Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Fage fat-free plain is potent enough to take the skin off the roof of your mouth, but it's just the foil for baklava fixings -- chopped pecans and honey -- and it's hard to beat a 150-calorie breakfast that's good for you and keeps you satisfied till lunch.

I'm afraid I let them all expire about the time all the shelter magazines went belly-up in late 2008. None of them has anything really new to say, I own lots of cookbooks I truly love, and all of the mentioned publications have Web sites. Why would you buy the magazines, especially in this economy.

Is there any reason why the sausage can't be shaped into small patties and frozen or refrigerated?

I forgot "The Gift of Southern Cooking" by Edna Lewis and Scott Peacock. Intended exclusively as a cookbook, but Ms. Lewis' introductory comments are wonderful to read.

Let's begin with Ben&Jerry's Phish Food (love that caramel swirl), then B&J's Peanut Butter Cup, Blue Bell's Pralines and Cream drizzled over with hot fudge sauce and...AND...any flavor combo among the Dove varieties but especially the white chocolate raspberry concoction. Indeed I do like plain ol' vanilla and chocolate, but to eat only them would be to eat only burgers and fries...boring.

I roast chilis with the broiler coil in the oven. Just put the peppers on an oven rack, and slide it in right up under the broiler. Give the peppers 3-5 mins., then turn (about 3 times total). Remove to a cutting board and cover with a bowl or put the peppers in a plastic bag and zip the top. You'll have to experiment, and should the peppers blaze, just keep the oven closed and turn off the coil. But I got a handle on it pretty quickly. Your nose also tells you when a pepper is charred because it begins to smell toasty/roasty.

The simpler the better, I say. Egg, mayo, something for crunch -- but nothing to overwhelm the flavors of the egg and mayo -- and you're done. I confess when my child was little and getting her to eat anything was a chore, I used to serve egg salad "boats," and instead of using white bread, I used hot-dog rolls with much of the crumb scooped out. She wouldn't eat egg salad any other way and still smiles, 30-some years later, when I make those "boats" for one of our Girlie Weekend lunches.

Bourdain makes me want to hurl. I cannot begin to understand why I so dislike him (it must be something more than his insufferable arrogance), but I do. I'm with whoever said they're rather hear Batali talk.

Wow! Hot dog buns. I love it. And I echo Jilly's recollection: Nothing liquid in the stuffing/dressing except butter and whatever fluids came from sauteeing the vegetables. Holy moly, it was good when you didn't have to cook it yourself, wasn't it?

I once received as a gift a garlic press so perverse as to have included as an accessory, a small hard plastic plaque (it looked like a miniature doggie comb/brush) used for "cleaning." you placed the plaque in the garlic hopper, with the tiny spines toward the press's holes and squashed...to push the garlic residue through the holes. It didn't truly clean the press, it just got itself dirty, so then you had TWO pieces of equipment to wash. Give me a good sharp heavy-ish knife every time.

I think this "hashed" vs. "hash" business is a regional thing. I've been eating "hashed" browns for more than a half-century, and in the Deep South, so far as I know, they've never been prepared with corned beef, but then corned beef (unless you're talking about that disgustingly gelatinous mass in a tin) isn't big in my part of the South. And on an only slightly different subject, Ina's Basil Chicken Hash (imagine "When Harry Met Sally..." moans and gasps). This stuff is sinfully delicious, though you'll have to track the recipe at Food Network site; it's not in "...at Home".

Contrats, Ed. Don't give up, even when you fall off the wagon. And, responding to Jbout, I think thin people (even food professionals) just don't relate to food the way the weight challenged do. My daughter and I recently watched a trio of young women in a coffee shop -- all of them thin-ish, though not anorexic -- and the way they dealt with what they had ordered, in turn, a giant cinnamon bun, a bagel with cream cheese and a fruit cup. No one finished her order, and the cinnamon bun girl left the most on her plate. The bagel lady first spread cream cheese on, then scraped it off before leaving behind a half bagel, and all of them tasted the fruit cup, but even part of that was left behind. Some people really do eat just until they are satisfied, and "satisfied" doesn't mean "bursting at the seams" to everyone. It's a brain thing, I believe.

Oh, my goodness. Boorish Bourdain? Not on your life. I used to think he was an acquired taste, but the more I watched, the more I (intensely) disliked him. Colicchio, hands down.