Four weeks where the only correct move is buying too many, salting them, and eating them over the sink like a raccoon.

On under-salting, crowding the pan, and the very long stretch of being confidently bad at this.

An hour over the border, a stall selling nothing but herbs, and the woman who flatly refuses to sell me artichokes on a Thursday.

Salt it like the sea, they say, and then nobody agrees on which sea. Here is what actually matters and what does not.

Two bottles, not one. The cheap one you cook with, the good one you never heat. I will die on this hill.

Nobody is at their best at nine at night. Everything I make now goes in the oven at eleven in the morning and I have never enjoyed hosting more.