secrets

When my birthday gift certificate to Amazon covered the price of a long-anticipated cookbook with a few dollars left over, I bought a used copy of Thomas McNamee's authorized biography of Alice Waters and Chez Panisse. Although the story seemed better for the characters in it than for the telling of it, I read it compulsively. It even fueled a cooking binge, complete with olive oil bread, boiled kale, tempeh tacos, and projections for shortcakes dressed with locally-foraged berries. Not all in the same meal, of course. Last night, however, I dreamed in vivid detail that I kept trying to order, unsuccessfully, a chicken sandwich from McDonald's.