From Bacon Nation by Peter Kaminsky and Marie Rama, here’s a deliciously brunch-worthy take on eggs and bacon.

1. Cook the bacon in a large skillet over medium heat until lightly browned and most of the fat is rendered, 6 to 9 minutes, stirring often and adjusting the heat as necessary. Using a slotted spoon, transfer the bacon to a paper towel-lined plate to drain. Remove and discard all but 4 1/2 teaspoons of bacon fat from skillet.

2. Reheat the bacon fat in the skillet over medium heat until it shimmers, about 1 minute, then add the black beans, cumin, and two thirds of the cooked bacon. Cook until the mixture is heated through, 3 to 4 minutes, stirring occasionally and scraping up any brown bits from the bottom of the skillet. Add the salsa and let the mixture come to a simmer.

3. Using the back of a spoon, make 4 wells in the salsa, about 2 inches across. Crack an egg into a small bowl and slide it gently in to one of the wells without breaking the yolk (don’t be concerned if some of the egg white runs out of the well). Repeat with the remaining eggs. Season the eggs with salt and pepper to taste. Sprinkle the remaining bacon around the eggs. Cover the skillet and cook over medium heat, 4 to 6 minutes for slightly runny yolks, or as desired. Sprinkle cilantro over the huevos rancheros, divide it among 4 small bowls, and serve with warm tortillas.

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Everything tastes better with bacon, the full-flavored, umami-rich ingredient that’s become the home chef’s new secret weapon of choice. With over 100 smoky, savory, crispy, meaty, salty, and sweetly sensuous recipes, Peter Kaminsky and Marie Rama’s Bacon Nation is pure heaven for bacon lovers everywhere. 

T-Shirt Confetti Necklace from Generation-T.com

Who says upcycling can’t be glamorous? Click here for necklace-making instructions and general T-Shirt love.

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Slash a tee, scrunch a tee, sew a tee. With 120 projects for every occasion, Megan Nicolay’s Generation T: Beyond Fashion takes the humble tee in dozens of directions, from fashion to home decor.There’s a basic primer on techniques—knotting, sewing, braiding, lacing—plus a full tutorial on embellishing. Projects range from the simplest no-sew to intermediate, with easy-to-follow illustrated directions.

Thank you to all of our authors, friends, and colleagues for the outpouring of well-wishes and remembrances you’ve sent our way. Here are just a few of your tweets, posts, and comments. It has meant so much to us to read them.

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Peter left a wake of good and beauty behind him. I don’t think I will ever be able to imagine him away from his Workman office. Peter had an abiding love for his profession and an artist’s eye with everything that he produced. From the smallest project to a huge series of books. He saw every aspect of publishing in a different way and he tweaked and tweaked, sometimes to our chagrin, but he had an unerring sense of style and creativity.

Peter changed my life in so many ways. I remember the day he said he would like to do some of my books. On that morning in his office, I dumped a lunchbox full of red earthworms on his table. He didn’t flinch, “Oh, you brought your ‘Girls,’” he said casually.

One night when we were walking to a dinner celebration, Peter was in the middle of a sentence when he saw a man sitting on the sidewalk. Peter stopped, bent over the man and said something to him, then emptied his pocket of cash.

I hope he knew how deeply we all cared for him.

—Sharon Lovejoy and Jeff Prostovich

I was seated next to him at a BEA dinner once, as a very new bookseller, and I still vividly remember how delightful it was to talk with him, and what a gentleman he was. I have met very few people who were as happy to be in the book business as he was. And he was so EXCITED about things! Innovative, but never to show off or out of fear, it seemed—always just because it was what he liked to do, and he did it with confidence. That one meeting has stayed with me and inspired me ever since.

—Bookavore

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In which we celebrate the change of seasons with a springtime dispatch from author Crescent Dragonwagon, followed by her recipe for a salad made with sugar snap peas.

Get the ebook for only $2.99–offer runs through April 30th!

“Here in Vermont, it’s still Mud Season; we don’t get our gardens in until early May (unless you count garlic, which got planted the previous fall, when the rest of the garden got put to bed). It can be spring on the plate, however, with this lovely, bright flavored sugar snap pea salad, which uses the brand new fresh-from-the-new-season’s-ground edible pod peas (coming in now from Florida and elsewhere in the South) with the good late winter navel oranges. Mint in the vinaigrette makes the whole thing even lighter and more refreshing. We look forward to this one every year.

