Pontormo

The new year is two and a half weeks away. Fill in any or all of the blanks below: In 2006, I will eat__________________ I will make_______________________ I will find___________________ I will learn_________________________ I will teach____________________________ I will read___________________________ This is the year I will try_____________________________ I will taste____________________________ I will use________________________________ I will give________________________________ I______________________ We________________________ My kids_______________________________

Thank you for responding, Michelle! I should have asked about proportions. If there's 1/2 cup of vanilla sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla? It's okay to speak in terms of weight in grams since I have a scale.

Two related questions: 1) If a recipe calls for vanilla sugar and I want to substitute vanilla extract and regular sugar, does anyone know how I would calculate how much of the extract to use? 2) Standing on a chair, I discovered a very, very old vanilla pod in the back of a high shelf in my cabinet. I have no idea when I made the purchase. It might even be more than a decade old. Will it still have flavor? Should I try pouring boiling water over it to resusitate it? Or stick it in a small jar of sugar and see if flavor seeps out into the crystals eventually, if not in time to meet immediate needs? Thanks.

Still have the sauce, too? Bitter cold in Kansas? Heat up sauce with chicken, diced or torn into shreds. Add sauteed mushrooms, if desired. Make a steamy, nourishing bowl of polenta, adding butter and Parmigiano with the final stirs of your wooden spoon. Pour into a warm bowl and top with chicken and sauce and a bit more cheese. On side, see Daniel's suggestion regarding bitter greens, or Jsolomon regarding kale, especially what some stores call "Dinosaur" kale & Italians, black cabbage (dark, bumpy leaves), slivered after stems are removed, boiled a few minutes, then drained and sauteed in olive oil with salt, a few red pepper flakes and slivers of garlic. Spinach, leaves still wet, is also good sauteed in olive oil with slivers of garlic and an anchovy fillet until the latter dissolves (vegetable will not taste fishy, just better).

Thank you, all who contributed their photographed stages of making a version of an authentic ragu. As for that reference to a secret ingredient...

Thanks for your interest, Karen. The bibliography's use is up to the people who contribute to it and read it and watch it evolve. (See initial posts above.) To respect the wealth of resources, as Hathor as indicated, there are bound to be entries that are accessible only to someone in Cortona, Naples or London along with books readily available from Amazon.com or other online sources, whether cookbooks, histories, memoirs or other genres. There's no special way to write an entry of older publication. Providing the fullest amount of information helps track down sources (publisher, year, etc.). If you're not familiar with WorldCat, an online database that compiles information from international, participating libraries, you should speak to the librarian at your local university or college. It's a great resource. Manuscripts and archival material are handled differently, but libraries and archives have cataloging systems and your best bet is to check the bibliography and notes in recent publications that include such sources (such as Scully's work above) as a model. Few of us would ever encounter that need. Most libraries do not have comprehensive online catalogs of the earliest sources in their collections, however, since these enterprises are time-consuming and expensive. Were a database employed, it would be wonderful if a generous number of keywords were permitted for each entry to facilitate research on a number of topics.

Based on recommendations here, I was planning to bake the Korova cookies and mail them along with other cookies. According to Leite's site, however, they keep in an airtight container only three days! Can anyone tell me what I want to hear? You've had them out and around for a week and no one got sick? Nothing green grew on the surface? Or should I abandon plans? I wanted to make at least one non-traditional very chocolate cookie....

