Cooking in the West

The 2024 Olympics are wrapped up, which is good, because watching them makes us normal people feel inadequate and unworthy. We like to believe we have achieved some level of greatness, and then we compare ourselves to those amazing athletes and feel substandard. I am reminded of a conversation I had back when the Olympics were in Japan. It went like this:

"What are you doing here? I thought you would be in Sochi," my friend Judy Vidack greeted me.

"Are you worried about security or did you decide not to compete this year?" asked my other friend, Marion Beley.

You see, when you live in a small...