This book is not an attempt to say a new word in cooking, for all the gods I have learned will put up with me, to compete with the great cooks of past centuries and modernity. This is not a cookbook, although it is structured this way and almost every essay has a recipe, of which there are almost 600. This book is about how Food, being our fellow traveler, changes us, and we change it. And how these small changes become, at times, the most invaluable and quivering moments of our amazing life.