IT ONLY TOOK ME 35 YEARS TO CATCH ON

I came this close - this close I tell you! - to missing out on one of the best meals ever to come out of my kitchen. Oh, I had plenty of excuses not to cook tonight: I was too tired after driving back from Houston; I hadn't had a chance to go to the store yet; why go to all that trouble just for me? On the other hand, did I really want to go back into town to eat? Wasn't that just as much trouble as cooking?

Upon inspection, I discovered that the cupboard wasn't completely bare after all. I did have a few small red potatoes, and there was always my garlic braid. I had planned to make a Provencal Salad with the potatoes originally - the kind where you boil some slender green beans and some new potatoes, toss them in a nice Dijon vinaigrette dressing, then add some tuna, cherry tomatoes, Kalamata olives, capers, and wedges of hard-cooked egg. Unfortunately, I was missing the green beans, cherry tomatoes, and eggs. I did, however, have some sun-dried tomatoes, a jar of roasted red peppers and a little feta cheese. Hmm, I wonder? What would happen if, instead of just boiling the potatoes, I tossed them and some garlic cloves in a little olive oil and sea salt, and roasted them in the oven until they got tender on the inside, but brown and crispy on the outside, then tossed them in a homemade vinaigrette along with a bit of canned tuna, the Greek olives, roasted peppers, and feta... OMG! Heaven, that's what! And oh so easy. When I think of all the years I wasted, being chained to following recipes and never having the nerve to improvise, it just makes me want to cry.

You see, this is exactly what I was talking about here when I said that all of my favorite books about living the good life had a common thread running through them. Everyone from Ina Garten to Barbara Damrosch and Mereille Guiliano had told me that the key to cooking - and therefore living - well, is to cook with Seasonality (even if they didn't actually call it that). We must learn to cook from ingredients, rather than recipes, and the trick to pulling that off is to know just a handful of simple, basic recipes, that adapt easily to whatever ingredients are in season, fresh, or at hand. By jove, I think I've got it!