JAZ

Can she have any acid at all? If something mildly acidic is okay, maybe she could try tomato juice, or even tomato water.

I like peas and mushrooms together -- maybe in a cream sauce over pasta?

I found this guide to Mexican cheeses to be very helpful. I can never keep straight which cheeses are good for which uses.

Now, there's an official kitchen cover for the ipad: the Chef Sleeve.

One thing that's common to a lot of restaurant books is that any given recipe actually has two or more sub-recipes. Sometimes they're with the main recipe but often you just get a page number. It's not a big problem, but it can mean a lot more work that you expect at first glance.

A while ago, I had a chicken salad sandwich that was garnished with celery leaves instead of lettuce. It was great, and it occurred to me that I don't use celery leaves much. Aside from throwing them in soups, I don't really know what else to do with them. Do you use the leaves, and if so, how?

While Goo-Gone will remove most adhesives, I've never found it very effective at actually removing the label itself. Back when I worked at Sur La Table, we used Un-du.

Here's a recipe I've used for beets (and the greens) with horseradish cream sauce. It's great: Beets with horseradish sauce.

When I first went to college, my parents drove me and my sister (who went to the same school) from Seattle to Pullman (across the state). Pretty much everyone who made that drive stopped halfway in a town called Vantage and ate at the A&W there. We were no exception. I don't remember if they had tables, but in any case, we ate in the car (parked in the lot). My mother was in the front passenger seat but had the door open and was sitting with her feet out on the pavement; my dad was standing outside the car to stretch his legs while he finished his root beer float, which he had on the roof of the car. Yes! You guessed it! He tipped the float over so that it spilled all over my mom's head. The amazing thing was that she just sat there instead of pulling her head back into the car to avoid the rest of the float because she didn't want to get the inside of the car dirty.

For asparagus, yes. But I use mine for beets and sweet potatoes all the time.

I like WW for the same reason; I love to cook and didn't want to have to alter my cooking a lot. There are a few recipes that I've changed a bit to make them more "point friendly" -- for instance, I devised a pretty decent "faux" remoulade made with yogurt in place of most (not all) of the mayonnaise -- but mostly, I just make what I want but watch portion size, and I eat a lot more vegetables. I have become more aware of the fat I eat, but I too have not cut back all that much. I've found that I can use much less oil for things like roasting vegetables, but if a dish needs fat, I use it. I think a reasonable amount of fat in my diet keeps me fuller longer and more satisfied with the food that I eat. The few times I tried to cut way back on fat I felt hungry all the time. After years of not eating breakfast, I've found that eating it has made a big difference for me too. On the other hand, I haven't really found that snacking works for me, but I know it does for many others.

How about pastrami hash?

I've heard about that kale "chip" recipe but haven't tried it. Another great non-leafy-green salad is this one for Thai green bean and tomato salad (in fact, I made it tonight). The only thing I do differently from the way the recipe is written is to blanch the green beans for a couple of minutes. (I just don't care for raw green beans.) And since I'm blanching them, I usually don't take the time to julienne them. It makes a nice starter for Asian-style dinners.

If you're investing in that style of juicer, get one made from stainless -- like this one from RSVP Endurance. The enameled ones chip and break easily. I've had my stainless one for years, after having been through 4 or 5 of the cheaper aluminum/enamel ones. Andie, I agree that they're easy to use and get a lot of juice out, but they're not always perfect. If your lemon is not round on the ends, it can easily be pushed off center, which can cause juice to fly everywhere. And as Mitch said, if your fruit is too large, you'll have problems as well.

Pam, I understand that "kosher for Passover" is more strict than regular kosher rules, but that's as far as my knowledge goes. Could you explain the difference?

My icemaker makes pretty decent ice, but my problem is that I don't use all that much. If I turn it off, then the water in the hose to the freezer gets stale and tastes like plastic, so I end up with a lot of ice to deal with. When I make stock I can clean out the old stuff when I chill down the stock, but otherwise I have to either throw it out or melt it and use it for the cats' water dish so that I can make sure the ice in the bin is fresher. Even so, I still prefer to make cubes in a silicone mold for drinks on the rocks -- they just taste fresher.

On the second point, have you considered other vegetable dishes besides salads to start? Or less traditional salads? Since I started Weight Watchers a few months ago, I've been trying to increase my vegetables and eat them first too. I like salads, but don't want a leafy salad every single night, so I sometimes start with -- for instance -- a dish of roasted green beans and garlic chips, or broccoli in a mustard vinaigrette, or (one of my favorites) sugar snap peas and radishes in a horseradish-sour cream dressing.

Actually, one thing Taubes points out in the article is that from a nutritional standpoint, there's virtually no difference between sugar and high fructose corn syrup.

