I Heart Mark

Let me just clarify something for the listening audience. All three of you. It's not really that I love to cook; I simply love food. Fresh food. Local food. Real food. And in this day and age, if you want real food, you've gotta cook.

Or do you?

See, Mark Bittman understands me. Never met him? Allow me to introduce you right here. You can thank me later. #14, #53, and #90 have me especially excited in ways I choose not to explain further.

This is my kind of cooking. Fast and fresh meals, a paragraph recipe instead of a page, celebrating the best of the season, and not a single can of cream of mushroom soup in sight. It's because of articles like this that my copy of his cookbook How To Cook Everything is dog-eared and covered in splatters, while my Joy of Cooking remains pristine.

You see, Mark understands that I don't have a/c, so I don't want to heat up the oven and bake a casserole in July.

Mark understands that there are a million and one things I want to do outside right now, and stirring a pot of risotto for 45 mins didn't make the list.

Mark understands that I want to spend the dinner hour lounging on the sunny back porch with my sweetie, not basting a turkey.

So here's to a summer of fresh, seasonal, slapdash cooking. Grab it out of the garden, chop, season, serve, dine, laugh, and enjoy these precious golden drops called summer.