Thoughts on Cafe Eilat: The food is barely acceptable and the ambience is one step up from squalor.

I chanced on Babylon last summer during a visit to the National Park in Lowell. It was the best part of the day!

If you are interested in Indian flavors, google "chana masaledar madhur jaffrey" and you will find a wonderful recipe that uses canned chick peas,

I have made it countless times (usually tripling or quadrupling the recipe) and everyone loves it, even non-adventurous eaters.

The way I heard this joke, the setup is that the old Jewish guy (or Ollie, if you prefer) has not been feeling well and is sure he's dying. He doesn't eat; he doesn't drink; he's depressed and miserable. His wife gives him an enthusiastic pep talk: "Don't worry! You're fine! Don't talk this way! You'll live a good long life."

He cheers up and says, "You know, you're right. I'm even feeling a little better. You know what I'd like to have? A little bit of that cherry strudel that you have in the freezer."

She says, "You can't have any; I'm saving it for the shiva."

Just stopped there yesterday returning to Boston after Thanksgiving weekend in NYC. The food was unexceptional, but I loved the authentic diner setting, the cheerful atmosphere and the friendly service. Also, it looks like the kind of place that could be crusted in grease, but it is spotlessly clean. All in all, a very endearing place. I also love the way it's a relic of the past smack in the midst of soulless strip malls and big box stores. I'd be happy to go back again.

Here's the version I know, equally appealing to the grammar-school sensibility, and evidently meant to be sung to the same tune. I learned it from the kids at a camp where I was a counselor in the mid-70's:

McDonald's is my kind of place
They fry rattlesnakes.
The last time I was there
They fried my underwear.
I do not care!
It was my dirty pair.
McDonald's is my kind of place.

I got an egg slicer that looks just like the one in the Amazon link above at least five years ago. It was a gift and came from Williams Sonoma. It's like a tough little truck parked in the gadget drawer; it's all metal, weighs a ton and has been a joy to use. The link to the Amazon product includes complaints about broken wires, but I haven't had a speck of trouble.

Do let me know how it comes out!

The first time I made this, I was taken aback by the instructions, too. Such a high temperature for so long!!! Here's what happens: For the first hour or so, it's just potatoes floating in water/oil. During the final 1/2 hour or 20 minutes, the water evaporates and the potatoes get both softer and a little caramelized/crunchy. The individual potato cubes do not altogether lose their individual identities, but they "melt" into each other a bit. The stirring doesn't break up tihe potatoes; it just circulates them and keeps them from sticking to the pan. I hope this makes sense; I would like to assure you that the texture is one of the charms of this dish.

I was puzzled reading this complaint about painted-on markings wearing off glass measuring cups, because I've owned mine for about 30 years and have never had this problem. Mine are Pyrex, are used regularly, have been washed both by hand and in the dishwasher, are a bit chipped along the top rim, but the numbers remain bright and legible. Come to think of it, my mother's Pyrex items - much older than mine - are nice and bright as well.

I love a Greek potato recipe that appears in one of the later (non-Mollie Katzen) Moosewood cookbooks. It's made with lemon and garlic and has become a Seder table favorite in my family, even for the folks with non-adventurous tastes. If you Google "Moosewood Greek potatoes" the recipe will come up. If you double the recipe, it should be enough for 20.

On September 12, 2001, I decided to spend the day cooking. I was living in NYC, work was closed, and I figured cooking would be healing and calming. I made a detailed shopping list (because I knew that otherwise I would be too deranged by sadness and anxiety to shop in an organized way), and one of the things on my shopping list was fresh ginger. In some ways, being in the supermarket made me feel worse. No trucks were coming into the city to make deliveries, and the shelves were messy and full of empty spaces. One of the missing items was fresh ginger. As a substitute, for the first time in my life, I bought a jar of pre-minced ginger. It was actually a pretty good product, and I was pleased by what a decent substitute it was for fresh ginger. At the time, I thought, "Hey, I should buy this again." Every now and then I notice pre-minced ginger on the shelf, but to me, the jar radiates memories of grief. So I've never bought it since. Also, fresh ginger actually is better.

And I should mention that once I got home from the supermarket, cooking really was healing and calming.

Penzey's (located in Arlington) sells whole nutmeg.

Even though I only use fresh whole nutmeg and grate my own as needed, my guess is that for this recipe freshly-grated vs. powdered-from-a-jar wouldn't make such a huge difference.

I was told by a nice Penzey's saleslady is that the coupons do not expire! I think this means that you could walk into a Penzey's with a handful of coupons going back a few catalogs and they will all be accepted. I haven't done this yet (I haven't been to Penzey's for a while), but I intend to try.

In general, I've found that barley is a pretty decent substitute for farro.

