GG Mora

Oh, man...and how. Where I live in VT, the road bikers are generally the skiiers that need an equivalent obsession for warmer months. Ski season looks to be dying a quick, early death, so bring on the biking!

Just don't tell my husband. Judging from your intended sponsored rides, I would say that YOU are da man. I ride this shit at my own pace; no racing for me, thanks.

I love the earthiness of lentils with duck. Maybe you could make a braise of lentils with bitter greens?

I tend to feed my body some carbs within the first half hour or so after a good ride. A quick banana or bagel or oatmeal cookie, or even a beer. Then I stock up on protein at the next available meal. I find that what I eat before the ride is most important. If it's a morning ride, I'll do eggs and cheese and whole grain something. Later in the day, I like to fuel up with a tunafish and peanut butter sandwich (on whole grain bread). And yeah, to answer whomever it was that asked, I GU. I usually shoot some GU before I start a big climb. Any ride here in So. VT. is going to include climb, no getting around it. For every 10 miles of ride, the average climb is 700 – 1,000 feet. But then there are the epic climbs, the 5 mile guts with 8 – 12% grade. When you hit one of those towards the end of a 40-miler, GU can be your best friend.

Oh, are we confessing knife sins? Back when I was still using a no-name 8" chef's knife as my ONLY knife, both my brother and my boss took pity on me one fine Christmas and gifted me up with a full compliment...Chicago Cutlery from bro, Wusthof from the coach. I've upgraded along the way in the 12 years since, and rely mostly on my Global Chef's knife at this point, but the knife I really really counted on to get me through was the Chicago Cutlery boning knife. I have a Wusthof boner, too, but the crappy-ish quality of the CC blade let me get a good ragged dirty sharp-as-hell edge on it that I just loved and depended on for all my butchering needs. And it disappeared about 3 weeks ago. I'm under a whole lotta stress these days, and my mental faculties aren't what they otta be...the paring knife that my husband discovered in the compost last week suggests that a similar fate befell my boning knife. I'm resigned to believing that after boning and cleaning a few pounds of chicken thighs for paella, I gathered up the avian detritus and included the knife with it when I pitched the whole mess.

Those look perfectly delicious, but they don't look anything like a French macaron. A macaron should have a smooth, nearly shiny top and a sort of ruffly rim around the outside. To put it bluntly, they should look a approximately like a diaphragm (the birth-control kind).

I have zero compunction about trying new recipes on anyone, anywhere. Never had a major disaster. Have had some great success. Best was when I threw a birthday dinner for the chef under whom I was working. Dinner for 8, 4 of them French – 3 chefs and a Maitre d'...The entire menu was first-timers for me. Robuchon's warm scallops with beurre blanc and caviar as first course. Main was my own invention – roast rack of lamb with lamb jus & port reduction, parsnip purée, deep-fried fennel rings, steamed baby asparagus. Dessert was my first go at a St. Honoré (the birthday boy's favorite dessert). It was all spectacular. That's the last time I ever got uptight about cooking for guests.

Tuna with peanut butter.

I think the Three Thieves Zinfandel is a great looking bottle in every regard. Love the logo, love the friendly little jug, love the coloring. And at $9.99/litre, it's damned quaffable. I tried the TT Cabarnet last weekend and wasn't as taken with it. Even the packaging is a bit off – the purple label, clear jug and silver screw-top just aren't as appealing as the Zin's red label, green jug, black top combo. I love Steadman's wine labels, too. And his Grapes of Ralph is a hilarious read.

Looking forward to your blog – especially to watching someone else shovel-load a preadolescent male. We have a 12-yr.-old eating machine, affectionately known simply as "boy". It's simply astonishing what they can consume, no?

Neil, can you elaborate? How does one "properly" line a flan ring so that lining and weighting are unnecessary? I have a handful of flan rings and would much prefer to use them for tart production, especially if I can save time by skipping the lining! Muchos Gracias.

