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No apologies necessary. I just wasn't sure I understood you.

I empathize with you, Lauren. Take good care of yourself!!

You can get high-quality ground cumin at Indian stores, but you're right: It's certainly stronger freshly-ground. Which is an excellent argument for having a spice grinder around the house.

Rhubarb pie! It was great meeting you, as well.

And here's a link.

John, good point about Neapolitan pizzas being for one person. And even so, if you're pretty hungry, it makes good sense to have a salad as well.

That story is bizarre. Why didn't your friend's parents pay you? Truly a nightmare. Are you still a chef?

Actually, the "Quattro Stagione" is a fairly popular Neapolitan pizza nowadays and is divided into 4 sections with different toppings. Michael, you must have eaten in different pizzerie than I did, My crusts weren't flimsy nor were they overly sauced. I take your point on Quattro Stagione, but you seem to have misinterpreted my comments as negative toward Neapolitan pizza. I do not think that Neapolitan pizza is oversauced! I do, however, think that the crust is too thin and soft and there is too much sauce on the pizza for it to be appropriate to eat it without a knife and fork. Have you tried eating Neapolitan pizza with your hands on the street? You made a mess, right? For the record, the pizzerie I can remember eating at in Naples are Trianon and the Antica Pizzeria Ponte d'Alba. Trianon is (or was) the most famous pizzeria in Naples, as I understand, and the other one has more offerings (good salad, etc.), and is slightly more formal. I haven't eaten at dozens and dozens of pizzerie in Naples, so I'm no expert in that respect.

Irwin, you are a fabulous poster and have my blanket forgiveness for all typing errors you have made and will ever make. I just wanted clarity and now have it.

Jenny, you'll be amazed in the morning at how well you spelled while drunk! Do you really think people are bored with you?

Oh, in other words, we kind of eat a varied diet naturally.

Musical garbage trucks? How about that!

Fat Guy, are you saying that L & B Spumoni Gardens is better than DiFara's? That would be pretty amazing to me.

Thanks, Irwin, but I was asking about this: DiFarias in Coney Island is different from DiFara's on 15th St. off Av. J?

It was lovely of you and HWOE to have us, Suzanne!

That would be B Minor, but I don't think a chart of church modes clearly relates to the Major/minor tonal system. We'd need a different chart for that. I wonder if there was a relationship between the food that was served in Court and the key of the dinner music being played by the Court musicians. I'd also wonder about that in terms of places like China, Japan, and India. But the fact is, I have no idea.

I'm following your line of thinking now, ExtraMSG, except that I do think that early modern peoples were very concerned with the humors as well as digestion. As I said, it's my understanding that there was pretty overwhelming belief in the Humoral System through the 19th century in Europe and the U.S. For example, when I was in Nashville in 1996, I visited a replica of the Parthenon from the 1897 World's Fair and looked at an exhibit that included some newspaper coverage of the event. In a local Nashville newspaper from 1897, on a page that included coverage of the World's Fair, I saw an ad for a patent medicine that promised it was "cooling" and got rid of results of an excess of heat such as pimples. I don't remember the rest of it (it mentioned various other symptoms), but you get the idea. It was abundantly clear to me that this advertisement assumed all readers believed in humoral concepts of balance between internal "hot" and "cold" as necessary for optimal health. jsolomon, I don't understand what you mean when you write that you don't think most eGulleteers "are concerned about eating a varied diet." mongo_jones, it's ironic that my stomach often gets upset from overly rich (i.e., too much fat) Indian food. I eat it anyway, and there's less of a chance of problems when I don't go to crappy places like most of those on 6th St. (since those always upset my stomach, I don't go to them except when there's absolutely no way to refuse gracefully, so that's almost never), but I have to wonder at what level I'd find no excess of ghee or oil.

Sounds a little like how I feel after a good recital, jo-mel. Catering, in other words, is a performance, in real time.

