There was a time I questioned if leaving the Big Apple for San Diego was wise.

Sure, the weather here is incomparable, and who can complain about the idea of being stretched out on a blanket at the shore while back East they’re shoveling their cars out of the snow?

That was all factored in when we made the big move, but there’s one thing I hadn’t anticipated, the issue I always took for granted:

New York’s fabulous food.

I got used to walking into the neighborhood shop back there for the fabulous fare.

Like the world’s best pizza.

Or visiting the local deli for a hot brisket sandwich or perhaps eggplant parmigiana smothered with homemade tomato sauce.

Or I might call upon the corner bagel shop for a dozen — still warm — assorted treasures. Then I’d walk next door to the deli for fresh cream cheese and some thinly sliced Nova Scotia lox to complement the bagels.

Occasionally, I’d enter the popular local pastry shop where you could buy its famous strudel, or sfogliatelle, zeppole, pignoli, cream-filled Napoleon, or cannoli stuffed with sweetened ricotta and chocolate chips.

Or maybe I’d go to Junior’s on Flatbush Avenue where you could purchase one of their famous cheesecakes.

Back there it was easy to frequent the many meat markets, pastry shops, cheese stores, Italian, German, Greek, Spanish or Asian delis.

Or Pastosa, the popular pasta shop where the owners created their signature ravioli.

Here, it’s next to impossible to find such specialty stores, the ones crammed with all those succulent staples. If they’re around, they’re scarce and many miles apart.

So I had to settle for whatever limited options they offered at the local supermarket.

It was a sacrifice I had trouble swallowing.

I was faced with a choice: Give up the sun, the sea and the sand and move back to New York, or learn how to prepare those treasures myself.

Enter Julia Child, the famous cookbook author and TV celebrity. She was offering a class on pastry-making at the Mandell Weiss Theatre at UC San Diego some four decades ago.

She taught me and the enthusiastic crowd how to make puff pastry, the butter-filled sensation used to create that extraordinary French perfection known as a pithivier.

The dough is repeatedly folded before being filled with almond paste.

It’s a pastry I never saw in those famous New York bakeries.

I was determined to make it at home. It’s a two-day operation because the sheets of dough have to be frequently refrigerated, preferably overnight, in order to keep the butter from softening.

The pastry is rolled thin and letter folded sufficient times to produce a total of 729 layers. Then it’s packed with that almond paste, an operation that first requires boiling the almonds, removing the skins, then turning them into a paste in the food processor as it’s combined with powdered sugar, egg white and almond extract.

The pastry is cut into circles, loaded with that almond paste, sealed, then placed on a baking sheet, brushed with egg wash, and finally etched with a razor to form spiral grooves before it’s baked and inflates into a golden ethereal confection.

Thank you, Julia, for helping me cement my decision to stay here, where I continue to create my own pithiviers, pizza, pastries and pasta in paradise.

Erdos is a freelance humor columnist. Contact him at irverdos@aol.com.