Lindacakes

That sandwich looked seriously good, Katie. It would be a service to humanity if you went to S & E on a fact-finding mission. Ernie does talk. He says, "Hi, puppy!" when you come home, because that's what I call him. He says "Gimme kiss!" quite easily and makes several kissing sounds. From the little pt pt pt of a peck to the long puckering sound of a smacker. He makes that errrrr noise you make when you stretch, he'll stretch with you. Birds actually stretch and yawn. He laughs when we're laughing together. He'll call out his name when he wants attention. But the really interesting and astounding thing that he says is "I love you." He never parrots that phrase (meaning he'll repeat it after you say it). I've never heard him parrot it once. And when he does say it, he says it completely appropriately. Which means that he's understanding an abstract concept and using language to express it appropriately. Like when you cover his cage, turn out the light and say good night to him. And there's a few minutes of silence and then you hear, "I love you."

The Main Drag in the Nabe. These are some of the businesses in my neighborhood. This is where they sell the bread made in the bakery below me. After 9/11, many businesses had supportive slogans on posters in their windows. In the window here, there was a sign that said, “We salute our heros who gave their lives at the World Trade Center. Try our new stuffed ravioli.” This is the laundry mat where a guy once poured bleach in my washer by accident. He nearly gave birth to a cow while we waited for my clothes to come out. They were unharmed, and I wouldn’t have cared anyway. I never saw someone so socially mortified in all my life, except when Barbie Hall peed her pants in fourth grade. I witnessed a knifing here once. I like their Sicilian pie, which I get delivered and then freeze the slices for a quick lunch. Once upon a time my friend Jake and I, in a state of altered consciousness, stood outside a place like this and laughed at the poor ladies under the dryers so hard someone got up and closed the curtains. This is where I get my prescriptions filled. Until the recent smoking ban in New York City, the people who work behind the cash register would smoke. I used to buy a horseradish cheese here until the last time, when Lou sliced my cheese on the same slicer I’d just seen him slicing raw meat on. Luckily, I haven't needed to shop here, but the sign painted on the side of the building is cool.

He's going to buy a used leather jacket from one of Hummingbirdkiss's bad birds. You know it's a joke, but that's what he does when he wants attention. Chews that web of flesh. I don't think it would hurt to try one cookie. They're only in season once a year.

I think, Chris, that the taste of the cookies has gone downhill. I used to like them, too. Very processed. Not good. Ernie, by the way, would be glad to chew the flesh web between your thumb and first finger any time you come near him . . .

Easter Morning: The Bunny Stops By. Sunday morning, Easter morning. And the sun is out. Very good. I’m in the mood for grits and eggs. This is a regular Sunday dish for me. I get my grits from Falls Mill. I’ve always liked grits, since a college friend from South Carolina introduced me to them. But these are really gritty grits. Their corn meal is special, too. Falls Mill Naturally, Ernie relishes eggs. It is a bird’s first food, after all. Loves grits, too. After breakfast, the Easter Bunny stopped by and we had a little chat, and he dropped off this nice Italian Easter egg. This is a formal portrait of the chocolate egg. The Italians, just another thing they do really well, wrapping food. Try buying four cookies in Venice and see what you get. You’d think it was your birthday. Someone upthread asked to see the binding presses. I think you would be really disappointed in my binding equipment, which is quite makeshift. I removed the clothing from the chocolate egg and posed it nude on the printing press instead. This is the ceremonial opening of the Easter Egg: Madonna mia! There’s something inside the egg! Look what’s inside! A cunning little blue net bag with a silver heart charm and a cord to wear it around your neck with. The E.B. tells me you can pick up one of these nice eggs at Market Hall.

The Cheese Plate. Saturday night. Time to relax. We’ve rented some old episodes of Prime Suspect. We have supplies for a cheese plate that we bought in Philadelphia. A bottle of Prosecco is opened. I love me a good cheese plate. I love to make cheese plates. I love to go to wine and cheese tastings. What did we do before the invention of the cheese plate? Never mind, I know, we unwrapped a cube of Laughing Cow. I’m going to order some more of the candied orange peel from Market Hall. That was excellent, and although I’ve never had candied orange peel on a cheese plate, I understand that it is delicious. This is the prosecco. A very nice one. I discovered this during one of those Astor Place wine tastings. This was not a boon to the cheese plate offerings. But it was tasty on its own. This is the cheese plate. A bite of fig and a bite of the St. Andre together was mind blowing. Really good. The gorgonzola stuffed olives were tasty, but I prefer my olives stuffed with a garlic clove. The Prime Suspect was riveting. We stayed up until 3:30 to watch Part 2. Couldn’t help it. You can get this on NetFlix, I checked.

