When Linton Hopkins arrived last month for the Southern Chefs Series, he had 4 things he’d never brought before: a plan to cook Italian food. a chittara pasta cutter; a four-ounce bottle of vinegar that cost $120; and his 17-year-old son, Linton V.

But he had that same all-encompassing passion for food and knowledge, which always strikes me, no matter how many times he visits. Every time that man walks through my door, I learn something.

The words “cooking class” only loosely describe what happens when Linton straps on his apron and starts talking to guests in my kitchen. It’s a food history, cooking technique and philosophy class rolled into one.

At some point — possibly when he was showing everyone the Peugeot peppermill he bought in Paris that lets you change the grind on the pepper — I just sat back and listened. He is such an unbelievable teacher. Here are four things he said that spoke straight to my soul:

1. Cooking well means having a love affair with food. And no one wants a crappy lover. That means using the best ingredients — the best olive oil; the best cut of meat. He didn’t use that $120 bottle of balsamic to dress a salad; he put a drop of it on top of a thin slice of sautéed garlic sitting on top of a thick slice of bacon he’d cured at Restaurant Eugene. And it was heaven.

2. Ten thousand hours. This was Linton’s response any time someone asked him how long it took him to learn how to poach an egg, or crack one with one hand. It takes practice, he told them. Hours and hours of practice. It reminded me so much of that scene in Julie & Julia when Julia Child refuses to be defeated at Le Cordon Bleu because she can’t chop onions correctly. So she gets a huge sack of onions, goes home and practices until she gets it right.

3. Fail forward: If you fail, keep moving forward. Don’t stop and don’t let it get you off track. Keep moving, keep trying, keep thinking your way to success.

4. Get your hands dirty: Linton is a huge kitchen gadget geek, but the most essential tools are his hands. He asked, “How can we learn to cook — how can we learn how the food really feels — unless our hands are in it?”

Come back next week for more about Linton’s homemade pasta and another thing I learned: the difference between marinara and pomodoro.

Years from now, when I look back at the pictures from Kara’s baby shower, I’ll remember the gifts, the décor and how beautiful Kara looked, pregnant with her first child. I’ll also remember it as the time I scheduled two parties in the same day and forgot until I looked at the calendar.

I had 25 coming for the shower luncheon and 8 neighbors coming for an al fresco dinner. When I realized what happened, I thought, okay, I’m going to serve the same thing at lunch and dinner. That was the plan, but the plan morphed as the day went on.

For the shower, Garnie, Quinn and I agreed to host together, but guess who was nominated to cook?

I decided to make my version of a Pierre Franey shrimp salad recipe I’ve loved for years. Shrimp is one of a few fish dishes that can be served at room temperature, which makes it infinitely easier to prep. I paired it with celery, onion, shaved fennel, cucumbers, caper vinaigrette and feta cheese. Shrimp and feta is the exception to the rule of never pairing seafood and cheese. Something about it just works.

I also did a green salad with buttermilk dill dressing and pasta, because Kara loves her noodles. I tried the pasta with lemon and parsley, but something didn’t work right the first time. So I kept adding oils and vinegars until it did.

It all came off beautifully and when it was over, I looked around and thought, instead of repeating lunch, why don’t I just combine everything for dinner instead?

I’d quadrupled the green soup I made for the Farmers Market demo and froze a few batches, so I defrosted that and used it as the first course.

For dinner, I combined penne pasta with shrimp, added fennel, celery, Kirby cucumber, feta and covered it with vinaigrette. I even used the butter lettuces from the green salad at lunch as the base of the shrimp pasta salad. The buttermilk dill vinaigrette I did for the lunch salad wouldn’t have worked with the dinner pasta, so I combined white balsamic vinegar with Champagne vinegar, grapeseed oil and olive oil for the dressing. Again, it wasn’t quite right, so I added lemon juice and capers until it had some life to it.

