It's almost a tease, looking at all the yummy links to cooking magazines, at-home grocery shopping services, restaurant recommendations, gourmet how-to's on bookstore sites, and kitchen ware catalogues, that you can find in just 30 minutes' worth of wandering on the web. However, the idea of planning and spending time preparing elaborate meals seems to have been permanently lost sometime after we turned the corner of 1990. Who's got time, in this high-energy, high-tech, no-time-to-spare (where's my Palm Pilot?) world we live in to spend hours in the kitchen slaving over complex dishes that will disappear down our gullets in less than 25% of the time it took to prepare them? Besides, there's always the frozen food section beckoning to us in the local supermarket -- who can resist pre-skinned, pre-sliced, and pre-cooked chicken bits? Fast and easy. And tasteless.

Increasingly I find myself resisting such modern day conveniences. Perhaps in reaction to such gastronomic malfeasance as the aforementioned chicken strips, I (re)turned to my stove and oven in the attempt to redress such wrongs. Becoming a weekend warrior of the grill is also, I've found, a way of reconnecting with some of the basic, simple, pleasures of making an apartment (or house) a home. The smell of cooking adds as much to the sensibility of a true refuge as anything else you can name . family photo, pet waiting by the door, etc. Added benefits to quality time in the kitchen . for both the male and/or female members of a household -- are quiet times for meditation and reflection. I can forget about the phone messages and e-mails, and focus instead on dropping the walnut oil in just the right amounts on the tossed salad. When concentrating on stirring the rice pudding is the biggest worry you have, you know life can't be all that bad.

I find a great way to spark my culinary imagination (and whet my appetite) is to cruise through the sites I paid homage to at the start of this tome. I realize, when I skim the pages of an e-zine run by food devotees, how un-varied my range of cooking styles is. I vow to try unfamiliar modes. I dream of shopping in local ethnic marts, and putting that package of garam masala or bundle of fresh lemongrass to uses such as the world has never seen (or should I say tasted). No more mac and cheese for me' It's on to the butchers, the natural produce store, and the fully-stocked suburban-style grocery store I go. (Actually, home-made mac and cheese is wonderful - my local finer diner serves up a mean version of this staple.)

There's a wealth of sites on the web that will motivate your search for culinary adventure, and how to proceed with the how-to's of it all.A variety of restaurants can be found for a number of cities and towns - even if you can't get to all of the restaurants listed, there's plenty of information on the types of cuisines they specialize in. If you want to go ahead and start ordering up delectables, you can purchase goods online and have them delivered straight to your kitchen. Finally, for an absolute cornucopia of ideas, issues, recipes, and all other things food-related, try this gourmet. Here, you'll find seasonal links (right now it's summer recipes), contests, essays, book recommendations, information about cooking shows on TV, and even a link to a site for those who want to get their offspring excited about working with *real* food. You might also want to check out the Epicurious and Simple Cooking sites if you're not too hungry already. Bon Appetit1x