Imagine your single guy friends’ house. Bikes in every corner, laundry piled up on the coffee table, lawn chairs in the living room, empty pizza boxes stacked on the top of the fridge, labe-free beer bottles littering the counter next to the “pizza cheese” packets, something resembling ranch dressing in the fridge (with a 2006 expiration date), and a big hairy dog who barks low when you ring the doorbell. The dog and your friend smell the same.

Every kitchen holds a cache of herbs and spices. This kitchen fingerprint defines the resident cook. Each collection differs, sometimes reflecting nationality, or, more often, a family’s history and sense of adventure.

I used to lie in a hammock under a lilac tree, swinging and thinking about my grown up food life, and whether I could have a farm. I wanted clucking chickens that would lay fresh eggs, a brown spotted cow to milk, furry sheep to shave for sweaters, and chubby pigs for bacon that would be made in the smoker my husband would fashion from some scrap lumber. I would compost and use the output in my vegetable garden. I would wear a bonnet.

Gone is the old admonition of salting only seconds before cooking a steak. Today, restaurant chefs and home cooks alike are using salts and rubs in a dizzying array of techniques to create sumptuous flavors.

“Without salt,
there is no end to blandness.”
—Chinese proverb

I sit in the warmth of a baywindow, sunlight dancing in, and talk to the father of Stone House Café, Paul Abowd. The comfort of the old house turned café is as intoxicating as the meals served next to me. His large brown eyes twinkle as he re-caps sixty years of culinary adventure. San Francisco coffee shops and nightclub dining in Oakland are a few of the many restaurant endeavors brought to life by Paul and his late wife, Adele; also among them, located in Carson City, is her namesake restaurant, Adele’s, now owned by their son, Charlie Abowd, another talented restaurateur.

We drove and drove—past two accidents, past construction cones funneling traffic into curvy pathways, past lines of cars containing commuters, nicely making room for others to go first, but impatiently waving for people to move it. Please!

Any chef worth her salt can tell you that great cooking follows many time-honored basic traditions and techniques. One of those basics is knife skills. I find that this is one area of the kitchen where people have the amount of confidence I wish for them. It’s important to learn how to use your knife, as well as how to buy and care for a good knife.

“I have a piece of mahimahi and a mango. Can I make dinner with that?”

“I have a bag of chard and a potato. What can I make with that? What if I use a can of white beans with this? Is that dinner?” I used to get such weekly cell-phone calls at around 5:30 p.m. from my single friend Katie. Then Katie got married, and the calls started coming more often.

Good Food: the hope is that this term is defined by eatables that are not only good tasting but also good for your health. In an effort to promote this idea, the new USDA food pyramid has an outline for this good food movement. On the list: grains. The USDA suggests that half of all the grains you eat daily be whole.