I’m addicted to the Jacques Pepin cooking show—the latest edition is Fast Food My Way. He often mentions his mother’s cooking and I’m convinced our mothers’ must have known each other, since they cook the same way. I recently read his autobiography, which I enjoyed immensely. Pepin relates his journey from the kitchen of his mother’s modest restaurant in rural France after World War II to his current position as author of 21 cookbooks, star of 13 PBS cooking shows and dean of special programs at the French Culinary Institute in New York City. He enjoys exploring the differences between French and American attitudes toward food, as when he describes how he and a French friend once stopped at a farm in the U.S. with a sign reading “Ducks for Sale” and proceeded to wring the neck of the duck they’d just bought while the terrified owner looked on.

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