Early pandemic, March. Restaurants were closed, takeout was confusing, and the aisles of my corner grocery store were narrow, crowded, stressful. I sidestepped down one and tipped a jar of popcorn kernels and some Heinz baked beans into my basket, realizing, at 46, I still didn’t know how to feed myself. When I’d moved to New York City 25 years ago, my mother had written out recipes for simple meals on pastel-colored index cards. I’d used them as bookmarks, and ate fig bars for dinner.

I can bake, but I’m not a good cook. I don’t enjoy it. As a child, my family went to very few restaurants. My mom made every meal and my father would, as he wiped his mouth with a napkin, sigh: “Who needs restaurants when your mother is such a good cook?” (My mom, that’s who.)

I love restaurants. I love prettily prepared food from delis, pre-cubed cheese, supermarket sushi in tidy rows, and salads stuffed into domed bowls with little cups of dressing. I love the sandwiches in grab and go places, cut diagonally and displayed, their fillings like cleavage, on the chilled shelves. I love small leather-bound bar menus and bowls of nuts. I love making toast. I love trail mix.

By June I had reluctantly cooked, for my daughter and myself, four fish pies and 22 plates of spaghetti. 30 simple rocket salads, and 25 bowls of maple-cinnamon oatmeal. I’d made dishes like kedgeree, cheesy pasta bakes, layered casseroles where everything was heaped into one pan, one bowl, one dish. I tried making soup, once, and cut myself chopping leeks. I made four disappointing versions of a pastry-crusted Dijon slice from my favorite café in London, and five bowls of garlicky babaganoush from my favorite Lebanese restaurant cookbook. I had never really cooked at home. My ex-husband was the foodie. When we divorced I went to town, very literally, on diner food.

Without that option, I craved the food of my childhood. The British call it nursery food, (who has a nursery?) but I call it… Canadian. A mix of lumberjack stodge and comforting immigrant dishes from “back home” (meaning – considering my suburban nursery school – The Dominican Republic, Poland, the Ukraine, the Philippines, Italy, Ireland, basically the Roman-Catholic diaspora). I craved fluorescent yellow Jamaican patties, donuts, food with English and French-language packaging. Farine de Blé, biscuit d’erable. I remembered a snack my best friend and I called “lune moons:” the bilingual run-on moniker we gave a semi-circle of chocolate cake full of cream. One day, using my stimulus check, I splurged on two dozen St.Viateur bagels Fedexed from Montreal.

But what I missed, really, was Canada. Being stuck in my apartment, I longed for home. I couldn’t travel there with my daughter, despite our citizenships. So from New York I made goopy Nanaimo bars over FaceTime with another Canadian in LA, I thawed the precious Coffee Crisp chocolate bar in my freezer and cut it up into tiny squares. I listened to CBC radio for clearer lockdown projections and guidelines. Then I put Joni on Spotify.

We listened to her as we crafted and cleaned and made forts in the living room. We sung along to Blueas the rioting began in Union Square and the protesters marched along my block. I hummed to Hejira as my landlady threatened me with eviction and tweeted furiously about “the China virus.” As June waxed, the trees turned a deeper green, and I listened to The Hissing of Summer Lawns. I ached for a lawn.[…]