Wow.

Move over An Everlasting Meal (which is still a great book), this is my favorite book on cooking.

This is going to be a short review because I don't have much to say: I think Capon is a tremendous writer, I think his arguments and prose are beautiful and compelling, and I think he changed my behavior and the way I look at the world for the better. This writing is inventive, sincere, and divine.

I'm going to go out and make some noodles this week!

★★★★★

Highlights

Why do we marry, why take friends and lovers? Why give ourselves to music, painting, chemistry or cooking? Out of simple delight in the resident goodness of creation, of course; but out of more than that, too. Half earth's gorgeousness lies hidden in the glimpsed city it longs to become.

What is good is difficult, and what is difficult is rare.

Paradox is the only basket large enough to hold truth.

If you take all your meals seriously, none of them gets a chance to matter.

One real thing is closer to God than all the diagrams in the world.

It isn't stubbornness. It's just that, once you've seen giants, you don't forget so easily.

As a nation, we drink the way we exercise: too little and too hard.

Things are precious before they are contributory.

This is no time for cost-counters: It is time to be very rich or very poor - or both at once.