Coming home exhausted after high-school basketball practices, my Mother frequentlymet me with a platter of freshly fried driedapple pies and a refillable glass of milk.
By the time he got to Roasted Pork Tenderloin with Dried Cranberry and Apple Stuffing and Cranberry-White Wine Reduction Sauce, Bill had bought a new meat thermometer, digital, with protruding wires and flashing lights that made it look as though he'd lifted the whole apparatus from an intensive care unit.
Since then, each item had engraved itself in my memory, frozen in time: a bag of dried chickpeas, a cannister of salt, a withered Fuji apple, and the rock-hard stump of a baguette.