Here’s an email I sent recently about a cooking failure and a big success: Hello there cooks, Have you had any triumphs in the kitchen lately? Or perhaps a terrific flop? I’ve had both in the last month or so. On December 30 I undertook to make apple butter. We had ordered a box from a farm about a month earlier and time was running out to make good use of them.

Dinner last night. The funniest part of this is the shaker of black pepper they provide: So you’re telling me this soup which is made out of red pepper might be a little bland, and to season according to my taste? I’ve seen peppercorns here, and I’ve seen shakers of ground black pepper, but I have not seen a pepper mill. In the kitchens I frequent we gave up pre-ground black pepper for the pepper mills a while ago, because it’s bland.

That’s from an orphanage outside Seoul in 2009. The hedge reads ㅎhㅏaㅣi (the ㅇ is silent), so it’s actually saying “hi” in phonetic Korean.