I'm Frances Lamb, and this is The Splendid Table from APM.

So the other day, I called a friend of mine, and I started with the knee-jerk question,

hey, how's it going? And she said the perfect thing. She said, oh, you know, I'm pandemic fine. And it totally captured how

awkward I feel answering that question now. Like me and my family are safe and healthy. We have

food. We're super grateful for that. So we're okay, even though there are points every day

where we're all on the verge of tears.

And that's most people's new normal.

And I'm pretty glad my friend Kate found a way to just acknowledge it.

And of course, part of our new normal is all the cooking we're doing.

And I do feel like now, though, that, you know, a month or more into quarantine,

something has seemed to shift for a lot of people, from the stress of having to cook so much

to really kind of finding more pleasure in it or more curiosity or more just the spirit of,

well, I'm going to be doing this, I might as well

love it. And we've definitely been hearing that and the questions you've been sending in,

especially the ones you sent in for our first guest this week, Alison Roman.

Allison is a cooking columnist for The New York Times and the author of two bestselling cookbooks,

Dining in and nothing fancy.

And so many of the recipes become instant icons, they go by one name only.

The fish, the stew, the cookie.

Okay, the shallot pasta has more than a couple words, but their popularity also means that

so many people have grown to love cooking in a new way because of Allison.

So, hey, Allison, how are you doing?

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