I will be alone in Williamsburg for four nights next week, and need good dinner suggestions to cheer me up after a day of hard work. I will have a car. The restaurant I really wanted to go to--a cooking demonstration part of the meal-- will be closed for vacation. Bummer. Where else can I go for a good meal? Can be a dive or posh, as long as the cooking excels. Thanks in advance!

There are leap year bargains galore today. The two I've taken advantage of are King Arthur Flour (where all orders are 29 cents shipping, including their heavy bags of flour) and D'Artagnan, which has 7 pages of discounted products at $29.99. There are discounts today on lots of other food sites, too, so check out the ones you frequent!

Leah Douglas's Brown University CSA initiative has dropped below fifth in the vote to go to the White House. SE needs to rally behind one of our own. Cast your three votes for Leah! (Brown Market Shares Program) link: (you'll have to cut and paste)
http://campuschallenge.uservoice.com/forums/148562-campus-champions-of-change-challenge

A long long time ago, mr. teachertalk and I ate twice at Shun Lee Palace, and they were two of the best Chinese meals we'd ever had. Over the years, I carried the fond memories of Chicken Soong in lettuce leaves, hacked chicken, and a delicious sliced lamb dish. Last night I was part of a group that got takeout from the same restaurant, and we tried at least seven different dishes--all of which were bland and undistinguished. Even the chicken soong was not as I remembered it--although the diced ingredients and pine nuts elevated it above the rest of the fare. Has this been your experience? Shun Lee was one of NYC's iconic Chinese restaurants, and it makes me sad if it has slipped into mediocrity. Perhaps it's just the takeout that has gone downhill?

I know there are 800 of you out there who, along with me, asked for an SE bookplate to stick on our own copies of the new book. I received mine today, and think the signatures are very revealing. (btw, thanks, SE for the cool bookplates!)
Kenji, Maggie, and Erin are all perfectly legible--displaying their solid identities and ease with their positions as public personalities. Carey Jones? Almost illegible. And Robyn!--totally illegible. Hambone is Hambone---gosh, we love that wrinkly guy. What do you make of your own bookplate? If you haven't gotten it yet, you must live west of NYC. Hold tight--it's in the mail!

If you missed the Dining section of today's "Times," there's a lovely review of the new SE book:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/09/dining/the-serious-eats-book-stuffed-to-the-cover.html?_r=1&ref=dining
And don't forget to post a review on Amazon.com so that others thinking of buying it, know what to expect:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/030772087X/?tag=serieats-20
Long live Serious Eats and its fine staff!

Hurricane Irene is still alive in New England, but has cleared out of the Carolinas, Washington D.C., and New York. Were your food preparations adequate? Too thorough? What would you do differently?
I overplanned because we usually lose power in storms, and I figured if I overprepared there was a better chance I wouldn't need to have been so cautious. The storm tracked slightly East of where I live, and the coolers packed with sandwich fixings, veggies, and meat didn't ever get put into use!
How did you fare?

I hope the management will lift the ban on website and Flickr links so we who are "inside" on this 100 plus degree day can vicariously enjoy the sandwich festival on Governor's Island with all the "Serious" SE staff and fans. I know many of us would love to hear about it, and see your photos!

I unpacked my volumes of Nathan Myhrvold's "Modernist Cuisine" yesterday, and spent an hour or two figuring out a place to keep it. Now what? Are those of you who own it using any of the recipes? (The first one I plan to try is parmesan creme brulees.) Do you simply leaf through and marvel at the photos and the science? Has anyone actually looked through the whole thing yet? I love the separate recipe book; the spatter-proof cover guarantees that it will actually get used, on occasion.
What have new owners been doing with "the greatest cookbook since Escoffier"?

I was reading the NYTimes on Justin Bieber this morning, and suddenly "conversation hearts" entered my brain. Madonna seems a bit more rich and complex--maybe a Ritter hazelnut. Colin Firth (OMG!) is a porcini mushroom--dried or fresh, depending on the role. Anne Tyler (love her novels) is the old-fashioned Mary Jane chewy candy.
What is the food or candy that would exemplify your favorite celebrity, singer, dancer, or author?

