I made mayonnaise.

You guys, I was inspired this week. Not by the Spirit (although I think they're working in conjunction), but by Alice Waters.

When I first got married I quickly began experiencing some unexpected feelings of "Oh crap. Now I can't eat quesadillas every night." Ralph in no way made me feel that I was responsible for cooking for him every night, and is always right there in the kitchen with me, but let's be honest, I'm a good cook and I really, truly enjoy it, so it made sense that I at least coordinate the culinary efforts. But when I was single, I would cook on Sundays, pack it into tupperware, and it would magically last the whole week. When I was in grad school and working 50 hours a week on top of going to school full time, I made a slightly dressed up quesadilla every night when I got home and called it a day. (When I came home one night with a Cafe Rio quesadilla - it hadn't occurred to me that I had been eating one every day for months - my roommate Lisa said, "Wow. You must really like quesadillas.")

So then I got married and there was this self-imposed pressure to feed this person every night, and then Pinterest rolled along with its wealth of recipes, and my first thought was, "Hallelujah! An unlimited source of recipes."

But Pinterest immediately reveals itself as having an abundance of mediocre stuff with an occasional gem here and there. There are some we've tried that have been a pure delight to eat (e.g. tilapia with Thai coconut curry. Ralph made it. It's on my "To Make Again" board. You should eat it.), but far too many of them have been mediocre at best. The most tiring Pinteresty thing of all are the MILLIONS of foodie bloggers out there who are a) amateurs and seriously can't possibly have tested that recipe ever because I followed it exactly and that nasty bread went straight into the trash and didn't even smell good, and b) are hellbent on cooking super elaborate time-consuming food with as many trendy ingredients as they can muster. (I'm talking to you, Meyer lemons.)

And then comes Alice Waters. Blessed Alice. My dear friend Courtney gave me her book The Art of Simple Food as a wedding present. I'll admit, it took me a while to get to it because I don't like to do things halfheartedly, and in flipping through it initially, I kind of decided that for me to really appreciate the whole point of her book, I needed to really spend some time with it. It isn't just recipes; it's notes and thoughts and ideas and a presentation of a certain way of cooking that I've always found so appealing. So last week I was laying on the floor while Ralph did the dishes and I grabbed the book, and ended up reading it until right before we went to bed.

I know it's a cookbook, but you guys, I can't put it down. She's thoughtful and fascinating, and communicates a vision of how to shop and cook and eat that's inspiring* - and true to its title, the things I tried making this week were indeed simple.

I read the chapter on sauces, and because I don't do moderation very well (Alice would not approve), I made a dinner last night that included several. And they were so good, and so fast, and just so much better than, well, most things.

Like mayonnaise. I don't like mayonnaise. But homemade mayo....well, I kept dipping my fingers into it, and typically, in regards to mayonnaise, this would be disgusting, but not here, people. Not with Alice.

So last night we had salmon with salsa verde (took 5 minutes to make), artichokes dipped in mayonnaise with a little lemon in it, and some Pugliese bread with herb butter on it (yes, I know that herb butter is simple and nobody's brainchild, but when Alice adds in her squeeze of lemon and pinch of cayenne pepper, it changes lives). And the blunt end of a watermelon.

I was literally clapping my hands repeatedly and jumping up and down with excitement because it's the way food is supposed to taste, and without using a million different ingredients that are all competing with each other - and I couldn't sit still while we were eating because I was just. so. excited. that I had made these wonderful things.

Amazon has her book, used, for $9.00.

*I think Julia Child deserves a small shout-out here, because a little over a year or so ago I read Julia Child's My Life in France and was similarly inspired, but I was on the cusp of planning a wedding and never actually got to the implementation stage...