The rice casserole was delicious, thanks to loads of garlic and fresh shiitake mushrooms from my new favorite mushroom farmer. Tomorrow, dairy kugel and fish for Shabbat dinner (still trying to use up the cottage cheese), plus an Earl Gray tea cake with chocolate and orange. The fish is my husband’s responsibility; he recently became a tilapia expert, after I bought 20 pounds in March from the same place that supplied the giant tub of cottage cheese.

I don’t have egg noodles for the kugel, so I’ll substitute bow tie pasta. Or cream for the cake’s frosting; we’ll make do with a slightly less fluffy topping.

Shabbat dinner requires dessert: peanut butter, chocolate or blueberry cake, brownies, apple turnovers, rhubarb crisp. The Earl Gray recipe is new.

We have been lighting Shabbat candles with my parents via Facetime. It’s a sweet way to end the week, though we can’t always get the angle of the iPad right. Sometimes they’re looking down at us, while other times all they can see is the overhead light. Still, we’re together in a manner of speaking, marking the beginning of Shabbat as we always have, with candles, challah and wine.

But I can’t help but wonder, how long till we can host them in our home, in person?

How long till they are seated side by side in front of the baker’s rack, the spot in our dining room where it is most difficult to get up from the table, which means they have to stay put and let the rest of us serve the soup and clear the dishes?

How long till I can hug my mother?

How long till I can sit next to my dad? Really next to him – not six feet away on the front porch?

I don’t know. So in the meantime, I bake. I sauté onions and mushrooms. I search for ways to use up cottage cheese.

It keeps me busy. And sometimes I don’t even cry.