Dinner With Edward

by Isabel Vincent

crowded in summer with a lush tangle of tomato vines, all manner of flowering shrubs, and a jumble of dusty lawn ornaments.

“sometimes I would go to the best restaurant I knew about, and order dishes and good wines as if I were a guest of myself, to be treated with infinite courtesy.” I longed to be a guest of myself, but

“The secret is treating family like guests and guests like family,”

argued with the staff at the small cheese boutique in the East Village—I needed the prosciutto di Parma to be parchment thin when they sliced it. I was even willing to leave the store if they refused to cut it to my specifications. You can’t serve thick prosciutto; it defeats the point!