CRASH COURSE IN BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ENTRIES Were we to use a database system, which I would lobby for, the following probably will not matter very much unless members wish to start early. Standards for formatting a bibliography in English-speaking countries differ from those in other parts of the world. Format for footnotes or end notes differs from that of bibliography. The best source for academic writers is: Turabian, Kate L. A Manual for Writers of Term Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. Sixth edition. Chicago & London: The University of Chicago Press, 1996. Its instructions apply to scholarly publications as well. Russell and others may have something to add about other sorts of books, however, I notice in the back of a few recent cookbooks that have been heavily researched, the format is similar. N.B. Lost in transfer to eGullet is fact that title took up entire first line of text. Every line of entry following the first is indented five spaces. I can't figure out how to TAB here. Then you double space before the next entry. All lines in a single entry are single spaced. I. BOOKS A. Order of entries 1. Author's name 2. Title 3. Place of publication 4. Publisher (if known. This will not always be available in early sources.) 5. Date 6. For annotated bibliographies, skip one line, then indent first line five spaces. (My format is not orthodox, but I like to indent entire text of commentary. Note full sentences are not required, though initial letters are capitalized and terminal punctuation is used.) Scully, Terence. The Neapolitan Recipe Collection. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2000. Translation of late fifteenth-century cookbook whose author remains unknown. 220 recipes. Catalan rulers of Naples mirrored those of courts throughout Quattrocento Italy in elaborate food prepared by cooks whose recipes survive in manuscript form. Historical introduction & commentary on recipes included. 264 pages. B. Author's Name 1. Last name first, comma, first name, etc. ending in a period. 2. More than one author? Invert the name of the first author cited only. E.g.: Rosso, Julee and Shelia Lukins with Michael McLaughlin. The Silver Palate Cookbook. N.B. I respect the order of names in publication vs. alphabetical order. 3. If author has edited the volume, indicate the fact by following first name with a comma, then write the abbreviation "ed." before continuing with the title. Adamson, Melitta Weiss, ed. Regional Cuisines of Medieval Europe: A Book of Essays. New York & London: Routledge, 2001. Part of the Garland series called Medieval Casebooks. Seven chapters organized chronologically and by region, each with variety of authors. Begins with Greco-Roman world of antiquity. Chapter 3 treats northern and southern France separately, with two different authors. Also co-authored, Chapter 4 concerns Italy with Sicily singled out from the peninsula. Next features Spain. Final chapter on Low Countries culminates in 1500s. 4. Author of a study in an anthology or collection of essays as in the title above, or: Bertolli, Paul. "Cooking is Always Trouble." In Best Food Writing. 2004, ed. Holly Hughes. New York: Marlowe & Company: 2004. Pages 87-92. Camporesi, Piero. "The Consecrated Host: A Wonderous Excess." In Fragments for a History of the Human Body. Part One. Ed. Michel Feher with Roman Naddaff and Nadia Tazi. New York: Zone, 1989. Pages 220-237. N.B. See two alternatives regarding relationship between title and editor's name. C. Title of Book 1. See the entries above for the general format of all parts of entry that follow the author's name, especially in terms of spacing and punctuation. This is where Anglo model differs from that of the European countries most familiar to me. It's always in italics, now the standard vs. underscoring formerly used. The format is also different from what you'll find in print journalism. 2. Romance languages do not capitalize all the words in the title, only the initial word and all proper nouns, such as Toscana for Tuscany, if not the adjective for Tuscan. You'll see two ways of following this rule. Strictest: La cucina della casa maledetta. Alternative: La Cucina della casa maledetta. D. Location 1. Of publisher vs. printer. Sometimes this is hard to determine with Italian books, so check an online catalog to see what librarians have been able to determine if you're not sure. 2. If the country is foreign, it is, unfortunately, standard practice to use the Anglicized form of the name such as Rome for Roma, Cologne, etc. 3. Major city, generally well known? City alone suffices. Paris, Texas? Write the name of the state so it's not confused with Gay Parie. I took a risk with Ann Arbor, above, but I figure someone in Poland will be able to figure out that it's in Michigan given the name of the press. It's a judgment call. E. Publisher Cf. comments above regarding fact that publisher is not always indicated. However, this current trend in academic publishing is something that should be used across the board. Librarians will tell you surely that it is good to have as much information as possible. It's useful when Mark Bittman, for example switches to Wiley from Macmillan when the proof-reading of his recipes at the former house proved abysmal (don't quote me; just a personal observation about first edition of a book I own). F. Date Of the publication you are citing. If it's a revised edition, cf. first example I gave you. Were I to be utterly kosher, I might have added the following after the title & number of edition: Rev. by John Grossman & Alice Bennett. II. Articles I've written enough, so let me just give you a simple example and comment upon it thoroughly. URLs, I will leave up to someone else when it's needed. Fant, Maureen B. "Roma Primavera." Gourmet 63 (March 2003): 74-85. Here, I chose not to use the magazine's "Seasonal Kitchen" heading, one of several that highlight sections of its special edition on Rome. I stuck strictly to the title. Articles in periodical literature are treated like articles or essays in edited volumes, i.e., their titles are placed within quotation marks. Terminal punctuation separates the name of article from that of the magazine or journal. Nowadays, even if the publication uses Roman numerals for the number of its volume, it's become standard to use Arabic numerals for easier access. You don't even need to use comma, Volume 63 or Vol. LXIII. NEVER punctuate directly before a parenthesis. (2003) is sufficient, though we tend to think of food magazines in terms of the month, so I added this. While March would indicate this is No. 3 of Volume 63, rarely do citations bother with the information. Punctuation after second parenthesis can be a comma, but colons are more where it's at. The two superimposed dots are sufficient to indicate you are about to provide page numbers. Always provide all page numbers in an article. That way, if your reader needs to order a photocopy, s/he can indicate all the pages that should be sent. If your publication sends you from page 74-76 to pages 114-117, make sure you add all the pages, separating each set by commas. Use semi-colons if you have a very long series, especially when text is involved, e.g. Culpa, Mea. "Why You are Right About Ragu and I am So Very Wrong." Purgatorio Gastronimiche 666 (November 2005): 32-33; 47-62; notes 112-243; illustrations 254-261.

