With Saucy out of commission (over a year and I still mourn), I'll take it upon myself to review a few of November's periodic offerings.

BBC Good Food: It's regularly featured in my fabulous local magazine store (Avril 50) but my innate frugalness keeps me from buying it. I couldn't resist the November issue, featuring do-ahead recipes for Christmas (Christmas cake, Christmas pudding). I might not be able to resist future issues now that I've had my first taste. Published by the BBC, it's heavy on BBC celebrity chefs and programs. However, it had three articles on weeknight meals, two articles with each five unusual but appetizing recipes featuring a specific ingredient (walnuts in one case, frozen puff pastry in another), a high percentage of vegetarian recipes, a one-page "what's fresh now" article, a five-person readers' tasting panel, and, of course, some early Christmas recipes. American publishers take note: steal some ideas!

Saveur: Seeing the cover, I knew immediately Saveur had changed editors. Last Thanksgiving issue, Coleman Andrews proudly wrote that the magazine had never featured a turkey on the cover in nearly ten years of publishing. This trend came to a screeching end with this Thanksgiving's issue, featuring not only a turkey as the cover shot but "four fine ways to cook it." The other regular features are preserved -- for how long? -- but I'd already noticed a decline in the essay writing in October's issue; it had become more a travelogue of what-I-saw and what-I-ate than real storytelling, reaction and even analysis. In November, they return to the storytelling, but also include that idiotic, fake, $250 cookie recipe.

Bon Appetit: This month must be both a blessing and curse for the editors of cooking magazines. They know the subject, but they've done it so often. (This is why I resist any traditions in our own meal; I want a meal that is still fun to cook.) Bon Appetit has managed some small updates to the traditional, with an article on dishes to bring so that the hostess can avoid another green bean casserole. The make-it/buy-it meal is a needed modernization of the usual Thaksgiving Four Ways! coverage. BA also features a dinner party featuring pork tenderloin, cookies from Dorie Greenspan's new book, olives, and interviews with Amy Sedaris and Candice Bergan. The recipes didn't make me want to cook like BBC Good Food did, although the roasted cauliflower recipe is quite good (had it with steak one night). The "Food & Entertainment Awards" seem thrown in from nowhere. I miss Jinx and Jefferson Morgan, but they still have the Menu Guide, alternate menus featuring the recipes in the issue; someone needs to tell them that anyone with a full-time job not in food service will not be making "Cranberry Granita with Orange Whipped Cream" for a weeknight dinner.

Cooks Illustrated: With it's focus on the traditional, Cook's tackles green bean casserole. They also find yet another method for cooking turkey (salt-roasted), coq au vin and penne alla vodka. The back page features varieties of oysters, but they all look the same to me, wiggly, squishy things on ugly shells. This isn't an issue that tempts me to cook everything in its pages, but the pots de creme were inviting enough to be considered for our bi-weekly cooking with friends night (I got sane and made steak instead). I may even get to the multi-grain pancakes and arugula salad. More likely, I'll buy the recommended knife sharpener to replace my ceramic rods. And it should have been "Olive Oil World Cup." (One thing that aggravates me is that web site access is available only to web site subscribers, and for a limited time to magazine subscribers.)

... with my farmer's market.

I work in West Philly, oh, sorry, University City, and one of the benefits is the University of Pennsylvania trying to make it a hip college town in the middle of an un-hip city. Lunchtime Wednesdays, there is a two-stall farmer's market outside the student bookstore (and the Cosi coffee shop and Urban Outfitter's flagship store) at 36th and Walnut streets for the organic yuppie crowd.

It's a big improvement over buying use-it-today produce from the back of a truck under the railroad tracks on Market Street.

You wouldn't think two stalls would be enough, but, first, these are big stalls, six or eight folding tables each, and secondly, one of them is Mennonite, and they sell almost everything: vegetables, fresh basil, some fruits, cakes, shoo-fly pie. It's fresh and cheap and full of flavor. They come in from Lancaster, so the produce ripens as God intended: in the ground or on the tree.

The other stall sells fruit and heirloom tomatoes. The fruit is exquisite: juicy and full of flavor. Their blueberries tasted like blueberries, not sour, blue orbs. Even weeks after, eating plain cereal gave me a physical longing for fresh blueberries. I'll never buy supermarket berries again.

