chappie

I would stay away from the chipotles in adobo, because they'll still taste like the adobo, which I believe has garlic in it. Go with dried and you'll get the pure chipotle. Cooking them with the fruit will be all the reconstituting you need.

I think habañero — used carefully — will complement the orange better than would jalapeño. Another suggestion would be to use the omnipresent clementines that go on sale this time of year. Might make a unique product.

As far as I know, I've eaten Virginia hams my whole life mostly raw. Dad would glaze them and bake them for a little while, but mainly just to flavor the outside. I doubt he cooked them long enough to penetrate to the bone. We liked it super salty and sliced paper-thin. But I'm curious about this smoking technique. Can you describe it further? I'd love to try it.

A great article in today's Washington Post, titled "Down the Hatch, Then What?", explores some of the theories behind competitive speed eaters' abilities. It also mentions a second organization for competitive eaters, the Association of Independent Competitive Eaters (www.competitiveeaters.com).

I recommend the book "Nourishing Traditions" (by Sallon Fallon and the Weston Price Foundation) because it's full of anecdotal evidence on the ills of modern, factory foods — he might enjoy reading it even at his age — and it gives a sensible platform to base a whole-foods diet around. Does he like oatmeal? If so, then you could make Irish steel-cut oats for him, adding dried fruits and a little bit of honey, maybe some flax seed. They take longer to cook, but if you soak them overnight (usually with a little bit of yogurt to make the grains easier to digest), then it's really quite managable. I loved oatmeal as a kid, but it was the instant, over-sugared variety that was really a nutritional nightmare. This stuff fills me up and gives me energy for hours. It might prevent a child from snacking throughout the day.

Fine dining and high-priced plates are the culinary equilvalent of the overextravigance of the Roman Empire's decline. It's gotten ridiculous, and I'm tired of it. I get suckered into a pricey meal here and there — celebrate this, celebrate that — and every time I walk out of place having spent $120 plus for two people to put goddamn food in our mouths, I feel like a fool. To each his own, and don't get me wrong — I'm impressed with the creativity these chefs are demonstrating and the remarkable flavors they conjure — but it's gotten to the point where it's just excess. Too rich, overbuttered, and you walk out stifling the urge to projectile vomit from calorie overload. When did we all become such snobs? I am much happier spending a third the price on a humble Vietnamese or Korean restaurant on the outskirts of a city, where I am the minority among clientelle, the food is sublime and actually what real people eat to nourish themselves. Or making some Guiness venison stew at home. Unfortunately, where I live (a picturesque, waterfront town of 12,000 or so with lots of wealth), it's either eat rich or eat dull. The only affordable meals are pizza, sugary Chinese, border Mexican or a burger. No Pho, no Middle Eastern kebabs, no Indian. It pays around here to know how to cook. I will spend a little bit on sushi sometimes, but if I were to hit the powerball right now, I would still never pay $1G for a meal.

Some big beer-tasting database ranked Corona Light as the world's worst beer among the thousands of entries. I loathe Bud Light as well. Ranier, bottled in Washington, is also pretty god-awful stuff, but I have fond memories of drinking it by the pitcher in Anacortes, Wash., as an 18-year-old working pre-trip duty on an Alaska-bound fishing boat.

I haven't used to book for recipes per se, but I do use the whey-inoculated pickle recipes and methods, and techniques like soaking grains and drinking keffir milk. Lately I've been off my Nourishing Traditions kick and I don't feel nearly as energetic and healthy as I did when I woke up to a bowl of soaked steel-cut oats, kefir milk and yerba mate (not sure how Fallon feels about the mate, but it made me feel great). Has anyone tried making kombucha?

In 1998 I made 10 gallons of champagne-method cider using Montrachet yeast, and it was perfect: dry, crisp with just a touch of sweetness. We really discovered cider in summer 2002, during a trip to Quebec. After reading a piece about the various cidreries dotting the countryside, my girlfriend and I decided to tour some of them upon leaving Montreal. We found our favorite, one Michel Jodoin, where we wandered their orchards alone, ate the different apples and bought a case of a champagney, rose cider. Most of it we finished that winter, but we saved one bottle in the fridge for a special occasion. Sunday I popped it open, it was only better with age, and while we enjoyed it I proposed to her. She said yes, and we'll probably go back to Quebec just to get some more of the good stuff.

I didn't know Chincoteague had a Vietnamese place... Dad and I drove through a few years ago, and ate at a local-type place called the Pony Pines. Fantastic salty, Chincoteague clams and the best friend flounder I ever had.

You do know that most Chincoteague oysters are Bay oysters that have been barged south and submerged for a period of time to allow them to develop a briny flavor in the salty ocean water. Another Delmarva country tradition I am not fond of is adding sugar to all sorts of overcooked vegetables. A pinch in stewed tomatoes I can understand, but lima beans? I like mine simple, not overcooked, with butter, salt and peper. Maybe this would have been a better forum to post my thread on Muskrapple.

