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Kenji: I make your Cook's Illustrated recipe for this at least once a month, so I immediately noticed the main difference: the original was thinned after blending with 2 cups of chicken stock.

That's not gonna work for a vegan recipe, of course, but I was surprised to see no additional liquid, either water or vegetable stock. Isn't the resulting soup kind of thick and pasty?

For all we know, she takes one bite of everything she eats on-screen and lives off steamed broccoli and grilled fish the rest of the time.

Deen said this week that she says "all things in moderation, y'all," but has she ever shown this? I've seen Deen defenders say things to the effect of "she never said this kind of food was all you should eat."

To that, I say, "OK, when did she eat anything else? When did she show anything else?" In 500+ hours of cooking on TV that she's done in the past decade, how much of it was stuff you could eat every day and how much was stuff you should only eat occasionally, "in moderation?"

Actions speak louder than words, and Paula Deen's actions as the only Food Network chef with a built-in deep fryer on her island have said "I eat this every day and I'm just fine, y'all." If she doesn't eat it every day, she'd be disingenuous. If she does and she's known she's not fine, for three full years, and waited to say anything until she could profit from it?

Why should we believe anything she says now?

In case the OP doesn't know this: If you spoon flour into a one-cup measure and then level it off, you'll likely have right around four ounces of flour.

If you scoop the one-cup measure down into the container of flour and then sweep off the excess, you'll likely have around five ounces of flour.

Cook's Illustrated recipes assume the latter, "scoop-and-sweep" method because they think that's what most people do. Most baking-oriented recipes assume the former "spoon and sweep" method because there's less variation in the weight from cup to cup measured by spooning.

So why weight? Because if you spoon-and-sweep 2 cups of flour for a Cook's Illustrated recipe, you'll have about 8 ounces of flour, not the 10 ounces the recipe expects. You'd need 2½ cups of spooned flour to equal two cups of scooped flour.

And the other way around, too: King Arthur's recipes assume 4¼ ounces of flour per cup. Therefore, a bread recipe calling for 3 cups of flour (pretty standard) is designed for 12¾ ounces of flour. If you scoop and sweep instead, you'll have 15 ounces of flour—18% too much flour. Your bread will be heavy and dense because you scooped instead of spooned.

Other baking books I have say a cup of flour is 4 ounces. Or 4½ ounces. One said it was 5½ ounces, and that messed up my attempts at those recipes until I noticed it.

So, yeah, weight is especially important in baking. If no one you know uses ounces, then you can be the first and have better baked goods to show for it.

Or, if you just can't stand the scale, break it out for some consistency tests. Measure a cup of flour your normal way and see how much the flour weighs. Then put it back and do it again, and again, and again. If you consistently hit an exact number, like 4¼ ounces or 5 ounces, then you can do the math and measure that way. 11¼ ounces would be 2¼ cups if your cups of flour weigh 5 ounces.

Me? I just use the scale and a 1-cup scoop. It's faster than measuring by cups anyway.

According to this here PDF right here, which comes from the University of Wisconsin Extension Coop series, you should weigh salt for best accuracy. Furthermore, they do the conversion you ask for, and note that 1 cup of Morton's Canning & Pickling salt weighs as much as 1½ cups of Diamond Crystal Kosher Salt. It also says what varieties of salt not to use for home-canned shelf-stable pickles, and may be worth a read for anyone who has any interest in the subject.

(Nothing about adjusting times for altitudes, but we rarely find one source that answers everything, alas.)

I've never used my pressure cooker on anything but an electric stove. It works just fine. You typically do not need a "flame tamer" or other way to diffuse heat on an electric stove, so unless there's a specific recipe you're worried about, don't worry about it.

If there is, share it with us and we'll try to figure it out.

About 20 years ago, in a themed pizza joint in another state (not the Chuck E. Cheese franchise, but one that was obviously trying for a similar vibe with licensed characters), some friends and I ordered a "bacon cheeseburger pizza."

You can already imagine the tasteless chunks of hamburger from earlier comments. I don't remember any tomato sauce on it, but there may have been. The two nightmarish parts were a) a thick blanket of American and cheddar cheeses (no mozzarella that I recall), and b) the bacon.

How can you make bacon bad? This bacon was already fried before they put it on the pizza and baked it. When the pizza came out, it was topped with shriveled, carbonized black lines of what can best be described as cured pork ashes. It was like biting charcoal. Never again.

When I do this, I make it directly in a quart jar. A Mason jar works, but I usually use one of the big jars from Penzey's because I have some. Making it right in the jar you use for storage makes it even better. Be sure to use a jar that's not much bigger than your stick blender's head, though, because if the container is much bigger you don't get the steady stream influx that Kenji describes.

AB's point about storing homemade mayo on the counter was that your homemade mayo is more acidic than the commercial stuff—you can really taste your lemon juice or vinegar. The acid is more effective at killing any bacteria at room temperature, the theory goes, so leaving it sealed on the counter for several hours helps preserve it longer. Then you refrigerate it because, you know, science. (Can you tell I have no idea if any of this is true?)

Hangover Helper restaurant/truck reviews may be fun, but you have to admit they're of limited use to anyone who's not hung over in the place mentioned. Can there be some more hints as to how those who aren't in Austin, TX, could use these ideas to improve a breakfast?

@Cincinnatti Nomerati: there's no reason you can't use light or fat-free mayo and sour cream if you like the taste. Or fat-free mayo and light sour cream, or whatever else. On their own, the light ones are usually fine and the fat-free ones usually aren't, but in something flavored like this where they're blended with lime juice and chipotle, you may never notice.

(Note: not responsible for bigger pants if you use this trick to put a low-calorie delicious condiment on tons of fried foods.)

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That's some Kafkaesque chicken there.

Wait...the onions, carrot, and celery are just flavorings for the potato boiling water and should be discarded? Because if you drain that pot and use all the contents in the salad, you've also got whole black peppercorns and a bay leaf in your salad...