It sounded way too good to be true. If Stephen Durfee had not strongly recommended we take note of this book and attend the class at Whole Foods in Napa, I’d have been inclined to dismiss it all as the fantasy of a mad scientist let loose in a kitchen: “The Bread That Baked Itself.”

In the past, when I watched the Olympics, I felt inspired. I wanted to go out and train, learn to dive, run a race, try badminton, take up ping-pong, finally master a handstand. But this year, about halfway through the medal events, the coverage started to have the opposite effect on me.

My best friend Claudia and I just returned from a trans-Atlantic crossing on the Queen Mary 2. The captain informed us that the fuel cost for the one-way voyage was $1 million. My gas bill pales in comparison, but I, like everyone else, am feeling the crunch of rising fuel costs across the board. It’s taking big bites out of my grocery bills too.

History, agriculture and the Berbers, Morocco’s earliest indigenous inhabitants, have all joined to produce one of the world’s greatest cuisines.