Okay. So I'm curious. How exactly do you go about this? Peter (age 8) adores PB and tuna. Tuna salad on one slice of break, peanut butter on the other, and then put the PB side on top of the tuna. He then flips the sandwich over so the PB is on the bottom as he's eating it. With the advent of tuna in a pouch, he makes it himself. Yeah, pretty much the way Peter does it, only we use bread. Seriously: make yer tuna mix (I use Hellman's [generously], solid white albacore and chopped onion) & do up a tuna sandwich, with one of your bread slices spread thickly with PB. Best on bread with some balls, like a good crusty sourdough or pain au levain. Sounds totally wierd – disgusting, even – but it's one of those things you have to try to see just how well it goes together. I mean, if you're someone who'll eat raw sea urchin, or pig entrails, or some critter's feet, then PB and tunafish should be no BFD.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: tunafish salad with peanut butter. Don't knock it til you've tried it.

Gotcha beat: mine was 25¢ at the local fire department's tag sale. You can make perfectly decent ice cream with it, but: you have to freeze the liner for at least 24 hours and throw away the instructions that came wiith the thing. You need to crank it slowly but continuously for about half an hour, reversing direction occasionally. I think the instructions have you give the crank one turn every 10 minutes for an hour or something insanely ineffective like that.

Wat Pho.

Sounds like the place, although it's not even remotely "around the corner" from Bon Marché. That'd be like saying that it's "just across the river" from Monmartre.

Is it possible that you mean 35 and not 25? If so, it is indeed a delightful little no-hype neighborhoody kind of place with very good food.

Don't know about you, but when I've been in the throes of a breakup, there's been a good bit of anxiety involved, sometimes nearly to the point of panic. I found Bach's Rescue Remedy (available at most health food stores) to be indispensible. Capsules of Valerian root will help enormously, too. As for food, when you simply can't eat, try a few spoonfuls of some good, plain yogurt. Something about it is quite soothing to the gut. Sucks, girlfriend. I'm happily married now (had to wait til I was 42) but I was in your shoes more times than I care to remember. Here's some positive vibes from a perfect stranger.

A simple sautéed duck breast with a side of lentils braised in stock is lovely. I personally go for the sweet(ish) and make a sauce of duck demi-glace with currants, though I cut it with a little vinegar (prefer honey vinegar if I can find it) to keep it from being cloying.

Imagine if you were being raised in as tight quarters as some of those pigs on commercial farms...you'd probably get mighty nasty, too. Pigs aren't stupid, y'know.

Dewar's & Yoo-Hoo. BTW, grain & grape Kool-Aid is known as Jim Jones' Juice.

For our anniversary on Wednesday, I made the Apricot Soufflé from Cocolat. I kind of f***** up the gelée on top, but otherwise it was a masterpiece.

Wednesday was our 2nd anniversary. I spent most of the day in the kitchen, resulting in a dinner of sautéed duck breast with a black-currant duck demi-glace, pommes fondant and steamed asparagus: Dessert was this Apricot Soufflé from Alice Medrich's Cocolat. I sort of botched the gelée on top, but otherwise it was spot-on.

What Fifi said. Especially the poblano thing.

Hard to believe, but I've actually had a jar in the fridge for over a year (subsequent batches were so much better, this one's been sort of orphaned). Other than some crystalization of the sugars, it seems just fine...no mold, no slime. If I wanted to be compulsive, I could melt it down with a little water to get rid of the crystals but, to my mind, they just make it more interesting when sucking the DdL off my finger. One of my husband's coworkers is an Argentinian woman & I got chatting with her about the DdL thing the other day. She said that when they made it at home, they would put glass marbles in it to keep it moving around the pan & prevent build-up along the bottom and sides. Very interesting. I'd be afraid of finding broken marbles in my otherwise lovely sauce. She's going to pass on her family recipe, along with a recipe for a special cake to be filled with DdL. I promise to share.