Verjuice

Vacqueyras? The 'fours' in "petit fours"? Tuiles? Trying not to blush.

I remember a fundraiser in Santa Fe a couple of years back; local pastry chefs competing to see who could create the most delicious dessert featuring the Girl Scout Cookie of their choice. I didn't go, though.

I like it plain, unless I'm making shumai or something, in which case I marinate it in a mixture of soy sauce, rice wine vinegar and chopped scallions. Add water to cover. Scrape off as much of the marinade as possible before cooking. I like to make a dipping sauce by heating up some sesame oil and then removing from heat and pouring over minced garlic and ginger. Add soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, brown sugar, chopped scallions. The only missing ingredient is the wrappers. So good.

Corn muffins from this fantastic little bakery around the corner. Well, okay. They were supermarket brand. But I still rode home on my bike with a basketful of warm muffins. And I like to pretend that I live nearby a wonderful patisserie. I was up all night attempting to bake corn muffins from scratch and every last one was a disaster. Something about that standard supermarket type is magical, though: suspiciously pronounced "butter" flavor, dough-conditioner tenderness, and those nubbly, grainy flecks of golden cornmeal... ohh.

I can't get enough of these. Ever since rediscovering them two weeks ago, I have craved cornmeal is one form or another every day. Mostly, though, I just crave the muffins themselves. I just moved to New England from the Southwest and don't remember seeing any when I was living out there. I'm aware that many purists won't touch a sweetened cornbread, but I think these are fantastic and would love to get my paws on a killer recipe. I recently bought an incredible corn muffin loaded with raspberries at Whole Foods in Bellingham, MA. Delicious! Anybody have a recipe to share?

The restaurants are owned by the same company. I used to love them, twenty years ago when I was in grade school. I moved out of the area, and I haven't had them since. Now that I've just moved back, I'm wondering if Papa Gino's plain cheese pizza and D'Angelo pita pocket sandwiches could possibly live up to my expectations. As a seven year old, I was convinced that food just didn't get any more delicious.

Avocado. All day, every day.

No fruit. Nuts; almonds or pecans or walnuts. Maybe even some kind of quick coconut macaroon filling. Well, maybe prunes in Armagnac. Someone mentioned cherries; I like the idea of dried sour cherries. Or brandied figs? As for fresh fruit, bananas or pears would be okay, I think. I don't much like the combination of fruit and chocolate actually, unless is candied orange peel or candied ginger.

Elie, Mine came out great, as well. As I mentioned earlier, I made this for my mom, who before tonight had not eaten red meat in over a year. One of my mom's favorite dishes when she was growing up was fettah bi lahmeh, made with lamb and eggplant and lots of good homemade laban. I often order fettah with chickpeas when we go out to eat around here in Abu Dhabi, but I've never had a lamb version that I liked; the few that I've tried have been loaded with cinnamon and I really dislike the taste of cinnamon with lamb. Your recipe was brilliant; I was happy and my mom didn't miss the cinnamon for a second, which brings me to my question: got a recipe for lamb fettah? I can't wait to try this one with New Mexican lamb when I visit Santa Fe over Christmas. Thanks for an excellent recipe. V

