Katie Meadow

Making your own napkins seems like a great way to go. I've always made my own tablecloths, but never napkins. My napkin preference is always for 100 percent cotton, a medium to heavy weight. I had one lovely linen tablecloth and it drove me nuts, with its wrinkling and shape-shifting and slipperiness. I f you make your own napkins you would pre-wash and pre-shrink the fabric first, no? Napkins take a real beating, so, at least for me, the fabric needs to stand up to very warm water and a warm drier. I like prints for tablecloths and napkins; prints hide a myriad of sins. I have an old set of those classic red check Italian bistro napkins that are perfect if you eat a lot of pasta with red sauce. I have neither the budget nor the temperament for expensive table linens, especially not white ones. Most good quality cotton gets soft quickly and drapes well. I've been using fabric tablecloths and napkins for as long as I've owned a washing machine, which is about 40 years. Confession: not once have I ever ironed them.

Yep. I've only had the one from The Jasmine Pearl in Portland. Not to be confused with Jasmine Pearl teas. It is delicious and not priced into the stratosphere. Love to attend a tasting of Taiwan oolongs and get some idea of the range. There is an online purveyor called Eto En that has a creative description for the flavor notes of various oolongs broken down by taste, aroma and mouthfeel. Interesting and amusing.

In warm weather I drink mostly black tea, iced. In winter I drink a lot of green tea--jasmine pearl and my new favorite, emerald oolong. Tastes like buttah.

I loved "Blood, Bones and Butter." Just a great read. Hamilton's childhood and teen years were an astonishing mix of magical and scary. I don't buy many cookbooks for myself, but I'm going to ask for Prune this holiday season.

I am pretty sure you can get good Italian sweet sausages at Piedmont Grocery and absolutely sure you can get them at the Pasta Shop or maybe even the meat market in Market Hall. That should be close enough to Berkeley for you. For that matter I think there are charcuterie people who sell at the Berkeley Farmers Market who may have them. Contact Fifth Quarter and see if they make a fennel sausage--they are at the Saturday Berkeley Market on Center St. Maybe even Whole Foods on Ashby/Tel. I don't shop much in Berkeley, but there's gotta be something besides Molinari at a variety of places.

Right, I don't think I expressed myself very clearly. My reason for making stock is solely to make soups, not to use up leftovers; I go out and buy what I need because byproduct chicken feet is simply not what happens in my life. I guess all I meant was that in the days before prepackaged chicken pieces you did whatever you could not to waste any foodstuffs. Clearly old vegetable peelings don't make the purest chicken stock, but if flavor and nutrition is in short supply you will use whatever you can.

I make a pretty traditional bread and chestnut stuffing (no eggs) and I always add a couple of apples, cubed small. I stuff the turkey and also cook a casserole dish full of the same mix for the vegetarians in the family, so that should give you an idea of quantity or ratio of apples to the rest of ingredients. I am insanely fastidious about closing up the body after stuffing, so the apples are all that is needed for moisture. The dressing that cooks outside the turkey of course needs a healthy dose of liquid to keep it from drying out. This year I am only going to stuff the turkey and not do the extra side dish, so I think one apple will be plenty. I used to use granny smiths but now I use whatever tart apples I have on hand.

Since the reason for making stock lies in what's left over or what can be bought for cheap there must be many ways to make a good one. I like stock made from roasted carcass, but I rarely roast whole chickens, so I usually make chicken stock with raw parts. When I have nothing on hand, I buy two lbs backs, 1 lb wings and 1 lb feet. Often, if I am planning to make some variation of soup with chicken meat, I will buy one breast and/or a leg-thigh combo. I put everything in to start with, then take out the breast after half an hour and the dark meat out after 45 minutes. When cool enough, I strip off the meat and set it aside, then throw the bones and skin back in the pot to continue simmering. I do cook an onion stuck with cloves, a carrot and some celery tops along with the parts. I've never understood how you can cook chicken long enough to make stock--like two or three hours--and still want to eat any of that chicken meat; it seems flavorless and worn out. So with fresh raw pieces like breasts or thighs, rescuing the meat before it overcooks seems like the best solution.