Ruth: Thanks for the advance notice. Those small books from Chronicle are beautifully produced, so I look forward to seeing the outcome of this project. ETRTIB, MSPF

Major themes being addressed here include: *Effect of food commercials on children --ARE children marks? --do ads contribute to their obesity? *Parental responsibility --Just Say NO school vs. --Can you ask all parents to be effective monitors, including those who don't eat balanced diets themselves? *Corporations, i.e. their goals, strategies & responsibility *Governmental intervention. Regarding the first item here, I would like to stress that obesity is not the only issue that should raise concerns. The principal aim of commercials for soft drinks, snack foods and candy that are aired on children's programs is the same as the purpose of ads for Hamburger Helper, Betty Crocker and Hormel's chili on shows catering to adult audiences. This kind of marketing produces a desire for food as a product. It wants you to buy your pie from the freezer case in your supermarket and not bake the one that draws Mottmott to the kitchen. I believe one of the insidious goals of such marketing for children is not JUST to develop an early craving for sweet and salty things with excessive amounts of calories; it's to get to those kids early and produce bad habits for life. For now, reach for the juice box and cookies instead of the banana. Later, microwave the pizza rolls when you come home from school starved. First apartment? Job in software development? Graduate school? Develop a taste for Stouffer's broccoli souffle. First child: Lean Cuisine. Concerns about health should also take into account the virtues of fresh produce among other raw ingredients that adults buy to cook and make into meals. (I don't want to be inflexible about this since I am fully aware that deadlines and the sleep-deprived lives of the parents of infants call for convenience.) Nutritional value, fiber,* etc. also deserve attention. I think we should also be wary of commercials that continue to promote the joys of not cooking. It's not just a matter of health. *Anecdote from a friend who is a great cook, busy professional and mother of two young boys: while the 7-year old is now becoming more and more willing to try new foods, the youngest was going through an especially stubborn period of white food plus cookies. After experiencing sheer agony, alternating between squatting and screeching and whining standing with legs crossed, he was taken to his doctor who decided the five-year old was in desperate need of fiber, lots and lots of it, especially from fruits and vegetables.

Karen: M.F.K. Fisher lamented that no one she invited to dinner ever reciprocated. Remember? She wanted to tell everyone how much she loved simple, delicious things. Her guests shouldn't be intimidated by the meals she prepared. Your thoughtful comments are much appreciated even if they're a tough act to follow. Once more time has passed, I hope others will continue the conversation about this very important topic.

Both. I'll be brief for a change, but I have just logged in again to answer this while my reheated butternut squash gratin is getting cold. We're told that network TV is dying, that TIVO, etc. are helping potential consumers skip over commercials. Therefore, alternative ways to market are being sought. Nonetheless, the power of the commercial, ad, etc. is not over yet.

