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I did not know there was a need for this advice – another case of “behind closed doors”. Making toast is usually done in the privacy of one’s own kitchen, an intimate affair, and I was under the misguided impression that what goes on in my home is “normal”. We freeze bread. And bagels. Sliced. For toast. For sandwiches.

My family is small. My mother’s family was small. She freezes sliced bread. As mother, as daughter.

So yeah, duh, unless you have bread at your elbow at every meal, freeze on.

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Toast lovers, I have a modest proposal for you: Do not bother with bad bread. Say goodbye to sweet, cottony, lightweight toast, the kind that squishes under a butter knife or slumps under a blanket of jam.

Read on here.

Thank you, Karen Barry Schwarz, cabin roommate, nighttime hilarion, toast connection.

This is my new book and I’m very proud of it.

While it comes from the wonderful American Girl people and is a terrific book for girls, it is also a terrific book for boys. Girls and boys of any age – school age to dotage – who want to cook. I think it would make a great gift for college kids, young adults, newlyweds, or anyone else who is beginning their kitchen adventure.

Recipes include hot and cold sandwiches (of course there are sandwiches!), roast chicken, salads, the best chocolate chip cookies ever, amazing chocolate cupcakes, perfect marinara, what to do with vegetables, and all that one needs to create all meals, snacks, and occasions surrounding food.

Seriously, I love this book.

You’re the Chef is available right here.

Get ’em while they’re hot. The griddle is on the back berner.

Who should walk into the Lunch Encounter with a sandwich chronicle? Hey-Pal Susan. Hey pal, toss your hat onto a hook, take a seat and let me pour you a cup of coffee. We are all ears.

What do you do when your husband comes home with a hunk of Jarlsberg the size of a toaster? Luckily, Lisa’s post featuring the apple-cheese sandwich came just in time.  I am happy to report that this was still a huge hit, even though I used down-market bread right from the grocery aisle. Oh, and I used butter instead of olive oil. And the Jarlsburg. But I made up for the lapses by sautéing the apples in a small amount of homemade carmel sauce. YUM! I can’t wait to make it again – with the right ingredients.  Thanks for the inspiration!

of what this stuff is made. Sandwiches. Potato chips. Benign enough. You don’t gotta make them yourself (boo hoo hoo). Tear into a couple packages while watching the Superbowl and let oblivion reign.

Bacon! NATURALLY FLAVORED & Maple Sandwich Cookies MADE WITH REAL MAPLE SYRUP

gripped in one hand,

NEW YORK REUBEN FLAVORED Lays Potato Chips

in the other.

Meat is one thing. Meat is flesh, a substance with which you must wrestle and chew. Visceral, created by death, meat is an outer deal with your inner animal. One needs teeth and a soul comfortable with the food chain to relish meat. Yup yup yup.

Meat flavor though. What is it? Bacon flavored (already dubious) cookies and Reuben sandwich flavored chips. What the what? I would truly like to know how food scientists created both these products. What what what is in there? Cut the murk please. And, if you are listening and you are a food scientist, what drove you to create these things?

Say you did buy both these products. And say eating something that is more “product” than food is something you are willing to do in your brief, bright life – how was it?  Did the chip taste of pastrami, rye, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese and Russian dressing?  Reductionism maximized. Amazing, maybe, and frackin’ freaky. My heart bleeds for every human who ever brined a brisket, created a starter, set cabbage to ferment or a curd to age.

And then I bought the bag of Reuben chips. Salty, crispy, chip chip chippy! I have not encountered a chip I did not devour with relish. So there. I am only human – flesh, desire, appetite, weakness.

So, you’ve got a package in each of your paws. Chips! Cookies! Origins? Effects? Oh for chrissakes. It’s the Superbowl. Why are you hitting yourself on the head? Why are you hitting yourself on the head? A one-two flavor concussion!

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Cowboy. Poet. Two powerful words. We think of autonomy, no boundary, hearts that rip apart and heel back together. Theirs and ours. Cowboys and poets, stars in the galaxies of our fantasies.

Lunch. Plebian, mundane, a quotidian event that is not essential. Not breakfast, the “most important meal of the day”. Not dinner, the meal that creates national merit scholars. Lunch. So optional. Lunch, the star of garden variety hedonists. 

LUNCH IS ON, THEN OFF, then on again, depending on how they’re getting along on the given day.

Yes lunch. “Joe and I are meeting at the Safeway at noon.”

No lunch. “Chris is being difficult.”

Yes lunch. “Joe and I have smoothed things over.”

Chris Earnshaw and Joe Mills are kindred spirits who can be passionate foes. They are now also photographer and printmaker, respectively, and artist and curator. They’ve got a baguette, mustard packets, loose supermarket roast beef and a heap of liverwurst. They are inspired by each other, not listening to each other, at each other’s throats about everything. Art. Film. Life. Death. It’s June 2012 at the Wisconsin Avenue Safeway.

Read on here.

Thank you, Mr. Fixit, for sending this story to me. Makes me love Washington.