Obligations

I enjoy reading and owning physical cookbooks.  I can spend hours in a bookstore running my fingers across glossy photographs of food, thumbing through pages of measurements and ingredients.  I also enjoy the small stories that come with them. Sometimes I crave the story more than the food.

Ina Garten, whose recipes have never failed me, wrote at the beginning of Barefoot Contessa: How Easy Is That? about dinner parties:

Your friends have come to see you -- not to critique your cooking skills.  I'm asked all the time, "How many hors d'oeuvres do I need to make before dinner?"  

"None," is my answer.

I think of this often.  Not only when it comes to cooking but when it comes to life.  Sometimes I ask too much of myself. I invent obligations. In sorting through what matters, sometimes I fail to see what doesn't.