This holiday season had rather strange bookends—in December, a couple of weeks before Christmas, my husband, Clif, fell down the front steps and broke his wrist. At the other end, on New Year’s Day, when our daughter Dee, who lives in New York, was slated to leave Portland by Concord bus, we learned that the station was closed because of a bomb threat. What to do? How would she get home?

In between, there were snow storms and good movies—The Hobbit, Les Misérables, Argo, Hitchcock, The Queen of Versailles, and Ai Weiwei: Never Sorry. We saw some of the movies at the cinema and some at home.

There were also gatherings with friends—one at our daughter Shannon’s house, where we had tacos with pulled pork, beans, and zucchini and mushrooms. Man oh man do I love this dish. We were joined by our friends Bob and Kate, whom we don’t see nearly as often as we would like. (They live out of state.)

On New Year’s Eve, our friends Joel and Alice came over, and I made Marjorie Standish’s oven-cooked beef stew. This is one of my favorite ways of making beef stew. Somehow, the slow cooking in the oven—at 300 degrees—gives this stew a terrific taste that just can’t be replicated in a cockpot. As we don’t eat beef very often, this hearty, homey stew is a real treat for us. I also made a lentil soup, from a recipe in Arthritis magazine, for Dee, who is a vegetarian. Unfortunately, this soup, while edible, was not as tasty as I had hoped.

“It’s best to stick with Moosewood,” Dee advised, and of course she is right. Still, it is good to try new recipes from time to time, even if they don’t always turn out the way you might want.

What else did we eat? On Christmas Eve, a cheddar cheese soup, with broccoli and tortellini. On Christmas Day, stuffed shells using a recipe from Cook’s, but more important, using Sorento ricotta cheese. Most ricotta is bland beyond endurance, and before I made the shells, I had Clif do some ricotta research, something he could do easily with a broken wrist. His findings? Most commercial ricottas—including Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s brands—are bland beyond endurance. Clif’s research indicated Sorento ricotta is an exception. Very good advice! With Sorento ricotta—a little sweet, a little tangy, and smooth—those stuffed shells were real gems.

And what about Dee? Did she make it out of Portland on New Year’s Day, despite the bomb threat? She did indeed. By the time her bus was scheduled to leave, the station had been thoroughly searched and no bombs were found. Dee’s bus left right on time.

In the parking lot was a camera man from one of the news stations—ABC, I think.

“Is the excitement over?” I asked as he began disassembling his camera.

“All over,” he said. “It was some homeless man with a knapsack. But no bomb.”

Well, thank goodness for that! What a strange, often scary world we live in. What to do but go forth as bravely as we can and take comfort in our friends and families, our soups, movies, and stuffed shells? Yes, I know there are many other things we can and should do, but most people can manage the small, homely acts that include generosity and the opening of their homes. To borrow from a science phrase, perhaps it is not sufficient, but it seems to me it is necessary.