is difficult. Polenta can be rough. Beans have scratchy skins. Greens are fibrous. Rice is unyielding, bread is dry, yogurt stings, vinegar burns. Ground meat feels gristly, herbs have pointy stems, and entirely too many types of ice cream come with bits.
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