Once I read More Home Cooking, though, my attitude toward meal preparation began to shift. I still threw dinner parties, but they grew smaller and less elaborate; I took to heart Colwin’s idea that the perfect-food aspect was less important than the simple yet meaningful act of bringing people together to eat. In the first chapter of More Home Cooking, she writes: “We must march into the kitchen, en famille or with a friend, and find some easy, heartwarming things to make from scratch, and even if it is but once a week, we must gather at the table, alone or with friends or with lots of friends or with one friend, and eat a meal together. We know that without food we would die. Without fellowship life is not worth living.” Here, at last, were clear, simple orders I could follow.
The notion of fellowship struck a
