Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Homemade pizza. So easy. So satisfying. So many variations. We're all so much happier on pizza night.

Almost always eggs. Poached with lots of pepper on top of a green salad. Scrambled and wrapped in a burrito. An omlet with sharp cheese. Soft boiled with toast sticks. Eggs are the perfect eat-alone food.

Let the chicken breasts cool -- at least part way -- in their cooking liquid. If you pull them out still hot, they'll shed all their liquid and get dry and yucky. Also, remember to keep the water truly below the boiling point -- 212 degrees. Poached chicken is yummy. Boiled chicken is not.

Finnish "tapas" in Duluth, Minn! http://www.kippis.us

Japanese! So healthful. So complicated. So far from what I usually cook...

Won't it be nice when a piece like this is totally irrelevant? When handmade, small-batch, from-the-source products are so widespread and easy to find that we stop referring to them collectively as anything at all -- good or bad? When we would say to Future Ed, Duh, of course some are going to be good and some bad; look for the good ones!

I had strong cravings when I was pregnant: Must have a bologna and cheese sandwich NOW! Must have an egg roll NOW! But I never needed to go very far to satisfy them.

I do remember quite fondly the lengths we went to in Estonia to make a proper American Thanksgiving dinner -- no compromises! no cheating! Among the best I've ever had. And that was where I learned to bake pita and bagels, because if I wanted those, I had to make them.

Dense Finnish rye bread. Very satisfying.

Now I'm embarrassed: 3 cups of broth and 3 cups of WATER. Carry on.

I have to add my dislike for Toby Young. Tom Colicchio and Gail and even the French dude (hey, could he stick around and be the permanent judge?) know their food and take their jobs seriously. Toby was just throwing out cliches in a poor Simon Cowell impression. I had to laugh when he opined oh so seriously that the fennel added a real licoricey undertone. Oh, really? That's astute.

Fortunately it's not just a memory, but something I get to experience every weekend: Watching my 3-year-old son work his way through as much of a pound of bacon as he can manage. I realized how seriously he took this task once when he looked up and said, "Somebody's got to help me eat all this bacon!"

I loved The Hungry Thing when I was little -- another food-related book.