I use almond milk a fair amount. It's much lower in carbs than dairy milk (and I don't have the problem of wanting to swig the entire carton right out of the fridge, which I do with your standard 1%). It works great for, say, hot cocoa, and it also makes a fine bechamel, which is helpful for me when I'm making dinner for friends who keep Kosher. Don't love it in coffee, and don't want to drink it straight, but I do find it a very useful milk-substitute.

I think any regime that kicks us out of our food-ruts is likely to result in a more varied diet. I'm doing the opposite of Kenji; I've gone very seriously low-carb, which means stripping out all the starches that I'm used to basing meals around. I've discovered, happily, that I really like stir-fries and curries and similar sauce-y things on a bed of salad, particularly if that salad includes some really sturdy stuff like mustard greens. I've learned that mashed jerusalem artichokes and pureed celeriac make really nice beds for stews, rather than mashed potatoes. I've started roasting cauliflower and broccoli and kabocha squash to go next to my chicken. All in all, MANY more vegetables than I used to eat.

I've been using Whey Low for several years -- so much so that I no longer keep sugar in the house. I can't stand any other sugar substitutes, Splenda very much included (blech!), but Whey Low, for me, tastes and functions exactly like sugar. That said, I'm not a big dessert-person, so I haven't been churning out batches of cookies and ice cream with the stuff. However, I regularly use it to make fruit compote, as an ingredient in Asian dishes, to make simple-syrup for sweetening iced tea (yes, it thickens exactly like sugar), in coleslaw, etc. And I have used it to make desserts, everything from very simple teacakes (where an "off" flavor would be very noticeable) to fancy-ass mousse-filled cakes, and nobody has ever detected a difference.

As to its caloric/glycemic load, all I can say is that I've taken off more than 50 pounds in the past year on a modified low-carb diet (i.e., higher in carbs than, say, Atkins, but lower than a standard low-fat/high-carb regime), and though I eat fruit with Whey Low just about every morning, my blood-sugar levels continue to drop. I don't think this would be the case if I were eating an equivalent amount of straight sugar. But as always, YMMV.

if you insist on a principally green dish, fried okra (though fried okra is more beige than green, now that I'm thinking about it).

Fried okra is conceptually green, and that's what counts.

Hey olddad, I would love some Hubig pies. Will you email me at either of the two email addies listed above, and we can talk logistics?
Thanks so much,
Maggiesara

Speaking as a publisher, Jerzee Tomato, I'm afraid it's not that easy. But I certainly would love it if the books became available again.

Oh gosh, I have just been overwhelmed by the response here! And I'm thrilled. Here are the details, which I'll repeat in emails to all who wrote asking for specifics:

1. The pantry specifically requested fruit pies (rather than, say, pumpkin, though pecan would probably be ok), because they will have to sit out overnight, and we don't want any issues with custard going bad. Also, fruit pies are easier to cut.

2. Many of the pantry's clients work, so they stop off to get food in the morning, and they take it away to eat later in the day. Pieces of pie are difficult to pack into a paper bag, so I thought it would be helpful to have some of the pies be in the form of turnovers or pocket pies. People who would like to send pie from outside of NYC -- and THANK YOU!! -- might find it easier to send turnovers. Off the top of my head, I'd suggest baking them, wrapping them individually in bubble wrap, and putting them in a fairly sturdy box for overnight delivery. Please let me know if you'd like a recipe for turnovers -- or for pie, for that matter, that I bet most Serious Eaters have that covered.

3. My mom will be baking a couple of pies, but she has also volunteered her apartment as Pie Central. The plan is to collect all pies at her place by about 2 in the afternoon THE DAY BEFORE THANKSGIVING, at which point I'll pack them all up and get a car to take them over to the pantry. Since it's Mom, I'm really loathe to post her address on a public website. If you're having trouble getting through to my email address, you can try books at Felony and Mayhem dot com. Yes, you do have to spell out the "and."

Once again, thank you all so much! Happy though I am to be doing this, I was feeling a little faint at the thought of baking ALL those pies.

Lobster Cantonese is a classic Chinese-American dish of lobster in a sauce made with fermented black beans and ground pork. Sometimes you'll see "shrimp in lobster sauce" on old-school menus, and that's shrimp in the sauce that would otherwise be used for lobster. You're going to be most likely to find it at somewhat old-fashioned restaurants -- the ones that feature egg rolls and lo mein rather than soup dumplings and cold sesame noodles.

I'm a passionate fan of feet in chicken soup -- creates unbelievable body. Whole Foods does indeed carry organic feets (and sometimes backs as well -- another good addition), and Quattro Farms, the pheasant people at the US Greenmarket, have wonderful soup chickens. The only problem with them is that they have a TON of fat that should be removed ahead of time, but if you're smart and frugal and can channel your grandmother, you'll render it down and give yourself both a great cooking medium and (mmmm) cracklings.

I love macarons -- love the intense flavor and the multiple textures. Don't much like macaroons, but then, I don't really like cookies.

By me, french fries are not a staple of Jewish delis. They're certainly not echt deli fare along the lines of soup, pastrami and corned beef, chopped liver, pickles, salami-and-eggs. In fact, I don't think I've ever eaten or ordered french fries in a deli; if it's a good deli, the sandwiches are of a size that really doesn't cry out for a side dish. If you must add something to the line-up of judging criteria beyond the soups and meats, I nominate chopped liver. It's what my grandmother would have called A Nice Appetizer.

Where to buy good macarons (anywhere? ANYWHERE in the U.S.???) and how to make them (how to create the little "foot," how to give the "skin" just the right degree of tensile strength, how to add intense flavor without disrupting the delicate balance of dry ingredients to liquids) is the subject of MANY blog discussions.

(laughing) I don't know about lots of knowledge, Jenn; I have lots of cookbooks, which is not at all the same thing. And actually, if you're starting out cooking Asian food, I would probably most highly recommend Barbara Tropp's first book, "The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking," which has recently been reissued. Her discussion of technique is very clear and thorough, and in my experience, her recipes always work. I remember making her (MAJOR pain-in-the-butt) smoked chicken and bringing it to a potluck (it reheats really well and easily); one of the guests was a Taiwanese grad student who hadn't been able to afford to go home for several years, and when he ate the chicken he actually started crying and said it tasted like his grandmother's.