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From The Four-Season Farm Gardener’s Cookbook by Barbara Damrosch and Eliot Coleman, here’s a beautiful way to prepare beet greens that features a welcome dash of smoke. . . .

“This dish is good when made with beet greens of any size, whether small bunches from a thinned row or the tops of mature beets that you will be storing in the cellar. Teaming them up with scallions, bacon, and maple syrup has won over many a greens-hater. They are especially tasty when served alongside a hearty piece of meat, but if it’s pork, omit the bacon. Keep in mind that beet stems bleed just the way the roots do, and will color pale foods such as fish.”

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“How she would laugh when she would see chicken soup recipes from famous cookbook authors calling for two carrots and a stalk of celery. My mother used two POUNDS of carrots in that soup.

Most chicken soup recipes instruct you to add water to cover. No, no, no, said my mother. Two-thirds is plenty. The vegetables cook down and will be covered soon enough, because what you are looking for is that deep, dark, richly flavorful brew. Resist the temptation to add a cup of water to get another cup of soup, she advised.

Even if you’re not Jewish, you must use kosher chickens. The jury is still out on why they taste so much better. Is it the method of killing? The freshness? The salting? The blessing? Who knows, but there really is a difference.”

—Judy Bart Kancigor on her mother’s chicken soup (see recipe)

A posse of subversive librarians (revolutionary hearts under wooly cardigans) encouraged me to read books above my grade level, like all the Vonnegut ever published, tons of Updike, Cheever (and Naked Lunch!), textbooks on art history and anthropology, and amazing anthologies of short stories and essays on everything from feminism to uranium mining.

 –Author Jessica Hagy, in a delightful Q&A at Cloth Unbound.

With recent statistics showing that close to 20 percent of the over-65 population is working (where 25 years ago, that number was closer to 10 percent), it’s clear that job-hunting is no longer the sole province of sweaty-palmed first-timers. For those looking to reinvent themselves and do good in the second part of life, here’s a list of organizations excerpted from Marci Alboher’s soup-to-nuts opus, The Encore Career Handbook. 

1. Work Reimagined: A project of AARP and LinkedIn, WorkReimagined.org is a social community and talent exchange for people with twentyplus years of work experience.

2. WorkSearch Information Network: An online employment guide to the job search process from start to finish. Offers assessments and résumé-writing tools. Sponsored by the AARP Foundation.

3. PivotPlanet: A service from the creators of Vocation Vacations that matches people exploring new careers, thinking about starting a business, or seeking to hone skills with expert advisors working in various professions for affordable, one-on-one video or voice-over-IP mentoring sessions.

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When I use a computer to make music, it’s as if I have a partner—one that acts in a very logical way and appears to function like a human brain. The interaction causes a strange relationship. The computer gives me answers quickly and makes no mistakes. If I give it data that doesn’t fit into what it can do, I say: “It doesn’t like that.” Or when it pauses, I tell myself: “It’s thinking.” There is definitely an intellectual challenge to make the computer do what I want. I have to communicate with it in a very specific way.

I use a Fairlight computer to create sounds I can’t get any other way. I can digitize sounds from actual instruments and then modify their waveforms on the screen with a light pen. This doesn’t mean I intend to turn my back on traditional acoustic instruments. I’ll continue to play acoustic as well as electronic keyboards, because every instrument has its own touch, texture and nuance. It’s just that synthesizers and computers are tools for making instruments the likes of which have never been heard before.

Some keyboard players are great performers on a synthesizer, but they don’t know much about programming it. Others are good players and programmers. Thinking in musical terms can help develop your technique for programming computers. A musician thinks in terms of measures and themes; in programming you have to consider lines of code and routines. Of course, having manual dexterity also helps, since a prerequisite for using today’s computers is the ability to key in commands. Someday, though, you’ll be able simply to talk to computers with voice recognition.

In the future I’d like to be able to create music on-line with anyone anywhere in the world. Recently I saw a concert in Vancouver where the musician on stage was playing with two other people in Sydney and Tokyo. The only limitation was the speed of the electrons on-line-the speed of light. There was a slight delay in the audio, and the musicians had to take risks with their playing to stay in sync. But here they were, playing together on three continents! It made me look forward to the day when the electronic cottage will become an electronic bandstand.

—Herbie Hancock on “The Musician/Machine Connection,” from the amazing book Digital Deli, published by Workman in 1984 and now available in full here

Congrats to @jessicahagy, whose new book How to Be Interesting hits stores on March 19th!

If you’re at SXSW today, head on over to the Convention Center to hear Jessica read and get your early signed copy at 5:00.