"...A book about cooking? What kind of nonsense, in our time when on television they show special channels on which they cook something quickly and tasty all day long, just have time to watch and lick your lips. And even the tenth, yes no, I don’t know a hundredth of those recipes and will never remember them. But on the Internet, you type in the name of a dish and you can spend a week glued to the screen, reading thousands of links and variations of something that seemed so simple. You can cook this or that one all your life. borscht or kharcho, if you don’t go through the recipes, if you don’t try them, you’ll get confused. But the thought that someday it’s worth writing such a book came back from time to time..."A. Thorin