Wine Cake.

Now, I'm a decent cook. I delight in multi-day recipes and serious desserts, can whip up a 30-pound turkey and am the designated gravy-meister at my house. I pore over cookbooks and this year's variations like everybody else and can debate brining and what to do if, against Cook's Illustrated's explicit instructions, you absolutely insist on stuffing your turkey (bring it to some absurd temperature in the microwave first, of course.) And I'm not saying wine cake is what you want to make for your FCI entrance exam, or even for snootie foodies. But in all other cases, Wine Cake is a sort of O-positive of desserts.

My grandmother was the worst cook you'll ever meet - her cooking was a combination of passive-aggression and performance art and rotten ingredients and to be avoided whenever possible. The one exception was Wine Cake, which goes to show that it's fool-proof. Wine Cake is the traditional birthday cake on that side of the family, a tradition I've continued. It's one of those objectively revolting, 1950s-style recipes that makes no bones about its chemical antecedents and becomes more unfashionable every year. In a bid for respectability, I once worked out an all-natural version, but it just made me miss the original. Friends of mine have brought Wine Cake to feuding families and CIA picnics and block parties, and it's always a hit. Anyone can make it. So, without further ado, I give you:

Sherry Wine Cake

1 box yellow cake mix (I like Moist Deluxe, but grandma always used generic, so.)
1 lg. regular vanilla pudding (or just use 2 small)
1 c. oil
3/4 c. sherry wine (cheap, please)
5 eggs

Preheat oven to 350
Mix everything. Bake in a buttered-and-floured bundt pan for about 50 minutes, until the proverbial tester comes out clean.

Glaze:
1 cup powdered (confectioner's) sugar
1/2 cup sherry, or less. The point is, you want a quite liquid glaze.

Now, here is the crucial part. Without unmolding the hot cake, poke the exposed top - really the bottom! - all over, and I do mean all over, with a skewer, a chopstick, or a fork. Now, drizzle a goodly amount of glaze over the holes. It'll absorb.

Let it sit for another couple of minutes, just so it doesn't all run out. Then, unmold onto a rack. Or the serving dish, I guess, if you don't mind icing all over. If you do use the rack, do yourself a favor and put some waxed paper underneath. Now, repeat the pricking and pouring routine all over the rest of the cake. Soak it well! Now, let it cool.

After the cake is cool, I like to glaze again, this time with a thicker icing (just dump more sugar into the dregs of the glaze.) Drizzle this thicker, white icing over the cooled, glazed cake. Let firm up.

Et voila! Trust me, vile as this may sound, it's scrumptious in a mid-century sort of way. Do not dismiss it without trying it, like those most irritating of all Epicurious commenters. People will hate themselves for it, but they won't be able to stop eating it, or making it, or trying to figure out what makes it so moist. If you are a no-fun ascetic, I suppose you need not glaze quite so heavily; I must admit, my grandmother was not quite so enthusiastic in this department. But in my opinion, it's the 1/2" of sugary lusciousness - so rich and damp a cake, as Captain Hook would have it - that makes this so good. It is customary, in my family, to stick a fat pink candle in the hole. This may be omitted.

And if you just can't stomach it, here's another wonderful dessert. This one respectable. So, give: what's your fail-safe?

I can't tell you how many times I've said, like Portman, "I love food, I love eating, I'm pretty adventurous with different flavors and cuisines, and the one thing is, I'm a vegatarian" — and watched people's faces fall. Being "adventurous" and being vegetarian really aren't mutually exclusive — because cutting out meat forced me to vary my diet more, I now eat a much wider variety of foods than I did when I was omnivorous. And I'm a lot less "picky" than some of my meat-eating friends, many of whom turn up their noses at vegetables — I often say I'll eat anything as long as it isn't meat. As I've written here before, I do eat seafood now, so my family and friends are a little less freaked out, but some omnivores still seem to find my diet mysterious. Yesterday's Top Chef may explain why. Below are four common myths about vegetarian cooking, as illustrated on the show (and yeah, also some spoilers).

— Vegetarian food lacks protein.