Good question. Answer: I don't know. I realize you don't have to, for both. I don't even think my mom did. I was conscious of putting the molasses in the fridge and I usually don't and I'm not sure why I did, except that I use it very infrequently. That's an interesting topic, food in fridge and food not in fridge. My grandmother used to put weird things in the fridge. Chocolate, for one. I lived for a whole year without a fridge and used to keep butter. I ate a lot of instant mashed potatoes back then, I was too busy being young to cook. I kept milk outside on the windowsill in the winter. I suppose I should take those out of the fridge. I actually have more fridge space than cupboard space, though . . .

The Refrigerator Door is Opened. The folks who posted comments on the existence of other two-kitchen situations made me think about two kitchens as a class and culture issue. And made me remember that the Italian ladies in my family all have two kitchens, which amazed me. We’re using the word kitchen loosely here, but my grandmother, even when she lived in an old folks apartment complex, had a “fruit cellar” in which extra food was kept. I don’t know who was going to eat it, and she no longer had the fruit trees or tomato plants that led to the canning, but she used her walk-in closet to store the same items that she once stored in the basement. Huge cans of flour, preserves, boxes of ancient cookies, the pizzelle iron. Her two daughters also had the same set up – but more. Coffin-like deep freezes. Huge sinks. Storage of canned and preserved foods. Big family get-together meals were actually served in the basement, which could hold several long folding tables. There are two reasons why I particularly like having the two kitchens. One is storage for dishes. I like to buy dishes and after I do, I have to have somewhere to put them. Having additional cupboard space helps, and later, there’s eBay. But the best part is the opportunity to have two fridges. New York apartment fridges are small. I’ve always had a problem with freezer space, and one year I had to cook a turkey, carve it, and freeze the meat before Thanksgiving because I had no room for a turkey. The savory fridge holds all the vegetables, and food that is in use like milk and yogurt and cans of coffee. Cheese is kept there, in a basket. There’s a little basket for Ernie’s foods – kiwi, apples, sweet potatoes. Everyday condiments are on the door. If you squint, you can see Penzey's Foxpoint and this chicken paste product I'm fond of from Penzey's. That miniature milk jug is the buttermilk. The freezer has a couple of homemade soups, some chicken breasts, some stock. Those little boxes are frozen herbs -- shallots and parsley. I always forget to use them. I wouldn't buy that again. On the door there's bags of extra spices, peppercorns. Cubes of homemade chili colorado. Normally I have a lot of frozen food, but as winter is over, we're trying to clean out the old to bring in the new. The sweet fridge holds overflow food. Note that the vegetable keeper is empty. The eggs must have been out when I took these, I notice I have no eggs in the fridge. Normally there's two dozen. For two people. On the door you'll see the jelly -- right now there's candied ginger jelly and rose petal jelly. Once, when I was a kid, my mother made rose petal jelly from roses in our garden. I've never forgotten that and whenever I see rose petal jelly, I buy a jar. None of it tastes anything like hers did, but the one that's there now is the closest I've come. It's not pleasant enough to spread on toast, so every once in a while I melt a tablespoon of it in a cup of hot water and make a tea. In the freezer, there's ice and an ice cream maker. Avocado from Costco. Containers of leaf lard. A bag of grits. On the door are my baking items. Yeast, nuts, cherries, persimmons, a frozen pie crust. Some chili peppers, which are not for baking.

Pudina leaves, we find out, are mint leaves!

