Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

My mom is pushing 90 and when I make pizza for her, I substitute 1/4 to 1/2 cup potato flakes for the flour in a three cup recipe. Makes a nice easy to eat crust. When I was a kid, she and our dad took us to Pepe's Apizza in New Haven, CT (back when you didn't have to wait hours in line) so we were raised on thin chewy and charred at the edges crusts.

I registered, make a few replies, stop by now and then but mostly drifted off elsewhere because of the format. Just my opinion but the software doesn't lend itself to continuity and developing a large community of regular posters (and there are some very informative, funny and otherwise good posters here). RSS and email notification are fine but I often ignore those I already have. What I look for (and where I post) are forums I can slide into when I feel like it and join an on going discussion.

If you want to grow your own, check out Sandhill Preservation. Glenn and Linda have an incredible assortment of heirloom turkey, duck, geese and chickens. I don't have room for their Bourbon Reds, Cuckoo Marans, Barnevelders, Jersey Buffs and Dewlap Toulouse but do grow their heirloom vegetables.

I grow, smoke and dry bhut jolokia peppers ( roughly 200 times hotter a jalapeno --over 1 million Scoville Heat Units) and santaka peppers (400,000 SHU). What works for me is a combination of hydrogen peroxide, baking soda and dish washing soap.

Their used coffee grounds make good compost (but no better I suspect than any other brand):

http://www.sunset.com/sunset/garden/article/0,20633,1208232,00.html

Orange beef.

Tell someone you are a foodie and people can relax when they ask you over. Be it meatloaf and gravy or Buddhist fare, they know you'll scarf it down. They'll probably leave you alone about not eating this or that too because they know you're a hopeless case.

Refreshing to see it printed in the New York Times too. I'm stunned.

News to me too, starbreiz. Since we both pondered range free honey, there has to be a marketing niche here. How much do you think Martha or Rachael would want to use their name?

When I was 8 or 9 we had range free honey. One of my friend's parents discovered a honeycomb inside the house . Two stories worth of honey. Along side the chimmey. We got big chunks of honeycomb which was so dark it was almost black. Wonderful. I felt cheated because a wall in our house hadn't been wrecked by bees (they had to tear siding off to extract all the honey from my neighbors place).

Big Jim, like Joe Parker, Conquistador and NuMex 6-4 is a New Mexico pod type pepper from New Mexico State University. When a vendor says he has "Hatch Chiles" he is playing off the name of a growing region, not telling you what chile you are buying. Or it is possible the vendor has no idea what chile he is selling or doesn't want to bother explaining. Because these varieties are similiar in taste, most consumers are content with this. But there are people who insist on one or the other.

While other chiles are grown in Hatch (jalapenos for instance), what a "Hatch chile" almost always refers to is a cultivar which is descended from New Mexico #9--a landrace chile developed by Fabian Garcia and released by NMSU in 1921. Garcia's work created the New Mexico chile boom.

Garcia is also responsible for the New Mexico paprika industry which is economically more important than the "Hatch" chile business. These peppers are not grown for their taste but for for their deep red color. Tons of powdered NuMex Garnet and Sweet are shipped worldwide to be used as natural food colorings. When you see "coloring added" on processed food labels you are probably eating New Mexico chile peppers. The problematic red dyes of 30 years ago have been largely replaced by chile peppers.

I go with that, finsbigfan. Rellenos are terrific but better if someone else does the work. Not something I would make except for a group.

But a roasted pepper cream sauce is very doable for even one.

What you most likely have is Numex Joe Parker--one of the many "Numex" cultivars devoloped at New Mexico State University's Chile Institute--or Anaheim chiles. Both are excellent roasted and stuffed (chile rellenos), in salsa or chile con queso. Joe Parker has a Scoville heat rating of under 1000 while Anaheim is from under 1000 to 1500 (for comparison, Tabasco is 30,000 to 50,000). Warm enough to give a nice glow.

Search around to see if your chiles match a photo of the cultivars above, then look for a chile picadillo recipe. The variations are endless. Ingredients may include aside from Poblano, Numex or Anaheim chiles, ground beef, raisins, capers, olives (the Cuban variety), onion, cloves, garlic, cinnamon and even bay leaf.

No hint in the article if the motivation is what those on the city council say it is--looking after the well being of the poor-- or is something else. Often in politics it is something else.