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Another person who gets short shrift in the acknowledgments of Forking Fantastic! is Barton Rouse. He was the chef at Terrace Club, the place I ate in college. That college was Princeton, and, yes, it's a world-class educational institution and I feel very lucky to have attended, but sweet Jesus, did I feel out of step in that preppie kingdom in central New Jersey.

I hailed from New Mexico (geographic affirmative action, most certainly), and had never even before set eyes on the glossy, worldly New England prep school kids, who strode around campus like royalty. (Even worse, I didn't discover until my junior year, was that half of those apparently entitled kids were actually on as much financial aid as I was.)

Terrace "Flaming" Club was the antidote. The place was refreshingly frumpy and democratic. It was a tony-sounding "eating club" like all the others that ruled Princeton's social scene, but membership was by random selection, not interview. Where other clubs had waiters, high-shine wood paneling and antiques on display in the library, we had fellow students in pink hairnets serving us food on a cafeteria line, saggy secondhand sofas and a pinball machine.

And we had Barton. When he was hired as the head chef at Terrace Club in the early 1980s, he had taken it upon himself to make sure his charges didn't take themselves or Princeton too seriously. He did this largely through food. He fed us decadent things like black pasta with lobster; he celebrated Van Gogh's birthday or any other random holiday he could drum up; he devised parties that involved nearly naked people sprawled on buffets. His efforts reminded us daily that it was a good time to be alive, never mind the gray limestone buildings and our fellow students who aspired to be investment bankers.

(Barton is on the left; Peter, my husband-to-be, is on the right)

Barton taught me that any occasion can be an occasion for a party, and if you're going to do it, go all out. Plow all your creativity into an event: think of funny names for the dishes you'll serve, encourage costumes and move all the furniture up to the third floor to make room, if you have to. Feed people generously, and you'll be loved in return. Sex was food was bounty was family was love was genius, a worldview that Barton boiled down simply to Food = Love.

I actually suggested that as a title for the cookbook, but apparently this phrase has a countercultural, stick-it-to-the-preppie-establishment association only for me. In the wider world, apparently it sounds a bit hippie, or even the cause of an eating disorder. I just keep it in mind every time I make a meal for friends--or even for myself.

I only wish Barton could see the book. He died less than a year after I graduated, of AIDS. All those loans I took out to get my Ivy League education--so worth it, just for the education I received from this incredibly generous man.