I’m reading The Dirty Life (as well as The Best American Short Stories of 1994) which is actually about cooking shallots in heavy cream (and also farming). I don’t know if I recommend it or not, but we’re here at the very beginning of winter with unseasonably lovely spring weather and markets full of mealy apples (I dry them) and cabbage (which I’m learning to love), and I’m reading this lovely book about shallots and cream and homemade stock and I go and eat a boxed roast beast sandwich, because hey, free lunch, and I know I’m doing it wrong but I do it anyway and live with the regrets. It didn’t even taste good. So for dinner I’m having cocoa.

I’m working on a manifesto (not my first) that I think starts with everything you put in your body should be amazing. Nourish yourself. Also, forgive yourself, which I promise to do should I ever actually digest my lunch, which wasn’t even nasty it was just too much not that great roast beef. But if an animal is going to die for your lunch it should not taste mediocre.