Also known as DINNER IMPOSSIBLE.
My daughter arrived with 7 friends tonight for her birthday dinner. They noshed on goat's milk cheese and veggie chips (the Trader Joe's equivalent of Terre Chips) and pistachios while they waited for dinner. No soy, no wheat, no onions, & no mushrooms in that!
The soup course was her favorite soup: fennel, leek, and celeriac from the Greens cookbook. I made the broth from scratch because it had to have no onions or mushrooms--and commercial vegetable broths always have onions. Plus, commercial veggie broth always tastes like cabbage to me.
Then we started the Asian part of the meal. Summer rolls always use rice wrappers, so they're fine for gluten free diets. I stuffed them with strips of cucs, avocado, chopped scallions, fresh mint, fresh Thai basil, and spring lettuce. I made a peanut sauce to go with it--just omitting soy sauce and putting extra salt and some sesame oil to liven it up. That option was suggested by commenters on the site. Thanks!
Main course: vegetable curry with rice. I found a Mae Ploy Thai curry paste that had no shrimp paste, no soy, and no soybean oil. It was the yellow paste; green, red, and two or three others all have shrimp paste. I practically yelped in the aisle when I read the ingredients and saw I could use it! I sauteed garlic, ginger, chopped lemongrass, and the yellow curry paste in canola oil, added a couple of cans of coconut milk, then added both Thai and regular eggplant, zucchini, butternut squash, carrots, and leeks along with a few kaffir lime leaves. I served it with Jasmine rice. It needed a bit of salt, but other than that there was plenty of flavor. Yay for Mae Ploy yellow curry paste!
Dessert was 2 homemade sorbets: raspberry and mango, plus meringue coconut kiss cookies (no flour!) and some fresh raspberries.
A good time was had by all. No one knew I had been semi-hysterical for a week.
Thanks to the SE community for keeping my hysteria at bay!

The title about where to find "raw dog" and the trepidation a number of us felt when we first saw it (and before we realized it meant hot dog) has made me wonder: What Talk topic do you hope never to see on Serious Eats?
What comes to mind for me are the very general topic titles like "Help, I'm in trouble" when you have no idea what the subject is. Or perhaps the titles you've seen a million times like "What is your definition of Serious Eats?" Or maybe the ones that will get contentious like "Is eating meat ethical?"
What titles do YOU hope never appear as topics on Talk threads?

My daughter's birthday is coming up and we are having her friends for dinner. She would like an Asian meal (mostly Thai) but one of her friends is allergic to soy, another to wheat, and she is a vegetarian. So: no oyster sauce, fish sauce, soy sauce, or soy substitute made from reduced beef stock.
What can I use to flavor as the "salty" element? I'll use ginger, garlic, chiles, lemongrass, lime, lime leaves--all that good stuff (no onions or mushrooms--more allergies!) But I need that extra "oomph" that fish sauce or soy gives a recipe. Please help!

A number of SEers have referred to "fancy pants" recipes their families have made in the past. My family never used that term, although they did say something (with an expensive ingredient) was "fancy schmancy."
What was your family's "fancy pants" dish?

Hannah Howard's series, "Served," and a conversation on SE Day with John Edwards has made me think about first person accounts on Serious Eats. "Served" was initially met with some confusion where a few readers were expecting current news rather than reminiscence and past anecdotes. And the current site is mostly reviews, recipes, and present day accounts of food explorations and experiences.

Would you like first person accounts on this site that trace someone's "culinary journey"? (John Edwards' story about how he gained--qualified--respect for fast food is really interesting.) Would you like to hear more from Ed and Adam and others on how they got into this business?

I think a weekly column from SE staff revealing how they got where they are would be fascinating. What about the rest of you? Thumbs up or "not so much"?

There was a flurry of activity on meet-up SE about a month ago. But most of the gatherings still have only one guest (that's no fun!) and even NYC has only added one person in the past couple of weeks. Maybe we all need a reminder:

http://www.meetup.com/Serious-Eats/

Gather with other Serious Eaters and swap stories/recipes/techniques/pet stories.

