It came to me in a dream the other night that I had to write a post about mashed potatoes. This was non-negotiable. So here it is.

This iconoclastic method for constructing a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich is a revelation. But isn't a PBJ one of those Proustian things whose quality hinges on familiarity? And, more to the point, don't some of us like the overflowing jelly? Discuss. [BuzzFeed]

Ruth Reichl:"There's all this pessimism that people aren't going to cook...I just don't believe that...That people want to spend less time cooking sometimes doesn't negate the fact that people are cooking recreationally in a way they haven't before." [PW]

As we gird our loins for the Post-Recession frontier, we're all taking to the canner. Luckily, some of us nerds have been prepared for years.

For months, we've been getting tips about this mysterious retro concoction known as "Jezebel sauce or, alternatively, simply "Hot Jezebel." So we bit the bullet - or, more accurately, the quarter pound of straight cream cheese - and tried it.

Fad diets be damned! Researchers have found that it doesn't matter what you cut back on, so long as you are counting calories. [New York Times]

"I believe in food and sex; I believe in food then sex; food and sex together? I'm always deeply disturbed by people who get a little too excited talking about chocolate," says Anthony Bourdain.

Says one killjoy in today's New York Times, "Cooking is chemistry, and the only way to know for sure is to employ the scientific method." Um, no thanks. Pass the butter.

Today someone writes into the Philadelphia Inquirer's advice column, "Ask Amy," to ask how to deal with her hostess's tasteless fat-free cooking. Amy says suck it up. We respectfully disagree.

Bon Appetit just released their end-of-year list of the "Hottest Food Trends of 2009!" And, thanks to the economy, let's just say you're probably on the cutting edge of the culinary vanguard, because apparently being on trend means feeding yourself like a gluttonous toddler!

We know what we're whipping up this weekend: a big batch of "Jezebel Sauce." The concoction is made up of apple jelly, preserves (pineapple is a repeat suspect), dry mustard and horseradish, and seems to be used alternately as an appetizer — "spooned over a brick of cream cheese and served with crackers" — or as an …

Lately, "cooking for one" is "a hot topic" that food magazines and cookbooks are covering with patronizing gusto. A piece in the Washington Post offers a slew of practical tips on the joys of freezing and shopping and cooking in bulk, all of them good. (And many of which the 'belles had already cottoned to!) But the…

There's a piece in the Times today that I found kind of depressing: apparently calorie-counting, the hallmark of 80s weight loss, is back with a vengeance. Inspired by some states' initiatives to force restaurants to post calorie count of all their food, the pernicious practice has reentered the cultural…

FYI: You like meat. But you kind of feel bad about it, so menus have to trick you into ordering it. Oh, and you're really sensitive to harsh lighting, too. What, you didn't know? Well, according to the Times, every restauranteur does: it all comes out in a piece on the often "laughably clichéd" differences —…

"So let there be no more loose talk — especially not now, with summer arriving — about beer not being essential. Benjamin Franklin was, as usual, on to something when he said, 'Beer is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.'" That's George Will on the funnest consequence of the cholera epidemic,…

Yesterday's post equating Barack Obama embarrassing his daughter Malia with his firm handshakes of her ten-year-old peers with my dad's own litany of mortifyingly weird habits alerted me to another unexploited parallel between my parents and the Obamas: Michelle Obama's control over Malia's caloric intake as told to…

Remember that deputy Prime Minister who resigned two years ago with Tony Blair only to resurface a year and a half later with a memoir about his decades-long struggle with bulimia? The British press sure does! And while coverage of this confession has generally fallen into the category of "merciless mockfest", an…

Breakfast is my favorite meal, perhaps because it's the only meal I remember to eat every day, and every day I have an egg sandwich, and it costs the same price as four cigarettes in New York and tides you over lots longer. So anyway, the New York Magazine breakfast issue hit home, even though its "Breakfast! People…

I've never been a fan of "foodie-ism" or really, any cultural movement that muddles art/commerce/housework to the detriment of the public good (i.e. fashion, blogging) but this food blogger I met recently, Michele, is maybe the Joan Didion to my Bill Buckley on these matters. (She also dresses well.) These cupcakes…

Dear Leslie, Congrats on the publication of your essay In Defense Of Saccharin in the Black Warrior Review. You're a hell of a writer; I totally get what Harvard/Iowa/whatever dude you wrote this essay to get over saw in you. So it sorta kills me to say that you're wrong. It doesn't sound particularly counterintuitive…