The tomatoes sent my husband into raptures. Flavor! Texture! Worthy of being eaten with only pinch of salt. The stall owner was giving away extra tomatoes; this is the first year he'd planted tomatoes and was astounded at the yield -- and he doesn't even like tomatoes.

Whole Foods and other organic supermarkets can't compete with the farmer's markets. The produce may be organic, but it's all too often flown from far away, and bred for making the trip, not tasting delicious once it arrives. (Having recently flown six and a half hours to Charles De Gaulle Airport, I have a lot of sympathy for any peach making a similar journey and hold it no ill will for not being at its best on arrival, because I desperately needed at least a shower on my own arrival, and more appropriately a good, stiff breakfast.) I'm not sure how I'll survive the winter without good produce. I may need to learn to can next summer and fall.

That was the title of my birthday present from my husband.

We're still married.

This cannot be what I think it is, I thought. He's not a jerk. He's not stupid.

No-one's face could hide the you've-got-to-be-kidding-me thoughts on receiving that title as a present, and Jorj quickly explained that this book was recommended by a co-worker as the only book with recipes of the foods her native Japanese mother makes. He'd mentioned this book (without title) before, and I'd told him to track it down.

Japanese Women (and yes, author Naomi Moriyama admits the title is derived from French Women Don't Get Fat) beats you over the head with how fat Americans (and soon Europeans) are, how skinny and long-lived Japanese (especially women) are, and how it's all due to diet (not a lack of medical coverage for 30 percent of the American adult population) and lifestyle. Eating like the Japanese do at home (not at the sushi bar) will correct this.

She might have a point, but for this book to be a keeper, the recipes need to be very good and quick to prepare. Everything I tried was both good and quick. The recipe for teriyaki fish alone is almost worth the price of the book. Rather than pre-making a teriyaki sauce reduction, Moriyama quickly marinates the filets in soy and sake, sautes the filets, deglazes with soy and mirin, and finishes with quickly poaching the filets in the soy-mirin mix.

The recipes all rely on quick techniques using widely available ingredients -- if not in your grocery, check the sources list in the back of the book. I spent the most time cutting vegetables (hello food processor). The recipes I've tried -- teriyaki, soba noodles, "Tokyo" salad, beef over rice and vegetable stir fry -- are all winners and I've made them all more than once.

It seems I gave myself another baking obsession in May; you'd think Christmas would be enough.

The month was just end-to-end baking. First, my co-baker Elise and I each made four cakes/breads for a 40-person baby shower. Weeks before the shower I was baking and freezing a cake a weekend: Jewish apple, chocolate-almond-cherry cake, and chocolate roll; and a new summer stand-by: strawberry short cake (bake one 9" spongecake, cut into two layers, whip 1 1/2 to 2 c heavy cream with a dash of vanilla and 3 Tb. sugar, slice a pint of strawberries, leaving the really nice ones whole for the top, macerate berries in a bit of sugar, assemble in layers).

Midst of this came Mother's Day, always held here as the neutral territory. I have brunch, which is just an excuse for everyone to drink Mimosas. The menu included scones and bread pudding (which fulfills my lifelong need for baked French toast).

To fill up the remaining spare time, I took an introductory cake decorating class at my local craft center. Alert readers will notice that almost all cakes on this site require no frosting. Even the wedding cakes I've done have been barely decorated (fresh flowers are solution here).

But I'd always wanted to do this, and Elise, Marsha and I talked about taking the intermediate class at Fantes this Summer or Fall.

Thus, Monday nights found me baking and icing cake between 8:30 and 10:30. I needed a fast recipe. I needed a chocolate recipe (I have standards here). I needed a recipe with ingredients to hand (admittedly I have a lot to hand -- vegan egg substitute, anyone?). The sheer length of the recipes in Death by Chocolate and Baking with Julia was daunting. German cakes are not meant to be iced. Mixes are just out of the question. I needed American cake from scratch. I needed Betty Crocker.

And there was "Black Midnight Cake," which called for all-purpose flour (not even cake flour!), eggs, water, sugar, vanilla, and, er, shortening. But no chocolate to melt, no sour cream or buttermilk (we have it, it's just of voting age). Dump the ingredients, mix and bake.

And it was bland.

So I tweaked.

