A collection of essays on cooking and eating for one by twenty-six top writers and foodies reveals its contributors' most cherished or private comfort-food practices, from Haruki Murakami's enjoyment of spaghetti and Nora Ephron's consolation of a broken heart with mashed potatoes in bed to Marcella Hazan's enjoyment of a simple grilled ham-and-cheese sandwich. In this celebration of the meal for one, Ferrari-Adler connects short essays from a diverse set of writers recounting solitary suppers and reflecting on the singular rewards and blissful consolation of indulging no one else's hungers but one's own. Marcella Hazan affirms this truth, noting that the single diner tends to disdain nutrition for comfort and familiarity, but without sinking into childhood formulations. Many of these writers address the specific challenges of cooking in the severely limited conditions presented by tiny Manhattan apartments. Laura Dave contends that in such cramped circumstances the conscientious cook learns never to prepare anything that may leave a lingering odor. Ann Patchett seems ultimately to reject the notion of dining alone, contending that feeding others is one of the most basic means of making human connections. In the few recipes recorded here, cheese figures prominently, from fine Gruyere through pedestrian cottage cheese. Knoblauch, Mark Jenni Ferrari-Adler is a graduate of Oberlin College and the University of Michigan, where she received an MFA in fiction. She has worked as a reader for The Paris Review , a bookseller, an egg-seller, and is an agent at Union Literary Agents. Her short fiction has been published in numerous magazines. You can follow her @JenFerrariAdler.