Oh this is great - and I'm gratified to hear I'm asking good questions! :D It's really useful to hear about the sorts of things you can do without going to the synagogue, and also, yeah, the idea of Joel celebrating Shabbat alone being a bit sad sort of fits with how he is at the beginning of the story.

Is there a middle ground with eating out, I wonder? Reading over the rules of kosher, I can see why keeping kosher while eating in a non-Jewish restaurant is basically impossible, but might some people, for example, decide to eat vegetarian food when they are eating out, to avoid some of the problems with meat not having been slaughtered in the proper way, for example?