Market Street El -- Well, shucks. Next time I'm in Philadelphia, I'll send a warning. That's very kind of you. Interestingly, this topic of vegetarianism was discussed over lunch at Lord & Taylor (department store, I kind of like lunching in department stores and museums . . . but only when I'm there to shop or gawk -- still it's a little pocket of foodity, isn't it?) yesterday. Lynn ordered the BLT, I had a spinach, mushroom and cheese whole wheat wrap with sweet potato fries. And I brought up the thread from eGullet on which food it was that you left the vegetarian wagon for. Most folks say bacon. Lynn and I both have been vegetarians in our youth. It was me who tempted her off the wagon with a hot dog in the Museum of Natural History museum cafe. What we decided was that Americans are raised to be meat-centric, at least, we were growing up in Ohio in the 60's. And when you go to college, this is the first time you get acquainted with a lot of ideas you didn't get at home, and vegetarianism is one of them. You learn that the act of eating is a political issue. And you exercise your right to rebel, and to voice your political opinion through your food choices. And in the process of being a vegetarian in the years that follow, you rethink how to eat. So that when the strip of bacon flirts with you, and you leave your lover Tofu behind, you are a changed person. And you don't eat meat the way you used to. This is me. I eat meat, but it isn't the centerpiece of a meal for me. I like turkey and lamb the most. Lately I've been playing with roast pork and pork in all its forms. I'm suspicious of beef, though, as I had a brush with E. Coli and learned something about it. Lynn's cousin died of an E. Coli infection, so it's real to me. And more than that, I do believe that there is mad cow disease in our meat supply. Not in a real paranoic way, but in a realistic sense. There's a huge not-so-clean and powerful beef industry in America. I don't buy a lot of meat and either buy what goes as "organic" (better food and living conditions for the animals) or buy directly from the butcher. I like buying from the butcher the best, as it is a pleasant cultural experience. I like big beefy butchers and the repartee over the meat counter. Note in the picture of the meat market on Ninth Street, there are spring lambs in the window.

Petite Tete de Chou -- I don't know how to begin to describe what paneer pasanda tastes like . . . it's thick and creamy, hot, and then with an indescribable spice mix. Oddly, I never tried to crack this code before. Julie Sahni's Classic Indian Cooking doesn't have anything. Below I compare two recipes -- items in green are items that are identical in the recipes. Items in black are where they differ. It's sort of sad to have the magic revealed, but when you see the mix you can see how it is impossible to describe the taste. The one I'm liking has the cashew nuts and definitely the tomatoes, and definitely cream. I would not have identified the cashew nut flavor on my own, but it makes perfect sense to me that this taste drives me wild. I love peanut butter enough not to be able to have it in the house. Indian Food Forever has a recipe -- click. Paneer is cottage cheese, but a very firm curd. This is the rest of the ingredients: onion tomato ginger green chili cream curd butter red chili powder turmeric dried pudina Leaves garam masala milk Flavors of India has a slightly different recipe -- click. chopped cashew nuts cornflour bay leaf chopped green chilli garlic paste ginger paste red chilli powder onion paste cashewnut paste tomato puree green cardamon powder cream oil salt garam masala: black cardamom green cardamom cinnamon cloves mace peppercorns

In Which the Sink is Used for Alternative Purposes. Ernie likes to have a bath on Saturday mornings. He’d probably like to have one on other mornings, but I like to make sure he’s completely dry before I leave the house, which I don’t have time to do on a weekday. I give him a bath in the sink, although he has come into the shower with me. Birds like ritual, like kids, and his bath is always the same. He stands on the T-stand and gets used to it, I position the water so that it will run down his back, he offers his feet, which I rub under the water to remove any sticky fruit, when he’s done he gets toweled off, and held for a few minutes, then released into his cage where I’ve placed a space heater focused on his perch.