The thought is not original to me. Perhaps someone else will recall who said the following, when, and be able to establish the context in which the observations were made: Think of the glamorous ads for Pepsi that feature sexy young celebrities such as Brittany Spears in her day...or the infamous one in which Michael Jackson's hair caught on fire during the shoot. A lot of money goes into selling a highly sweetened, fattening carbonated drink with no nutritional value to young fans who want--g-d forbid--to be like Brittany or Michael. Now, imagine if Public Service Announcements were not those little serious scenarios set in a cavernous empty space populated only by the celebrity who looks earnestly into the camera, then smiles like a real person and tells you to read to your kids, cut, rainbow and stars. Instead, picture Cameron Diaz or one of those other Hollywood types who swear they do not eat anything white and live on fruits and vegetables. Give them the budget and the experienced staff who works on the sexiest ad campaigns to promote chard and eating fresh tomatoes only when they're in season. Let them strut to the beet. See if kids start clammering to visit the produce aisle. Right now, the only thing close to that scenario is something featuring the Jolly Green Giant (remember him--there to sell kids on the virtues of frozen vegetables before the Keebler elves hand over the cookies?) chuckling over the boy who clings to a freezer display of broccoli slathered with cheese sauce. The commercial is hardly believable and not all that seductive. The problem is that fresh fruits and vegetables don't have the money that processed food companies do. Farmers & specialists in related fields are better able to address this issue than I, but there does not seem to be the kind of unified front that the Dairy Association had when it did its cute "Got Milk" campaign. Ads are starting to lose their hold. Commercials are in trouble. They remain pervasive and effective. If they are to be replaced by product placement, I would like to see actors on TV eat a salad every once in a while, preferably a teen-age boy, right before a pretty young neighbor knocks on the door, and says, "Oh, you like fennel, too?" "Yeah, dressed with EVOO and lemon juice," Jordon replies. "What a man," she purrs, removing her blouse as offscreen, the sound of an acoustic guitar picks up and a husky, whispery voice goes OOOOO-oouu-ooou....

FYI: Related threads to consider in this forum include one initiated by Gifted Gourmet on McDonald's and its campaign to appear more healthful. Then, of course, see General Food Topics for discussion of children and obesity where I included a link to an article in The Washington Post about junk food companies and their PR campaigns to appeal to the concerns of parents. Link to the Frito-Lay campaign mentioned directly above as well as in Melissa Shaw's thread: Just for the Fun of It. Also see Born to Buy.

And what are companies like Frito-Lay/Pepsi doing? They're telling people to exercise more!!! They're sponsoring playground equipment. Gets them off the hook....right? Those campaigns are not as transparent as the ads that Phillip Morris is forced (? I forget) to run about the dangers of smoking. And we all know how carefully smokers attend to the cautionary note about possible dangers to their health when they buy cigarettes...

Obesity is an important issue, certainly. However, it's only the most accessible issue since, as Steven Shaw can tell you, it's currently a national obsession and a popular topic for news programs and articles. Marketing to children is the ethical dilemma here. I repeat, I urge you to read Laura Shapiro's Something from the Oven about the ways the food industry pestered the American housewife to change her family's meals. Now those women are more savvy. So, aha, GO AFTER DA KIDS!!

One of the posts that resonates most with me was written by Mottmott. I am writing in part to draw your attention back to it now that the thread is growing longer. When Ruth Reichl recently answered questions, she wrote about a son who grew out of a long phase of eating white things simply by becoming familiar with the variety of interesting foods that his parents ate at the same table without being forced to eat a balanced, healthful diet. Alberto Chinali has said something very similar on his own blog regarding the importance of both exposure and lack of dictatorial pressure. Mottmott pointed out that parents do not always have such concerns and that these concerns are often shared by families with college degrees and high incomes. Class is not the only factor that we're not taking into account seriously enough when arguing that it is the job of parents to raise their children to be skeptical TV viewers and Eat the Right Thing. Especially while living in St. Louis where I frequented an urban market where produce was cheap, I encountered many lower middle class and lower class shoppers who bought plenty of plums, greens, carrots and cantaloupe before picking up their ribs and sweet potato pie at the shack you pass as you head back to the street. There are middle-class families with two cars in their own garage headed by parents who do not like to eat vegetables or fresh fruit. They serve plates of packaged sandwich bread along with a big dish of lasagna that one of them has spent hours preparing. There's a bottle of Pepsi on the table while they eat. Sometimes they have salad as duty food. I have highly educated, successful friends who cook well, travel throughout France and Spain and have sophisticated tastes, but once they became parents, they had to make a concerted effort to eat five servings of fruits and vegetables a day...to set a better example for the child and to lose weight. Their decision does not seem typical. MY COMMERCIAL BREAK I realize that humor is being used to alleviate tension and that we of the radical PC bent sometimes can be incredibly annoying, sorry, but for the parents of teen-age sons who fear their children long for prostitutes, I urge you to drive by a place where these sex workers hang out looking for customers and give them a sense of the desperation that leads them to their line of work. Show them Traffic so they can watch Pretty Woman with a more critical eye since Julia Roberts is to sex work what Alice Waters is to grill staff at McDonald's. [END] One solution to this mess is public education. I was in Junior High when they stopped sending all girls to Home Ec and all boys to Shop. I recall that the section devoted to cooking was dismal (hmm...new thread?). There's only so much you can make in a single class period to begin with. However, in addition to those great Edible Schoolyards in Berkeley and Terrytown, and the Jamie Olivers in the cafeterias of the world, we need public school teachers who have culinary training and a knowledge of nutrition. Science can be taught along with cooking. History and geography and foreign languages should have components devoted to agriculture, cooking and the business and politics of food.