And Easy Chocolate Layer Cake was born. Still everything you should have in your cabinet. Still very much mix it and go. But now with flavor!

The class was fun. We were three students: myself, and a mother and her 11-year-old son, Ian. They were there because they "love cake." Ian was just nifty! We squeezed out borders, wrote our names, piped headless clowns, and learned ... The Rose, the famous Wilton rose. Sometimes the course materials took themselves too seriously.

Now I've got a lot of time to kill until the fall, when we can take our next class. I have some plans for cool icing effects for my husband's birthday. But when we're drinking shiraz and watching Doctor Who, I surf the web for toys related to my latest obsession.

The Sugarcraft site offers the current Wilton student books (usually availble only by taking a class), along with older books from the 80s and 70s. Well, this was just too good to pass up! Not so much for the techniques, which are unchanged, but for the projects, typography, and illustration, all the things that make James Lilek's Gallery of Regrettable Food the fascinating car wreck it is. Garfield! Yellow cakes with orange flowers! Care Bears! Brown roses! Suddenly, I hear music ... "Come and knock on our door! We've been waiting for you! ..."

111 S 18th Street Philadelphia, Penna.

With a Starbucks on every corner and a house blend in every grocery store, a coffee lover need never go without an acceptable cuppa. Tea drinkers, however, are most often confined to the Bigelow/Twinnings/Tazo bag ghetto. Sure, gourmet groceries and even the average mega-mart carry loose tea, but there your choices are still limited to Twinnings and the Republic of Tea.

In Philly, a few stores carry quality loose tea: Fante's and the Spice Terminal are where I usually get my brew. For green and oolong, we go to Ten Ren in NYC, although MotoYamaMoto brand bags from any Oriental grocer are a good everyday choice.

In the past couple of years, the city seems to have become a tea-drinker's Mecca, with a number of new tea shops, including Ray's Cafe and Tea House, Remedy Tea Bar and Premium Steap. (I'm not forgetting The Bubble House, but bubble tea is very much an acquired taste.)

Returning from Suzanne Goin at Le Bec Fin, I walked past Premium Steap and had to give it a try. They have a larger collection of flavored teas than I expected -- flavored teas seem unsophisticated to me. I skipped the greens and oolongs because we have at least two, four-ounce bags of tea from Ten Ren. Old stand-bys seemed the best choices to assess the teas. I asked for English and Irish breakfast and received English breakfast, the house blend, and a sample of keemun.

As much as my tastes have refined over the years, I still like an English breakfast that can put hair on your chest. Alas, the Premium Steap English breakfast leaves one's chest no more hairy than before (much to my husband's relief). All three teas were more delicate than the supermarket standbys. The house blend tasted similar to the English breakfast blend, but the keemun was lovely.

Will I go back? Next time I'm in Center City I'll be experimenting with assam, darjeeling and keemun.

Spring has long sprung, and a foodie's mind turns to asparagus and mesclun. For a foodie with a garden, the mind turns to tomatoes, basil and crop rotation.

My gardening success has been limited to herbs in pots and rhubarb. The tomato and pepper plants are leggy, the lettuces bolt shortly after sprouting, and even the mint -- a plant with the motto "we are mint; you will be assimilated" -- died after a few years. Rhubarb's success is due to its liking poor soil and low light, conditions affecting most of our yard.

My grandmother had a beautiful vegetable garden, growing her own cucumbers for the bread and butter pickles she canned, plus green beans, carrots, radishes, zucchini, eggplant, and tomatoes, of course. My grandfather built her a cold frame (a miniature greenhouse) for lettuces and seedlings. Her rhubarb was three feet wide; my own is barely two feet wide after nearly ten years. In February, she started all her plants from seeds, putting the tiny little pots under special grow lights in the spare bedroom, then transplanting them in mid-May. She weeded daily. She waged psychological war on squirrels and bunnies with a rubber snake. Come fall, she canned, canned, canned.

Every year, I dream of fresh herbs, tomatoes, peppers and lettuces, all grown organically (I'm too lazy for pesticides), fresher than the local farmer's market, available when needed, and not wrinkling in the fridge. Most years I buy seeds, which will languish, unplanted, in their paper envelopes until June, when I throw them haphazardly and guiltily into hastily prepared soil.

This is exactly the losing strategy it seems.

