I was born in Lyon, in 1930, above a bakery. I stood at a stove from the age of nine, on a wooden crate, until the spring of 1995. Now I am a man in Sonoma with a garden and a notebook. In the mornings, when the kitchen is quiet, I write in the notebook. This is some of what I write.

Butter.

My mother kept it in a blue crock on the windowsill, out of the sun but not out of the morning. She said butter must be spoken to kindly or it sulks. I was six. I believed her. I am sixty-nine, and I still believe her.

Bread.

On the hill of the Croix-Rousse the floor of our room was warm at four in the morning, because the ovens were beneath it. I slept above bread before I learned to eat it. Every loaf I have made since has been a small attempt to go home.

Salt.

Henri said I salted like a man paying a debt: too much, too late, all at once. For thirty-one years he tasted over my shoulder, in the restaurant and at home. Now the spoon comes back only to my own mouth, and it is always, a little, not enough.

Onions.

People say that onions make you cry. This is not true. Onions only give you permission. In March of 1997 I cut forty onions for a soup that no one was coming to eat, and I let them.

Stock.

We called the restaurant Chez Solange, for my mother, and it lived off the square for twenty-four years. On the last Sunday I washed the big pot myself and hung it on the wall. A stock is what you make from what is left: the bones, the ends, the tops of things. You let it go slowly. You do not boil it. On ne le brusque pas. I am making one still.

Tomatoes.

In August the tomatoes in my garden split their skins from too much happiness. I eat them standing over the sink, warm, with salt, the juice running to my wrist, the way my mother would have scolded me for. Pardon, Maman. Some things are better than manners.

Wine.

Here my neighbors speak of wine the way men at home spoke of horses. In Lyon it was only the heavy little bottle on the table, next to the bread, next to the salt. Henri liked the first glass. I liked the last one. Tonight I pour both.

My grand-nephew Thomas made this page for me on his computer in August. He tells me anyone in the world may read it. Then: bienvenue, the world. Sit. There is bread.