Visiting hours at Henry Ford Hospital didn’t start until noon. For whatever reason the thought of three ruthless punks on their way to kill me felt less urgent than taking Tatina to Eastern Market, the largest and one of the oldest public market districts in the US, where the city mixed and mingled as people searched for the perfect fresh zucchini, heirloom tomatoes, apple butter, handmade seasonal wreaths or specialized vendor treats such as individually prepared mole and barbeque sauces. Thousands of aromas from the world’s dinner table permeated the air, even after hours: saffron and cinnamon from Vietnam and Thailand, halal lamb and fish, kosher beef and kugel, roasted peanuts and cashews.

A couple summers earlier I’d taken Tatina to Vivio’s, one of my favorite Eastern Market restaurant haunts, a neighborhood-style bar and grill where suburbanites and urban folk sat shoulder to shoulder, hunched over huge sandwiches, arguing sports stats, laughing at bad jokes and washing down their muffalettas, spicy buffalo wings and lobster rolls with a variety of ridiculously large Bloody Marys. (Try the Stacked Bloody Mary, the only drink where roasted asparagus, celery and a kosher dill peacefully coexist with a strip of thick-sliced applewood bacon.) We’d had tickets to see some rap musical about one of America’s slave-holding founding fathers. We missed the play, opting rather to enjoy a few more Bloody Marys. Tatina gave some new friends free how-to-cuss-in-Norwegian language lessons.

Today, though, we were on a shopping mission.

“Aren’t you concerned those men might try to hurt you?” Tatina said, inspecting a stalk of broccoli.

“Naw,” I said. “Murderers don’t eat vegetables.”

By ten o’clock that morning, Tatina had filled the house with the warm and seductively spicy aroma of Moroccan lentil and chickpea soup. While I usually enjoy being the XO in my own kitchen, I didn’t mind at all taking the position of sous-chef (chopping celery; measuring cinnamon, coriander, cumin, paprika and rice; chopping onions and draining chickpeas).

Halfway through cooking, I teasingly said, “You’re sure you know what you’re doing?” She raised her wooden spoon out of the simmering soup and made a threatening gesture with it. “Just checkin’,” I said.

Since it was going to be a big pot, I braised about three pounds of diced lamb (modest seasoning of salt and pepper, splashes of beef broth) until the chunks were medium rare. Their time in the soup would slowly cook them through while infusing them with the mixture’s warm, zesty flavor.

We ladled six servings of the Moroccan soup into a large Tupperware container and, with paper bowls, plastic spoons and festive paper napkins, headed out to visit Tomás.

“You should think about getting a winter car,” Tatina said, throwing a lightning-fast verbal jab into the solar plexus of my ego, my beloved Olds 442.

“You drive a MINI Cooper,” I reminded her.