Well, I'm back! Inspired by my success in finding my three favorite cookbooks through Amazon's out-of-print service, I am newly inspired to cook alone!
The books have not arrived yet, but I am feeling inspired by the very anticipation! James Beard's The Theory and Practice of Good Cooking is simply the best book on cooking I have ever encountered. It is not so much a recipe book as an explanation of the principles of cooking. My good friend and mentor in many ways, the late Sally Henry, gave me this book as a wedding present. It is incomprehensible to me that it has gone out of print. He devotes a chapter to each cooking method: baking, broiling, etc., explaining the principles and advantages of each method. The many pages he devotes to baking a potato baffled me when I first read it, but after reading his explanations I followed the instructions and found that, indeed, the baked potato is much abused and ill appreciated!
My cousin Mary Hobart Key introduced me to Craig Claiborne's Cooking with Herbs and Spices. Mary Hobart was from Mississippi, as was Claiborne, and had known him. He told her that tomatoes need a lot of salt, because you need to get rid of the water to savor the flavor of the tomato. So here is Craig Claiborne's method of preparing a tomato for a salad:

core tomato
fill cavity with salt
allow to sit for 15 minutes or so
squeeze salt from tomato (which squeezes out the seeds along with the water)

You now have a rich, delicious tomato if you have started with a good one, and an acceptable one if you have started with an anemic one typical of our supermarkets. This also solves the problem James Beard has with using tomatoes in salads : that they water down the dressing and should only be served on the side.

I plan to post more regularly now (I've also recovered my password for the blog...I am trying to keep up with technology!). Tomorrow, favorite salad recipes!