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.

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

When I was alone, I lived on eggplant, the stove top cook's strongest ally.

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

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

Dinner alone is one of life's pleasures.