A person cooking is a person giving. Even the simplest food is a gift.

There is nothing like soup. It is by nature eccentric: no two are ever alike, unless of course you get your soup in a can.

On Saturday mornings I would walk to the Flavor Cup or Puerto Rico Importing coffee store to get my coffee. Often it was freshly roasted and the beans were still warm. Coffee was my nectar and my ambrosia: I was very careful about it. I decanted my beans into glass...and I ground them in little batches in my grinder.

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.

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

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

It is a fact of life that people give dinner parties, and when they invite you, you have to turn around and invite them back. Often they retaliate by inviting you again, and you must then extend another invitation. Back and forth you go, like Ping-Pong balls, and what you end up with is called social life.