Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

The flavors come together so well here -- rich (but not too rich) and totally satisfying. Perfect winter stew!

I cut the dumpling recipe in half, and that was plenty for us.

I have one thumb up and one down on this issue.

On the one hand (no pun intended), it seems like a terrific initiative to give people information, especially since lower levels of education and socio-economic status correlate so strongly with obesity risk in the US.

On the other hand, adding this quantitative component to food choice--by literally placing a number next to an item on a menu--risks detracting from the pleasure we are able to take in food. It makes eating out into a calculation, not an enjoyable aesthetic experience. Mindful eating is a wonderful thing, but a single number does not necessarily lead to mindfulness. It seems on the contrary to encourage reductive (and potentially even disordered) thinking about what food is, how we make decisions about it, and how we consume it.

Bottom line: my political hand likes this very much, my aesthetic hand is very dismayed. But how to communicate this to a government agency wanting to institute a blanket policy?

I think this one has less to do with ignorance, per se, than a lack of confidence in the kitchen:

My mother used to make us quiche using store-bought frozen pie crust. This turned out surprisingly well, given my mom's low level of culinary enthusiasm. However, she often neglected to remove the wax paper lining that came on the crust before pouring the custard in and baking the quiche. At the dinner table the the rest of us would either battle the paper with our forks, or else use the lining to delicately separate crust from filling, trying not to embarrass my mom. As if fulfilling some kind of destiny, the first time I made quiche trying to impress a boyfriend, I did exactly the same thing.

More recently, at Whole Foods:

The guy at the check out didn't know what kind of green I was buying--totally forgivable, since they have a dozen kinds many of which look the same inside a plastic bag. I told him it was kale. He asked me if it was any good. I told him I thought it was delicious. He replied, "I always imagine that eating kale is like rolling down a grassy hill with your mouth open." This was hilarious, but also sort of put me off my kale.

In Chicago, the Bears eat YOU.

Laptop-friendly coffee shops are invaluable to people whose work requires computers but who don't necessarily have office space (grad students, writers, freelancers, etc.). I would never have finished my dissertation without certain cafés in Providence and Paris.

This seems to me to be more a question of style or even genre, not an across-the-board coffee shop issue. If a certain establishment feels laptop users are killing their cool (or their business), so be it.

I once found a (used) band-aid in my duck choo chee. Unfortunately it was take-out, so I had no one to complain to but my roommate.

I felt I couldn't return to the restaurant on principle/without endangering my health, which was too bad -- it was my favorite Thai spot in Boston.

Galliano -- not only good in a Harvey Wallbanger cake, but also to give a vanilla/citrus note compotes, syrups...

Olives with olives and more olives. Olives!

Blueberry pie. Miam, miam.

@simon -- Loving the attempt to get the French right, but I have to respectfully disagree: since "dog" would be masculine (as either "chien" or a foreign word from a non-gendered language), "haut" would be right, even if this means Americanizing the pronunciation. And if you were really being a stickler for pronunciation, "haute" still wouldn't really give you "hot," but something more like "oat."

I know, I know, this is ridiculous! Can I be excused on the grounds that I'm a French teacher?

My mom's brownie recipe. Super basic; infallible.

Sol del Sur on Fullerton in Chicago. Shockingly good, fresh burritos.