Lindacakes

At the risk of offending those of you who may enjoy this ingredient, I have to say that the thing on the bottom, slightly to the right looks a lot like the pig uteruses available in Chinatown.

I once froze a giant block of Velveeta-ish cheese that Ronald Reagan had thoughtfully provided for my grandmother, who thoughtfully passed it on to me. Not wanting to waste such precious government commodity, I left it perched on a street sign where I'd hoped a homeless person might find it.

I want to know more about pears candied with sweet potatoes . . . I have eight pears on my kitchen table, Bosc, arranged in a circle, tops pointing inward. A ripening mandala, each day I give their round bottoms a feel. They followed me home from the farmer's market, saying, clearly, plainly: pear sorbet . . .

I just made my favorite minestrone the other night -- from Epicurious. Minestrone I love this soup like mad. I freeze it in portions for two, it makes that night's supper and six more. Right now I have a monster of a butternut squash if anyone would care to share a nice butternut squash soup recipe. I love soup-for-dinner all year round. Quick, easy, nutritious. Man, that soup pot sounds astounding. What I think we are not hearing is that it's from the Le Creuset Cannibal line. Big enough for femurs and a full set of ribs! I had to do some on line hunting, but I found a 10 quart pot. Most come in 8 or 12, for some reason, and for two -- 10 is just right.

Now I've got to click on those links above, because I remember someone was making stupendous duck egg pasta and I'd forgotten about it. Silky, elastic, golden pasta.

I have seen black cake sold on eBay, believe it or not. I don't remember the price, but I'm thinking $30. This is the sort of cake that can't be bought and sold -- first of all, at least for me, the price of the liquor alone would shoot the price of one piece off the map. How do you charge for the amount of time you had to age the cake? Or, since there is no labor involved, do you neglect to charge for one of the "ingredients" that is most precious? One of the reasons why I would be very reluctant to sell what I bake -- I don't think I could ever get back out what I put in, either in cost of ingredients or time. Next year's cake has hand candied cherries. How would I begin to charge for that? All those hot summer mornings of cooking syrup and changing it? Aye yi yi! Priceless!

Good design is half the battle. Type face, text size, page layout, color. Take a look at the Gourmet cookbook. Unreadably yellow. Who would buy that? How could the very same editor who espouses the belief that the cookbook buying public can't be bothered with a kitchen scale look at the proofs for that book and say, "Yes, that's a damn readable yellow, my friends." And I dare to say there is more than one cookbook buying public. One of us has a kitchen scale and uses it. We probably bought it because we needed it. Doesn't Rose Levy Berenbaum's Cake Bible have multiple measures? And hasn't that book sold a gazillion copies?

Maple. Pecan. Maybe both. Maple pecan brittle cake . . . Butternut squash creme brulee. Little fried pies -- mincemeat.

I am willing to unload my mother on anyone who asks. She comes with her own wardrobe.

Where might one find that tweaked version of the Epicurious recipe?

I'm a pie girl living in Brooklyn, too. I'm starting to face the realities of a low-income mother as she faces greater medical care, so I can identify with the charity. I'd stick with two or three kinds of pie, the ones that are bound to be the most pleasing -- pumpkin, pecan, apple. For me, the difficult part would be not spending so much on the ingredients (all organic, for instance) to keep costs down. You can make the dough 24 hours ahead of time. Make disks of one pie each and wrap them in cellophane. You can easily freeze unbaked apple pies, I don't know about the pumpkin or pecan. You have time to experiment. To maximize the income, I would advise not selling the pies, but selling raffle tickets for them or auctioning them. Another alternative would be to sell them by the slice. A story from my mother, who was a wonderful pie baker: When we were kids, they wanted mothers to donate baked goods for a bake sale. So she made one of her specialties, a pecan pie. This involved the labor of a handmade lard crust and the expense of pecans. Then she cut a little display box for it and fixed it up with a doily and wrapped it in cellophane. Very beautiful, perfect flutes, the whole nine yards. The school sold her pie for 25 cents and she never baked for the bake sale again. A story that reminds us to keep control of the actual sale!

