Somewhere between the lessons her mother taught her and the ones she is now trying to teach her own daughter, Kim Severson stumbled. She lost sight of what mattered, of who she was and who she wanted to be, and of how she needed to live her life. It took a series of encounters with female cooks-including Marion Cunningham, Alice Waters, Ruth Reichl, Rachael Ray, and Marcella Hazan-to reteach her the life lessons she had forgotten, and many she had never learned in the first place. Some were as small as a spoonful, and others so big they saved her life-at any measure, the best lessons she found were delivered in the kitchen.