Hello Good People of the Amateur Gourmet Newsletter, Confession: even though you are reading this on a Monday morning, I am writing it on Sunday night. This is all part of my mission to get ahead of the week since things are about to get very intense with the book: over the next month and a half I'm heading to Portland (Oregon), Seattle, Atlanta, L.A. and San Francisco and I have a lot of ticket-buying, car-renting and chef-scheduling to do.