????? An insider thing for Burnsians? Anyway, this is why I thought a separate thread on bibliography might be useful: The following publication looks like fun since it concerns food in Naples during the fifteenth century.. Whether or not there's anything in here remotely related to a ragu, I don't know.

Kevin: Everything on this "page" is gorgeous, especially the potato cake which is completely unknown to me. Living in an Italian-American neighborhood in New Haven (THE pizza street), I was accustomed to individually scaled braciole, but not the larger version you prepare. Final comment regarding the spectacular pizza: there is a place outside of Florence that bakes pizza with only a tomato sauce. When it comes OUT of the oven, it is draped generously with prosciutto, large curls of Parmigiano-Reggiano, and a generous handful of arugula that invites a drizzle of olive oil.

Interesting post, Adam. The Library of Congress has all of the works you cite, including four Italian editions of Le Cuisinier francois as well as the original French. FYI: More accessible is a modern French edition, ed. by Jean-Louis Flandrin (? last name) and Philip & Mary Hyman in Paris: Montalba, c. 1983.

How lovely! Thanks for the empathy and for the wonderful vision of a quiet way to end the year with friends away from the city and shops...and for the glimpse forward. A simple bowl of soup does great things. Today's: minestrone made with chick peas, cannellini, farro and Italian sausage, Savoy cabbage, carrots, onions, celery and just a touch of tomato paste, garlic, olive oil and sage. Bread's in the oven. Snow is coating the trees.

Thanks for all the recommendations. I should have said cookies vs. snaps since snaps are by definition crisp. I will get the NYTs today if I am not too late. Unfortunately, I am having technical problems here and lost copy when trying to preview the message, so I will recap: Cf. Epicurious recipe for a Ginger Spice cookie that was published in Bon Appetit in March 2000 originally. I am guessing that Ling wrote helpful suggestions on 11/14/05 which I will follow; there are 150 reviews and the cookie seems to be quite popular. If the reserved syrup from stem ginger in my fridge is still good, I will cut back on some of the molasses and brown sugar and use a couple of tablespoons. There is an awful lot of sugar in these when you take into account the crystallized ginger and sugar used to coat the balls of dough before baking. Since ginger is up there with dark chocolate for me, any further ginger-rich alternatives are welcome here. I also think the BA recipe might be good if the final roll in sugar is omitted. Instead, a dark chocolate glaze could be added to the tops...or filling used to sandwich them. If I like the cookies, I may try a Pollock drizzle of melted chocolate...similar to the beautiful and delicious cardammon cookies in last year's December issue of Gourmet which had thin swirls of coffee and chocolate on the top.

