Food, not Torture (for a change)

Someone I don't know left a real, and very nice, comment on Biscuit, after which, as is customary, I visited his site. And I found this lovely thought in an essay he wrote about why he cooks:

The sharing of food distinguishes conversation from confrontation, discussion from argument, and the relaxed exchange of impressions from debate. The pleasure of good talk is one that I prefer to take in the shade of a good pretext, and nothing beats dining for keeping the hands busy and the mind idling along nicely – excepting, of course, smoking, which I’m not about to take up again. The pleasure of tasty food harmonizes with the weighing and considering matters of personal taste that underlies all good talk. Nothing invigorates me more than a good conversation launched at the table.

He goes on to talk about why going out to eat, ordering in, and frozen food are all inadequate for this purpose; hence, the only solution is to cook 'from scratch' (a term I find hilarious -- my uncle once praised me a as a gourmet cook because I made spaghetti sauce 'from scratch'. My brother, on the other hand, takes points away for 'scratch cooking', but mushy green beans on a school cafeteria tray loom large in his memory of fabulous foods, so he can justly be ignored regarding such matters).

Anyway, this reminded me that I forgot to mention cooking in myprevious post about local agriculture and the food supply. What good is fresh, local food, if you can't cook something tasty with it? If you don't know what to do with fresh food, get a copy of Mark Bittman's How To Cook Everything. Ignore the rest of the HTCE series, I believe they're just a marketing ploy. I love what Bittman says in his introduction, and think I shall post it above my stove:

Striving for brilliance in everyday cooking is a recipe for frustration. Rather, everyday cooking is about preparing good, wholesome, tasty, varied meals for the ones you love. This is a simple, satisfying pleasure. Your results need not be perfect to give you this gift, to which all humans are entitled.