It's just a dying romance.

I've decided it is impossible to be in a bad mood when partaking of ripe summer nectarines. Mmm. Every week I go to the local farmer's market and pick up my produce for the week, and every week I am delighted to discover something new and delicious. This week I met a vendor selling "Super Sweet and Ugly Peaches" - made me laugh. Talk about truth in advertising! It's no secret I've gone back to my vegetarian ways, much easier to do in summer when the produce is abundant and not so easy to do the rest of the year when I can't rely on the traditional staples - legumes, soy, etc. because of having to limit my protein intake.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am well into the slow food movement. I was a disciple of Alice Waters and her ilk long before it was fashionable to be so. Watching the growth of this movement has pleased me. I was thinking about my food influences recently and this is what I concluded:

Thomas Keller is a genius, an inspiration and an Icon, Alice Waters and Mollie Katzen have had the most influence on how I shop and how I cook on a daily basis - but Peter Reinhart is my god.

In the 1918 edition of The Boston Cooking-School Cook Book, Fannie Farmer wrote,

"BREAD is the most important article of food, and history tells of its use thousands of years before the Christian era . . . The study of bread making is of no slight importance, and deserves more attention than it receives.

Considering its great value, it seems unnecessary and wrong to find poor bread on the table; and would that our standard might be raised as high as that of our friends across the water ! Who does not appreciate the loaf produced by the French baker, who has worked months to learn the art of bread making?"

When a certain person (who shall remain nameless) first moved over here, his quest for "proper bread" was seemingly endless. I myself received many a queer look from people when I stood in bakery aisles poking loaves of bread trying to find one with a proper crust. (Neither one of us ever succeeded in the quest, by the way.) So, I bake. Fair enough, I did study culinary arts - so it would be appalling if I didn't, but that's not the point at all.

According to Fannie, "Bread is made from flour of wheat, or other cereals, by addition of water, salt, and a ferment." There's no polysorbate 60 or 80, propylene glycol or corn syrup in that list.

I understand the appeal of convenience, but at what cost?