Katherine

Are you trying to avoid the "problem" of the rounded top, or the "problem" of the top layer splitting when you assemble them that way? I understand that using baking strips along the outside of the cake pan will allow the edges to rise evenly. I've never tried this, though. I trim off the top, flat, and eat the scraps, or mix them with whipped cream. And eat them.

Which one? Must be the other Portland.

This is a question you must answer for yourself, to your own tastes. Try it both ways. Report back. I'm guessing you'll prefer a touch of salt.

For the record, mentally maintaining categories of food as "spoiled" is not unique to Jewish experience. My own mother has a number of what we would call "normal" foods that she thought were spoiled, contaminated, or similarly inedible, etc, and were not allowed in the house.

prefer staright varietals when consuming Americano's. Drip coffee is another story - some of the varietals that I really like as Americanos, I am less fond of when made as drip coffee. I'll reemphasize the excellent point that was already made - the critical importance of freshness. It's hard enough to find REAL Kona or Jamaican Blue Mountain, much less find the real thing that is truly freshroasted (i.e. was roasted within 24 - 48 hours of the time you get the coffee). I'll take fresh roasted beans of nearly any old arabica variety over stale beans of some pricey and exotic brean or blend. drip as opposed to _____ ? i have a typical Krups, like most. &, how does one actually know "fresh-roasted? Drip as opposed to espresso, in this case. (americano is an espresso variation) If your coffee doesn't have a roasted-on date on the package, and you care (most people don't care/can't tell if their coffee's fresh or godawful stale), then you have no way of knowing when it was roasted. Either find a small roaster that will sell fresh coffee to you, or roast your own. Warning: Once you do this you can never go back.

I've got a nomination. Jason Epstein's New York Times Sunday Magazine columns walk the line, and occasionally slip over into the pointlessly memoirish. Case in point Sunday's offering, wherein Epstein belabors readers with his account of his 1953 honeymoon aboard the Atlantic liner Ile de France. Not enough about food. Too much about him and the decor in his stateroom, etc. I often enjoy his columns. Just this one made me mutter, "Get to the food already, sheesh. I don't care that much about your life." Meaning that I could be interested in your life. But you completely failed to hold me there this time. Rather like where, through reading memoirish articles, you become personally acquainted with a writer, and realize that you don't like them at all, and wish you'd never gotten to know them.

Ooh! That sounds intriguing. Tell us more? I can tell you approximately what I did, as I don't currently have an exact recipe. If I end up writing the cookbook, I will end up with specifics. The moisture level in the dough can be varied, and the moister it is, the softer it cooks up. So I made two batches (seasoned well with salt and pepper), one moister, and one with cocoa, beet juice, and paprika to color it deep pink, in a meatlike sort of way. Both pieces were shaped roughly into rectangles, and pressed together. They were simmered (not too long) in salted water, which caused the white layer to get softer than the dark section. I sliced it 3/8" thick, and simmered it in a liquid which contained vinegar, sugar, spices, mesquite smoke flavored oil, and cabbage. The vegans loved it, but I'm not sure they would have liked it so much if they realized it was mock pork belly they were eating.

As long as you don't have celiac disease or a wheat allergy, gluten is good food. It's the goodness of wheat without massive quantities of starch. If you tried to get all your protein from whole grains and beans, veganism would be an extremely high-carb diet.

I'd definitely say that for me, it's a "know it when I see it" type of thing. The word "slippery slope" comes to mind. At what point does the writing pass from being about food, with the warmth of the writer's experience enhancing it, to being about the writer, with the food there just to say it was? Perhaps it does have something to do with the target audience, trying to appeal to people who are more self-centered yet want to be sophisticated in all things culinary, without actually having to cook meals. Makes me want to cancel a magazine subscription when I see that.

I've always made my own from gluten flour aka vital wheat gluten. I never had any recipes to work from, so I just winged it. Kung pao seitan and seitan green chili were a huge hit with the vegans my daughter used to hang out with. Also the seitan in the style of smoked pork belly (fakin). And last week I had seitan cubes (resembling stew beef) with green beans, garlic, ginger and chili oil that nonvegetarians were drooling over at work. Looking into writing a cookbook.