Pancake Feed. Saturday morning. Ah, the deliciousness of it all. A deliciousness which can only be improved with the addition of pancakes. Really good pancakes. I have several pancake recipes that I keep in regular rotation – One that is classic, like mom used to make (from Bisquick), which I like with bananas. One that is rich and precious. One that includes cornmeal and corn kernels. All of them have to have buttermilk. Let’s try something new. I’ve been wanting to make a recipe that was included in the Saveur Top 100 issue, which came out, I think, last month, just before the butter issue (!). These were from a particular restaurant called Robie’s. This is the bowl of batter – it’s quite thick and puffy. Pancakes in the cast iron skillet. Because the batter is so thick and puffy, you can’t pour these round. The finished beauties. The recipe makes twelve. They’re thick, and fluffy and very tasty. I would make these again, and put less sugar in the batter. The sugar tips them a little closer to the cakey type pancake. I’m a classicist. Butter and maple syrup, Grade B. Mr. E. is a big fan of pancakes. Robie’s Buttermilk Flapjacks 2 cups flour 2 tablespoons granulated sugar 4 teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon baking soda 1 teaspoon fine salt Whisk together in a large bowl and set aside. 2 cups buttermilk 4 tablespoons melted butter 1 teaspoon vanilla 2 beaten eggs Whisk together in a medium bowl. Pour the liquid mixture into the dry mixture. Whisk until just combined. Allow to set at least ten minutes. Heat an 8 inch skillet over medium heat. Add 1 tablespoon of butter and heat until the butter’s foam subsides. Ladle in 1/2 cup batter. Cook, turning once until deep golden brown on both sides. Transfer to a large plate and keep warm. Repeat to make 8 flapjacks. Serve hot with maple syrup.

Good Friday. Indian Food. My mother always served a salmon loaf on Good Friday. Which was kind of odd, because we weren’t supposed to eat meat and yet, when she opened the can of salmon, there it was: a spinal cord. Oddly enough, in the last six months or so I got a huge hankering for a salmon loaf (life is very, very strange) and I made one. There’s a recipe in the Joy of Cooking. And I enjoyed it. So, I am thinking, what can I eat that is meatless that would be sort of fun for you to watch me eat and I think, well, Indian food. And then I think, oh, boy, would I like to have some paneer pasanda. This is my favorite Indian dish. The taste of this dish is like music to me. So, I decide that we need to go out to Jackson Heights, where there is a large Indian population, and we need to go to the Jackson Diner. Now, those of you who are watching who know New York might be thinking, “Heh, Jackson Diner! Idiot! That’s overdone. There’s better Indian food in Jackson Heights”. And you know, you are right, and usually I go to those places, too. But when I want paneer pasanda, I go to the Jackson Diner. If you know where I can get better, PM me, operators are standing by. On the street that the Jackson Diner is on, there are quite a few sari shops. They have really funny manikins because the manikins are Caucasian and Caucasian manikins look pretty ridiculous in Indian clothing. This is the Jackson Diner. I’m starving and I can’t wait. The Jackson Diner has these really fun water pitchers on the tables. They come in green and pink, and they have embossed fruit on the side. You can order really hot food and drink the whole pitcher and even ask for more. This is the goddess of Indian dishes, the pinnacle of spice, the gravy of the gods, paneer pasanda. Lynn has ordered chicken tikka, and we have some rice and onion kulcha. We load up our plates. This is my plate. OH MY GOD!!! I came out here to have a vegetarian meal, I ordered a cheese dish, I put a piece of Lynn’s chicken on my plate, cut it and put a piece in my mouth. MEAT!!! I immediately spit it out. I am mortified. Which is really odd, because I was raised Protestant and I do not practice an organized religion in my adult life. And yet, I feel the repercussive horror. At least, my mom didn’t see. She doesn’t have a computer. The meal was extremely satisfying, absolutely delicious and made me very, very happy. We ended the meal sharing this wonderful rice pudding. It has raisins plumped from being in the ricey milk and cashews in it.

Thank you, sincerely, for the vegetable cookbook tips. I am always looking for those perfect, perfectly easy veggie dishes. Tommy the Vegetable Guy? Wow. That's astounding. When I was a kid, we had potato chips delivered to the door! The Charles Chip van would come round and fill up your tin. We had a milk delivery in those metal boxes you are talking about, you leave a slip in there and check off what you want and the milkman leaves it. We also had dry cleaning delivered. When I first moved into this neighborhood, 12 years ago, there was a knife grinder who would go down the street, really slow, and toot his musical horn. You could go out and have your knives sharpened. I haven't seen him for about ten years. The vegetable box is kindly taken in by my landlord most of the time. The guy rings the bell, and leaves it with the landlord and sometimes the guy who lives next door. I still don't know what happened, it is one of the drawbacks of the delivery. Sometimes this happens, sometimes you get bad produce. Bugs in the broccoli, mealy oranges, things like that. But mostly it works. It's not for people who have to have absolute control.

