I make the kids I nanny a chocolate banana pudding with just bananas and cocoa powder. Freeze overripe bananas, then heat them to mush in a saucepan, and stir in cocoa powder to taste. You can either put it in the fridge until it firms up or freeze into pops. It's not decadent, but it satisfies a sweet tooth.

I doubt it's food poisoning. It sounds like you just ate more animal fat than you're used to - lots of meat, plus bearnaise, plus creamed spinach.

You can get canned pig brains!?!?! Where?
I've never tried brains of any kind, but I'm open to it. My personal philosophy is if I'm not going to be a vegetarian, I have to be open to trying any part of the animal.

Are Italians-in-Italy aware of Italian-American cuisine, and how do you find it compares?

Ignoring the sponsor issue, I've pretty much given up paper towels. I gathered all of the fraying bath towels and cut them into paper towel sized sheets, and put them in an old trash can under the sink. There's a laundry bag in the pantry for soiled ones. I find I much prefer the cloth rags - you can wring them out, they don't fall apart, you only need one of them to do the job of several paper towels, and when you have a major spill you can just dump the bag of rags waiting to be washed on top of it.

Anna Thomas' The Vegetarian Epicure has some great dishes. I have Book 1 & Book 2, and I think a revised edition came out a few years ago.

I'm slowly amassing the entire run of Time Life's Foods of the World. They were produced in the 70s, and the pictures are just stunning. Each set is a hardcover with said photos, essays about the culture, and some recipes, accompanied by a spiral-bound volume that is all recipes. These are the books I'm drawn to during midnight snacks, when I'm kneeling on a kitchen chair and eating saltines with butter.

Julia Child's My Life in France is a great book about her path in the culinary world. She started out just wanting how to learn to cook, and found a career out of that.

Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential is also great. He writes about the dirty truth of the restaurant world - burns, cuts, psychopath line chefs. It's the book that convinced me I belong nowhere near a restaurant kitchen.

If you're determined to share your story with the world in writing, please consider an editing workshop. "I" vs "i", "you" vs "u" and proper punctuation and paragraph breaks make all the difference in whether or not I'll read someone's writing. (It can also determine whether or not I'll eat at a restaurant - if they don't care enough to proofread the menu, what else don't they care enough to do?) Mistakes happen, but they should be rare.

Ashamed confession -
When I order from a place close to my house but don't feel like going out to pick it up myself, I always apologize to the delivery person and tell them I would have picked it up myself, but I just got the baby to sleep.....
I don't have any kids.

I scooped ice cream in high school, and it was the job where I discovered (thanks to a customer's comments) that I have a talent for food writing. I think it was my three-minute answer to her friend's question "How is the raspberry sorbet different from the raspberry ice cream?"

I'm both a foodie and a person who has struggled with disordered eating most of my life - anorexia, bulimia, overeating, and everything in between. I appreciate good food when I'm treating myself well and I either deprive myself of all food or binge on cheap/sub-quality food when I'm not happy with myself. For example, I love to bake, but I won't binge on something I made myself because I put so much work into it and want to savor it - because I respect it, really. In that way, being part of foodie culture has helped me recover. Respecting my food reminds me to respect myself.

This may be elementary, but - You'll notice that no one says to eat the tofu raw and un-adorned. Plain tofu tastes unpleasantly bland, and the texture can be a little.... squeaky?

I visited The Friendly Toast many times when Marzi-Man lived in Portsmouth, and I was not impressed. It's a well-decorated diner with a few interesting menu items, but the waitstaff is surly and they're prone to make substitutions without asking your permission. I once ordered one of their deep-fried appetizers (mushrooms? jalapeno peppers?) and they gave me deep-fried broccoli. "The kitchen ran out..." Well fine, but tell me that and give me the opportunity to order something I'll actually eat.

If you're in Portsmouth and want breakfast, walk up the street to Cafe Espresso. If you want Deep Fried American Stuff for dinner, go to Muddy River.