basics to get started. In instructing readers on the art of intuitive cooking, Ms. Adler offers not just cooking lessons, but a recipe for simplifying life. However, if you can hold your nose, there are some pretty fine recipes buried here and there, some not in recipe format at all. Author Adler makes you work as much in reading as she would have you in making mayonnaise. (Just bring out the Kroger brand, thank you very much.) But I found it was worth it, making it a three-star read. She writes very conversationally, with a recipe scattered here and there. Here are the chapter headings with (my summary).

An Everlasting Meal by Tamar Adler | Waterstones

For another meal, the cooked vegetables might be used in a frittata or a warm sandwich. Cooked greens can be turned into a bubbling gratin, roasted vegetables are added to risotto, and everything left over can become Last year is when I started getting really into recipes. But, reader, I was still a mere “shopping for one recipe at a time” person, a type of person which I have, these past few weeks, come to regard as a very weak and inferior type of person when compared to this accomplished and frankly powerful “shopping for three weeks of meals at a time” person that I have become. She uses her all her senses to distinguish to detect the freshness or doneness of the ingredients and writes that through touching "the food you cook, you develop intelligence in our fingertips." We instinctively add just the right amount of seasoning or garnish. Tamar Adler loves food and loves words. I love her writing. Two chapters in, and she's already quoted Robert Farrar Capon and C.S. Lewis. I surrendered. I’ve often used the word “sovereignty” to refer to one thing it allows you. If you don’t know how to make rice, you’re bound to minute rice or no rice. If you don’t know that rice and pasta play similar roles in dishes, you’re bound to one or the other. If you don’t know how to cook dried beans, you’re in the woods if they’re ever all that’s there. I don’t mean to sound apocalyptic, but truly, we’ve forgotten that things are unpredictable, and that it is very good, especially when time and money are short, to be able to make choices based on actual circumstance.

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These “tales”, based on episodes in the author’s life, are “mostly” or “almost” true, he assures us. Medical physics, academia and healthcare constituted his professional life and he has had a lifelong interest in the arts, religious studies and music, having twice directed the Merriman Summer School. Here he serves up a witty, entertaining, thought-provoking, sometimes moving, sometimes truculent smorgasbord of memories, such as using public transport, the appeal of Catholic ritual, the joy of set-dancing and pleasures of the Merriman Summer School, the merits of mitching, the ups and downs of practising medicine in Ireland and how physics can “shine a light on the enigma of existence”. Religion and spirituality have played a central role in his life; he advocates a personal spirituality that frees one from religion’s excesses. Brian Maye An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace by Tamar Adler Swift Press, €20.99 To listen to Ms. Adler talk about cooking is to be drawn into a rhythmic dance where each step — from washing and chopping vegetables to cooking and seasoning the meal — flows effortlessly into the next, Many people, myself included, have long believed that vegetables are best if they are cooked just before they are served. But cooking vegetables as soon as you buy them essentially turns them into a convenience food, Finally, I loved how Adler ends her book as the ending of a meal. There is "an old British tradition of serving something savory at the end of a meal. It is designed as a shield against dessert's taunt. What if, a savory bite asks, the wisp of sadness at a meal's close were swept away with a riddle?"

Everlasting meals | Lifeandstyle | The Guardian Everlasting meals | Lifeandstyle | The Guardian

In An Everlasting Meal, Tamar Adler has written a book that “reads less like a cookbook than like a recipe for a delicious life” ( New York magazine). An excerpt from Rebecca Dinerstein Knight’s novel Hex. After a lab accident, a disgraced toxicologist makes a choice. “I guess you could say that I like revenge and they like common decency. I guess you could say I don’t approve of myself enough to protect myself.” 9. “ Season of the Witch” by Ana Cecilia Alvarez, Bookforum I adore her unabashed campaign against food waste. It reminds me of Jacques Pépin's zeal for using up leftovers. (Anybody else recall The Tightwad Gazette?) Adler takes the anxiety out of entertaining by simply stating "that no one ever comes to dinner for what you're cooking. We are all hungry and thirsty and happy that someone's predicted we would be and made arrangements for dealing with it."That said, this was a mildly successful book, in that it did teach me some things, while also boring me through some chapters of stuff I already know. The chapter on beans was especially eye-opening, as I do not cook beans nearly enough (usually I just reach for the canned ones at the last minute). And for that alone, as well as some useful tidbits here and there, this was worth reading.

An Everlasting Reviews in brief: Tales from the Ivory Tower; An Everlasting

p.m.: My exercise these days is split into two types: the home type and the outdoor/game type. At home, it’s not as much exercise as watching TV with a slightly elevated heart rate. After a few months of Peloton-ing along with great and motivating Peloton instructors, I got tired of the emotional intensity of the experience, and decided that I would just put low-impact Peloton classes on screen on mute, and follow along while watching TV shows on my phone. This means I’m definitely never getting whatever full workout Tunde or Cody has to offer, but I’m also never in an internal willpower battle. I take a 30- or 45-minute beginner or low-impact class, and do what the screen says, but prop my phone in front of the screen and watch whatever series I’m into. I completely accept that this is not a great workout, but all I’m after is general health. Plus, I love TV. A short story from Daniel Mason’s forthcoming collection A Registry of My Passage Upon the Earth, in which the narrator discovers a startling aspect of his recently deceased uncle’s favorite hobby. 6. “ Broken Pieces” by Cody Delistraty, Poetry During the winter I sleep with an old-fashioned rubber hot water bottle at my feet. Tonight as I’m filling it I think about how much I love the hot water bottle, and how I want to get one for everyone. Then around 1 a.m., it springs a leak. I awake to a flood. But because my husband is away, I just shimmy over to his side of the bed, curl into a ball, and decide to deal with it in the morning. Thursday, March 2

An Everlasting Meal

I really enjoyed most of the chapters as descriptive, not prescriptive. As one meal ending and holding hands with the next. Springboards. Some people don't like food that much to think about it so ... constantly, but I found the ideas inspiring. It is a book to cook in the spirit of, not the specifics. I don't really understand the constant ladling soup over bread ... I still have plans to make so many — so many different — curries that it would make your head explode. If I told you how many I’m afraid the information would hurt you. My other problem is her statement that everything is better salted. While the average human can use (needs!) moderate amounts of salt, a lot of us are getting far too much; a significant population develops hypertension when they eat too much salt. I’d prefer to see most things prepared without much salt, if any, and those who need it can add it at the table. Simple enough to just ignore her statements about salt and not put it in when following her recipes, but I’m not sure the world needs a voice telling it that such and such NEEDS salt.