This year I'm getting smarter, and have skipped the seeds altogether; admittedly, I was too distracted in January to even order them. The garden will also move from the shady side yard (good only for rhubarb and asparagus -- hey!) to the front yard, free of overgrown boxwood since 2003!

There will be herbs like basil, thyme, chives, mint and rosemary. There must be tomatoes, both larger slicing tomatoes and small cherry or pear tomatoes. Bell peppers are always yummy in summer. Perhaps a yellow squash or zuchini, which are so good grilled. The garden catalogs offer more varieties of radish than the small globes in the grocery store. Kohlrabi is one of the first vegetables I truly liked, but it's hard to find in a grocery store. Strawberries would be good with the rhubarb! And maybe the lettuces would do well in the front yard with more sun ...

Once again, my eyes are bigger than my garden and my enthusiasm for weeding. Eventually it all gets to the point where you can't tell the tomatoes from the stinkweed. I'll have to whittle the list down to herbs, tomatoes and one other vegetable:

• Mint, my favorite summer herb
• Basil, the other favorite summer herb
• Thyme
• Rosemary
• Chives, for potato salad
• Big, red tomatoes
• Pear tomatoes
• Bell peppers

Everything else will just have to come from the farmer's markets. Until next year's gardening season ...

Seeing as both the Book and the Cook and I have been around for decades, you would think I would have years of stories of dining on meals prepared by this favorite PBS host, and that FoodTV celebrity at some of Philadelphia's premiere restaurants.

No, I've always talked myself out of it, attending only the local food expo (or "Culinary Market and Showcase") back in the early 90s. I'm a foodie, it was a food expo, there was fun to be had. That for two weeks in March dining experiences were available that usually require a trip to California or New Orleans did not move me.

The Cook

But when a friend suggested dinner prepared by Suzanne Goin at Le Bec Fin, it was the prodding I needed, although perhaps not the event I would have chosen.

At $85, it was one of the most expensive events, and after tax, tip and the wine flight, it was closer to $200.

It was, however, exquisite. Goin and the Le Bec Fin staff prepared five courses from her book, Sunday Suppers at Lucques: an amuse bouche of tomato tart with capers, watercress soup, salmon a la "Lutece", grilled steak, and an almond financier with nectarines and almond ice cream. Additionally, they managed to select wines available from Pennsylvania's notorious (but improving) liquor stores to complement each course.

Every description of the meal that comes to mind is trite: "balanced," "fresh," "delicious," "complementary." The salmon and the steak are hard to consider part of a casual Sunday supper, no matter how professionally and elegantly prepared.

Goin toured the dining room, signing copies of her book and answering questions. After three minutes I can tell you she is pleasant and confident, "Lucques" is pronounced "Luke," and she too was one of a dozen Susans/Suzannes in high school. She also works very hard, because any chef who cooks that well and is that slim goes non-stop.

The Book

Two glasses of wine and I'm a sucker for a new cookbook, plus I was goaded into the purchase by my friend Heather, who is normally a very restrained woman.

Cookbooks that can be read like any other book are my favorite. In Sunday Suppers at Lucques, Goin starts with the family entertaining and Sunday suppers that kindled her love of cooking. She describes the inspiration for each recipe, in turn inspiring her reader. Goin herself or co-author Teri Gelber is an excellent writer, getting out of the way of the prose.

The recipes are divided by season, which makes the "cook local/cook in season" way of life attainable for us mere mortals who need to plan a week's work of menus before shopping, lest we spend each night playing "what do you want for dinner" with our spouse/life partner.

Although I was assured that the recipes were achievable by the experienced home cook, they do seem involved. The watercress soup and salmon might be possible for a Sunday dinner party, when I have two days to prepare.

Last century, when we lived downtown, Dock Street Brewpub at 18th and the Parkway was a favorite if infrequent destination. The brew was varied, fresh and local (brewed down at Dock Street), and the food what is now standard brewpub fare, but at the time seemed new and innovative (and might have been). Dock Street's closing a few years ago was just another sign of the end of the 90's.

During the last snowstorm, we were at the Franklin Institute and, having seen that a new pub was in the old space, gleefully trekked down to the Public House for dinner and a trip to memory lane. The snowstorm was just beginning, so the bar and restaurant were quite deserted for a weekend night, something that could be either good or bad.