How did you deal with the challenge? I use certain books a lot because of the vegetable box -- Dolores Casella, The Complete Vegetable Book Deborah Madison, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone Alice Waters Chez Panisse Vegetables and Chez Panisse Fruits I also collect my own tips and tricks that I find, mostly on eGullet. The roasted cauliflower was a really good one. I use a lot of quinoa and beans to complement the veggies. Hummingbirdkiss, I know your birds wear leather jackets.

A Cookie Tasting. Dinner was decidedly healthful and light to allow for the indulgence of a Girl Scout cookie tasting. My mother was a Girl Scout leader, and Girl Scout cookie time was a trying and exciting time for me as a child. Trying because it necessitated going door-to-door in our neighborhood, ringing the bell, and then actually asking a strange person to buy something from you. Money was collected, an order was taken. If you were lucky. If you were unlucky, you gathered your child’s sense of try, try again about you and went to the next house. Where you rang the bell and faced another stranger. Exciting because the Burry truck drove right up to the house and unloaded cartons of cookies into our living room, where they took over for a week or so. Then my friends and their mothers would drive up and take some of the cookies away. My mother had to keep track of all this on a clipboard. Who got which cookies. This is all done differently now. We got an email from our niece asking us if we’d like to buy some cookies, with a link to a Web site where the cookies were depicted. We asked all about All Abouts, and after she told us, we felt obligated to buy them. Lynn sold cookies around her office and turned an order for nearly a hundred dollars worth of cookies over to the kid. A box, mailed by her mother, arrives at Lynn’s office with a note inside asking her to write a check to the sister-in-law. Well. Six boxes came home, some cookies were skimmed off the top and those boxes will be returned to the office. They can end up on the butts of Lynn’s co-workers. Surely there’s a thread here about dumping your unloved calories on your bored and under-stimulated co-workers. But I digress. The cookies were served with milk to cleanse the palate. Now, we are going to start at 12 o’clock and work in a clockwise direction around the plate. Is everyone with me? Cookie number 1, at 12 o’clock is a Thin Mint. This is a shortbread cookie with a mint-flavored chocolate coat. You are likely aware of this cookie as it is the best seller of Girl Scout cookies. Once you’re tasted the Thin Mint, take a drink of milk to freshen your taste buds. Cookie number 2 is a Do Si Do. I don’t know who named it this, because it’s a peanut butter sandwich cookie, and calling it that would save a lot of wear and tear on the Girl Scouts of America, who could be visiting old people in hospitals and picking up trash from the side of highways instead of explaining what a Do Si Do is. The peanut butter cookie part was saw-dusty. Let’s have a swallow of milk to make the memory go away. On to cookie number 3, which is the aforementioned All About. I offer a close up here. The All About is apparently all about the character traits that Girl Scouts are supposed to acquire in their scouting efforts, like selling cookies. These cookies say, “Girl Scouting is all about . . . “ around the outside edge, and in the middle, the character trait is displayed. Confidence! Character! Values! Service! Friends! Fun! And our favorite, Girls! I’m thinking something like Live Nude Girls, but of course, they didn’t mean that. If we had these when I was a kid it would say Being Embarassed by Your Mom! Saluting the Flag! Acquiring Badges! Camping! Farting Around with Linda Reynolds! Drink your milk. Cookie number 4 is a Tagalong. Do you want to guess what that is? Come on, try. No, it’s nothing Filipino. You’re stumped, right? It’s a shortbread cookie with a dab of peanut butter enrobed in chocolate. I actually sort of like these and pause on this section for a while, sampling and identifying different flavor notes. I am a fiend for peanut butter with sugar in it in all forms, so the top note for me is that raunchy sugar-substitute tropical fat flavor that lingers and begs for more. Let’s have a sip. OK, cookie number 5 is the Trefoil. Very famous. Shortbread, sort of like a Lorna Doone. Lynn’s boss likes Lorna Doone’s and he thinks these are better. One bite is enough for me. I mean, I bake my own shortbread. Drink about half of that glass after that one. Our final cookie of the tasting is a Samoa. What do you suppose that is? If you said dictator, you are dating yourself. If you said Indian pu pu, you’re still wrong. It’s a shortbread cookie with caramel on top, shredded coconut and stripes of chocolate. It is the only cookie which deviates from the round shape, and is pierced in the middle. It also tastes like a--. Finish off your milk. Thank you for attending our tasting today. If you found a new friend in any of these cookies, you can order them from a Girl Scout.

