What could bring friends closer than a delicious meal shared in pleasant company?

MFK Fisher, food writer and gastronome, knew how to dine alone and do it well. But she knew even more the soul-pleasing pleasures of being among friends.

She wrote: Dining partners, regardless of gender, social standing or the years they''ve lived, should be chosen for their ability to eat and drink with the right mixture of abandon and restraint. They should relish the accompanying drinks, whether they be ale from a bottle on a hillside or the ripe bouquet of a Chambertin 1919 in a great crystal globe on finest damask. And above all, friends should possess the rare gift of sitting. They should be able, no eager, to sit for hours--three, four, six--over a meal of soup and wine and cheese, as well as one of 20 fabulous courses.

And to expand on these sage words, penned by MFK Fisher more than half a century ago, dining partners who can as easily share a vintage bottle of something special as a six-pack picked up on sale--these are the souls whose company enables one to slip into bed alone on a long rainy night with a measure of contentment. True companions are the magic that makes a humble pot of stew a banquet fit for kings.

I wasn''t here last week. Last week I spent thinking I would have to watch my mother die. Or much worse, watch her become so compromised that she would never again bear any resemblance to her former self. Seven cruel days, an agony of numbing institutionalized limbo. It''s hard to lose the smell of hospitals. It''s hard to accept the tenuousness between living and dying.

What does this have to do with the act of sharing food with friends? Everything in the world that''s worth anything at all. My mother was spared. And I get to come back to my life, the joy that is friends all gathered, whether to console or celebrate.

The 4th Street barbecues are carried on in the best literary traditions, taking their inspiration from both MFK Fisher and John Steinbeck. It''s no accident that the rally is set in John''s old neighborhood; a hedonistic duty obliges this eclectic fraternity in both feast times and famine. The call goes out and the assembly is made in fat times and lean, dumb party games and dancing are found in the bylaws, and weather be damned. If someone were to ask me for the cure for the malaise of the soul, a well-set table with the faces I love around its perimeter is the only answer I could muster.

MFK Fisher writes:

People ask me: ''Why do you write about food, and eating and drinking? Why don''t you write about the struggle for power and security, and about love, the way others do?'' They ask it accusingly, as if I were somehow gross, unfaithful to the honor of my craft. The easiest answer is to say that, like most other humans, I am hungry. But there is more than that. It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it--and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied--and it is all one.

Always in the spirit of such things and keeping the true believer''s flame burning on Cannery Row, Kalisa''s La Ida Cafe will celebrate St. Paddy''s Day in a style befitting a literary legacy. Join the queen of Cannery Row for corned beef and cabbage, green beer and Irish (that''s right) belly dancing on Friday the 17th. Live music, $10 only! 375-5328.

Last year''s Entre Nous Society''s Culinary Classic was such a smash, with more than 1,000 attendees assembling in the name of wine and food, that they''re doing it all over again this year. The event will be held Saturday, April 8 at the Salinas Community Center from 10am-4pm. Among many others, local restaurateurs Kurt Grasing (Grasing''s) and Lisa Dunn (Pajaro Street Grill) will show their stuff, while rubbing elbows with Chalone, Morgan Vineyards and Paraiso Springs as they tipple and taste. A deal at only $7. Call 484-9493 for more info.