"What the caterpillar calls the end of life, wise men call a butterfly."

What was it like before the microwave oven? Before the cast iron stove? What was it like to cook in a hearth that was 6 feet wide, 6 feet tall and 4 feet deep?

When was the last time you baked an apple or had an apple pie for breakfast? Ralph Waldo Emerson would have had a morning apple pie as his breakfast. Samuel Clemens recalled apples baked at the hearth as a treat that made "old people's old tales and old jokes sound fresh and crisp and enchanting." I wish I could write like them. I wish I could really learn to cook.

I'd like to learn to cook not as a restaurant chief but as a home cook that can handle any style whether it's Tex-Mex, Chinese, French, Italian, Japanese, whatever, and can do it in such a way that people beg for an invite to breakfast, lunch or dinner. Come on over, enjoy the smells coming out of the kitchen, help me peel the potatoes and stir whatever is simmering on the stove.

I've been talking to a lot of students and they don't sit down with other people and enjoy a meal together. They don't cook. They don't hang out in the kitchen. They nuke frozen food and boot up their laptop so they can IM friends that are either two doors away or on the other side of the world.

For breakfast tomorrow, maybe I'll make fried cornmeal mush with sorghum syrup, or maybe red flannel hash, or maybe even So. Carolina shrimp and grits. Anything but frozen waffles or CoCo Krispies has got to be an improvement.