Rejuvenated at Amada (and a NBG review/giveaway)

I have been in the kitchen for much of this summer—planning and cooking lunches and dinners, planning again, cooking again, starting again. Somewhere along the way, food lost its luster. Meals had become the thing to figure out, to be on the ready for. I wasn't, frankly, much in the mood, and the truth is: I miss my mother's cooking. No one ever did or will again cook like she did. I miss her simple chicken, her sandwich cookies, her inventions. My mother taught herself to cook. I never