Never thought I’d refer people to a sermon, but I guess I can get a little evangelical about the wonders of cooking. It’s the next most important thing to knowing how to read, I say. David Mudd says it more thoroughly here. David is James’s brother-in-law, and he thoughtfully emailed his absolutely hilarious and smart blow-by-blow accounts of cooking school while I was in Cairo in 1997 (back before people were so obsessed with the minutiae of cooking school, unfortunately, so he never got a book out of it). I happened to be doing a lot of cooking to save my GI tract from the ravages of Cairene cuisine (see, cooking is verrrrry useful), so among other things, I learned how to make onion soup from those emails. David now lives in West Virginia and writes occasionally for the Washington Post. They could use more of him—I just got through reading half of the most vapid story about wedding cakes.