We usually had to sneak our treats. If we begged for treats, she'd buckle and compromise with homemade doughnuts or pizza, or she'd make us mac and cheese or pancakes from scratch. We liked these things okay, but we secretly pined for Fruit Gums, Sno Cones and Fun Dip. Then, there were the times she wanted to reward or treat us for something when we hadn't pestered her for anything, and she was very generous this way. Of course, this meant that she got to offer us the stuff that she really encouraged, like all-natural plain potato chips, homemade chocolate cake, dark chocolate Dove bars, Lac-Nor fruit juices from concentrate, and my sister's favorite, "Mommy's Cheese"-- a slab of halloumi cheese placed on aluminium foil and run under the broiler until bubbly. We ate it all because we knew better than to turn away a treat, but to this day I have no particular fondness for any of these foods. What fun was it if it was given up without a fight? And then, there was the Grey Area: -Snickers were okay, because they contain peanuts, which contain protein. Milky Way, Mars, Twix... these were out of the question. -Bonkers and Starburst were okay, because the colors of the sweets were ones that "occurred in nature". Skittles, on the other hand, were as bad as rat poison. It didn't matter that Starburst packaging has "artificially flavored" plastered all over it. -No sugary cereal whatsoever, and no Kool Aid, but we could have Capri-Sun and Country Time Lemonade. And no pink lemonade- ever! -No Oreo cookies because they used to contain animal fats (lard; Mom is Muslim), but we could have Hydrox cookies- ditto Hostess treats (lard). Drake's Cakes were acceptable provided we stuck to Devil Dogs. -Skippy only. Jif was forbidden (she thought it resembled cake frosting and tasted dangerously sweet). -If mint chocolate chip ice cream was green, forget about it. It was my favorite flavor, too. -Maraschino cherries were outlawed. We had to specify that we didn't want one whenever we ordered Shirley Temples or ice cream sundaes. She sent us to school with tupperware containers filled with leftovers, carrot sticks, and juice. I remember how my heart pounded in my chest the day (4th grade) I asked her to stop sending those "wet" lunches to school with me, because they "smelled like garlic and steak" and I was embarrassed. She started packing me turkey or peanut butter sandwiches on pita bread instead. I still feel so bad about that.

Elie, I'm visiting my family in the Emirates just now and my Lebanese mostly-vegetarian mom is craving lamb. I'm going to make this for dinner tonight. Plans for the day include getting down to the souq to find preserved lemons. Thanks for the recipe.

Is there any way I can get my paws on this recipe? I would be most grateful... And thoughts of candied almonds have me fantasizing about all that marzipan I made a couple of years back. Four kinds; plain, pistachio, chocolate, cherry- all cut into thin, flat, one inch squares and placed in a single layer into clear boxes. Very pretty, and it freezes and ships well. This year, I'm making chocolates again, but I'm going with the recipients' favorites. So, for example, A will get a dozen peanut butter cups, B will get stack of thin mints, C will get dark chocolate cashew turtles, Mom like Almond Joy bars so I'm making my own and using Valrhona dark since she prefers dark anyway, and sisters love marzipan but this year they'll be getting their second favorite: candied orange peel dipped in dark. I make these because chocolate is the single ingredient that I can keep around in huge quantities. I love it, but it doesn't keep me up at night or anything like that. Baked goods, forget about it.

"Kate's Cake Pound" as kind of a spoof on pound cake. What do you think of "Sweet Tooth"? How about "Frosting" or "Icing"? Along the same lines, "Frost the Cake" or "Kate Ices Slices"? "The Batter Bowl"? Or, more simply, "Batter"? How about "Rise Like a Dream" or "High as a Cake"? It's getting late. You could call yourself "The Layer Slayer". And set out to spread your "Flour Power" like icing over the land.

Depends on the bread! Truffled egg toast. Labneh and honey. Great olive oil and Maldon sea salt. Almond butter and sour cherry preserves, with a swirl of maple syrup. Hummus or baba ghanouj and olives. Aioli, particularly on potato bread. Sauteed mushrooms and their juices. Basil mayonnaise or pesto and sweet, oven-roasted tomatoes. Avocado and bacon, especially on sourdough. Thin melting slabs of dark, bitter chocolate. This is especially good on toasted panettone. Even better when the chocolate toast is crowned with a slice of Camembert and run underneath the broiler for a few seconds. Compound butters: vanilla, hazelnut, strawberry, roquefort, tarragon. And so on,

It's only 2:45 pm and I'm beat. Here's what I ended up with: -Dry smoked salmon, salmon jerky, salmon candy from Pure Food Fish Market. -A loaf of summer corn bread and a box of macaroons from Dahlia's. -A lemon tart from Macrina. -Milk and dark chocolate salted caramels from Fran's. -Stuff from Chefshop; olive oil, preserves etc. -Three tubs of that amazing whipped garlic, Lebanese Breeze. I'll head back tomorrow morning for Uli's sausages, cheese from Beecher's (I think it was called) and some of those hazelnuts. Loved the chukar cherries, but they were swamped and I was exhausted. Does anyone have a strong recommendation for which kind to buy? I was too stuffed to taste more than one or two. Thanks for all the great suggestions.

