I didn’t cook much over the weekend because I was working on posting the Pete Wells interview and packing to move. I managed to make chicken stock with a pair of carcasses from the very back of the freezer, though, and while the stock simmered on the stove, I went through our books.

If the Strand Book Store in Manhattan famously has 18 miles of books, we have what feels like something close. Santa Maria and I started boxing them up, and I got sidetracked with one from my college days, a yellowed paperback copy of “The Portable Nietzsche.”

This, from “Thus Spoke Zarathustra," caught my eye: “Marriage: thus I name the will of two to create the one that is more than those who created it. … It is a torch that should light up higher paths for you.” *

I couldn’t have agreed more, but later I came across a Nietzsche quote about food that made me question his judgment (maybe he spouted it after he’d begun his slide into insanity): “A diet consisting primarily of rice leads to the use of opium and narcotics, just as a diet consisting primarily of potatoes leads to the use of liquor.”

(The second Nietzche quote is from “What the Great Ate: A Curious History of Food and Fame,” by Matthew Jacob and Mark Jacob.)