Our memories of food at home seem most often linked to our mothers, or our grandmothers. Learning that yeast needs warm water, why you need to cook the flour in a sauce, and how to smell when things are done – this is all distinctly maternal wisdom.

But my father was a gardener, and I can’t taste a late-August field tomato without thinking of him thickly slicing our backyard bounty for our summer suppers. For about a month every year, there was a plate of tomatoes and a plate of cucumbers on the table nearly every night. You could eat as much of both as you liked. » Read the rest of this entry «













