Lora

This applies to nuts times two! Learned that the hard way. Nuts have way more oils than whole grains. I now freeze my nuts and I've never had them go rancid on me again.

Heh. This happened to my Dad (a talented and creative cook) one Christmas when, despite soaking and careful cooking, our country-cured ham ended up as incredibly salty ham jerky. Ever adaptable, he got out the brand-new meat grinder he had just been given and put the ham through it, reducing it to powder. He then bagged the powder and chucked it in the freezer. And you know what? Ham powder is the Best. Condiment. Ever. We put it on everything and I was truly sorry when it was gone.

A hot-from-the-oven, made from scratch, old-fashioned American soft dinner roll. Excessive butter optional. I rediscovered these this year and now I make them several times a month, and there's always homemade "brown-and-serve" rolls in my freezer.

There is a food reaction spectrum from life-threatening allergy with a strong possibility of anaphylactic shock to a food that doesn't sit very well in your stomach. Very few people have the former, darn near everybody has the latter. I think that what people call "allergy" has been sliding steadily from the former towards the latter, to our collective detriment. I have a friend with a life-threatening nut allergy. She's clearly allergic by anyone's definition. I have another friend who gets hives if she eats eggs. Not deadly, but a clear immune system response; she's allergic (but wouldn't show up in those emergency room stats). Another friend is intolerant of lactose. She vomits if she eats dairy. Definitely intolerant, not allergic. I get stomach aches if I eat fried food. Sorry, not allergic. It's OK to decide what you will and will not eat based on any criteria you choose. But keep it in perspective, and call it what it really is.

Al Habashi does indeed, as does Jerusalem Bakery on Westport Road at Roanoke.

Yeah, OK, I'll definitely give you that one! I rarely go to nice restaurants ('cause I'm poor), and hard experience has shown me that, unbelievably, not everybody wants to discuss the pros and cons of various types of blue cheese or the finer points of choux paste production. So I think that I don't always "out" myself as food-obsessed. What we need is a secret handshake, a code word, or a subtle lapel pin, so we know who amongst our casual acquaintances likes the good stuff. Let's have a meeting to discuss. I'll bring the Nutter Butters.

Are you sure you know who doesn't appreciate good food? If someone serves me food I do my darndest to be enthusiastic about it, whatever it is. I love homemade chocolate eclairs. I also love Nutter Butters. If someone gives me Nutter Butters, I would not behave in a way that indicated that I would rather have eclairs. Would they then conclude I would be "just as happy with Nutter Butters" and that eclairs would be "wasted" on me?

I'm thinking Christopher Elbow's Chocolate and Whiskey Liqueur. It's incredibly delicious. http://www.foodandwine.com/recipes/chocola...whiskey-liqueur I'd like to also do cookies and other goodies, but somehow I always either a) remember more people who need gifts at the last minute or b) decide that my boxes are not sufficiently stuffed and come up a little short. So this is going to be my easy whip-up-at-the-last-minute addition.

I was about 8. Summer holidays in rural America were extremely boring. I really loved lemon meringue pie, so one summer I started baking them from my Mom's Betty Crocker cookbook. (This was back when Betty was still mostly from scratch.) I would ask my mom for grocery money, walk a few miles to the grocery store with my brother, buy ingredients, walk back, and bake the pie. This, of course, took nearly all day. Perfect boredom antidote! I did this at least four days a week. I often colored the pie filling snot green to amuse my brother. Nobody knew what color it was going to be, of course, until the pie was cut. It only took me two more decades to perfect my pie crust technique.

There is a dessert restaurant in Stanfordville, NY, near where I used to live, called Desserticus. Stanfordville is the tiniest little back-of-beyond place about 2 hours north of NYC. The place was opened by a pastry chef graduate from the nearby Culinary Institute of America. During the day, the place sold pastries and coffee from a counter. At night, you were seated at tables for plated desserts ordered from a menu (which were absolutely stunning). Last I heard, it was still going strong after several years. If such a place can work in Stanfordville, I'm sure it could work in KC. I would definitely go, even if I had already been somewhere else for dinner. (Think about drinks after work one place, dinner somewhere else - people do it all the time.) I think it would help if the location was near other restaurants so people could walk over. Easy takeout would be helpful - I bet lots of people would love to pick up their favorite dessert on their way home from work.