A New Book

I'm cooking some bacon in the oven, and it's the most gorgeous smell we've had in the house for a while. Sweet, salty, almost like a woodstove but not enough so to be off-putting. It's raining and dark outside and I fully expect Todd to walk in the door and feel like he's back in Durango, where he had to chop the wood for the stove that heated his childhood home. Anyway, after 10 minutes, the bacon's pink; it kind of looks like ham.

Turns out that moment, smelling the bacon cooking, was the apex of my dining enjoyment that night. Bacon's like doughnuts to me; the smell always holds more promise than the taste can deliver. I know I feel that way about bacon, yet I keep eating it.

I know that the book Mindless Eating is about more complex ways we're manipulated when making decisions about what to eat, and I'm excited to get started on it. It seems like it's going to be the research BEFORE the diet gurus get ahold of it and twist it into some magical way to lose weight. Maybe you could use it to the opposite effect, to heighten your dining experience. (My last dining out experience, at Cookshop, makes me think that type of manipulation is sorely needed and in short supply.) Or to persuade a finicky 2-year-old to eat his squash.