This is arriving in your inbox while I’m on the road once again, on my way to Portland, Oregon, to be in conversation with Soleil Ho for Roux, a food conference. My recent travels, from Baltimore to New York to Wisconsin, accounted for much of my documented eating, to the point that this could’ve been just a missive about airport, plane, and Amtrak cuisine. But I wouldn’t do that to you, so there are cooking recommendations here as well. Here’s my eating, cooking, and drinking for the last month.

Do I recommend taking a first-class Amtrak ride from Baltimore to New York? No, but I couldn’t really resist the possibility: I fell victim to the same runaway imagination as one Carrie Bradshaw on Sex and the City, when she assures Samantha their cross-country railway trip will be the stuff of old Hollywood movies and it is decidedly not. Thankfully this was a much shorter trip, but there is so much lost in our national rail system by not providing the glamour of our fantasies (as well as not providing high speeds nor much more accessibility, but… I’d take a tinge of charm, at the very least). The menu offered little in the way of vegetarian options—crackers, cheese, cherry jam—and the only gin was Bombay Sapphire, which I despise, so I didn’t even have a train martini. I am trying to create content, here! (I spent the entire time writing the first draft of a long essay in my Notes app, so it served that purpose, at least.)