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table, surrounded by several shockingly beautiful young hippie-farmer girls. So I asked what the hell he was doing in San Francisco.
    â€œSelling turnips, man! I’m a farmer!”
    Liz, speaking softly to me, said, “Sweetheart, I’ve got to get out of here. Hannah’s melting down.”
    â€œHold on, sweetie. Joe’s got turnips. You remember Joe, don’t you?”
    She smiled at him. Then, to me, Liz said, “Honestly, honey, I can’t deal anymore.”
    â€œOkay, okay. Just hang in a little longer.” I got carried away, paying alarming prices not only for Joe’s perfect Tokyo turnips, as he called them, but for the rest of his early-spring offerings, like shallots and kale, chard and carrots, even strawberries and baby leeks. I feel a measure of guilt, in hindsight, over the way I led the exhausted Liz and the screaming Hannah onward through the rest of the booths, buying up still more foods I’d seen in
Vegetables
but never in a store: savoy cabbage, escarole, curly endive. I saw astounding things for which I did not yet have recipes, and could therefore not yet rationalize the splurge: shockingly tasty cheeses; fresh fish for a small fortune per pound; locally grown beef, chicken, lamb, pork, goat, and eggs. I led my wife and baby into the Ferry Building itself, too, a vast emporium with a high domed ceiling. Like one long large intestine, the hall branchedoff here and there into an All-Star lineup of Northern California’s very highest-status, highest-prestige local food labels, from Recchiutti Confections to Prather Ranch Meats, and from the Cowgirl Creamery to Boccalone (“Tasty Salted Pig Parts”) to Far West Fungi. Sur La Table alone, the upscale kitchenware store, carried so many things I suddenly wanted to own that I had to hustle Liz and Hannah out of the building and back down the waterfront as if I’d just smoked my first pipe of crack and liked the rush so much I knew I was coming back.
    After returning home, while the enraged Liz and the oblivious Hannah fell asleep together, I diced and sautéed exactly the prescribed amount of onion and garlic. Then I sliced up those costly little turnips and added them to the pot, and I then added just the right amount of bay leaf, thyme, bacon, and vegetable stock that I’d made the night before. The turnip greens went in last, around the time Liz got up from her nap. I shaved a little Parmesan onto the top of our bowls and then, precisely because I’d resisted all impulse to improvise, I liked the soup. I liked it a lot.
    â€œThis is great,” Liz said, already willing to forgive. “I love this.”
    â€œI’m so glad, baby.”
    She smiled. “You’ll never make it again, will you?”
    â€œNever.”
    â€œAnd remind me why?”
    â€œForward motion, baby. Got to keep moving.”

4
We All Need Something to Believe In
    â€œFood—at least as much as language and religion, perhaps more so—is cultural litmus,” according to Felipe Fernández-Armesto, in
Near a Thousand Tables: A History of Food
. “We continually devise ways to feed for social effect: to bond with the like-minded.” Think of adolescents and their fierce interest in the finer shades of musical taste: “Well, I
know
she’s like
totally
smoking hot and super sweet and ultra smart and
totally
perfect for me in every imaginable way, and she even actually likes me, which is amazing, but I’m really worried that I don’t know what kind of music she listens to.” And when it comes to food, it’s not just the feeding: cookbooks play an outsized role, placing the food in its all-important cultural and aesthetic context, telling you what the food actually means—like Fergus Henderson’s cult classic
The Whole Beast: Nose to Tail Eating
, from which I would one day cook Deviled Kidneys (“the perfect breakfast on your birthday”) and Pot-Roast