This morning I was cruising through past Talk threads and saw that Judith had updated her white truffle thread to tell us what she made with her remaining truffles. It was wonderful! That made me think that it would be great if there were some way on the site to allow the OPs of threads that ask advice about a certain occasion or event to let us know what they decided or how an event went. I was updated in a separate thread by carmason on her "Thai chicken" dilemma (the guests requesting a certain meal) and again wished everyone on that thread could be alerted to her update. Wouldn't you like to know what Mom's cookbook was finally named, or how grandma's recipes were changed (to mention two recent threads)?
If this would take too much work on Adam's or Alaina's part--let us know. But I'd love to be able to go to a section for OP Updates. Going back to old threads is so time-consuming, and it's hard to tell if they've been updated, or just have the original comments.
SEers--what do you think of the idea?

When I first began commenting on SE, I was worried that I was too much a home cook, not elitist enough, not a chef, not a REAL foodie (whatever that means.) But in the past few years, I've had so many of those stereotypes dispelled.

Have any of yours been dispelled for the better? (Let's make this thread positive!) I always assumed the SE talkers were women and those on Slice were male; not so. And Velveeta---who would've thunk? But the last thread "What's in it anyway?" yielded a "serious" Velveeta recipe by dmcavanagh.

And I never would have thought I'd fall in love with a dog-in-the-kitchen. (Oh that Dumpling!)

What pleasant surprises have you experienced on Serious Eats?

The latest Campbell's sponsor recipe did, as predicted by a number of people in yesterday's Talk thread, close comments. (No one likes to be bashed!) But they seem to have read the comments because several SEers said that the sponsors were missing an opportunity to upgrade their recipes to appeal to more of us on his website. The chicken recipe has balsamic vinegar, baby spinach, garlic, and white beans as well as the de rigueur canned soup.
What do you think? Are sponsors listening and changing their recipes? Or is this one just an anomaly?

I am running a workshop for 30 Advanced Placement teachers just outside Ft. Lauderdale, and will have a somewhat limited budget for lunches and dinners for five days--$45 for lunch and dinner combined. (I will need decent food since I am away from my family, including my one-week-old grandchild.)
The workshop site is near Sunrise and Plantation Florida. There's a big mall (Sawgrass Mills), but do any of you know any local Cuban restaurants? Or other ethnic restaurants? I know a few of you must live near there, and somehow TGIFridays and Cheesecake Factory is not going to do it for me! I need good comfort food to erase the memory that everyone else is with my new grandchild.

Snowmageddon, snowpocalypse--when the power goes out and you don't have gas or an outdoor grill, can you cook with sterno? The D.C. area is getting ready for another blizzard, and last weekend I had the worst (frigid) dinner of my life when I put sliced ham (expiration date '06) in between two slices of light bread. This week, in preparation for the next bout, I bought sterno and the racks to hold foil pans warm, but I don't know if it's only designed to keep already warm food warm. Can you actually cook with sterno? When our house was 49 degrees, we would have loved some scrambled eggs or canned food warmed up. Any advice before this next power-busting storm would be most appreciated!

I have years of old "Gourmet" magazines and especially cherish the ones with the "centerfolds" that epitomized the regal table that we all aspired to. Will you miss Gourmet magazine? Why or why not?

I hope you SE'ers will know what my friend, in her 90's, means when she asks me to bring a recipe for "Ruth's Tamale Pie." I think it might be from a book by Ruth Glick--but somehow I missed the Tamale Pie craze in whatever decade it occurred! Alternatively, I'm sure she would be happy with a more contemporary recipe that one of you has tried and liked. Thanks for your help!

My husband and I will be in Oxford for over two weeks. I searched on SE to find threads on restaurants there, but I didn't see much. Have any of you visited friends at Oxford, or studied there, and discovered great fish and chips, or Indian, or Thai, or British restaurants? Jamie Oliver opened an Italian restaurant here a year ago; have any of you eaten there?

Does anyone have the link to the recent recipe that has made the magazine and newspaper rounds for crisp-skinned roast chicken rubbed with baking soda and salt? I thought I saw it in Serious Eats or in Cooks Illustrated, but I've searched both websites and come up empty. I know it needs to air dry in the refrigerator for 24 hours. Thanks!