Turns out: bad.

Even with only a quarter of the tables filled, it still took an hour from the time we ordered until the food tepidly arrived. I had the grilled tuna sandwich, my husband the grilled chicken sandwich, our friends the calamari. We tried to order the hummus appetizer platter for the baby, but they were out of hummus (they couldn't find a can of chickpeas?) and settled for buttermilk chicken tenders.

The calamari was over-battered and the tuna sandwich was tepid. Both the chicken sandwhich and tenders were well-cooked, not underdone, not dry.

Against all logic and evidence, my husband ordered the bread pudding; I had a coffee to keep him company. Of course, the coffee came out first. Not only was it extremely long in arriving, it was dry as a bone. My only guess is the bread pudding was unmade and the chef threw it together, skipping the egg custard, in an effort to get it to the table before last call.

Would I go back? Not unless I was with a group of friends who absolutely could not walk another step without fainting from hunger. I could always have a salad.

It's almost Ash Wednesday, time for Mardis Gras, Fat Tuesday, Pancake Day and Doughnut Day.

Although most of America -- or at least my part of it -- has now heard of Doughnut Day, such was not the case in my youth. Twenty years ago, no-one outside my family ate doughnuts for dinner, and not square, deep-fried doughnuts either. Doughnuts were round with holes, eaten with coffee at breakfast and covered in glaze, icing or powdered sugar.

But my grandmother, her cousins and her siblings made doughnuts for Fasnachttag. We aren't Catholic, so she wasn't using up the oil to prepare for Lenten fasting. Instead, the Lutherans living in mainly Catholic southern Germany (the Black Forest, Swabia and Bavaria) see no reason to forgo a good party because of minor religious differences. Although Philadelphia doesn't have parades and costume parties in the week leading up to Ash Wednesday, we had doughnuts Tuesday night.

My grandmother paid lip service to a balanced meal, serving noodle soup as a first course. Frankly, I think she picked something that wouldn't be too filling (like vegetable soup) and would leave room for doughnuts. Or maybe my grandfather objected to anything heartier than noodle soup. After the soup, she would bring out a platter of doughnuts as big as my little hand, fried just before Mom and I arrived.

Fasching is all about being wild and crazy, releasing steam in a stratified, rigid society. When you're seven, nothing seems wilder than having doughnuts for dinner.

And best of all.

Best of all.

One year I swear my birthday was on Fasnachttag.

That's right, one year I had doughnuts for dinner on my birthday.

Half the time Fasnachttag is within a week of my birthday -- close enough for me to have an extra doughnut and call it a birthday doughnut. But the best year it was on my actual birthday.

You would think that I've been making doughnuts since moving out on my own half a lifetime ago, or at least since my grandmother passed away. Not so. I rarely fried anything and had never gotten the recipe from my grandmother.

Two years ago, a German exchange student lived with us for ten months. It was time to make the doughnuts. It was time, not because he was from the Karneval-celebrating regions (Switzerland, south Germany and Cologne), but because he wasn't. The boy had missed seventeen years of week-long parties, the least I could do was make him doughnuts.

The first batch was edible. Anything coated in sugar isn't that bad, and that's the best that can be said for them. The second batch showed improvement, and the third batch was just right -- me and Goldilocks there.

I skipped last year, being too busy with a newborn.

This year I would not miss my doughnuts. Out came the Schwäbisch cookbook and the toddler was shooed into the living room with his father. Mid-way through, I realized I'd run out of eggs. I never run out of eggs. A drive to the convience store. The lights are on but the system is down. On to the next convience store, and I can return with the world's most expensive eggs. By this time the yeast has proofed for an hour, and the toddler is having a meltdown and needs to go to bed. The dough is kneaded, the toddler is put to bed, and I can start frying doughnuts.

Let's just say a year off did nothing for my doughnut skills. The dough was over-kneaded and had too much flour, making the doughnuts resemble fried bread dough. I fry in my wok and over-heated the oil, so the doughnuts cooked in seconds flat and rushed passed golden straight to brown. And bland, because I'd forgotten the salt.

Yet I ate them.

A second try for co-workers who had bought a small electric fryer and planned to christen it with a "fry-day" of batter-dipped Twinkies, Oreos, Thin Mints and other sugar bombs. This time the dough was just right, giving me one up on Miss Goldilocks.