Here's what I like to do: Tear off the leaves, reserving the meaty ones. Then trim the bottoms. Steam the bottoms and stuff. Steam the leaves, serve with hollandaise or other sauce for dipping. Voila! Two course tasting.

Nor from scrapie-infected sheep.

I think powerlifting is what you need to build up your overall strength. People bring me jars to open.

My ex-mil made a meatloaf that looked and tasted like dog food. I'm sure she used the fattiest hamburger available, a packet of some sort of French's seasoning mix, and lots of bread torn into irregular pieces to soak up the grease. What else, I didn't want to know. The standards were pretty low at that household, but everybody agreed this was way below the bar. To get the flavor right, I think you'd need to add some sort of processed soy product, like a texturized soy protein. Tofu is too tasty.

What are you planning on feeding your guests, or do you expect them to be so grossed out they will not want to eat real food?

You can brew any blend or roast of coffee in your espresso maker. It won't be espresso, though. Try it and see. Venezuelans brew a very light roast of coffee as for espresso, and I enjoyed it very much there. But like I said, not espresso. Break out of the box. Edge of the envelope.

Mmm, stuffed pig heart.

I think it would bring the bar up faster if we could improve the writing at the lower levels, where the reviews seem to be based on a document template. A badly designed and boring document template. Reviewers use the same clichés repeatedly in the same review, and don't seem to have any knowledge or curiousity about food. I'm not surprised: there are plenty of people who own and operate restaurants who appear to have no idea about what good food is. Again, the restaurant analogy, but this time I agree with your premise: the demand for bad food always seems to be growing faster than that for good food.

Certainly in my area, and probably in small markets and minor publications all over the country, an additional problem is that many editors see food writing as a warm body job.

There's an Orange, Massachusetts, which is even more unlikely to grow orange trees than you would imagine. And Cherryfield, Maine, where the big business in town is processing, what else, blueberries.

[not Jewish]I had horseradish mixed with salted unsweetened whipped cream, served over rare roast beef that made a defining culinary experience. [/not Jewish]

Do you normally make it from scratch, or do you buy the tubes of rubbery polenta, ready for slicing?

These are an Oregon-grown seedless grape that sold for $4.95 at Fred Meyer. They are next to the neighbor's fence (they're in Arizona and haven't checked out what I am up to), and close to Puget Sound, where once the great Island Belle variety thrived on Grapeview Island when fruit wines were still in vogue. Meanwhile in the Spring - after a nice Valentine's Day - an old man's (that's me) hopes turn to Spring and potential new feed from the grapes for the birds, to keep them out of my blueberries and raspberries. And, meanwhile, the horseradish lurks away growing deep in the heart of Winter. dave Come spring, prune your grapes sternly to improve quality of the fruit produced. Don't let them run rampant and take over, they'll expend their energy on leaves, rather than fruit. Prunings can be used for stuffed grape leaves and wreaths.

I like to coat the bottom of dish with hot caramel, and then unmold it after baking. Mmmm... In the restaurant I was working in at one time, I took leftover stale brownies (an excellent reason not to bake low-fat brownies in the first place, as they are stale almost immediately), broke them up, packed in a pan, covered with custard and baked. It was great, but we couldn't figure out what to call it.

I don't know -- I'm looking out my window right now at my neighbor's grapevines. They have conquered her house and are trying to conquer mine. The vines run the length of her property and grow up onto a 4' trellis on her roof. They have choked the life out of the peach tree in my backyard (didn't trim them soon enough) and they have felled my neighbor's TV antenna. I realize it's a race between the grapevines and the horseradish to see who gets established first, but once that happens, my money's on the grapes. I guess that would have to depend on where you live and the type of grapes that are planted. Viticulture is exacting, if you want a quality crop. Wild (or feral) grapes are not.