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I've been hitting the Acton-Boxborough Farmers Market in Acton, MA. It's in its second year, and while small, the vendors are mighty, and willing to do awesome things like bring utility seconds on order for tomato sauce. (Thanks, Foxbarn Farms!) Also, it has a bagel vendor!

I am both a coffee snob who will happily pay $15/pound for small-batch-roasted coffee and a coffee heretic who then drinks it light and sweet! I only drink froofy drinks at Starbucks, pretty much, where the beans are roasted too dark for my tastes and the culture is to order something with thirty adjectives; other places, my standard is cafe au lait, and as long as the baristas don't snark my preferred coffee heresy, I'm happy to order off the menu! (The same is true at restaurants, where the only time I veer off the menu is if there isn't a veg option, in which case I usually wave my hands and say "can you make me one?" This turns out completely awesomely about 50% of the time.)

It's a recipe, not a straightjacket!

I am pretty convinced that pommes Anna made in a cast iron skillet is the way that potatoes were made to be eaten. Crispy, buttery....mmmm.

I *love* Craigie on Main! They also have excellent drinks and a nice set of options for food at the bar. There are other excellent restaurants in Boston, but for best-in-show (especially for vegetarians), there's only one other serious contender in my mind, T.W. Food in Cambridge (http://www.twfoodrestaurant.com/). (i'm incredibly excited about the forthcoming Journeyman Restaurant (www.journeymanrestaurant.com) in Somerville; I've had meals cooked by the chefs and they were mind-bogglingly good, and much in this vein.)

Of the new ones, I like "I scream." But I bought an old one called "Baron von Funburger's Haunted Castle" that had a zombie burger on it for my ex, and that is my all-time food-related fave.

Chocolate with salted caramel frosting. The chocolate cake itself is now my standby recipe: three sticks of butter plus EIGHT EGGS cannot be wrong.

Risotto. It's not easy in the sense of "super-quick," but once you've made it a half-dozen times, you can do it by feel for the rest of time.

My new favorite method involves a dutch oven, and the source of my love for it is that it only takes 90 minutes, even for chickpeas, and doesn't require soaking. I've seen it online a couple of places -- the discussion boards at eGullet, Paupered Chef -- and finally wrote it up myself recently: http://aseasontotaste.wordpress.com/2010/01/28/90-minute-beans/.

It's the thing that finally broke me of the canned-beans habit, and helped me start making a dent in that giant bag of chickpeas I got from my coop in the spring!

Quebrada in Arlington, MA. Gingerbread muffins, good croissants, amazing coffee.

I have a sex of Pyrex mixing bowls that my mom bought when *she* was in college, 30 years ago. I still use them almost every day and regularly pass over newer bowls for them.

It is absolutely that easy, and you can get cheese exactly as creamy as you like it by changing the draining time. If it were me, I'd add salt, though :)