Great pics, Sherri! Nice meeting you, too. I also think the wines are worth mentioning, and not just because I brought one. I didn't get to try all of them, but I loved the Riesling from the Finger Lakes (super clean and great with dessert!) and the red wine from Long Island (good initial taste, wonderful aftertaste!). Nice Belgian-style beer, too. I also did like the Cotes de Rhone I brought, but if I didn't, I'd admit that, too. I think the wine from Long Island was better than the Cotes de Rhone, though! I hope those who have been ailing are feeling better, but with all that slippery slushy snow, it was a good day for you to stay home. But come next time! I encourage all you expert piemakers to post recipes on RecipeGullet, except Elyse, who has to maintain her secret formula for professional reasons. And in her case, having another chance to eat that ambrosial Pecan Pie is enough of a treat without having a recipe!

Irwin: Was that DiFara's you were saying used to be in Coney Island? Dominic's father was the pizzaiolo? L & B Spumoni Gardens seems way the heck out there in Brooklyn for a Manhattanite like me, but I teach a walking distance from DiFara's every Saturday. Does anyone feel like L & B is worth a special trip? In other words, how many minutes' worth of travel would you value it at?

Well stated, Fat Guy. I've been to Naples twice, and I'm here to tell you New York pizza is not at all the same as Neapolitan pizza. Neapolitan pizza has a very thin crust and is not suitable for ordering slices of or attempting to eat on the street (I tried that once and was nearly attacked by a swarm of yellowjacks, but that's another story). It's much too saucy and its crust is much too soft and flimsy for that. You get the pizza in a pizzeria and eat it there, with knife and fork. It's great, but it is not the same as New York pizza. DiFara's is a good example of the difference, in fact. Dominic is from the Caserta area, north of Naples, but his pizza has a thick crust and is available with many toppings you'd never find on a pizza in Naples. My experience in Naples is that you can get Pizza Margherita, that plus prosciutto, and sometimes that plus mushrooms (I guess prosciutto and mushrooms would be possible), and that's it. I don't think you could find a pizzeria in Naples where you could get a pizza that's half artichoke and onion and half sausage and mushroom - or for that matter, half anything. I don't see how a Neapolitan-style pizza could effectively be made with half topped one way and the other half another. Also, though, where is Spumoni Gardens, and has anyone been there lately?

I second that emotion. And it was great to meet everyone and put faces on some of the names.

I think that it's unquestionable that people who believe(d) in humors have and had certain humoral bases for deciding what would be best for their digestion, but I don't see digestion as something that's divorced from an overall medical conception, except inasmuch as there's been a tendency in biomedicine to emphasize specialization over general medicine, giving rise to a compartmentalization of the "digestive system" as opposed to the "endocrine system," the "circulatory system," etc. But the idea of bodily systems as unrelated is not scientific, and if the concepts of vitamins, minerals, proteins, calories, etc. have replaced digestion, why are sales of antacids and laxatives so high? Perhaps because people are trying to substitute "medicines" for a diet that would promote better digestion, and that's where your take on this and mine may come together.

Just to show the tip of the iceberg of the Humoral System as something all-encompassing, those of you who are musically inclined can look at this fascinating annotated chart of the Medieval European and ancient Greek modes and their corresponding elements, humors, effects on people's mental and emotional state, and planets. Indian classical music is similarly governed by rags that are considered appropriate for a particular time of day, mood, etc. Ditto for pathet in Indonesian gamelan music, etc. (Rags and pathet are essentially analogous to modes.) But back to food...

I'm not so sure about that - maybe, maybe not. One thing I didn't mention yet is that in rural Terengganu, Malaysia c. 1975, all Western medicine was considered humorally hot and had to be counterbalanced by some humorally cold food or some other cooling thing like perhaps baths with lime juice. I doubt that Americans are taking their medicine with squash, for example, but I guess even here I can temporize and note that alcohol, too, is hot, and interacts poorly with some Western medicines - but then again, only some of them. I do think that some of the empirical elements to the humoral system are comprehensible to people not brought up with these principles, but if you don't believe in the Four Elements (or for Chinese, the Five Elements) and don't believe that the blood is the hot humor and the phlegm is the cold humor, does the system lose its underpinnings and become uncredible in the end? I hope someone who doesn't believe in the Four/Five Elements but understands traditional categories of "heaty" and "cooling" will address this point. (Blood was the humor corresponding to Air in ancient Greek cosmology, with Choler corresponding to Fire, but where I was living, the hot/cold opposition in most current use was blood/phlegm. Massaging cramped muscles was called "breaking up phlegm," because the idea was that lumps of cold phlegm were impeding the free movement of the hot blood.)