This year, in our house, we're cooking our version of Suzanne Goin's succotash. Of course, Suzanne Goin doesn't call it succotash; in her book Sunday Suppers at Luques, she calls it sweet corn, green cabbage and bacon. We call it succotash because we throw in some lima beans and way more butter:
Cut 6 thick slices of bacon into small pieces and cook in a casserole until crispy. Remove and drain. Melt 1 stick of butter in the remaining bacon grease and add 1 sliced onion and some salt and pepper. Saute for a few minutes, then add half a small green cabbage, sliced, and cook until wilted. Add 2 packages of cooked frozen lima beans and 2 packages of frozen corn. Cook about 5 minutes, stirring, till the corn is done. You can do this in advance. Reheat gently and add the bacon bits. (Of course you might be able to get fresh corn, in which case feel free to overreach.)
- Recipe courtesy of Nora Ephron
Oh those personal chefs of Palm Beach – those white jacketed, croc-shod, Bluetooth-eared, clubby bunch that troll the aisles of our local supermarket! Is it simple envy that knowing they wield a knife better than I that has made me feel less than human as I wheel my cart past them? Probably. But, today there was victory! Today, There was Deliverance! Equality – nay – Superiority! (They don’t have to know I usually cut my finger when I cut a bagel – and you don’t have to tell them!)
I write to thank you for the wonderful memories, the delicious moments, and the extra calories this year. All well worth it and ready for more in 2012. 
Eating alone is a trying thing for some people, writing cooking and eating off
as products of a banal bodily necessity. I love to eat and cook alone,
using the kitchen as an improvisational laboratory to experiment with
recipe ideas, flavor combinations, and cooking techniques. MFK Fisher,
a witty food writer with a fluid, deeply expressive writing style
bursting with gastronomic knowledge, shared my passion. She was one of
the best food writers out there, blurring the lines between the genres
of food anthropology, ecology, travel literature, and cooking.
sums up her point of view. “It took me several years of such periods of being alone to learn how to care for myself, at least at
table. I came to believe that since nobody else dared feed me as I
wished to be fed. I must do it myself, and with as much aplomb as I
could muster.” In regards to eating alone, I have taken a page from her
book, and as a result treat myself to lavish meals regularly.
We had just started Saturday Night Live, I was an apprentice writer, 24 years old and I felt intimidated. Chevy was hysterically funny. So was John and Danny and Gilda and Franken. And Michael O’Donoghue, well, Michael O’Donoghue simply scared the shit out of me. So I stayed pretty much to myself.