Like any contest, the point is simple: win something. In this case it was $400 and 28 pounds of meat. I don't think any of the "professionals" are doing it for free, either, and with the increased attention to the contests (Verizon now sponsors the chicken-wing circuit, and most of the other major contests are sponsored), I would expect the top consumers to make a decent living off of it, unhealthy a living as it may be. This all might dismay you, but it's really quite a fitting "sport" for modern America. Just one that I am not quite cut out for.

I was waiting for someone to say scrapple. That would be my top Delmarva food. Surprisingly, though, a lot of the out-of-the-way islands and hamlets don't have too many specialties that don't involve a box of packaged something or some jello. I had something called "Under the Sea Salad" in Tilghman that involved lime jello, mayonnaise, horseradish and canned pineapple. Did you eat muskrat at The Washington Hotel in Princess Anne? My old college roommate's parents owned that place, and once ever other year or so, some regional newspaper or magazine would bill it the authentic destination to taste muskrat at its best... which is still pretty awful in my opinion. Greenish, slimy meat and infinite bones. No thanks. I am also no fan of Maryland Beaten Biscuits. Eat one of those dense, dry flour baseballs and you feel like you've ingested lead fishing weights. I do like a good, homemade vegetable crab soup.

How on earth does Sonya Thomas do it? Take a look at those records... 65 hard-boiled eggs in 6 minutes, 40 seconds. Damn.

I would ammend this to say Might "have used to have been" the best gyro in the world. I used to live in Frederick Hall right up the hill from Marathon, making the brief downhill pilgrimage several times a week for perfect spannakopita, tyropita, gyros and — my favorite — souvlaki. Unfortunately, the place changed owners in 1997 or so, and the food, though still good, was never quite the same. The pastry for each of the turnovers, for instance, became overly sweet and gummy, while the gyros were drier and more similar to what you'd find at a diner. I still went. My favorite place in College Park, though, hands-down, is Food Factory. Tucked into a bland shopping center behind Town Hall liquors, you could pass right by this place and never know it served some of the best Persian kebabs this side of the Ayatollah's grandmother's kitchen. Go for the lamb, toss in a $1.50 samosa, and you will roll yourself out for under $7. Every order comes with freshly baked naan — lowered into a coal-burning, vertical oven by a wispy, asparagus-thin man who appears to be closing in on 90 (he's probably in his 60s) — that comes out charred in just the right spots. Also a homemade, yogurt-based cucumbery "hot sauce" you could drink straight up if no one was looking. We used to call the guy who ran it the "Kebab Nazi" — after the Seinfeld "Soup Nazi" episode — because when we'd call in an extensive order, he would say "About 30 minute", we'd arrive too early, and he would instantly know it was us when we entered. The place was overly packed, mostly with Middle-Eastern people, a good sign, and he would shake his fist and shout "I say 30 minute, not 20!" Also, you can't beat taking a jaunt down University Boulevard for cheap pho or the various Peruvian and other Vietnamese places...

Two more photos. The first, a pre-feast glimpse of the contestants: from left, my friend Izzy (she doused hers in ketchup and finished just 2.5); a mysterious J.J. — lean, hungry and the man I thought would devour the rest of us; me; and close runner-up Mead. After winning I gave a ridiculous interview with the radio station in which I discussed my on-the-fly strategy shift, the glazed feeling emmanting outward from my innards, and the possibility of trying a scrapple-eating contest before working my way up the breakfast meats chain of minor-league chow competitions. A friend of mine was driving his truck and this was the only station he could get. He had forgotten about the contest, and tuned in just as I was giving my interview. He said he had to pull over he was laughing so hard.

The guy next to me was a bystander (actually I know him but hadn't seen him in about 7 years) who quickly joined in when the $400 bonus was announced. What impressed me most about him — other than the pink sneakers he sported to match his sweatshirt — was that, once I won, he held my hand up and continued to methodically finish his free brat.