The summer corn bread at Dahlia was bread of the month in August. However, I stopped by this morning and found out that they are extending it until the end of September. Thanks for all the wonderful suggestions everyone. I'm heading out to start food hunting now.

I'm in town for a couple of days, and so far I have ordered a lemon tart from Macrina and am hoping to find a loaf of that corn bread and some macaroons at Dahlia tomorrow (September 1st, but perhaps I'll get lucky). I'm also thinking of bringing back some olive oil (Chefshop maybe? Has anyone been? I order online from them all the time but have never visited the retail store) and cruising Pike's Place tomorrow for, I don't know, more delicious stuff. Any suggestions? I am open to everything.

Date syrup is made from the dates themselves, along with date paste and liquid date sugar. Date sugar is made by pulverizing dried dates. In the U.A.E., there is a Saudi Arabian franchise called Bateel and they have the most amazing date confections; dates molded into truffles with nuts or chocolate or coconut or whatever. They're just beautiful. They also make a sparkling date champagne that you'd probably love if you dig date syrup.

Love is tagliatelle with scrambled egg curds and white truffle butter. Salt and pepper.

Yeah- dates go really well with coffee. Adding cardamom to the combo makes it even better, I think. For years, my afternoon snack was a tiny cup of amber-hued cardamom qahweh (Arabic coffee) and a fistful of soft, half-golden half-chestnut brown dates just picked from our garden. We used to stuff quail and goat with dried dates all the time. Earthier, gamier meats work best with the caramel-like nuances of the dates, in my opinion.

I spent the better part of the morning lounging in the backyard with a huge sticky pile of ripe Saudi dates on a tray in front of me thinking about the very same thing. When I lived in the U.A.E., dates were cooked into everything, but my favorites were a rich date cake with walnuts (like a gooey fudge brownie with a wallop of molasses and butterscotch flavors where the chocolate would otherwise be-- worthless however unless you have excellent dates) and basmati rice with dates, caramelized onionc, almons and saffron. I also like dates roasted with orange peel and stuffed with mascarpone, and Claudia Fleming has a recipe for roasted dates with coconut sorbet and candies coconut. Dates are awesome mixed with amonds or pecans as a filling for baklava, and they marry well with other Middle Eastern flavors like cardamom, anise, honey, orange flower water and rosewater. Date cookies. Date shakes. And I love a good oatmeal bar with a date filling. They make great cinnamon-pecan date bars at Pasqual's here in Santa Fe.

Thank you for a beautiful report.

-Adjust-a-size Tupperware. I own so many of the stupid things to accomodate varying amounts of food. -Disposable tea kettles. -Fold-up 'n' go food processors. So few people that I know seem to own one, and I use mine almost everyday. I hate lugging it around when I cook at friends' homes. -Bring-back-to-life texture saving pellets (made from tasteless herbs grown in the hills surrounding Kyoto and picked by young virgins, of course) for reviving leftover pasta. -Microbial dipsticks for testing restaurant food. No more of that unsettling and disquieting waiting-for-the-rumble after eating an Indian or a Thai meal. -Espresso machine that plugs into the car cigarette lighter. For long road trips with really poor prospects as far as decent coffee is concerned. edited because the fantasies keep coming.

And that simply does not matter. It's not that I binge because I'm famished and finicky around this time of the month; I'm just too tired and worn out to come up with excuses not to eat as much as I like. I give myself a break by granting my body permission to abandon my more typical forms of restraint.

You're not. But that doesn't make it right . God I love doing that.