Only if you do it wrong — like, say, the hapless Mike, who thought some undercooked leeks shaped like scallops could be a main dish. The point of vegetarian cooking isn't to make food look like meat or shellfish — as in all other cuisines, it's to make delicious and satisfying dishes. And while a vegetarian can get by with a breakfast of fruit or a salad lunch sometimes, everybody needs some protein to feel full and be healthy. Luckily there are a bazillion vegetarian sources of protein. Many vegetarians still eat cheese, eggs, and milk, but for those who don't, there are lots of protein-rich beans, nuts, seeds, and grains, and these can be combined into dishes that are a lot more tasty than some scallop-shaped leeks. For instance, I like to cook up a bunch of quinoa (quite proteiny, and pretty cheap if you can get it in bulk— if you can't, couscous or brown rice would work), add sauteed red peppers, spinach, olives, walnuts, and spices, and then wrap the thing in a tortilla and call it a burrito. I usually add a bunch of goat cheese to this, but for vegans, some truffle oil will do the job, or just plain old olive oil. An important note: mushrooms don't actually have all that much protein, though they often appear in lieu of meat on restaurant menus. Which brings me to my next myth.

— Vegetarians need a "meaty" substitute.

This one has a grain of truth — it is nice to eat something with a little savory, umami flavor, and mushrooms do provide that. I also like soy-based fake meats like MorningStar "bacon" and veggie crumbles for this purpose, even though a lot of vegetarians disdain them. Yes, they're a little pricey and not so great for the environment, but I tend to treat them the same way many cultures treat meat — as a seasoning, not a main dish. A little fakon in chili makes it taste like a whole different dish, which can be good if you're cooking for yourself and end up with a lot of leftovers. But all that said, I was kind of troubled to notice that so many of the chefs rushed for either eggplant or mushrooms to serve as the centerpiece for their dishes. I guess it's a texture thing, but these two foods appeared as the "vegetarian option" in my college dining halls more times than I can count, and while they can be tasty, they're not the be-all and end-all. Vegetarians don't need every meal to include a slab of something meat-like (and unfortunately, those college portobello mushroom sandwiches were often just that: a slab). One of my favorite dishes lately is a bunch of dandelion greens wilted with onions and garlic and olives and rosemary. I usually eat this with scrambled eggs and toast, but vegans could add white beans for an equally tasty protein kick — no meat "substitute" needed. And if you don't have dandelion greens, spinach works.

— Vegetarian food is just a "collection of sides."

Natalie Portman complained that vegetarian options at a restaurant often feel like side dishes, and I see where she's coming from. I don't really have a problem making a meal of sides, especially on Thanksgiving at my grandparents' house (I haven't officially told them I don't eat meat; I'm still letting them process the fact that I work for a "blog"). But sometimes I do want something main-dishy, not just a heap of kale and a bowl of beans and some bread (although this is pretty good). And just because you can't center a vegetarian meal around a hunk of meat doesn't mean you can't center it at all. A good solution to the problem, especially in fall and winter, is roasting, since nothing's more main-dishy than a roast. I like to chop up a bunch of red potatoes, sweet potatoes, green and red peppers, garlic, and onions, and stick them in the oven for an hour with rosemary and feta. Vegans could ditch the feta, add something else for extra flavor (like maybe hot chiles), and serve the whole thing with hummus on the side. This dish is real easy and cheap and great for potlucks.

— Vegetarian food can't be filling.

Kevin won the challenge with his dish of morels and turnips, which Portman and the other judges found both delicious and satisfying. Morels are, as you may know, fucking expensive, but the point is, it's possible to make a vegetarian meal just as filling as a meat-based one. It helps to remember the protein (though Kevin didn't actually seem to include much of that), but it's also important — at least in my view — not to be too afraid of fat. For some people, vegetarianism is synonymous with abstemiousness, and these are the same people who think a vegetarian meal always has to leave you hungry. I'm not saying you have to add a cup of sesame oil to everything (as a vegan housemate of mine used to do before we finally set him straight). I'm just saying that some olive oil, butter, cream, goat cheese, Earth Balance, or even avocado adds flavor and body to a vegetarian meal. For instance, brussels sprouts: they're okay if you boil them, but if you cut them in half and saute them in some butter or Earth Balance (plus garlic and rosemary and pepper), they're way more delicious. I like to eat this with Annie's mac and cheese from the box, which probably would not appear on Top Chef — but that doesn't mean it's not awesome.

