So the end may be a long time coming, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have a way of sneaking up on you.

Metz's Perfection chronicles with lapidary precision one woman's climb back to happiness after not just a spouse's death, but also the shocking recognition that her life before that death was not what she had thought it was. The journey is a painful one, but Ms. Metz is much the stronger for having survived to recount it.

Cooking saved my life! Sure, there were some miserable moments, but that was sort of the point, to find something challenging and consuming enough to take a place in the center of my life into which was creeping a horrible feeling of stasis and the doom of mediocrity.

Maybe I needed to make like a potato, winnow myself down, be part of something that was not easy, just simple.

So the end may be a long time coming, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have a way of sneaking up on you.

If there's a sexier sound on this planet than the person you're in love with cooing over the crepes you made for him, I don't know what it is.

Two years ago, I was a twenty-nine year old secretary. Now I am a thirty-one year old writer. I get paid very well to sit around in my pajamas and type on my ridiculously fancy iMac, unless I'd rather take a nap. Feel free to hate me -- I certainly would.