ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Sometime in early summer 2007 I had a conversation with Pete Wells, the Times’s Dining editor, which resulted in my writing “101 Summer Express Meals.” Neither of us precisely remembers whose idea this was; as is often the case, it was a product of a good discussion, and I certainly won’t take full credit for it.

The idea was to produce short, simple, inspiring ideas that would take ten minutes or less to make. Though the ten-minute rule proved difficult to maintain, the story was among the most popular in the paper that year, and remains among the most e-mailed of all time.

I won’t take full credit for that, either. For the original article, I asked for ideas from anyone who would give them. This group included Dining colleagues Pat Gurosky, Nick Fox, Trish Hall, Julia Moskin, Pete of course, and Nicki Kalish, who also designed the paper’s layout of the original story.

Nor was the idea of building on the concept to make a book mine; credit for that goes to my longtime agent and friend Angela Miller and my editor at Simon & Schuster, Sydny Miner. Others at Simon and Schuster I’d like to thank are David Rosenthal, Michelle Rorke, Alexis Welby and Jessica Abell, Mara Lurie, Michael Accordino, and Linda Dingler.

My colleagues Kerri Conan and Suzanne Lenzer worked hard on Kitchen Express, and they both know the depth of my gratitude. Stacey Ornstein helped with original research.

And Kelly Doe not only tweaked the design but lent moral support.

Mark Bittman

New York, Spring 2009