Yes, again. I personally wasn't thinking of a book. There are books of published bibliography & established Italian encyclopediae on regional cuisine.* There are scholars who study food history, whether in anthropology or history departments, and I am sure that faculty at cooking schools, authors, chefs, etc. spend a great deal of time and effort on their own collections and files. There's the USIG and perhaps they'll have full-time faculty in endowed chairs one day along with archivists. I was hoping that this might be a different way to collaborate on a regional forum and it might be a good new way to take advantage of eGullet's international membership....perhaps attract even more. The suggestion was casual and meant first to see if there was any interest. So far only three of us have piped up. It's also a good way to exploit one advantage that an internet site has over publications. Bibliographies that appear as publications become quickly out-dated. Here, that problem doesn't exist. Another thing I thought would be an advantage here is that we could establish a model that is superior to library practices in the United States where books are distinguished from periodical literature and placed in separate databases. There's one Italian library that I like in particular because its catalog organizes all publications together, whether they're books, articles or contributions to an anthology edited by someone else. So, for example, if Mario Batali contributed his own chapter on umami (umani? what's the word?) to a book edited by Christopher Kimball, a recipe to Silver Spoon and was the subject of a piece in Gourmet, all of these items would appear along with his own cookbooks if someone used his name as a search term. BUT: The one disadvantage of eGullet that I see right now is that these threads are not databases, so we don't have the advantage that librarians have with their ability to establish a nice system in which entries can added in a uniform, organized manner. You're right to raise the possibility of utter chaos. Nor would I wish to create more work for you and Alberto. I'd be happy to help out on the project, strictly as an amateur/home cook...IF there is interest....though I suspect some of us are lurking and don't want to say anything until something more is established. Since eGullet is U.S. based and English is the language used here, I'd suggest that text written by members ought to be in English, i.e., commentaries, and so forth. However, it would be a shame--and rather ridiculous--to exclude books in Italian...or German, French, ecclesiastical Latin or Arabic for that matter. It would be good to take advantage of the variety of local resources we might have. I have the LOC here, others may be in Manhattan, Cambridge, Hyde Park, Bari, Heidleberg... I was thinking very, very modestly, excited by the idea...but I find your cautionary remarks extremely important because it would be good to be organized from the beginning just in case other members become interested. It might become popular in other regional forums, too. What do you all think? Too much? *The aha! rests in the accessibility of these resources to those who don't read Italian. However, the burgeoning number of new cookbooks published in English kind of fill in the gaps in that many are well-researched and include Italian sources in their bibliographies. One of the many great things that Kevin's blog has demonstrated is that we no longer rely on books about Italian cooking as one monolithic entity, so those with bibliographies tend to have very specialized entries even if they're not comprehensive and devoted exclusively to published books. Well, I meant to log in just to check the Pastry & Baking forum. Please feel free to send a PM, though it would be nice if anyone with any sort of interest would make his or her presence felt here first. Librarians, registrars, curators, archivists or software engineers especially welcome.

I rarely bother to bake cookies anymore, though I find myself in the mood for really good home-baked gingersnaps. I am not in the mood for the thin Swedish kind, although a recent thread on shortening's lower trans level (when compared to butter) gave me pause since I had stopped buying products containing partially hydrogenized anything. (Never, ever will I give up butter unless I am in a Nathan Hale type of situation.) I want something bigger and bursting with intense flavor. I have some organic gingerroot. I have a new bottle of ground ginger. I have crystalized ginger, and in the back of the fridge, there's a small, squat jar from the Ginger People with syrup left over from a ginger loaf I baked last December which I pray is still good. I would like to use as much of these as I can. In a thread about favorite cookie dough, the focus was on a recipe for salty chocolate cookies by Pierre Herme, although Ling also praised a recipe for Chez Panisse gingersnaps, linking an entry from Chocolate & Zucchini (February 5, 2005) which provides the recipe. More recently, I think I read another post by Ling about crystalized ginger being used to make the dough....perhaps on Most Delicious Thing.... Any further thoughts, recipes, tips, suggestions would be accepted with gratitude before I bake some time over the next few days. Feel free to merge this thread with another on the topic if there is one. (My own search came up empty.)

Yes on all counts, I agree. There is no way on earth we could be exhaustive. There are plenty of specialists who compile such material for their own publications and institutions, and one thing we could always do when we want the latest word is go to the back of a recent publication and check out its bibliography. However, one thing eGullet members could do is keep this thread in mind when they come across a new book or Web site and inform the rest of us. Someone ambitious who is investigating street food such as tripe sandwiches, or ragu or soups or banquets at the Kingdom of Naples under Angevin rule might wish to post an annotated bibliography on that topic here, along with URLs or links to blogs with entries on the topic. Someone who really loves Italian desserts might wish to put together an annotated list of resources s/he's used or wishes others to consult. That effort might inspire a "spin-off" thread devoted to the cakes made with chestnut flour from various sources with comments and photographs from participants. This way, we could all be notified, too, when The New Yorker's food issue contains a piece on Italian heirloom pears. Who knows what would happen once and if the thread expands....but it would be fun to try.