When we were little, we used to go to Nantucket to stay with my grandparents in the summer. I remember some details so vividly: the smell of the salt water, the tangle of low blueberry bushes edging the sandy driveway, the sticky feeling on my fingers after eating bags of penny candy from the fudge shop. 

On bright Nantucket mornings, we'd pack up for a day of swimming. That, too, I remember in flashes: the beach was hot, the sand baked under the midday sun. My bare feet would burn as we'd walk to stake out a spot and settle down, beach chairs and towels and plastic buckets and all. Then my sisters (and cousins and parents and aunts and uncles and whatever family friends were there that week, too) and I would energetically and enthusiastically throw ourselves into the business of beach-going: swimming and building sand castles and boogie-boarding. 

Some nights, the subtle alchemy of cooking blows me away. It never ceases to amaze me that a handful of ingredients—humble and cheap—can be transformed and spun into endless, interesting, delicious variations. Cooking will probably always do that for me; it gives me a "this came from this?!" feeling at the end, even though I was right there performing each step.