Lindacakes

I've got bacon fat and lard. I've tried both Dietrich's and Flying Pigs Farm and I think they are quite comparable. For me, in New York City, getting Flying Pigs is easier so that's what I do. Dietrichs likes a personal check, which then has to clear, which is a bit much. Someone here should write a nice country blues song about My Fat Jar. I love my fat jar, I got me lots of fat jars, Bacon fat and hog fat and drippins from the chickins . . My fat jar gittin' higher since you ain't eatin' my biscuits no mo . . .

Spanokopita. Buttery, buttery, buttery filo dough. Tangy, cheesy, fresh lemony spinach.

I'm with johnnyd -- salsify. Also purslane. Celery root is a recent discovery.

P. S. Where do lobsters fit in?

A lovely way of looking at it, through the Phylum Mollusca. I go to Cape Cod on a regular annual sojourn that is all about communing with molluscs. I'm partial to the bivalaves, with oysters and scallops being at the top of the list. I like seeing them alive in nature, swimming with them, and then later enjoying eating them with a nice crisp white wine. The world seems right. This has a lot to do with saltwater and how it smells and tastes. I'm not partial to cephalopods, except intellectually. Octopi are actually rather clever animals. The gastropods I think of as land dwellers, and there I'd have to vote for our French friends, the escargot avec garlic and more garlic. Next time I'm planning for them, I'll make sure I smell wet earth first, and see if that brings up a feeling of deep peace.

Leslie, is it possible that you would share that recipe? I want to try something new this Christmas, and I vote for "stunning".

What is a Red Vine, please? Fat Guy, I think the Candy Machine aspect of what you are talking about is very important. I got a Letter of Concern in college for attempting to move the candy machine from the 3rd floor of the dorm to the 4th floor of the dorm. I thought the candy machine added a lot of personality and I wanted it closer. For many years I had the entire text of that letter memorized, and I must still have it somewhere. "Propensity for a mishap to occur was great . . . " was the crucial part. There's something about the Nourishing Mother of a candy machine, particularly for people in dire circumstances. Those who have stayed up all night for a press O.K., and are eating breakfast from it. Those who are travelling and must surge onward fueled by it. Your classmates whose brains must depend on it. The happiest candy machine I've known was in a very small airport in West Virginia and stocked only Lance products. It was emblazoned with the memorable logo: Why go round hungry? The finest nourishment available in a candy machine is a peanut block.

Is Subway actually a food?

Marshmallow Peeps, only the yellow ones and only at Easter. Heath Bars. Little cinnamon bear cookies, whatever they are called.

Must be the Brooklyn homie silpat method. I do the same, but I start in the kitchen sink and soap it up (which is awkward), rinse it in the tub and hang it over the back of the kitchen chair to dry. Then I roll it around the rolling pin which already has a stocking on it and a pastry cloth wrapped around it. Because they are hard to clean, I would never use them for baking -- I use parchment -- but I do like it for some applications of dough preparation when I don't want to use the pastry cloth.

Ain't you goona tell why you asked? I think about that guy a lot. I stayed on a ranch in Costa Rica where the guy was bringing in tropical fruits from all over the world. The orchards attracted a staggering array of exotic birds, and the star fruit there ruined star fruit for me here. Fruit guys rule.

I fix the icing to cake ratio problem by breaking the lower half of the cup cake off (the stem, as it were) and tossing it for birds and or dogs to enjoy. This leaves an appropriate cake to icing ratio that can be easily bitten through. Another trick is to flip the cupcake over so that it is the icing your tongue perceives first and foremost.

Funny, I noticed some geriatric horseradish in there this morning, and a set of lovely chili peppers that are at least a year and a half old. Meat I wrap in white freezer paper, tape with masking tape, label with a Sharpie, and then put in a freezer ziploc. I put the source of the meat there in case I want to buy it again. Most of it comes from the farmer's market and I like to know who to go back to for the good stuff. I have a library of nuts. Going on a year old. I think I have a bag of black walnuts that are two years old.

My mom always made a salmon loaf for Good Friday. Unbelieveably, about three years ago, I decided I wanted to eat this again. I say unbelieveably, because canned salmon meant tiny spinal cords. I made the one from Joy of Cooking and I made a Marion Cunningham version. Mind you, this is not mashed potatoes, which I think I would prefer, but I liked it and I'd definitely do it again. The binding was bread crumbs. Basically a meat loaf with salmon. Peas are very important. And salt. Lynn Rosetto Kasper does a nice riff on meat loaf and variations on the ingredients and this fits in.

We had a Charles Chip delivery man. He came in a van and filled your Charles Chip tin with fresh potato chips. The milk came from the local dairy. My father's first job was delivering milk by horse-drawn cart when he was twelve. We left a slip of paper with what we wanted checked off, and the milkman would leave it in the insulated box outside the door. This dairy also had, for a while, an ice cream shop. The milk tasted good. I buy only organic now, and it doesn't taste quite as good. Cottage cheese with large curds and actual flavor is what I think I miss the most.

