When I need comfort food, Mujadara is my Mac & Cheese. This Middle Eastern lentil and rice dish is fragrant with cumin, allspice and cayenne, topped with caramelized onions and parsley.

Because I have more time to be finicky these days, I ended up drawing from three recipes. These two from Melissa Clark for the cooking:

And this one from Food52 for the spiced yogurt topping https://food52.com/recipes/8565-mujaddara-with-spiced-yogurt

Following our Dinner and a Movie routine, my daughter suggested The Shining. The premise seemed particularly apt for these quarantine times – – a family is isolated in a hotel by a snowstorm, just as we and thousands of other families are isolated in our home by a virus.

We could relate.

We warned her it would be scary but she insisted, and we made it through the first half. But when Jack Nicholson began to unravel and his son Danny showed up with strangle marks on his neck, Sofia switched over to The Great British Bake Off.

There’s only so much crazy we can deal with right now, and to be honest, I’d rather eat cake.