Maybe it’s the end-of-summer-something-blueish but I always feel a certain heightened sense of awareness this time of year–clouds gathering, the light slants a certain way, rendering the shadows long and myself longing…

What to do but take a bit of time out of the day to read Nigel Slater’s thoughts on something like a simple, quiet dinner preparation. You are probably familiar with his 2004 memoir, Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger. I also love Notes from the Larder: A Kitchen Diary with Recipes and The Kitchen Diaries: A Year in the Kitchen with Nigel Slater. Slater offers small prose poems as introductions, vignettes of a life well-cooked. In an interview with The Guardian, he offers some insight into how food was a refuge and a rare place of happiness.

Channeling Slater, I pushed my deadlines aside and allowed myself a quiet moment in the kitchen, using up the produce from the weekend’s farmers’ market.  Here’s my celebration of celery tips and parsley leaves.

And a few of Slater’s bits on cooking:

-“I still meet men who never, ever cook. They think it’s their wife’s job. They are living in the dark ages.”

-“People who are good cooks are often good in bed.”

-“The first bite of pizza is always the best. Ditto sip of cold beer.”