It must have been winter the first time I went to an Archestratus cookbook club, because the dish I brought was a parsnip, date, and hazelnut loaf cake from the Winter section of Six Seasons by Joshua McFadden and Martha Holmberg. I didn’t know what to expect when I showed up at the brightly lit shop on a tree-lined neighborhood street with my loaf pan, but what I found was like the best potluck attended by every excellent cook in your life. There were people my age, younger, and my parents’ age, who’d made different things from the cookbook or the same dish but with their own spins, and I filled up my plate the way you do at Thanksgiving, trying to only take tiny servings so that I would have room for everything. Paige presided over the event, with her huge smile and slightly awkward pronouncements, making us all feel like the shop was her living room and we were her motley group of friends who didn’t know each other very well.