“All that glitters is not gold” . . . and all that is gold does not glitter. The pig, that estimable creature, while no thing of beauty and generally not highly regarded as to character, nevertheless supplies some of the world’s best fare. The porker, from snout to tail, is perhaps the most utilitarian of all our domestic animals and yet is perhaps the least treasured of meats.

Broccoli and other cruciferous vegetables were common on Colonial tables, but somehow got lost by their descendants. Although such truck, as broccoli, kale, chard, and a green known confusingly to Italians and precious few others as broccoli rabe and broccoli rapa, have been around for centuries, many cooks still have no idea of what to do with them.

Homing in on which crop is fleeing fastest, I've had lush, fragile, irrevocable peaches on my mind. But then I often do. Native South Carolinians and Georgians, of course, have a near obsession with this fruit: Peach ice cream is the only flavor, peach cobbler the only pie, peach butter and never apple on biscuits and toast. Peaches in winter were the prerogative of royalty until recent times. . . . Now we can freeze up a big batch fairly effortlessly and decide in the calm of late autumn just what to do with them – jam, chutney, ice cream, pie, or simply a luxurious dish of peaches and heavy cream.

A “chicken in every pot” is one political promise that has come all too true, at least in the United States, where chicken is about the cheapest protein going except for eggs. Chicken, achingly available in every place and season, is no longer universally regarded as a treat. To many, it’s more of a duty — either to waistline or bottom line.