The Leftovers. This is what is leftover from last week’s Urban Organics Delivery, some of it likely left over from the week before that: broccoli zucchini collard greens spinach celery lettuce 6 potatoes 3 red onions 4 yellow onions 2 Granny Smith apples 6 grapefruits 2 tomatoes 1 pear Last night’s dinner was zucchini with tofu. Today’s lunch would have been appropriate for St. Paddy’s Day: a stir fry with tofu, potatoes, broccoli, zucchini, a bag of celery sticks and a Granny Smith apple. I warned you about the Lucy-and-Viv-in-the-Candy-Factory factor. The stuff sometimes piles up, time is short, and your lunch is completely green.

Oh, No. There is a seriously disturbing crisis going on the house. The vegetable box has not arrived. Once in a while this happens. Once in a while, the doofus who delivers it will leave the box on the doorstep and it will get stolen. He's not really a doofus, he's a nice man and he has a relationship with my landlord and gives him loose fruit sometimes. My landlord is very big with the UPS guy, too, because the UPS guy parks at our house and reads the New York Post while my landlord cooks eggs for him. I digress. There is someone watching who wants to compare notes on vegetable boxes in Japan. Apparently this is common there. I would like to hear more about it. I am the only person I know who gets a regular food delivery, particularly vegetables. I know people who get the occasional Fresh Direct delivery. I boycott Fresh Direct because I think they are one of many factors that are irreparably changing New York. The neighborhoods that are not serviced by subways have their own character, because certain people will choose to live in these areas. They are isolated, and do not offer a great deal of amenities. Some of them offer unique, wonderful amenities. When Fresh Direct trucks food in, the neighborhood attracts a different sort of person and the fabric of the neighborhood changes. I digress. I get my weekly delivery from Urban Organics. There's a variety of fruits and vegetables in the box, some seasonal, some not. You can order additional food items to be added to your box. You can ask for certain changes -- for instance, I don't get the carrots. They're too coarse. Because I don't get carrots, they'll give me an extra portion of something else. Sometimes this means I have potatoes out the gazoo. Sometimes it means I have onions out the gazoo. This affects what I eat, of course, because I have to deal with the over supply. The grapefruits built up and we'll be having grapefruit juice this weekend. Potatoes usually become soup that gets frozen. And so on. What's normally in the box? Potatoes, onions, sometimes garlic or ginger. Almost always grapefruit, oranges, apples, and bananas. Often pears and kiwi. Sometimes tomatoes or green beans or celery. Lots of squash in the winter, butternut and acorn. Sometimes eggplants. Often cauliflower or broccoli, chard and spinach and beets. Lettuce. These are staples and I supplement that with whatever I'm in the mood for. Carrots. Berries. I like to go to the farmer's market and get something fresh there. A lot of the organic food is flown in from places like Chile. I don't like that, and I don't like the carbon footprint of the delivery truck, but it does add to the demand for organic food. I'm going to go make a list of what's left over from last week.