I was heavily influenced in my desire to can by two factors. One: The Butt'ry Shelf Cookbook. This curiosity, still widely available on the internet, was written in the mid-20th century by a New England eccentric and centered around her family's year as seen through the well-stocked "butt'ry" where she and her relatives industriously filled the shelves with homemade liqueurs, ripening fruitcakes, an ever-increasing store of foodstuffs and, of course, all the homemade jams and preserves a country housewife's heart could desire. It is not surprising that the book, already nostalgic at the time of publication, was illustrated by the author's neighbor Tasha Tudor. It's also not shocking that it was a major influence on my mid-childhood years (tweens didn't exist in the 1980s.) It was under its auspices that I attempted to "cure" meats in the playhouse in our back yard, have a taffy pull by myself, and churn butter in my dollhouse's 4" churn.

It will come as no great shock to regular readers of this space that these efforts met with sincere approbation by my grandfather, the family patriarch and eccentric, whose fear of a vague apocalyptic phenomenon known only as "The Bad Times" had led him to install an enormous deep freeze, build a makeshift compound, and melt and bury various metals under the house. "When the Bad Times come, they'll be eating each other," he'd say darkly, then go to a yard sale and buy another dozen pressure cookers. (Money bonfires also figured in the prognostications.) Some attributed his death to disappointment that none of this ever came to pass; had he but waited a few years...

Naturally, canning and preserving played no small role in our Bad Times Survival Guide. As such, my enthusiastic attempts at jam-making and pickling were encouraged. I didn't know what I was doing; I didn't really think about botulism or sterilizing or mold or recipes. All I knew was that we had to preserve as much as possible. I'd aid my grandfather in preparing the endless jars of nearly-inedible plum jam he distilled from the tree in the yard, or throw some herbs and vegetables in a can, add some salt water, and call it a day. (One particularly memorable jam involved pine needles.) Most of what I made molded before we could enjoy the fruits of my housewifery - despite the mysterious preponderance of pressure cookers, we never processed anything - but I was undaunted.

As I got older, I got keen on the notion of homemade jam as a gift. By 12 or so, I'd read up on procedure and had come to understand the two most important things about canning: 1) It's really, really expensive and 2) It's an enormous, horrible ordeal. Far from making practical use of the overflow of home-grown produce and ensuring a few vitamins through the long winter, for most of us, canning and preserving is an exercise in self-indulgent excess. If you buy farmer's market fruit, even the "damaged" varietal - and what's the point otherwise - it's exorbitant, and that's without even talking about the ready supply of ball jars you'll need. Once you've got your canner, your wide-mouth funnel, your selection of ladles, you're set for life (and those sales of the belongings of a dead old woman by her not-interested-in-canning boomer children are a boon in this regard) you're set, but it's an outlay. Then comes the actual process: whether it's stirring a kettle of jam in the summer heat or minding an insolent kettle of apple butter in the fall or just the sticky, messy ordeal of covering stuff with syrup or processing pickles, it's kind of nightmarish. (And the kitchen cleanup is second to none in its scope and difficulty.) The satisfaction of having that smug row of jewel-hued jars is, yes, almost worth it. But after the process, I find I am greedy: I don't want to give away my expensive, beautiful, labor-intensive preserves; I want to hoard them. If I can bring myself to give some away, I secretly want to ask for the jar back. Just last week I had to suppress a scream of wounded fury when I saw my boyfriend had opened a jar of rhubarb-and-onion relish (I specialize in the kind of thing no one actually wants to eat) to accompany a turkey burger. I guess this is a small taste of the pain of old-timey household drudgery: not just the labor, but the pain of seeing your laboriously-scrubbed floors muddied or hand-washed clothing soiled and the knowledge that you'll have to do it all over again, ad infinitum. In this regard, it really is a taste of the past.

And yet - or perhaps because of - the blatantly farcical nature of modern urban canning, it's becoming a thing. Like quilting, embroidery and all manner of DIY, canning's now the purview of the young, with more than half of enthusiasts, according to UPI, under 40. The "Recession" argument's obvious: we want to feel connection and security and the illusion of self-sufficiency. Maybe the general fuckwittery of the system has motivated a subconscious desire to live outside the grid - or at least cleave to the competence of another era. It makes sense in the scheme of eating locally and seasonally and there's also the little matter of avoiding corn syrup, a near-impossibility with anything mass-produced (and really, the good stuff's as pricey as doing it at home, albeit less of a headache.) As a result, we are seeing a rash of dubiously-spiced homemade jams in marketplaces and boutiques across the land. I succumbed to one amateur canner's "experiment" last week: peach jam with tarragon, for $10. I lived to regret it. But even so, I wondered that she was able to part with it: the sense of achievement, and the security of that store, is, for many of us, comforting in a way money never can be. And anyway, come the Bad Times, only gold will be worth anything.

