Lee Ann Morawski at Spinsters.com wrote a nice little essay on the value of cooking last Friday. She writes of how pleasing it is to create good food, how satisfying it is to nourish oneself and others, how important it is to share good cooking with other people:

There is something very satisfying about knowing that you are capable of truly sustaining yourself. I am dependent upon no delivery boy. Cooking is independence and embrace all at once. I can survive on my own or I can nourish you with good things. Cooking is a blessing.

I have tried to teach Lyman's boys that the two cheapest and easiest ways to raise their standards of living are to know how to cook and do it whenever possible, and to keep their homes and possessions clean. They seem to have incorporated those lessons pretty well. Now if I could just teach their dad the second of these.