Saturday I won a bratwurst-eating contest sponsored by a local spa company and radio station. The rules were the first to eat five Johnsonville brats, plus buns, and the turnout was low (I was the only one who qualified by phone to even show up...). There were four of us, and right before we started, the spa company president announced a bonus prize in addition to the "Octoberfest party package" ponied up by the radio station: $400 cash. Now it was serious. I ate the first brat straight-up, dunking the bun in water a la Takeru Kobayashi. Midway through number two, I switched to eating all the meat, leaving a pile of bread to deal with later. Unfortunately, they were still hot from the grill, and harder to get down that I hoped. I even found myself pushing sausage down my throat. As I chewed the last bite of brat, I noticed the guy to my left closing in on me, though he employed no tactics other than chomp, chew, repeat. As I swallowed, he had about 1/3 a brat+bun remaining. Quickly, I soaked my remaining buns in water and slurped the soggy mess down. It seemed like it took forever, but someone clocked my time around 4 minutes, 30 seconds. And I felt terrible, like one of those sausages had missed my stomach and remained lodged between some ribs. Along with the much-needed $400 (I am a small-town newspaper writer paid in occasional ladles full of nickles) I received two sacks of sauerkraut, some beer — and 28 pounds of Johnsonville brats I have relegated to the freezer for a future in which I am able to consider a bratwurst again. For four days now, I've felt sluggish, and the sad part is my feat was nothing. I went to www.ifoce.com to check out some of the records, and there, under Sonya "Black Widow" Thomas' bib sheet is a cruel and terrifying line: 35 Johnsonville brats in 10 minutes. Thomas weighs less than half my bulk and devoured seven times the number of brats in just over twice the time frame. I don't get it. What happens next for these gurgitators? Does she then slip into a week-long coma? Could you bottle her stomach acid as a WMD?

I had forgotten another of Dad's entries into the packrat hall of fame. It was about 1990 or so, and he was tinkering in our crusty old green shed. He uncovered some cans of C-rations from Vietnam, paused for a moment to reminisce -- then opened one up and took a bite. I think it was either beans or some sort of ham product. Now that's old. The respondents who have named items from the late 1990s... that's still new to him. This was a man who used to hang country hams for years in the aforementioned shed, and who has somewhere buried in one of his four freezers an albino squirrel we found dead when I was a kid. He had hoped to get it stuffed one day; I fear it may have been stewed instead.

My father is an infamous packrat, so much so that when he remarried in 2000, part of the contract stipulated side-by-side, his and hers refrigerators in the redesigned kitchen. His habits have changed somewhat, but I used to see bottles of salad dressing in the fridge at least a decade old. The real treasures, though, my friend Willie and I relegated to a top shelf in the late 1990s — what we admiringly called "The Food Museum." Let's see, there was a box of 1981 Chef Boyardee Pizza Mix; several packets of 1970s Jell-Well (a Jello knockoff); a container of corndog batter mix so old it had a cents symbol; Pillsbury Microwave Cake Mix from about 1983; and finally, the crown jewell: A mid-1980s, freeze-dried NutriSystem burger, complete with a petrified bun sealed in plastic and a packet of reddish "sauce." Mmmmmm. I will either bury him with that one, or I'm inheriting it.

Cut them in half or in slices, then treat them like apples for a pie (use a half-cup more sugar to compensate for the lack of sweetness). I made 10 of these and froze them a few years back and they're perfect with ice cream. The tomatoes turn jammy when they bake, and I leave off a top crust (or just do a few strips of dough over the top) so that the dinner guests get a green surprise on their plates.

I received a copy of Nourishing Traditions (based on the Weston A. Price Foundation) a year and a half ago and I pick it up almost every day, thumb through it and read techniques and essays randomly. I have adopted some of its practices, like soaking whole grains before I use them and lacto-fermenting vegetables with whey. I have made kombucha and beet kvass, as well as homemade kimchi and pickles — all delicious. A year ago I stuck with the main principles of the book (whole foods, with lacto-fermented condiments and sides) and lost 15 pounds in the blink of an eye. I don't always stick to the "traditional" methods advocated by this book, but I believe they are right in blaming many of today's ailments and chronic disease on a dead, pasturized, homogenized and factory-produced diet. I would like to start a thread for people to discuss this book and the techniques and ideas it describes. Have you lacto-fermented your own pickles or sourkraut? What was your experience with kombucha (it didn't agree with me). Do you eat steel-cut oats for breakfast, soaked beforehand? Do you disagree with parts of the book, all of the book? Or the Weston Price Foundation? Let's get some discussion going here...

Is there any reason these worms wouldn't make a suitable candidate for pickling? I've been making all sorts of pickles lately using the lacto-fermentation method described in Nourishing Traditions. Why wouldn't it work the same for a firm, juicy caterpillar? This might take some bravery to actually taste, however. On a sidenote, someone told me that on a recently aired episode of Fear Factor, contestants had to chew up green tomato hornworms and spit their juice into a container. Based on their flavor with a quick trip to the sautee pan, I'm guessing they aren't all that bad raw, either.

Our Acme sells a marinara sauce that has four or five ingredients, all quality (extra-virgin instead of soybean oil, no sugar or corn syrup) for far cheaper than even the Ragu shit. I'll have to look up the name at home.

If tomato hornworms taste like tomatoes, could you pinch a tobacco hornworm between your lip and gums and get a nicotine buzz?