Canning Not Just For Grandma Anymore [UPI]

Behold: classic Julia! The drama! The showmanship! The voice! The collar! In this case, we have both the foil varietal that allows M. Soufflé to puff up with maximum elan, and the glorious 70's specimen around Madame Chef's neck. You can imagine thousands of burgeoning gourmets rushing off to yellow and lima-hued kitchens to produce equally spectacular brunches for their guests, sweating with anxiety and fear, and hoping everyone has enough amaretto sours that they won't notice how late the meal is.

If you're new to the land of Julia, this is a perfect example: classic cuisine, common-sense advice, and a whole world of un-self-conscious weird. To those of us who grew up with PBS in the background, there are few things more comforting than the aggressively cheerful theme, that triumphant warble, the mix of competence and mishap, and the sense that, in 30 minutes, Julia will be sitting down to a butter-laden specialité and all will be right with the world.

Julia Child The French Chef (1972): Cheese Souflee [PBS]

To Michael Pollan, the nascence of Julie and Julia's paeon to celluloid gastronomy prompts a New York Times Magazine meditation on why the birth of American cuisine should have coincided with the death of the American diet. To be sure, he concludes, there's a corollation between cooking-as-specttaor sport and that Julia Child ushered in and, you know, actual cooking. But for all the disspiriting conclusions Pollan can't help drawing about our culture and our planet, there are some serious bright spots amidst the rubble. And a major one is Child-as-empowerer.

Says he,

Julie Powell operates in a world that Julia Child helped to create, one where food is taken seriously, where chefs have been welcomed into the repertory company of American celebrity and where cooking has become a broadly appealing mise-en-scène in which success stories can plausibly be set and played out. How amazing is it that we live today in a culture that has not only something called the Food Network but now a hit show on that network called "The Next Food Network Star," which thousands of 20- and 30-somethings compete eagerly to become? It would seem we have come a long way from Swanson TV dinners.

And Julia Child, he adds, had a lot to do with this. More than just the popularizer of soigne French cuisine, Child, ironically, managed to free women from kitchen drudgery with her laborious, multi-pan recipes.

Even as The Feminist Mystique was lambasting housework as drudgery - enter Friedan - Julia Child was presenting cooking as pleasurable, luxurious, spiritually sustaining. In popularizing French cuisine (which has so aften been the purview, famously, of the male chef) she was making the love of food a less-gendered and more sybaritic subject, a sign of sophistication rather than imprisonment. Indeed,

Julia never referred to her viewers as "housewives" - a word she detested - and never condescended to them. She tried to show the sort of women who read "The Feminine Mystique" that, far from oppressing them, the work of cooking approached in the proper spirit offered a kind of fulfillment and deserved an intelligent woman's attention.

On a personal level, like Friedan, Child was a housewife who'd found herself and made a career. Maybe a career that centered on a traditionally feminine sphere, but never one that depended upon an exaggerated femininity or sense of debasement. Child was, famously, "alone in the kitchen" - not preparing dinner for a husband or children, but for pleasure and accomplishment.

To suggest that Child destigmatized cooking for women, or removed the burden of context, would be absurd - the reactions to Amanda Hesser's recent piece on Michelle Obama's lack of interest in cooking is testament to this. And it also can't be denied, as Pollan points out, that obviously both parents entering the workforce had an adverse effect on the nation's eating habits, since we had never learned to balance domestic and professional duties, seeing them as stubbornly either-or. But, as Judith Jones points out in her wonderful The Tenth Muse, Child made good food democratic, removed some of the barriers that separated "fine cooking" from "cooking" and in so doing added an element of discovery and pleasure to an everyday ritual. It's not an unmixed legacy; many would surely claim that Child's focus on French cuisine served to maintain the underlying classicism of fine cooking that persists to this day, making good food's proliferation more fraught and tricky. But this was not her intention. And no one can deny that Julia's influence directly impacted on the American cuisine movement, and later, local, slow, and organic food in this country - all of which have been heavily influenced and run by progressive women.

And, as Pollan says, it's Child who allowed Powell to recapture an identity and a career, through food - a career that plays with traditional roles while confident in its autonomy. And be played by Amy Adams. And if that's not progress of a certain measure, well, I don't speak fluent American dream.

Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch [NYT Magazine]

Related: Should Michelle Obama Get Back In The Kitchen?

Of course, it's probably a little more complex than that. In the world that is food porn, sure, there are the carnivorous bears, the svelte sex kittens (Giada, Nigella), the asexual "moms" (Paula and Ina) and, of course, the Bad Boys (Anthony Bourdain, sometimes Mario and, it must be said, Flay.) All of these satisfy a different fantasy: comforting, aspirational, exciting.

It's not a shocker that the dude shows should get a "manly" host - Guy Fieri as resident carnivore is a believable and relatable eater, after all. Even Alton Brown takes cooking into the realm of scientific rather than aspirational in a way that seems, if not designed to appeal to, at least made not to alienate a male viewership by removing the domestic. And I get the larger point he's making: at the end of the day, people want their roles in place and their pretty ladies dainty. We don't want to see someone hot eating a really gross burger (unless, I guess, that's your thing - and it's gotta be someone's), and hypocritical society that we arem we probably don't want to see someone larger do so - Ina and Paula don't exactly tuck into their buttery concoctions on camera - which leaves, yes, the everydude.

But while I defer to Meatpaper's Chris Ying on most things fleshy, there are a couple of flaws with the argument. 1. Bourdain. The man eats insects and whale and fermented maggot - and say what one will, he's not unattractive. Indeed, "dashing" would be a better word. 2. Sandra Lee. Maybe the author's argument is confined to men, but Lee, whatever one may think of her aesthetic, checks all the boxes for conventional American attractiveness and, bar none, makes the weirdest and grossest food on television. Nauseous combinations of mixes and sodas, spice and jelly - all topped off by a lurid-colored original cocktail and served amidst a tablescape that feels like a bad trip on the Wonkatania.

Meatpaper
Unattractive Men Call For Unattractive Meat [Utne]

Whether it's due to convenience, comfort, laziness, or a need for a little adventure, Madison and McFarlin argue that people tend to play by different rules when they're cooking for a party of one. I'm not much of a cook (I'm more of a baker), but when I do cook for others, I tend to take certain needs into consideration: dietary restrictions, personal likes or dislikes, etc: you never want to serve a meatloaf to a room of vegans, dig?

But when I cook for myself, I tend to cook things that mostly anyone would eat: simple, basic dishes (mostly because that's my skill level, as far as cooking is concerned) that wouldn't offend anyone who happened to walk through the door. However, in the past, there were times when I hid certain comfort foods for fear that they would gross other people out a bit. It was all well and good until I moved in with my now-fiance a few years ago and caught a really terrible flu that just wouldn't go away. Naturally, he asked if he could help in any way, and in a fit of fever and exhaustion, I blurted: "I just want a bowl of Goldfish soup."

Goldfish soup, of course, consists of one can of super salty Campbell's condensed Double Noodle soup (chicken broth, no actual chicken bits) and about half a bag of Goldfish crackers. It is salty and cheap and though it makes my foodie friends recoil in horror, it is the BEST thing ever when you have a cold. My fiance, who is a bit of a food snob, actually ended up eating Goldfish soup himself when he caught the same flu a few days later. "It's really good," he sniffed as he gingerly lifted spoonfuls into his mouth.

Perhaps it speaks to our food obsessed culture that some of us have to hide our favorites for fear of being judged by others who tend to view what we eat as an extension of who we are. Comedian Jim Gaffigan has a famous bit about how you never see Hot Pockets on a restaurant menu, yet Hot Pockets have been selling for decades, a testament to the fact that what we eat in the privacy of our own homes isn't necessarily what we eat when we're under the surveillance of others.

So what say you, commenters? Do you have any secret meals? Or is your cooking style consistent, no matter how many people you're cooking for?

Jim Gaffigan: Hot Pockets [YouTube]
What We Really Eat When We Eat Alone [NPR]

[Image via Simple Daily Recipes]

"Hot Jezebel," for those unfamiliar, is a mixture of apricot preserves, mustard and horseradish, which you chill and pour over a block of cream cheese. Um, that's it. Since I had a King Ranch Casserole in the oven and an ex coming over for dinner, the time seemed ripe.


So I did my marketing


And I served it with crackers.


It looked really unappetizing. But I made everyone eat it anyway.


It tasted exactly like duck sauce.


