You shouldn't leave a woman alone in the kitchen too long. Things happen. She begins to hum Edith Piaf songs. Her women friends come over for strong coffee and stronger cheese. For a while they talk about schools for their children, presidential politics, the demoralization of our culture, good swing sets; then, with the first taste of bread and cheese together, there is some silent sharing of the pleasure in the compatibility of the pale colors—bread the color of a jersey cow, cheese a sheep's-wool white—and the mixing of textures, one pourous and gently resistant, the other opaque and melting. Finally, after a pause, the conversation surges into the delta of mankind and womankind, creeps first into the large waterways of habit, flows slowly between the trees of marriage, nudges softly but persistently against the small islands of children, and gradually fills in over the topography of daily history.

-- From The Kitchen Congregation

Not a cookbook.