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I never understood why chocolate isn't vegan. Milk chocolate I understand, but what about dark chocolate? The handful of (mostly 85-90%) dark chocolate bars I have nearby all have as their ingredients cocoa mass/liquor, cocoa butter, and raw cane sugar. The Vintage Plantations 90% bar even foregoes the cocoa butter and has just cocoa mass and raw cane sugar. Am I overlooking an animal ingredient or processing technique somewhere, or is it just milk chocolate that's not vegan?

I tried using them in granola once, adding them to the oats, nuts, oil, and sweetener when I baked the granola. It turned out almost unbearably bitter. I'm no stranger to bitter—I prefer my chocolate to be 85% dark. Did I do something wrong / use them incorrectly?

That looks pretty amazing, Kenji.

I'm assuming it does, but I thought I'd make sure: does the salt get added to the apples with the cinnamon, sugar, and cornstarch?

How do you convert a dough recipe that uses yeast to one that uses a sourdough starter? I'd imagine you'd need to subtract some of the flour and liquid from the recipe, but is there a particular ratio or rule of thumb? Is it different for white flour vs. whole-grain flours?

For me, it would be thinly-sliced country ham on rolls. We have them at every family gathering.

I buy my tea from a local tea shop. They have an online store:
http://www.carytownteas.com

They have a large selection, with a lot of custom blends they make in-house. One of their herbal tea blends won second place in its category at the 2010 North American Tea Championship.

Their teas are all organic and fair trade and the prices are very reasonable. Not all of their teas are the very top grade, but I actually like the medium-high grades better because they're less delicate and have a more robust flavor. My favorite tea is their Nuwara-Eliya Ceylon (a plain black tea).

They recently had a fire, so their stock might be low right now. When I was in there a few weeks ago, they were expecting to receive new shipments of many of their teas. Due to the seasonal nature of tea, though, they might not be able to replenish all of their stock until this year's harvest.

Has anyone tried AB's recipe with a heritage turkey? I'm getting one for Thanksgiving this year and, from what I'm reading on LocalHarvest (http://www.localharvest.org/features/cooking-turkeys.jsp?r=pe), it needs to be cooked slightly differently—high heat (425-450°F) the whole time and to an internal (thigh) temperature of 140-150°F.

She-crab soup is one of my favorites, and I've had good ones and I've had bad ones. The good ones are so far and above the bad ones that it hardly seems fair to compare them. Unfortunately, I can't remember specifically where I've had the better ones, but I know them when I taste them.

My favorite burgers are plain — just ground beef topped with American cheese. I do like fancier toppings sometimes too (caramelized onions and bacon are great), but plain burgers are my favorite.

I've done Nutella on saltines (it's great), but never thought of using frosting. That sounds good; I'll have to try it sometime.

My favorite taco memory is probably the first time I had went to a "taco place," Las Palapas in Yuma, Arizona. I'd been to places that served tacos, but this was the first place I'd visited that focused on them. It was also where I got hooked on fish tacos.