What was three separate buffet dishes at lunch became one dinner at night. Hosting 33 people over the course of a day is enough to make anyone a little bonkers, but with a little advance planning — and

a lot of prep work the day before — it can work out beautifully.

Shrimp and Pasta Salad

• 1 lb wild shrimp, cooked, peeled, deveined and tail removed
• 1 lb penne pasta
• 1/2 cup Kirby cucumber , sliced thin
• 1/2 cup fennel bulb, sliced thin
• 1/2 cup Vidalia onion, sliced thin
• 1/4 cup capers
• 1/2 cup feta, crumbled
• 1/4 cup parsley, chopped
• 2 heads butter lettuce, washed

• Vinaigrette
• 3/4 cup extra virgin olive oil
• 3/4 cup grape seed oil
• 2 tablespoons champagne vinegar
• 2 tablespoons white balsamic vinegar
• 2 tablespoons Meyer lemon, freshly squeezed
• 1 tablespoon kosher salt
• Place all ingredients in a jar and shake well.

Cook penne according to package directions. Drain well and place in bowl. Pour half the vinaigrette over hot pasta and stir well. Flavor will penetrate the pasta. Add all vegetables, stir well and let sit 30 minutes to marinate.

On a platter, line it with the lettuce leaves. Toss the shrimp with the pasta. Spoon over the lettuce leaves.

Sprinkle the feta, parsley and capers over the shrimp and pasta and serve.

Just as Steve’s Urban Land Institute meeting took us to New Orleans earlier this year, it took us to Tarrytown, New York last month for a forum on food and development at Stone Barns Center for Food & Agriculture.

Most call Stone Barns a nonprofit farm and educational center. I call it a fascinating think tank for food.

The facilities, once part of the Rockefeller estate, are exquisite. They’re overseen by Dan Barber, a chef/restaurateur, author and innovator in the food sustainability movement. Barber practices what he preaches at Blue Hill at Stone Barns and its sister restaurant, Blue Hill in Manhattan.

Barber spoke at length about both food and sustainability and his mission to educate the world on what it really takes to grow food. His key issue was the health of our soil and the concept of rotational crops.

For so many of us, food magically appears. We’ve gotten so far away from our food that we don’t understand what it takes to grow it. We demand so much of our soil that it gets depleted and won’t produce anything. The soil has to rest and be nourished.

Crop rotation is a system farmers use to keep the soil fertile and avoid disease. It means not planting the same thing in the same place year after year to keep up with demand.

It’s one thing to talk about it; it’s another thing to see it play out on the plate. Chef Barber served us his Rotational Risotto, which celebrates the lesser-known crops farmers plant in the rotational system. In this case, wheat is in demand, but it’s what he calls “uncoveted crops” — buckwheat, millet, rye, etc. — that nourish the soil so the wheat can shine.

It gave me a whole new appreciation for the science of farming, the agri-industry and what life must have been like 200 years ago when people didn’t have access to most foods year-round.

After the talk and tasting, we split up into three groups and rotated activities. I visited the chickens and learned about two different types: the Cornish Crown and the Freedom Ranger.

The Cornish Crown is the chicken most people eat because it’s genetically bred for breast meat and has very little bone to get the way of processing. By the time they’re eight weeks old, Cornish Crown breasts are so heavy they can barely walk. The Freedom Ranger is a heritage breed with a bonier skeletal structure. It was incredible to see them being raised side by side across the aisle from each other and taking in the differences between them at 3, 4 and 5 weeks old.

From there, I visited the hot house, where agricultural schools send seeds to see if they’re viable, and learned about different types of seeds. Then we came to my favorite part: food in action.

Together with the culinary director at Stone Barns, I created a dish featuring every part of the radish. We made a salad with sliced egg, asparagus, a chiffonade of radish greens, pickled radish and a carrot yogurt dressing.

The eating continued at Blue Hill at Stone Barns with cocktails, appetizers and a four-course dinner featuring a parsnip “steak” with bordelaise sauce and beet ketchup.