I agree that there hasn't been enough emphasis on brands. For sugared peanut butter, I like Peter Pan. It tastes more like fresh peanuts. For natural peanut butter, I like Smucker's. I hate having to stir the stuff, though. I've got a jar of some crap I bought at Trader Joe's if anyone wants it. For jelly, it is strawberry. I have to try the orange marmalade thing. I love, love, love peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. Open faced. I also like peanut butter with bananas, and dates, too. Those little powdery extruded date things they sell at health food stores. I'm thinking that mashed bananas might be awfully good, especially if the bananas had some cinnamon and honey added . . . Sort of like peanut butter and banana jelly. And I agree that wheat is the appropriate bread. Of everything above, I am most anxious to try onions with my peanut butter.

I've got a recipe from some chef out west, Portland, Seattle, I dunno, for a triple coconut cream pie. Coconut in the shell, coconut in the filling, coconut in the topping. I'm the person searching for an elusive toffee-ish macadamia cream pie I had in Hawaii.

I did chocolate sorbet to go with a key lime pie. It was amazing to watch my guest consume it. I've never seen anyone eat like that before. It worked wonderfully in spite of the fact that I'd left the sugar out and had to go back and add it at the end. I used Valrhona cocoa and Valrhona semisweet chocolate, and for fun I used black cocoa for 1/3 of the cocoa. Extremely impressive stuff.

Morrocan carrots, which are Alice Water's from Chez Panisse vegetables.

I use one of those green bags for my ice cream maker bowl in the freezer. I use one bag all summer. I also like the green bags for vegetables. If anyone's interested, I have a Martha Stewart recipe for cleaning silver instantly at home. Involves baking soda and boiling water. Use your baking ramekins for mise en place or condiment bowls at the table. Keep carrots and celery longer by cutting them into finger long pieces, placing in a bowl covered with water. Change the water every couple of days. Use your cherry pitter to pit olives.

Upthread there was some concern about double mayo swipes and slippage. I use my own patented Tomato Blotter. Double thick paper towels on bottom. Place tomato slices on the absorbant surface. Cover with double thick paper towels on top. Press lightly on tomato slices. Peel back cover, peel tomato slices from bottom. Expertly blotted. It is now safe to use extra mayo.

It's been said before, but I think it's wonderful in salad. Baby mesclun, purslane, some fresh goat cheese, red onions, just delightful. I can't wait to try the tacos, and try it cooked in general.

There is a recipe in Chez Panisse Fruits. I just did a batch of sour cherries. For the cherries, I left the pit in and the stem in and placed them in a glass canning jar that had been thoroughly cleaned. Added some sugar to a very good brandy, I don't remember the proportions. Covered the cherries with the brandy. A week or so later I added some cherry syrup left over from candying cherries. Turned the jar upside down every other day or so for about a month. Transfered the now plump and dark cherries to the fridge to await cocktails. Tested one. Honey, those are not for children.

Do they melt your teeth?

Life is full of interesting little synchronicities, probably to remind us how interconnected it all is. I don't usually read this page, but I switched browsers, and I don't have Pastry bookmarked and here I am. I'm also your age, Chris, and I lost my brother to suicide about the same time, and one of my memories that links me dearly to him is the breakfast cereal ritual you describe. The glory of the cereal aisle, the colorful boxes promising fun, the splendid toys inside the boxes. My mom wouldn't buy the seriously sweet cereal, but she didn't torture us, either, so mostly we had Life and Honeycomb and AlphaBits. But every once in a while she'd let us have Captain Crunch or Sugar Crisp or whatever we wanted. Once in a blue moon I buy a box of sweet cereal and relive the pleasure. After my brother's suicide, I experienced insomnia for the first time in my life. One night I was absolutely on fire uncomfortable in my skin, and I turned on the television and there was Julia Child, the old original Julia Child, cooking. I don't remember what she was cooking, but it made me feel peaceful. So I began to reconnect with my childhood love of baking, and got into food culture and went down to Washington to see Julia's kitchen and started a cookbook collection and so on. At this point, complete immersion in the pleasure of food and cooking is something that sustains me on a daily basis and quite likely will for the rest of my life. Thank you for the story, for the image of the Count Chocula milk infusion, and for the connection.

Excellent, thank you very much!

Sunny side up on top of a nice old hamsteak.

Maybe I'm a heretic, but rhubarb mango turns me on.

Ooooh, thank you. Yet another good use for leftover buttermilk!