"On the Menu" (Nov. 2008)

The first hard frost has put a bitter end to a long gardening season. The cornucopia of peppers and tomatoes is snugly preserved in the freezer, and the shortening days seem to instill in me a heightened passion for cooking, with olive oil instead of shortening of course. Beef stew on a chilly Sunday afternoon, homemade pizza for Monday Night football with the girls, or messing with a new idea from an online recipe or one of the many cookbooks we've acquired over the years - they all do lead to eating, which is a delight unto itself.

To me, cooking is a lot like making music. Improvisation with ingredients and recipes is similar to improvising within an established musical structure. And while hopefully you manage to record your successes to be enjoyed again in either forum, there is a magic and mystery about the process.

The stove is busy here when I am home from the road, though it is quite a contrast to make a mix of things interesting and delectable to the adult palate while also combining two or three ingredients into a nutritious but seemingly tasteless baby mush (come on molars!). Nonetheless, I am grateful for Madeleine's enthusiasm for eating, and hope that her palate will develop with a sense of adventure at least partially simpatico to ours.

This month does begin the season of big cooking. Whether you're destined for turkey or tofurkey, zesty combinations of unusual ingredients or a safe bland mush, I hope that you get some joy in the preparation as well as the consumption. I'm pretty sure that's not what was intended in the old truism about the journey and not the destination, but it works for me.

Finally, we Americans are about to exercise our hard-fought right to choose our leadership for the next four years. No doubt we are all suffering from campaign fatigue, as the length and expense of this one clearly would boggle the minds of the founding fathers. And no matter what happens, we are also clearly headed in a different direction.

May we choose wisely, but most of all, may we catch our breath together and meet each other where we have some common ground soon. There are winners and losers in elections, just like there are in life. May we find some compassion for those less fortunate, for there are more of them than there has been in a long time. May the loaves we bake in joy for the coming holidays also find their way to those hungry neighbors. Here's hoping that there is enough on the table for all of us in these coming days.