Most cookbooks serve six.She does not have six.She has herself, a garden that produces more zucchini than any reasonable person requires, a neighbor across the street who has never once waved first, and a cardinal named Gerald who takes no interest in any of it.Serves One, Plus Whoever Knocks is sixty-five recipes from the kitchen of the woman everybody calls the Pickled Egg. She cooks for herself most nights. She sets the second place anyway. And she has opinions.What is in itSoup that does not require a recipe (here is the recipe)Oatmeal raisin cookies for a neighbor whose mailbox you did not hitLemon bars with more zest than her husband liked, which is the entire pointA roast chicken that is really four days of dinner, and a plan for all fourA tomato sandwich, and she is serious about thisGreen beans cooked considerably longer than you have been toldPickled eggs, last, with a headnote that explains nothingWhy it is not like the other cookbooks on the shelfThe portions are for one or two. Not six, not eight, not a family of four. If you live alone, or cook for two, or have watched a household shrink and discovered that the recipes did not come down with you, this book was written from inside that exact problem.The food is real food. Vegetables because the garden produced them. Butter because it is butter. Made from scratch, because she has the time and she likes the time. There are no calorie counts anywhere in this book and there is no chapter about eating better.And every recipe that can be stretched for somebody who has turned up comes with a note telling you how. People turn up.Five running notes, one or two to a recipeIf Somebody Knocks, for stretching it to twoIf It Goes Wrong, because things do, and there is always a fixKeeps, said plainlyRabbit Tax, concerning a rabbit named Rosie and what she has takenWhat Husband Thought, one line of dissent from a man who is not hereArranged by season, spring to spring, the way a year and a garden actually go.A companion to the novel The Pickled Egg: Life Is Good (Even When It Isn't), though you do not need to have read it. You do not need to have met her.You will have by page four.
