Pink of Perfection

I have two parents who don’t care much about food. My mother could live on tea and toast smeared thick with butter and be perfectly content, while my father earned the nickname The Red Tornado early in life for tearing through a meal as fast as those funneling winds can sweep across West Texas. How then, did these two produce such a produce-swooner, cookbook-reader, and eager-to-serve hostess?

It could have been those melancholic, rainy fall months in Italy where I tasted my first wild boar sausage and clutched big bowls of cafe lattes with both hands. Or perhaps it was the vacation I took with my sister, both of us heartbroken and in France for the first time, drunk on foie gras and champagne. Or was it working at the best job I’ve known for a chef with a deep appreciation for sunny lunches, Algerian wine, and beautiful women? It was all those things, of course. But most instructive of all was the vibrant orange book spine that caught my eye at the local library three summers ago. Will you be patient with me as I take you back there?

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