And now, dear reader, I will explain the secret of the Fasnacht to you.

Technically, these are called Fasnachtsküchle, but in my pigden German they were always just Fasnachts. (Fasnacht is the night before the fast, and is spelled with a second t, Fastnacht, everywhere but Swaben and Switzerland.)

• 3 1/4 to 3 1/2 c. flour
• 1 c. milk, warmed
• 1/4 c. sugar
• 1 tsp. yeast (half a package)
• 1 tsp. salt
• 2 eggs
• 6 Tb. butter

Dipping sugar

• 1/3 c. sugar
• 1/4 to 1/2 tsp. cinnamon (optional)

Measure 3 1/4 c. flour into a large (3 quart) bowl, and make a "well" in the flour. Just a hole, not all the way down to the bottom of the bowl. Pour some of the warmed milk into the well, about 1/4 c. Don't sweat being particulary accurate. Add in about 1 Tb. of the sugar and all the yeast. Mix the milk, sugar, yeast and a little bit of the surrounding flour into a batter.

Now, let it sit for half an hour. Keep the remaining milk covered and warm; I leave it on an electric burner turned to warm.

This is how all German recipes make yeast breads. Make a well in the flour, mix a little liquid, etc. It's called a Vorteig, a pre-dough. It proofs the yeast (that is, proves the yeast works -- very important when you buy yeast from a store that sells mostly Cheetos to college students). Years ago, before modern instant yeasts, this steps was also important to remove the dead yeast cells encapsulating a core of living cells; not strictly necessary in these days of instant yeast, but this is all about tradition.

Just before the half hour is up, melt the butter, then combine it with the remaining milk and sugar, the two eggs, beaten, and the salt. Mix this into the proofed yeast, and mix in the remaining flour. If the dough looks wet and gloopy, add up to a quarter cup flour more. However, you want a soft dough that isn't dry, unless you want fried bread dough rather than doughnuts.

Turn the dough out onto a floured work surface and knead just until the dough is smooth, no more than a dozen times. This is not the time for an upper body work out; that's foccaccia. The dough should be soft, sticking just a bit to the heel of your hand. Put it into a bowl (about quart-size), cover and put into a warm room for half an hour.

This is a good time to do the dishes. Of course, in my house, any time is good for the dishes, they always seem to be there.

After half an hour, the dough with not have doubled in size. This is OK. Turn the dough out onto a lightly floured work surface and roll out to be about 3/8 to 1/2 inch thick. (When I made these directions, I measured the thickness, but measuring the height and width would have been better.) Using a pizza or pastry cutter (mine's plastic and says "Guiseppe's" on it -- best pizza in Bucks County), cut the dough into strips about three fingers wide. Cut each strip into rectangles about the size of the palm of your hand, or into squares, or diamonds. Or skip the strips and cut them into circles with a drinking glass, and cut the holes out with a shot glass, like my grandmother did when I complained that doughnuts are round, not square. Cut out all the doughnuts before frying.

Right now you can stop and freeze the doughnuts to fry them later. This will almost stop the yeast completely, but won't kill it. Place doughnuts onto a sheet of wax paper on a plate or baking sheet (plate is easier to transport); doughnuts should not touch each other. When the wax paper is covered, put down another sheet, etc. Cover with a last sheet of wax paper, then tinfoil and freeze.

In a wide soup bowl or on a plate, mix 1/3 c. sugar with cinnamon. Stir until cinnamon coats the sugar. There should be just enough cinnamon to give a hint to the final doughnut.

Heat canola or peanut oil to 350 to 375 degrees. An electric frypan would be really good for this. If you are frying without benefit of a self-calibrating appliance (say, frying in your wok), make sure the thermometer is calibrated: boil some water. Does the thermometer read 212 degrees? No? Time for a new one.

Gently slide in a few doughnuts; not so many that the oil is crowded. Cook until golden brown, flip and cook the other side to golden. If the oil is not too hot, this should take at least two minutes a side.

Drain on paper towels and cool enough to handle.

Drop each doughnut into the cinnamon sugar, and coat.

Eat immediately or within 24 hours. If you can't eat them immediately, and will be able to fry them when you can eat them, freeze the dough before frying.

Alles Gutes!