content: I wanted to like this book. I've curled up with it a couple times now, thinking that I was just being difficult and should give it another chance. I absolutely love Laurie Colwin's writing, surely I should enjoy this. But I just didn't. I can't explain why sometimes cranky writing is warm and endearing and sometimes it isn't, but something is lacking in this book. And while it's true that she tracks down such things as bone marrow and squab for authenticity's sake, she misses another recipe's texture completely because she doesn't have a cooking thermometer. Surely every grocery store with even a handful of implements for sale offers a cooking thermometer (probably for less than the cost of a squab)?