I learned to cook the summer I was trying to become pregnant. My wife and I were on a vacation on Cape Cod and the house we rented had an entire bookcase of Gourmet magazines. I was 29 years old and more of a Moosewood Cookbook kind of girl. But those cooking magazines spoke to my overwhelming desire to nurture, to grow and feed a baby, a family. I must have read 20 issues during that week, and by read I mean studied. I learned how to truss a chicken, how to bake custard in a water bath and how to sear steak in a cast-iron pan.