This is getting serious.
Last week my friend Doron e-mailed to tell me about a dream he’d had in which he’d gone into a store and picked up “any and every kitchen tool in existence.” From microplane zesters to rubber spatulas, food processors, and stockpots, “it was heaven,” he said. I could almost hear him sigh wistfully on the other side of the computer screen cheap designer sunglasses.

Doron isn’t the only one who’s been eating, sleeping, and breathing all things kitchen. I’ve been known to have dreams involving roasted-onion tarts, platefuls of oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies, and butter-rich cakes stacked like gold bullion. I wake up breathless, touching my belly like a private eye looking for evidence, whispering, “Thank GOD I didn’t actually eat all that. Phew!” And coincidentally, the very same night that Doron unleashed his subconscious upon a kitchen supply store, I was dreaming of a fried chicken sandwich. In my dream, I was somewhere trying on a pair of pants, when I found myself suddenly before a deli counter of sorts. Facing me was a round, genial man in overalls. I somehow knew that the place was known for its fried chicken sandwiches, but I hesitated, unsure. The man smiled at me, gestured over his shoulder with a ruddy thumb, and drawled, “I got a whole messa chickens fried up in back. You gotta have a sanwich.” So I ordered one, and then I went back to incongruously trying on my pants, wondering whether my sandwich would come with coleslaw. Unfortunately—and as is always the case—I woke up before I could find out Teeth whitening.

Then there are the times when all this eating, sleeping, and breathing paradoxically causes loss of sleep. Take, for example, the Sunday before last, when Kate sacrificed sleep and sanity to rise at six in the morning and bake sourdough boules before sunrise with a wifebeater and a copy of The Stranger—and this only a few days after she, in a fit of insomnia, read an entire hors d’oeuvres cookbook in the middle of night.

And of course there’s my strawberry problem, a late-night leitmotif since last June, when I giddily crammed 10+ pounds of freshly picked and washed strawberries into my freezer, blissfully unaware of the slumber they’d steal. Yes, dear reader, I’m still working my way through the berries, and I’m still lying awake at night, wondering what to do with them next. After all, before we know it, summer will be upon us again, with more fields of berries to be picked! As I said, this is serious. So thank goodness for old standbys, pinch hitters when the (alarm) clock is ticking