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Anyone else kind of itching to cut up a sandwich with a cleaver (honestly, my first throught was 'battle axe!')? It would probably be a mess, but equally probably, quite worth it.

I grew up aware that you're not supposed to break up the strands of spaghetti, but I break it in half anyway, because it does pick up more neatly and I have a morbid horror of doing something criminally sloppy while eating. Also, if I cook spaghetti, I'm 100% certain to be eating it with at least one other person, and for some reason, most of these people wrangle full-length strands in a way that puts me off my food. I prefer a soup plate for any pasta, just seems to work best. And, it's what I've always eaten pasta from... It's nice to have a bottle of talc at hand, too, to deal with the grease stains from when a fellow diner whips something off a high-speed spaghetti strand, and it hits your clothes As long as someone does not do that thing where they hang their face over their plate, and nip of and let the ends of their mouthful of spaghetti fall back into the platet, I can't think of any hard and fast rules for eating pasta. A good friend of mine hacks it up into little bits, and eats it with a spoon. The Italian in me winces, but really, no one dies as a consequence, so who cares.

When I saw this, I realized I should get on board with this, although my boyfriend and I are coming from a different place than the one described by the OP: Our refrigerator and freezer are not overflowing with anything other than condiments and things like paint rollers. The refrigerator looks like it could belong to most of the single men I know, sparsely populated with things that have obscure reasons for their presence (e.g. the empty bottle of gomme syrup persists, to remind me we're out). Our living situation has been a little odd these past two years, and we've slipped into the habit of compensating for lack of privacy and space, and having most of ours stuff in storage, by being a little extravagant when it comes to food. This is aided and abetted by the fact that most of the time, I have to shop on foot, and the only supermarket that is less than a 40-minute walk away is a highish-end one. Although a combination of workload and sloth mean I don't shop every day, it certainly takes place several times a week, and there are no specially designated days; it just happens when we decide we want X for dinner, and need ingredients a, b, and c, but don't have them. So, my boyfriend and I decided to experiment with an economically leaner approach to shopping and eating. This began last week, when I bought a clump of meat, and a bag of root vegetables, cut it all into into little strips, and wracked my brains to come up with something truly tasty every day. This week I'm continuing, and since there were two eggs languishing in the refrigerator, I decided to make fars (the mixture for frikadeller), and take things from there. A quick look at the refirgerator reveals a very typical(for us) array of items that are kind of useless on their own: Partial bag of washed baby rucola Large packet of smoked salmon containing exactly one teeny piece Some pasteurized egg whites in their cup-packages 2 eggs Nearly empty bottle of fish sauce Empty bottle of gomme syrup Bottle of champagne Squeeze bottle of mayonnaise Half a brick of butter Bottle of toasted sesame oil Sambal olek Baking powder Oyster sauce 2 packets of sandwich meat 2 bags of baby carrots (actual, complete small carrots, not those weird stumpy things) 800g chopped chicken Bottle of lemon juice Half litre bottle of tonic water Litre of chicken broth 4 scallions 2 bell peppers The freezer holds coffee beans, some lemon grass, some ginger, two slightly mummified-looking limes (last three items chucked in here before we went on holiday, and just kind of stayed there.) (The last eight items on the refriegerator list were bought yesterday or today, and yesterday also saw me buying rice, a packet of sour gummi sweets (= breakfast and lunch: I had a deadline...), and tin of water chestnuts (used in last night's stir-fry); today I also picked up some baking soda. Breakfast was coffee, lunch was leftover strir-fry from last night. Dinner will be frikadeller, with the carrots (raw; they're really sweet), and rice or pasta (there are penne and tagliatelle in the cupboard). ETA Although the fars is now made, it looks like the frikadeller are not going to happen until Saturday night, owing to work-related chaos. Form and freeze, I guess(?). I'm a bit leery of having an egg-and-chopped-chicken-meat mixture just sitting in the refrigerator for over two days.

Dan, speaking of Douglas Baldwin, if you have not already done so, you'll want to get your hands on his Sous Vide for the Home Cook, an excellent resource.

I find the whole 'it's healthy' being placed before all else really, really depressing. I try to keep a lid on things that may be detrimental to my health, but I won't eat anything exclusively because it's healthy. Partly, this has to do with the fact that a bunch of things I love are measurably bad for me (e.g. most starches mess with my joints/mucosae within minutes), so I have to avoid them, and partly to do with my having spent a goodish chunk of time as a student so broke that food every day wasn't even always a given. Eating things I dislike, added to the necessary aggravation of avoiding favourite foods, is just not a place I'm willing to go, there's plenty of stuff out there that is healthy for me that I like.

I've also used it in tiramisù, but as a replacement for the coffee+booze mixture you dip the lady fingers in. It also makes a dandy addition to hot chocolate (and pretty much any empty glass, but you've probably discovered this), and brushed or drizzled over layer cakes, a bit before icing them.

Tossup between LU Pim's and Bahlsen Lebkuchen. Actually, I am so full of lies: I will impartially eat virtually any brand of Jaffa-type Cakes or Lebkuchen in horrible quantities.

If the water is being filtered because it tastes bad (e.g. I had one of these in NYC, since the chlorine was pretty heavy), if the filter is working, the water will taste better, and the flavour will deteriorate when it isn't working any longer. If you're filtering for hard water, the filter is working if you notice that appliances like electric kettles are not showing any deposit (even when you regularly fill the kettle by topping up); water flow seems to start falling off when these sorts of flters become full of whatever they're removing. The better brands will give you an idea of the minimum/maximum volume of water that one filter will effectively clean.

