"I love Foodtown. It’s where I feel most grounded. Lately their ice-cream situation has been a real shambles — there will always be pints covered with ice and frost, and you know they’ve been through a couple of thaw-and-refreeze cycles — and the fruit is overpriced and sometimes the music truly makes me want to die, but it is still one of my favorite places in my neighborhood, if not the world."

"I pick up takeout from the Queensboro for dinner — two orders of Chinese-style steamed flounder with tamari, ginger, and scallion oil, served with little containers of white rice and garnished with superthin spears of asparagus, and peas. It’s just a perfect dish, and generous portions, of which I put some back in the fridge, and add some pressed tofu to the leftover sauce, to marinate overnight."

"I go into Manhattan to sign copies of World Travel at Kitchen Arts and Letters, then walk down Lexington to pick up a sandwich at Pastrami Queen."

"I stop first at Eli’s Essentials to see if there’s anything I might want to take home, like a slice of white cake with white icing, but that’s not really their thing, and the big fondant-iced cookies with the names of the Oscar-nominated films painted on them are not really doing it for me."

"It’s very quiet at Pastrami Queen, just one other customer there. I order the sandwich and carry it home on the subway. I think maybe I’ll only eat half of it, but it is so perfect and delicious that I just go for it. I love it: the soft rye bread and the juicy pastrami, with a fleeting but distinctive hit of coriander that reminds me, funny enough, of the taste of the best stuff at Superiority Burger, a vegan place."

"It’s raining pretty hard but I want something sweet, so I walk a few blocks to Lety’s, a very good and consistent local bakery, and get a macaroon. They’re big, sized somewhere between a golf ball and my fist, and always perfectly caramelized and crunchy on the outside."

"I go out with some cash but no plan, and end up getting an order of beef momos from the Amdo Kitchen truck in my neighborhood. There are eight in an order, and they come with spicy pickled radishes, plus red hot sauce, which I later learn is called sepen, and a neutral white sauce to cut the heat."

"I’m going to Portale for dinner tonight with my friend Jonathan, who is something of a regular there from pre-COVID times. I order the cappellacci with peas and pancetta, which is just terrific. We split an order of the herb-crusted cod, then I have the chicken with hen-of-the-woods mushrooms and cauliflower, and olive-oil cake with cherry compote for dessert. It’s all so good and professional and pleasing; without a doubt the daintiest, fanciest thing I have eaten in over a year of cooking almost every meal for myself."

"I heat up a mug of Brodo beef bone broth to which I add some soy sauce. While it’s in the microwave, I eat a few almonds and think, as I always do, about the fact that they are Barack Obama’s favorite snack."