I haven't written about cooking for quite a while, but that doesn't mean I haven't been in the kitchen. Earlier this week, for various meals, I made kale soup, shrimp etouffee, a salad of roasted Brussel sprouts and mandarin oranges, and a pumpkin buttermilk pudding. Last night I made baked tofu with soba noodles and vegetables: as you can see in the photo, with carrots, wild mushrooms, cabbage, red onion, and scallions. For dessert I put together a peach cobbler, using fruit my friend Angela had processed and frozen over the summer.

Winter cooking is not as divine as cooking from the kitchen garden, but it still has many charms. A freezer full of wild mushrooms is one beautiful constraint. All of that frozen kale is another. Though my autumn tomato sauce is now gone, I've still got lots of my own dried herbs, quarts of homemade stock, fish from the market down on the pier, as well as top-quality lamb from Angela's daughter at Maplemont Farm in Vermont.

As yesterday's snowstorm petered into streetlit flurries, I thawed peaches and julienned carrots and diced cabbage, and I thought about the many years, day in and out, that my hands and thoughts have narrowed down to the late-day task of making a meal for my people. Among all of my routine and endless chores, cooking is the one that I most love . . . though I would hate to work in a restaurant or for pay. I am the epitome of the home cook: small-scale, plain-skilled, trying to do the best I can--taste-, nutrition, and beauty-wise-- with the materials at hand.

Nonetheless, being the household's primary cook is a point of pride and identity. I love to plan meals. I love to grow meals. I love to arrange food on a plate. I love filling the house with the scent of dinner. I love crisply folded cloth napkins, and neatly laid silverware, and ice cubes clinking in the water glasses. We light candles for dinner every night, except in high summer. I love the slight formality of our dinners together. I love giving a meal as a gift, every single night.