If you don't want the books, don't acquire them. I try to be very judicious in my acquisition and use the public library as much as I can. But I love books and I love being surrounded by them and a room isn't worth being in, to me, if it doesn't have a bookcase in it. My kitchen has two. I acquire cookbooks for the pictures, sometimes, for the covers, sometimes, for whatever strikes my fancy. I'm a book person who makes books, collects books, buys books, gives books as gifts. Older, out of print books are precious to me. I believe there will come a time when books are not as plentiful as they are today. We just don't have the trees to support the population growth. More book buyers plus fewer resources to make books plus book alternatives such as ebooks and the Internet equals fewer books available. At the same time, I believe you'll see your online sources dry up. I don't believe that the Internet of the future will be as open or as free as it is now. I would recommend that you copy and paste recipes you really want to keep into Word documents. Back them up. Mine are in my safe deposit box. Ever since I read about the woman whose house was robbed and they took her hand-written recipes. Imagine that . . . the horror . . .

I'm not doing my black cakes this year -- last year's was perfection and now I'm on to something new. I'm thinking gingerbread. I went to a presentation on the apertif book mentioned above -- she brought samples of her rosolio -- I ended up making a plum elixir out of vodka and cognac. It's mind bogglingly delicious and barely sweet. But I doubt that I'll give any of it away unless you are sitting on my couch drinking it with me. Now that I've got it down, I'll try some more.

Many sweets that taste particularly good: Key Lime Pie. Bittersweet chocolate mousse. Lots of different kinds of cookies -- Snickerdoodles. Cinnamon rolls. And for some unknown reason, since I don't eat in movie theaters and on the rare occassions that I do this is it: Sour Patch Kids. I will chew my way maniacally through an entire bag, one right after another, until they are gone. Hot, light breads as mentioned above and this can be the incredible popovers at BLT Prime or it could mean the Pillsbury crescent rolls someone's mom served. Just needs melted butter and a little bit of steam and that's it. It's gone. When Krispy Kreme was new to my area, I got a dozen with a friend and we sat down and ate them all, right in the store. The glaze hadn't even dried yet.

I'm about to make a cup now. I don't really have time (!) to do it, so I don't do it as often as I like, but I like to have a cup of tea in the morning and in the afternoon. I use a green loose leaf tea from Tea Source. Put it in a stainless steel tea ball -- I don't like the taste of tea bags. The hot water comes from the hot water tap here. It isn't boiling; I've never taken the temperature but it's perfect for tea. I use a regular Gary Larson cartoon mug. I am currently lusting after a big mug with a lid. My neighbor drinks an endless stream of naked Earl Gray. I have to have milk and sugar in my Earl Gray and I think that would be over the top here. We once had an afternoon break guy who came around with a cart and rang a bell and you could buy coffee and pastries from him. I understand some offices in England do this; the tea cart. Terribly civilized but I wouldn't be able to control myself.

No one has mentioned my favorite: Porcini Mushroom Pizza. Imported from Italy. Absolutely delicious. Nice with a salad for supper. Nice if you cut it into little squares and serve with cocktails. I keep a running list of what people recommend, what I've tried that I don't like and what I've tried that I love. Fire Roasted Balsamic Vegetables. Nice base for all sorts of veggie mixes in the lunch. I find it about half and half. Half of what I try, I like. The other half, meh. Cappucino Craving Cake. Yech.

I was rather disappointed in a film I waited a long time to see and rushed out to see the first showing. I hated the J/J book -- I listened to it as an audio book on a cross country trip and after the first couple of pages, I threw the disks out the window, into the corn fields. I was prepared to not particularly like the Julie parts but I found them difficult to sit through and hated every time the movie switched back to the present. There's a lot I liked about the Julia parts, but I thought the structure of the movie was lacking and would much rather have seen a straight biography of Julia Child with more background information in it. I'm looking forward to renting it on DVD and skipping the present day scenes. Some of the period details, the clothes, were very nice indeed. Louisette Berthold's manicure, for instance, that red! I, too, was inspired to go home and cook, but I made a Pavlova instead. I did take MTAFC off my shelf, read quite a bit, and fondle it.

Hey, Chris, How did you like the crust? I've done that sour cream crust before, and as I recall, I thought it was quite good. Did you use the plastic bag method? Regarding the liquidy-ness of the pie, I am not above siphoning out excess liquid and have done so with a baster and with an eyedropper! Insanity!

I recently made a very nice cherry pie. I used RLB recipe, but I didn't do any cooking or reducing. I started with sour cherries from the farmer's market and was conservative with the sugar and the almond extract. I used a cup more cherries than Rose (4 cups instead of 3). The thickener was cornstarch. The pie was quite liquid after baking. It thickened after setting a proper amount of time (fruit pies need at least four to six hours to set) and the crust was not soggy. I used the traditional lattice top. My only regret was using a Pillsbury Ready Crust. I did it because of time and energy constraints. Leathery. So inferior. Everyone was ooing and ahhing and I was cringing through my smile. You call THAT pie? Farm Journal is a good source for pie recipes. Farm ladies compete at county fairs on pie crust and fresh fruit. Good thing I froze four cups of cherries because I need to compete with the Pillsbury company.

I got some favas at an organic guy last weekend. Late for favas, but they were good. He had a huge supply.

That's not exactly it, but it looked a lot like that. Would have been about 1980, it had a brown bottom and a cream-colored lid. Had an open/close vent. Maybe West Bend . . .