Or maybe really mild chutney, or ham glaze, on a big hunk of cream cheese. It didn't exactly move.

I had a lot left, so I put it in the blender.


Then I made some salami-cream-cheese rollups.


But no one wanted those either.

Although foodies everywhere have applauded the First Lady's commitment to healthy eating in the form of a widely-publicized White House organic garden, food writer Amanda Hesser takes issue with Michelle's stated disinterest in that food's preparation.

When The Washington Post asked Mrs. Obama for her favorite recipe, she replied, "You know, cooking isn't one of my huge things." And last month, when a boy who was visiting the White House asked her if she liked to cook, she replied: "I don't miss cooking. I'm just fine with other people cooking." Though delivered lightheartedly, and by someone with a very busy schedule, the message was unmistakable: everyday cooking is a chore...Both times Mrs. Obama missed a great opportunity to get people talking about a crucial yet neglected aspect of the food discussion: cooking. Because terrific local ingredients aren't much use if people are cooking less and less; cooking is to gardening what parenting is to childbirth.

Now, the objections to this statement are obvious: Hesser (herself a busy working mom) acknowledges that the First Lady is a busy woman with a lot of important things on her plate, and it would be disingenuous to pretend that her life, or cooking opportunities, are like that of the average American. While food and cooking, to someone in the food world, is at this point not a gendered issue, to Michelle Obama it's probably not incidental to distance herself from generations of recipe-swapping First Ladies who aligned themselves firmly with the domestic. And because Mrs. Obama does not cook much these days does not imply unilateral scorn - Mrs. Obama has mentioned cooking in the past, they've hired a chef well-versed in organic and sustainable cooking, and this year's Easter Egg Roll incorporated a cooking class for kids. A garden can teach a lot about nutrition and the environment even to those who can't or don't have the opportunity to cook. And Mrs. Obama clearly enjoys and appreciates good, healthy food - perhaps as important as anything. Besides, should a First Lady have to censor her every word? Be an example and a role model at every turn? At the end of the day, probably a lot of people can relate to a First Lady who doesn't always talk from the script - and doesn't cook.

But that would, of course, be Hesser's point - that too many people can relate. And that every word, from someone so admired and imitated, is an opportunity. One could certainly argue that the food issue is one the Obamas have been strong-armed - and Anthony Bourdain and his Waters-hating ilk would likely argue just that. But having taken on an issue, one must see it through. And having acknowledged a crisis in our nation's diet, one can't separate the issue of cooking from it. Cooking is essential to changing the nation's habits - locavore restaurants are great, but it's not Blue Hill that's going to feed the man on the street. The issue here is a tricky one, though, because Mrs. Obama has to tread a fine line: while there's nothing remotely elitist or luxurious about scratch cooking to its champions, the simple truth is that this is far from a universal view, and Mrs. Obama would risk just as much criticism from devoting time to, say, a course of cooking classes, as by her current flippancy. Hesser suggests that watching the First Lady master the preparation of food would be a great example for the country, and it would - but if it's that important, it would be nice if her husband could be in there with her occasionally - and would do quite a bit to un-load the issue.

The Commander In Chef [NY Times]

27-year-old Canadian @Maureen (Evans) has, with her collection of condensed international recipes, become something of a global sensation. I regret to say that certain things about the description of her in today's Times set of my "petty" alarm. To wit,

Though not a trained chef, she is an enthusiastic home cook and traveler, with a close connection to Twitter through her partner, Blaine Cook, who was Twitter's lead architect. They live by the sea in a rented castle; when I reached her by phone the other day, she said she was looking out over the low tide.

We've already mentioned her real job description; she describes the "tiny recipes" as " a coffee-break hobby."

But, pettiness aside, her tweets are rad. Her recipes, described as "Delicious ideas from all over the world" are inventive, ingeniously broken down, and very appealing. The ones yours truly have tried have worked, and the author of the article tests a bunch with no problems. Here's one: "Strudel Pastry: cut 2T butter/1c flour/mash tater. Knead w 2t yeast/2T h2o; rise 1h. On flour cloth gently pull 17x25"; trim-1"/butter well."