From that sublime tart tatin to the ridiculously simple: Dorie's "back-pocket" Custardy Apple Cake from Baking Chez Moi--on her website and various other places. You can practically make it with your eyes closed (well, if you are using a mandoline--which I don't--maybe that isn't so smart.) I got it here: http://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/custardy-apple-squares The apples are almost everything in this recipe. I used a couple of pink ladies and some other unidentified apple in the bowl, but I imagine any firm flavorful apple will work. The apple slices on the top get appealingly crispy and toasty edged, and it cuts easily into pretty squares. We had some leftover Bourbon Vanilla ice cream from the local Tara's Organic Creamery and it was a perfect go-with.

In the past I've tried to verify the difference between a crumble and a crisp. Both are basically a streusel topping, but most sources say that one contains flaked oats and the other doesn't. The funny part is that there are conflicting views on which one has the oats. Must be a very regional thing; many recipes that seem almost identical to me are called crisps and crumbles regardless of the oat factor. To my mind a cobbler is different: it is like a drop biscuit topping over the fruit. Then there are all those other variations, such as slumps and grunts, which to me sound like they originated in the backwoods or were invented by little magic people.

I eat a LOT of cauliflower, typically in curry or with red sauce over pasta. For the latter I always sauté it in olive oil or butter or a combo of both, with salt and pepper and then garlic, then combine it briefly with a basic red sauce and spoon it on a bowl of pasta, finished with a blizzard (or less) of pecorino. The other day I made a curry starring cauliflower and kale. Excellent combo. Also a very good combo: eggs and cauliflower. Leftover cauliflower is great in scrambled eggs, especially curried. Recently I've been making a Marcella Hazan cauliflower dish that uses a little onion, green olives and a tomato--super simple. The recipe calls for boiling the cauliflower first, but I find boiled cauliflower pretty insipid, so I sauté it for her recipe instead. In the days when I ate cheese with abandon I was crazy for a dish that was a sort of cauliflower parm, but without the hassle of battering or frying. The cauliflower was baked in large chunks with red sauce and mozz, really easy. Great for a gluten-free person. Am I the only person who adores cauliflower and detests broccoli?

We have 2 packs treat-size Kit Kats and two of M & Ms. I like both, especially M & Ms, so my husband has hidden them from me. Probably in a similar place as your husband hid yours, Sister Kim.

I like my mac 'n' cheese creamy and definitely not oily. I've never had a problem if I make a béchamel sauce and add shredded cheese just until melted. I use a good quality sharp cheddar; it's been eons since I used Velveeta or Kraft for anything. One thing I have noticed is that yellow cheddar seem to result in a creamier, smoother sauce than white. Does anyone else think so? White cheddar ends up being slightly granular, at least the ones I've used.

The only time I allow oil to get to the smoke point is when I stir-fry in the wok with peanut oil. I can't think of any other dishes that I cook on heat that high.

It sounds like the water never even got warm, so the veggies were just sitting in cold water, yes? No reason, but my instinct would be to strain the veggies and keep them in a bag or plastic container in the fridge and toss the water, then start over again on Friday. Or make the soup yourself and save some for her when she gets back, which I am sure she will appreciate.

That's my understanding as well, so I was surprised that it worked well for popping corn. Maybe my husband doesn't pop on super-high heat? No idea, I'm just happy to have someone do it for me.