'. . .objectively more flavorful, juicy, or otherwise preferable' pretty much nails the reason that you should just go with what you like; none of those things is objective, they're subjective. No one else has your mouth. Some people want beef that practically moos, others prefer something that is a few drops of water shy of beef jerky. Your tastes may change, too: In 2000, I casually devoured a 0.75kg bistecca alla fiorentina (yes: the entire staff slowly gathered to watch this); that's damn close to raw meat, and lots of it. Today, if meat is more than pink, or if there is a lot of it on my plate, I tend to start feeling queasy.

I'm sorry I didn't see this until now. I've been making far smaller batches than yours (from Japanese quinces), and although a few don't set up as well, most set up firmly. I always leave the skins on while cooking, and my weapon of choice is a food mill; a first pass removes the sees and such, a second fines it down (and I think may release more pectin).

Mozart Black. I never get tired of this stuff.

Eh.. no. That's what science says. It's also the reason people with kidney failure sometimes smell like urine; the kidneys can't handle the job well, and the skin takes over part of ot. But that's not the point here; that was whether or not this should be a serious concern, and as far as I know, there's no reason for most people to worry about it.

The skin is part of the excretory system (e.g. http://www.cape.ca/children/derm1.html I don't have time at the moment to copy out the entry from Dorland's). It may not be a beautiful thought, but there it is.

This is a load of hog swill. Neither pigs nor people "process all the bodies toxins" in their skin. That's the liver that does that mostly. Some toxic things (as well as vitamins) can linger in fat, but that's an exception. The skin is part of the excretory system, and particularly if one of the other parts of the system is overloaded (e.g. kidneys), the skin will excrete (and by extension, contain) various undesirable substances. I doubt it would be enough to be a problem, unless you're eating an awful lot of the skin, although this would probably also depend on what was in the animals' feed (and if the level of some substance was high enough to be excreted by the skin, there would also be plenty of it held in the fat). If you're eating pork that's been fed cleanly, this shouldn't be an issue.

Share links to reliable, interesting websites for the various spirits with everyone beforehand, not in a 'Study this' sort of way, but 'Look at this, this is great, wanted to share it with you!' If you do this, most should show up with a little background already, and you can pass along other the key information as you go. Just don't present the information in a block; even if they don't mean to, they're likely to quickly tune it out. My idea of a good tipple is madeira or one of the liqueurs, so I have no site suggestions myself, but I'm quite certain that plenty of the other members who are active in the beverage forums wil have some excellent suggestions.

My condolences to Dave's family, and I'm glad we have one last blog to remember him by.

All I see is a photo of some naan - no recipe, no technique, no suggestions. CI may be a good source. I'll look into it. Tks! You're welcome, and what I meant was the grilling option, but didn't know whether you had a grill (I never have, but a lot of American's I've mentioned this to have indicated this is aberrant..not so?) I really recommend giving the Cook's Illustrated version a go; I don't think I've had a failure with them (CI, that is, not the naan), yet.

I don't have a big easy fryer ... I have a stove and an oven. Oookay: How about Heidi's second suggestion (post #3)? 'Typical US kitchen' means different things in different regions. However, assuming your kitchen consists of a stove and an oven as heats sources, you can still make naan; just hop round to the library, and take a look at the May & June 2012 issue of Cook's Illustrated (pp. 22-23), or look up the recipe on their site, if you're a subscriber. You'll need a 12-inch skillet, ideally cast iron, although the recipe says you can use a non-stick one, too. The results look pretty good.

Definately sweet. One minor criticism of the French, in my opinion, is that they are heavy-handed with the sugar. A few bites is enough. The mousse, like all the mousse and custards at Jean Philippe, is incredibly silken but with a firm body. I'm always in amazement at how they can infuse such intense flavor into what appears on first glance to be vanilla pudding. Delicious. Thanks, Dave, I really do enjoy knowing what the inside of this sort of thing is like

It sounds delicious Damiano has done food shows around the US (http://www.damianorganic.it/it/fiere.jsp), so they seem to be working on their presence there, and it might be worth e-mailing their marketing person, to ask if and where this is availalble somewhere reasonably near you (http://www.damianorganic.it/it/contatti.htm).

Yesterday evening I was served a stir-fry of match-stick root vegetables (beetroot, parsnip, carrot) and venison, and although I'm not a huge fan of beetroot, this was excellent.

Is there a larger Shoprite or other supermarket not too far from you? I've seen Jerusalem artichokes at the Shoprite where my sister shops, so it isn't as though Shoprite simply does not carry them; I've also seen them at Whole Foods and various farmer's markets. I'm also not getting the 'out-of-season thing'; these are tubers, they keep for months under the right conditions (cool, dry, dark) and everyone I know who grows them generally has enough to see them through February.

What brand did you get in Italy? It might not be impossible to find in NYC, although it might take a bit of research/legwork (i.e. you may need to contact the company to ask if and to whom they distribute in the metro area). The only US-made ones I've seen are like those you describe, and are made from whole almonds.

I've found the teas from Harney & Son quite good, and their site does list the pearl jasmine, although I don't see the Yong Xi Huo Qing (does it go by any other name/spelling?).

Oh, yes there is (need for further description)! Was this a sweet, inthe stricter sense of the word, or was it almost savoury? Consistency of the carrot-pumpkin mousse?