Thank you, fellow cooks, for yesterday's fine suggestion. I decided to make chapathi, and I rolled them out on parchment and then cooked them on the new stove, and everything worked beautifully. I wondered how well the breads would puff up over an electric element (I've always used gas), but, in fact, they turned out far better on this stove than they did on my old one. I quickly baked each chapathi on a griddle, then flipped it onto a spatter screen and shook it over high heat for about 30 seconds, until it ballooned. And then Tom and I stood around in the kitchen and ate them hot with a salad made of cucumbers, yogurt, salt, and roasted mustard seeds and cumin. And then we adjourned to the dining room, where I served the remaining chapathi (kept warm in the stove's handy warming drawer) with what might be the best chicken curry I've ever concocted (ingredients: onions, diced chicken breast, diced potatoes parboiled in broth, coconut milk, homemade garam masala, chili paste, turmeric, fenugreek, spinach, cilantro, parsley, split cherry tomatoes, served over jasmine rice cooked in the leftover potato broth).

Today, there will be no such dinner as I'll have to rush off to teach the first class in my ten-week essay workshop, and Tom will rush off to attend an opening at the Portland Museum of Art that features a glorious birchbark canoe built by our friend Steve Cayard and the late David Moses Bridges. I'm feeling more and more excited about this workshop, but I am sorry to miss the opening. You should go, if you can.