After meetings the next day, Steve and I ventured into the city and saw three plays: Blackbird with Michelle Williams; The Humans, which was nominated for a Tony award; and The Woodsman.

It was nice to get my NYC fix, but I’ve become one of those country people who doesn’t find the craziness of the city as endearing as I once did. I’m good for a couple years, then I’ll forget, go back and do it all over again.

photo by J Ashley Photography

The 5,000 people who attended Serenbe’s May Day celebration this year saw our community at its finest. They strolled the sidewalks, enjoyed more than 50 vendors — including food trucks, roving performers and regional artisans — took pony rides and supported the Art Farm with their $5 admission fee.

What they didn’t see is all the hard work happening behind the scenes. Long before 18 little girls and boys dressed all in white did their dance around the maypole, my daughter Quinn, Serenbe’s brand manager, and the entire marketing team were planning, plotting, delegating and making magic happen.

Quinn does her job: She doesn’t talk about it, agonize over it, or go on and on about it — she just gets it done. And it was done beautifully. Even the weather cooperated with her: Earlier in the week there was an 80 percent chance of rain that day, but we never saw a drop.

As April became May, Kara asked what I wanted for Mother’s Day. I thought about it for a little while, then replied, “Why don’t’ y’all cook for Mama?”

I could already see the wheels spinning in her head.

On Mother’s Day morning, Steve and I flew back to Atlanta from an Urban Land Planning Institute meeting in New York. After we got unpacked and settled in, we sat down to a gorgeous table full of flowers brought by Quinn and her boyfriend, Lucas.

My family knows how much I love Asian food, so Garnie’s boyfriend Matt and his brother Paddy spent hours creating homemade spring rolls, dumplings, steamed buns and chicken and pork ramen in a delicious broth with egg, cilantro and scallions.

Kara and Micah brought dessert. Micah picked fresh mint from the Inn and made brownies with a cream cheese topping full of fresh mint and crushed Thin Mint cookies. He even arranged them into an M on the platter.

And Michael, Garnie’s best friend from college, brought a homemade card. Steve and I call him our bonus child.

At one point, I looked around the table at everyone talking, eating, sharing and loving each other. The meal was wonderful, but that’s the real gift right there. When all my babies are around me, every day is Mother’s Day.

In the weeks following Kara and Micah’s wedding in September, many guests reached out to say how touched they were by the beauty and tenderness they experienced over the weekend. We received calls, emails, hand-written notes and one very special promise.

David Sheppard, Kara’s godfather and one of Steve’s oldest friends, went so far as to say it was one of the most beautiful moments of his life. When he lived in Atlanta, David was an interior designer and theater producer who created one of the city’s original cabarets, the Manhattan Yellow Pages. He moved to New York City, spent years as the executive director of DIFFA (Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS) and retired to Margaretville, New York. After the wedding, David called and said he wanted to host a dinner party for the family at Serenbe as a way of showing his gratitude.

I’ve never had anyone show up at my house from another state with a suitcase full of food, placemats, napkins, menu cards and vases, but David had that plus a vision and a plan. For weeks he’d been sending me photos of bowls and platters, asking me if I had them in a certain size. He arrived on a Wednesday, started prepping on Thursday and was in full-on meal mode on Friday.

In the hours before the dinner, David was feeling the hostess heat. I assured him all would be well and arranged for him to have help so he could enjoy what he’d worked so hard to create. He’d never had help before and it changed everything for the better. I doubt he’ll ever host another dinner party without it again.

He started with roasted pumpkin seeds for nibbling, then did an amuse bouche of crostini with blue cheese spread, a great relish with collard greens and a quail egg. I had no idea you could get hard-boiled quail eggs in a can. Next course was carrot and crystallized ginger soup, then duck tenderloin with roasted asparagus and parmesan and mashed celery root sweet potatoes. For dessert he made almond cakes baked in crème brulee cups and topped with fresh blueberries.

Having David here with us was a treat. Having him cook for us was nourishment on another level. Something special always happens when friendship and food cross paths.