Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I actually made this a few years ago, and it's delicious! A balsamic reduction, drizzled around the plate rim, lets you add the flavor without muddying the color. I believe I might have added a bit of goat cheese or similar at the end. (I also beat in an egg yolk with the cream to finish - makes a perfect pudding-y texture!)

Nora Epron's "Heartburn" - a cookbook within a novel!

I throw kumquats in when I make oven-roasted vegetables ... nice!

I love this recipe and everyone already knows how to add a vegetable to their meal.

My question is - do you keep the sage leaves whole? Is that a lotta mouthful o'sage at one time?

My absolute favorite venison roast is to prepare it as a type of sauerbraten. Marinate in red wine/brown sugar/vinegar/spices for a couple of days, then drain and cook slowly until almost falling apart in beef broth - which makes a delicious gravy when thickened slightly with cornstarch. It kills the "gamey" flavor that makes a venison roast less popular with the masses.

I've never cooked okra or had it except in the Campbell's Chicken Gumbo as a child, but I'm a fan of the Sweet Potato Queens and a description in one of the books about how you can stick the gluey trimmed ends onto your face and they'll stay there all day, and how it's good to go about your business in town just for the looks you'll get.

As kids, we always ate our hot white rice with butter and sugar. Still yummy to this day.

My favorite sandwich! Add a little fish sauce to the mayo, too. Liverwurst works in a pinch instead of pate. Buttering/toasting the bun is a nice touch.

I'm adding zucchini to most everything lately - penne pasta with bacon and zucchini and Parmesan creamy sauce; added some grilled zucchini to morning cheesy grits, and most ingeniously and popular with the office girls, is to keep a baggie of chopped zucchini in the kitchen and sprinkling it onto the obligatory lunchtime frozen entree before microwaving. It really stretches out those teeny "lean" meals and works with pretty much everything.

I'm pretty adventurous but was served a small taster portion of chitlins by someone who had lots of experience cooking and cleaning 'em; they LOOKED good. But honestly tasted of poo/sewage. Unable to go with Bite #2.

I have a horseradish plant growing in the yard but never bothered to harvest - any tips on digging up the roots?

Hi - I'm in Minneapolis too, and luckily have a job (again) but the majority of my friends are out of work. I live alone but love to cook - and find that the biggest waste comes from letting things GO to waste. My favorite money-savers are buying the "ends & pieces" bacon that comes in big blocks, then separating into small portions and freezing and just using crumbled cooked bacon to flavor and enhance most everything. And shopping for bargains at Trader Joe's. In particular, their goat cheese logs are great priced and obviously wine.

But general just being inventive and using everything instead of throwing out something that's gone bad because you never got around to using it.