Serves One, Plus Whoever Knocks

A Note on the Name

People ask. Not everyone, and not right away, but eventually somebody gets to the end of a pleasant conversation and you can see the question arriving from a distance, the way you can see weather.

I am going to tell you what I told Ruth, which is nothing, because Ruth did not ask. She was holding an avocado at the time. I said I was the Pickled Egg and that everyone called me that, and Ruth nodded and put the avocado in her cart, and then we talked about soup for twenty minutes, and that was the beginning of one of the better friendships of my seventies.

Sensible people accept things that are true without requiring an explanation. I have found this to be one of the few reliable ways of telling a sensible person from the other kind.

So: no.

What I will tell you is that there is a recipe for pickled eggs at the end of this book. It is the last one. It is a good recipe and I make them every spring, and when you get there you will find that the headnote explains nothing either, and by then I hope you will have stopped minding.

Everything in between is food I actually cook, in a kitchen with a chipped blue teapot and a window that looks out on an oak tree that leans slightly to the left, as though it is listening for something.

Let us get on with it.