The Black Cake is Started. Or, How Lindacakes Earned her Avatar. Ah, (rubbing hands together), now at least, some baking! The food is what keeps you alive so that you can bake, yes? Yes! After consultation with the Black Cake Guru formerly known as Hummingbirdkiss, I decided that I would start my fruit earlier this year. I had intended to start it at Christmas, and then it seemed too luxuriant to buy two expensive bottles of extra booze just then and one thing lead to another and then it was March already. Let that be a lesson to you. Ask Santa to bring you booze. I had my own cherries, which I candied myself from sour cherries purchased at the Union Square farmer’s market this summer. Half of the cherries I put into a traditional fruitcake and half (about 3/4 pound) I saved out for the black cake. So, finally, one day I manage to make it over to Astor Wines on wine tasting night, just by accident and everything. This is a wonderful thing they do – every Friday night they have a wine tasting with about four bottles, and you line up and pass by the little tasting bar and get a little buzz on to help you with your shopping. And you may discover a lovely bottle in the process. This makes it easier to fill the cart and sign the credit card slip. By the time the buzz wears off, you’re home putting the bottles up. So, what I put in here is a bottle of Myer’s Dark Rum and a bottle of Graham’s Tawny Port 20-year-old. Be careful, because the Myer’s bottle is bigger than 750 ml. This is good, because you can use the leftovers for a splash here and a splash there to flavor your baking. I pour the Graham’s first, then pour the Myer’s into the Graham’s bottle to measure it. You need something to put this in to soak the fruit. I considered a variety of options before I settled on the 6 quart Rubbermaid container you’ll see in the picture below. This is my black cake bucket and I don’t really use it for anything else due to its fragrance. But if I had a life of luxury, I would do my black cake in a crock. So, to the bucket you add your booze. I hand cut the cherries and added them. I ordered the orange peel, lemon peel and citron from Market Hall. This is the first time I’ve ordered from them and I loved the quality. Highly recommended. Market Hall Foods I bought all of the dark fruits at Buon Italia this year. They seemed dry; they were probably old. Make sure to feel up the prunes. Every year I find an errant pit. You want to take those out, or at least, award something to the person who bites down on it. Traditional gifts are a cake, or dental work. This is what goes in the pot: 1 pound raisins 1 pound currants 1 pound pitted prunes 3/4 pound glace cherries 1/2 pound lemon peel 1/2 pound orange peel 1/2 pound citron Finely chop all the fruit in a food processor. I do mine in batches, and I don’t mix anything except the citrus peel. You can add a dab of two or the booze to help the food processor handle the fruit. The ideal texture is a paste with very small chunks of peel or fruit. Note that there are schools of thought on the texture. Some folks go for chunkier fruit, some folks go for pastier fruit. I kind of like pastier. This is the beautiful fruit ready to go: This is what it looks like once you’ve ground all the fruit and mixed it into the booze: Now you cover that up and hide it somewhere in your closet and forget about it. If you want to, stir it a bit now and again just to remind yourself how good it’s going to be.

Yes, you will! And the theory behind how you divide up the food between the fridges! Whyizzit folks in your community often have two kitchens?

The Sweet Kitchen is Revealed. The sweet kitchen is yellow. My favorite detail in this kitchen is the cupboards: an ironing board cabinet was turned into a spice cabinet, and the broom closet was turned into a food cabinet. There’s also room for cookbooks in here. Did you see the Mark Bittman top cookbooks list in the New York Times today? Click to read it. Why is that so fun? Why do we never grow tired of researching them, buying them, comparing them, shelving them, talking about them, using them, and over and over again, listing our top picks. Why?

I want to see the birds. The longest I've had a bird for was 11 years. I favor small birds, and they don't live as long. I have never heard the Daisy song, and I didn't know you could get it at Costco. That could be dangerous. I read about it somewhere, same sort of thing, someone mentioned sour cream and went on about Daisy.

What music do the birds prefer? I sing to Ernie, and the only songs he responds to, are Kumbaya and Down by the River. Go figure. The verses of Kumbaya are all about him: "Someone's screaming, Lord, Kumbaya!" and "Someone's biting, Lord, Kumbaya!" It calms him down anyway.

That Lunch Box Again. This was today’s lunch. One of my favorite lunches. Some nice potatoes. Green beans. Tuna. Lemon juice. Freshly ground pepper. This is worth going to work for. Tasting notes on lunch: I buy tuna from Buon Italia, one of my favorite places to shop. It comes in a jar, not a can, and it costs eleven bucks a jar. It’s tuna belly. If you Google tuna belly, one million eGullet threads come up. You can eat a jar of tuna belly with your bare hands while you read them. I buy whole carrots, smelling of the earth, and cut them into carrot sticks myself. I once got laughed at at the Farmer’s market for smelling carrots. The pear was incredible. The pears have been incredible lately. On carrots: Easy, delicious, make-ahead carrot dish that will get raves -- Moroccan Carrot Salad from Chez Panisse Vegetables: Peel carrots. Cut in half lengthwise. Boil in salted water with a crushed clove of garlic. Drain and cool. Toss with cumin, paprika, salt and a pinch each of cinnamon and cayenne. Toss with lemon juice, olive oil, and chopped parsley. Let it set for an hour.