For the socially timid, the kitchen is the place to be. At least, it is a place to start.

The sharing of food is the basis of social life, and to many people it is the only kind of social life worth participating in.

No one who cooks, cooks alone. Even at her most solitary, a cook in the kitchen is surrounded by generations of cooks past, the advice and menus of cooks present, the wisdom of cookbook writers.

Lentils are friendly - the Miss Congeniality of the bean world.

The old days were slower. People buttered their bread without guilt and sat down to dinner en famille.

There is really a je ne sais quoi about turkey cooking - the air of festivity, the family squabbles, the constant basting - that does not apply to the turkey breast, which is, really, a convenience of food... A turkey without seasonal angst is like a baseball game without a national anthem, a winter without snow, a birthday party without candles.

I will never eat fish eyeballs, and I do not want to taste anything commonly kept as a house pet, but otherwise I am a cinch to feed.