I agree, I certainly am not detained if folks in line use a bunch of coupons. I salute people who stretch their dollars to be able to feed their families. I just do not understand on any level the hatred for coupons and for people who use them. I have no hatred for people who use coupons. I don't mind standing in line behind people who have coupons for the items they're purchasing (anymore than I mind standing in line for anyone else, that is). I completely understand and sympathize with people who want or need to save money. I just think that people who use coupons should know what their coupons are actually for. My experience is probably not typical, because I have abysmal grocery store line karma. But here are three of my recent experiences behind people with coupons. And I swear I am not making this up. #1. I get in line behind a guy who has a big cart of groceries, but almost all of his purchases are already rung up. He hands the clerk a very thick stack of coupons -- I don't know how many, but the stack was easily an inch thick. The clerk starts scanning them. Several of them don't scan -- or, rather, they're for items he hasn't actually purchased. He points out the items the coupons are supposed to be for, but they're the wrong size or brand or whatever. So then he doesn't want the items that the coupons are not for. The clerk has to figure out what those items are for, find them (they've already been bagged) and return them. #2. I get in a line that appears to have one person in it. Oh, except that there's actually a person whose order is halfway done, but who has left to go get more items. She comes back with a cart full of more stuff and gets back in line to finish her transaction. One of her items is baby formula, and she has a coupon. It's not for the size she has. She argues. The clerk calls a manager. The coupon is still not for the size she has. She doesn't really want the larger size, which the coupon is good for, so she takes time to decide. She does decide she wants the coupon size, so the clerk leaves to go get it. Oh, did I mention that this was at 5:30 on a Friday evening, and the store was packed? #3. I get in a line where it appears the woman ahead of me is completely done -- all her bags are in the cart. She pulls out a binder (I am not making this up) and starts pulling out coupons. In stacks. Big stacks. I honestly can't believe that even with a full cart, she's bought enough items for all these coupons to be redeemable. Apparently, they aren't. It's like some kind of coupon lottery for her -- as if she must have something in her stack for the items she's bought. Having learned something from my previous experiences, I wait for a couple of minutes while she pulls out more stacks. I put my items back in my cart, move to another line behind two people and still get done while she is pulling out coupons. I know these people are not typical. I know that most people who use coupons are organized and only use coupons for the items they're buying. But I'm sorry, I see coupons in someone's hand and I make a beeline to another cashier.

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I have to admit that I'm prejudiced against coupons -- I rarely use them unless they're stuck on a product I'm already buying. I don't look for them in papers and flyers, and even when they're included in products I've already bought, they're never for something I actually want to buy -- for instance, I buy cat litter and included is a coupon for a litter box liner, which I have no intent of buying. Or I buy English muffins and get a coupon for Egg Beaters. Mostly, though, I don't like coupons because I really hate being stuck in line at the grocery store behind someone who has a couple dozen coupons for the clerk to process. It's bad enough when they all scan properly, but invariably the customer has gotten the wrong size item for the coupon, or something else happens to make a long process even longer. I wish coupons would just go away. But I know people who collect coupons and use them regularly, and claim they save a lot of money that way. So there must be another side to coupons, and at any rate they seem to be with us for good. So what's the deal? Do you use them, and if so, how? Do you only use them if they're for something you would buy otherwise? Do you try new products? Do you actively scout out coupons, or is it just an opportunistic fluke if you come across one that you think you might use?

I always knew that reduced-fat and fat-free "sour cream" contain various gums and other additives to give them a creamier mouthfeel and firmer texture. But I happened to glance at the ingredients in Publix's regular sour cream and realized that it also has quite a few chemicals added -- modified food starch, carrageenan, guar gum, and locust gum paste among them. Breakstone, on the other hand, contains only milk, cream and enzymes (Breakstone reduced fat has a few more ingredients, but not as many as Publix). It does seem that Breakstone separates a little more, but that's really the only difference I notice. I haven't done a taste test, so I can't say if one or the other has a better texture or flavor. Anyone else notice odd ingredients in sour cream or yogurt? And anyone know why they're there?

So my supermarket started carrying jicama recently -- yay! But while the first one I bought was pretty decent, the second one was dry, pithy and nasty. It occurred to me that I have no idea how to choose a jicama. I've always just bought them and hoped for the best. Any tips?

The factors that Chris listed do make a difference -- I'll wait a lot longer if I have a drink at a bar rather than getting jostled by the door as people come and go, for instance. Another crucial factor for me is getting a realistic wait time from the staff if it's a sit-down restaurant. If they tell me 10 minutes and 15 minutes have gone by I start to get edgy, but if they tell me 20 minutes and I get a table in 15, then I'm happy. The one circumstance where I really hate waiting is if I have reservations. If I don't get seated within five minutes of a reservation time, I expect an apology. If it's 15 minutes, I expect a complimentary drink.

I haven't heard of that diet. It seems too restrictive for me, even with the day to splurge. I'm the kind of person who automatically wants whatever food I'm not supposed to eat. What's the rationale for eating 4-5 times a day? I've been following the Weight Watchers plan for a few months and like the fact that I can eat anything I want -- just not unlimited portions. I've found that most of my recipes are surprisingly "point-friendly" or can be made so with a few tweaks. The ones that aren't I just don't eat as often. (Coincidentally, I'm having a similar "fajita" salad for dinner, but with tortilla strips on top.)