She says she likes the challenge of the condensation; the Times reporter likes the challenge of decoding them. Figuring out the recipes takes way longer than reading them, and while this may seem counterintuitive and gimmicky, it demands a level of detective work and basic know-how modern cookbooks, ironically, have rendered obsolete. In this sense, she's really a throwback to the receipt books of an earlier age, which assumed a breadth of knowledge and expertise and so could give only the broadest strokes of an idea. Beyond sites like this, Twitter's a boon for people looking for ideas; you have only to ask what your followers are having for dinner and get a barrage of suggestions and links. It takes some of the loneliness out of menu-planning and cooking. Lots of food bloggers and food diarists have taken advantage of the medium, and on a practical level, plenty of food trucks have started tweeting their whereabouts to hungry customers. When it comes to dieting, tweeting is great, too, as people can keep food diaries and compare notes with others on sites like tweetwhattyoueat.com.

If that's the sublime - and hey, this is Twitter, here - get a load of the ridic, also profiled in today's "Dining In." Basically, Danyelle Freeman, the New York Daily News' critic and a well-known blogger, has had her identity stolen - or so say she and her lawyers. A guy called Adam Robb Rucinsky has adopted her "Restaurant Girl" moniker and parodies Freeman's breezy, dizzy tone on Twitter. This might constitute trademark infringement, but is only really problematic if it moves beyond parody into impersonation. Thing is, it's hard to say: a lot of his writing is uncannily like hers. Weirder still, he adopts her "voice" on a blog devoted to Freeman's work, and on, um, his personal blog. Whether it's legal or not, this has clearly gone beyond idle interest into something quite peculiar.

Has Twitter changed the way we eat? Well, probably not, but certainly how we think about food: our obsessions are out in the open now, for good and bad. Even if you're not sold on a 140-character recipe, you can probably appreciate the back-to-basics streamlining it entails. And that someone's 140-character parodies can be recognized as riffs on 140-character originals? Altogether, this shows that when it comes to food, you can say a terrifying amount in a very few words.

Lawyers Enter Twitter Tempest [NY Times]

Take 1 Recipe, Mince, Reduce, Serve [NY Times]
Twitter for Your Lunch [New York Observer]
Latest Twitter Food Trend, Kogi BBQ [Look And Taste]
Tweet What You Eat [Official Site]

What's prompted this discussion is a new book called Dinner At Your Door: Tips and Recipes for Starting a Neighborhood Cooking Co-op, certainly a laudable idea for earnest souls who wish to save money, eat well, and bond with a community. The book, according to "the Ethicurean" (via Bittman at Bitten) is designed to

suggest a solution that applies not just to people interested in sustainable, local cooking, but also to mainstream eaters and inexperienced cooks - basically, anyone with busy lives who wants to eat more delicious, homemade meals. Their recommendation is to find like-minded households and start a dinner co-op, embracing core ideas of community.

Well, put like that, it's great. The reality sounds...messy. Beyond vaguely frightening notions of commune-style dumpster-diving (which I'm very sure has nothing to do with the actual book), such concepts strike fear into the heart of the kitchen control freak. To such, ahem, people, there is nothing more frightening than being at the whims of another's tastes and palate. Many of us have poorly-suppressed collegiate memories of meals involving homemade tofu (note: don't try this without a recipe) and gouging our palms in an effort to keep from reaching out and saving a sauce from misplaced creativity or incomplete knowledge. Ruth Reichl's accounts of cooking in a Berkeley coop, at the mercy of self-righteous food faddists, are all too familiar. I speak as someone who can't bear to let my very willing boyfriend fix dinner, as his cooking bears the unmistakable stamp of a youth of impoverished vegetarianism (a dangerous, if common, combo.)

This said, we are obviously the ones who need exactly this sort of thing: relinquishing control, learning to share, growing and changing with the aid of freer spirits...we've all watched A Good Year, or something like it, on illegal download. Don't get me wrong: I love my semi-monthly dining club and eating at friends' homes. But this is quite a different matter from entrusting one's everyday nourishment to others. And to me, my bowl of oatmeal, my cup of soup, my dinner are practically sacramental: one area over which I can exercise my own tastes and whims. To such as I, who fall into despair when hungry or are downcast at a bad meal's wasted opportunities for pleasure and nourishment, the benefits of such a worthy enterprise are obviously not worth the costs in neurosis. For the rest of you, it actually sounds lovely: I'll be over here, hoarding a pumpernickel roll.

Learning To Share: "Dinner At Your Door," By Alex Davis, Diana Ellis, And Andy Remeis [Ethicurean]
On Cooking Together [NY Times]