In essays ranging from his earliest cooking lessons in a cold-water walk-up apartment on New York's Lower East Side to opinions both admiring and acerbic on the food writers of the past ten years, John Thorne argues that to eat exactly what you want, you have to make it yourself. Thorne tells us how he learned to cook for himself the foods that he likes best to eat, and following along with him can make you so hungry that his simple, suggestive recipes will inspire you to go into the kitchen and translate your own appetite into your own supper.