COVID-19 has robbed us of pleasures both big and small. So author Rachel Khong decided to create “Chez Raché’s” in her own home, as a minor defense against major grief.

It’s a time of minor disappointments that we don’t feel right feeling, because they don’t compare to the vastness and ubiquity of the world’s suffering. My husband, Eli, had a trip to France scheduled for the end of March. When it became clear that he couldn’t go, we joked that I could cook a French meal for him as consolation. My own minor disappointment was that I’d been looking forward to going to a writers’ residency for the month of April—one of those residencies where I would be cooked for—and it was canceled. We joked that, instead, I could shut myself in the bedroom, and Eli could leave picnic basket lunches at the door.

I took my French meal assignment seriously. I emailed a Google calendar invite for 7:15 p.m. on a Wednesday. (He RSVP’d yes.) I considered the ingredients we had on hand: a frozen package of beef stew meat; carrots and cardoons that had come in our farm box. His trip was supposed to have taken him to Lille, in Northern France, where a Belgian beef-and-beer stew called carbonnade flamande is popular. I could roughly approximate it if I swapped in our last two cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon for Belgian ale.

I painted, in watercolor, a menu for Chez Raché’s (which I realized, after the fact, should have correctly been “Chez Raché,” but didn’t have the energy to repaint). And on the night of, I lit candles and played music: “La Vie En Rose” and Spotify’s “French Bistro” playlist. Making his way over from the bedroom to the kitchen, Eli wore a coat jacket, button-down shirt, and wingtip shoes. (He immediately shed the jacket because: comfort.) We clinked our wine glasses together. Dessert was “pepites de chocolate,” which Google Translate told me meant “chocolate chips.” I presented them in a glass dish.