1. When I fly, I go for the tomato juice, which I rarely drink at any other time. I think it's about the honest vegeable taste of tomato being an antidote to the artificial airplane air.

2. On my way home from an ophthalmologist appointment, waiting for my pupils to recover from having been dilated, I like to have miso soup. This I can't explain. It just feels good.

Long ago, someone gave me a recipe for a savory cheesecake whose bottom crust was composed of crushed tortilla chips - I believe blue ones, for color contrast. It was made in a springform pan and was quite tasty - I remember making it several times after I first ate it at a fancypants brunch in a beautiful back yard. Unfortunately, I lost that recipe ages ago, and now that I'm thinking about that cheesecake, I'm getting quite nostalgic about it.

As a general rule, I try to avoid single-purpose gadgets, but I'm very happy to own a pizza wheel. It really does work better than a knife for cutting pizza. It's also the ideal too to use when I make cheese straws.

I was interested to see your recent comment, because more than four years have gone by since I posted my original description of generations of apron-wearing (or not) in my family.

In the meantime, there have been some changes: My father passed away two years ago, but he was baking bread almost to the end. After his death, my mother basically stopped cooking altogether. She nukes this or that, she makes herself a little salad now and then, but anything that involves pots and pans has basically disappeared from her radar screen - so the likelihood of her adopting an apron-wearing lifestyle is pretty slim. Her kitchen is even tidier than it was before, as you can imagine. And I have inherited my father's bread-baking aprons, which I enjoy wearing when I cook and bake.

This post reminded me of a line in "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," where eating potatoes raw is about poverty - it's the low-rent alternative to eating an apple:

"Mama's rule was: don't buy candy or cake if you have a penny. Buy an apple. But what was an apple? Francie found that a raw potato tasted just as good and this she could have for free."

Seltzer. I was a kid, and I assumed it would be sweet, like Sprite. I drank a big mouthful and it tasted like nothing - only nasty.

I was horrified. Now I love it and happily drink it by the glassful.

I've used Yuengling in the past - it's good!!

Beer is terrific in cholent. Yes, your kitchen will smell like a saloon for a while after you dump in the beer. However, be patient: the beer integrates with the cholent and deepens the flavor - but the cholent itself will not taste or smell beery.

What I''ve learned over the years is that you should use a beer that has substance and body, not a pale light beer, which, I have discovered through sad experience, might as well be water. This year I am using Sam Adams Black Lager in my cholent and I like it a lot.

Along the same lines: Borscht with sour cream turns a wonderful magenta-pink color.

I have a cherry pitter that came from the wall-mounted rack of gadgets at Crate & Barrel. It cost about $12.00 two or three years ago. It's a efficient little gizmo that I use frequently while cherries are in season. It punches those pits right out.

One time, for a Fourth of July Friday night dinner, I made chopped liver in the shape of an American flag. I made chopped liver, chopped quite fine so the texture would be smooth. I molded it into a rectangle, and used a knife to outline the field of stars and the stripes. (This was actually the hardest part of the whole project. Fortunately, chopped liver is a forgiving sculptural medium; if the proportions were off, I could smooth it out and rework the affected area.) I cut red and white strips out of radishes, and lined them up to be the stripes. I filled the star area with uniformly-sized blueberries.

When this was eaten, the blueberries were set aside, but the radish strips tasted OK with the chopped liver.

My only regret is that I didn't take a picture. It looked wonderful.

Kam Man in Quincy is located in what used to be a Bradlee's, so it's big - bigger than the Allston Super 88 for sure. I haven't been in a while, but prices were reasonable and the selection is plentiful.If you're on the way to Nantasket, it is well worth a visit.

I'm fascinated by the range of responses here, especially the observation that older recipes call for larger portions.

As far as I can tell, though, the determination of portion size is a completely random crapshoot, regardless of the age of the recipe.

For instance, there's a reasonably contemporary pasta recipe I like to make (it includes spinach linguini, goat cheese and sun-dried tomatoes) that I got from Epicurious, I believe, not from my grandma's recipe collection) that claims to serve two, but makes a mountain of pasta. It realistically serves two only if this is the only food the two are planning to eat all day.

How hungry are your eaters? How many other side dishes are being served? How big are your soup bowls? Unless the recipe is for something that intrinsically implies individual portions (stuffed peppers, for example), there are just too many variables involved to be able to nail this down in an accurate and meaningful way.

There's an Indian recipe I make with some regularity that calls for "amchoor or lemon juice." It took a while until I found amchoor (or even had any idea what it was) so I used lemon juice. Finally I found amchoor and I keep a bag of it in the freezer. I can feel good now because I'm using the authentic ingredient. But the differential in taste? Negligible.

I have friends (this is in Boston, of course) who call them "soup jimmies."