Since deciding to not buy corn oil any more, my husband, who does 95 percent of the stove-top corn popping, has been experimenting with a variety of oils. He has declared that his favorite oil for popping is now grapeseed. He has tried olive and rice bran and thinks grapeseed does the best job: it leaves fewer unpopped kernels, tastes better and pops up nice and fluffy. We used the same bulk organic pop corn for all tests. Canola and peanut were the worst. Canola popped corn tasted fishy and that convinced me I didn't ever want to use it again for anything. So many recipes call for it that I wonder if the fishy taste is perceptible to only a percentage of people, the way some people think cilantro (I'm not one of them) tastes soapy.

On a hot dog. With dijon mustard. Served with a foam-topped iced papaya frappe. Or a beer, which is a lot easier to come by if you don't live near Papaya King.

I know nothing, especially about acid and beans, so really it is strictly a coincidence that I add my coffee late in the game; I do it because the liquid level gets too low and I have no more stock on hand to add. But now that I do know I will not change my routine! Now that I have this nice espresso powder on hand, I'm thinking that if I use that instead of brewed coffee I should make it into some kind of slurry or something rather than just toss the powder into the pot. I guess if acid is the culprit in beans cooking more slowly, if you add tomatoes you should also add them later on, no?

Haven't had the Ayocote, but they sound great. How do they compare to the black valentines? Patrick, it never occurred to me to add coffee in a dry form. I usually add a half a cup (or more) of rich brewed coffee about 45 min or an hour before the beans are done; it's a good way to add liquid if your beans are getting too thick. I did just get some powdered espresso from the Spice House, so I might try experimenting with that.

I'd be so happy to drop all the traditional fixings. Unfortunately my husband's family loves tradition, as long as it's their own. We make the turkey, and truthfully the only reason I am willing to keep on doing that is so I can take home the carcass for soup. In all fairness my sister-in-law makes a mean apple pie which I eat for breakfast the next morning. But I get a reprieve Friday evening, since we go to a friend's for dinner and he doesn't cook a turkey, ever, so there's no chance of leftovers. For that Friday dinner, which I consider the food (and drink) highlight of the weekend, I make a mostarda and bring coppa and the host makes some kind of Italian food. The hostess does dessert, and it is never pumpkin, for which I am eternally grateful. The most memorable Thanksgiving was a year I lived on a farm. We cooked two of our own geese, and they were such mean critters it didn't feel too bad.

Ice cream cake

I don't know if this would work with any and all pizza, but it works really well for the thin-crust minimalist pizza we make ourselves, which may not be as large as some commercial pies. We just throw a slice in the toaster like any piece of toast; it crisps up, the cheese gets a little melty but not to the point of oozing and nothing seems to fall off of the slice. No pre-heating necessary. Works great. Until we tried this I just never saw an upside to leftover pizza.

We eat a lot of popcorn. Mostly we buy organic bulk popcorn and we always pop it on the stovetop. The smell is intoxicating to me, but only with good oil used. Canola never smells good. My husband is doing most of the popping these days and he has been using Grapeseed oil, which I think smells very nice. The smell of microwave popcorn however is really unappealing to me. Over the years I've tried various gadgets for popping corn and my conclusion is that a simple pot on the stove is as good or better than any of them. That artisanal corn sounds interesting, and worth a try, but if you are regular popcorn consumers, Tiny but Mighty at $9 per pound is a bit steep, when you can buy organic in bulk for less than $2 per pound. Great idea for a gift, though, if you have friends or relatives who are into popcorn.

I always thought arranging books by spine color was hilarious, but I realize people really do it. They must have brains that work that way. But cookbooks especially either lose their jackets or never had them, so what do you do faced with 20 whitish spines in a row that are not easily readable? I don't have that many cookbooks, but mine are often organized by how much they get used: frequently consulted books are easily at hand on a lower shelf, the ones I can't part with but rarely use are way high up and require a ladder. The only books that are organized by topic are baking books and ice cream books, and they are in the middle, easy to reach for my tall husband who does most of the baking and all the ice cream making. I have limited space for cookbooks, and I rarely purchase new ones. If I do, I try to give away the ones I really don't need, so the numbers remain fairly steady.