Unlike breakfast, lunch offers variety, but, in contrast to dinner, it tolerates repetition. I can measure my life in lunches: tepid ham-on-wheat sandwiches, gently curling like fortune-telling fish and infused with a weird hint of citrus from the clementine that inevitably accompanied them in my lunchbox (ages five through eighteen, North Carolina); vinegary barbecue, hush puppies, and a ten-cent York peppermint patty from a cardboard dispenser at Merritt’s (on the odd childhood day my mom had to take me to a doctor’s appointment); bagels with turkey, Swiss, and spicy mustard (ages eighteen through twenty-two, college); lamb-and-rice plates from halal carts, the Così salad with grapes and Gorgonzola (ages twenty-two through thirty, New York); the W.F.H.-er’s wild array of refrigerator forage, often topped with an egg and always followed by a cup of tea and two squares of dark chocolate (age thirty and on). And that’s leaving out weekend lunches—back-yard barbecues, dim-sum feasts, my own lunch wedding—which lend themselves to unhurried socializing and multigenerational exchange. Everyone’s awake; no one has to drive at night. Indulge by day, then take a walk or watch a movie.