The best way to eat crabs, as everyone knows, is off newspaper at a large table with a large number of people.

In this world of uncertainty and woe, one thing remains unchanged: Fresh, canned, pureed, dried, salted, sliced, and served with sugar and cream, or pressed into juice, the tomato is reliable, friendly, and delicious. We would be nothing without it.

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.

That family glaze of common references, jokes, events, calamities-that sense of a family being like a kitchen midden: layer upon layer of the things daily life is made of. The edifice that lovers build is by comparison delicate and one-dimensional.

And, for an unsurpassed double whammy, there is talking about eating while you are eating with friends.

To feel safe and warm on a cold wet night, all you really need is soup.

People who like to cook like to talk about food....without one cook giving another cook a tip or two, human life might have died out a long time ago.