I agree on the rice cakes, although with enough peanut butter they're elevated to barely edible. One of my bosses years ago said they were "like eating compressed air". I don't care for soy nuts either but the worst snack I ever had was a "sesame candy" that Elery bought at the Asian market in Ann Arbor. He loves sesame, I tolerate it, but he stuck one of those things in his mouth and promptly spit it back out. Of course, that meant I just had to see how bad it was. It was bad, extremely sweet yet rancid. Ewwww. I don't know where it came from because I couldn't read the package, so it was my own fault, LOL. Actually, one of the worst lately was a Hostess chocolate cupcake. I don't remember them being dry and tasteless, or the frosting leaving that slick of tallow in my mouth. Maybe they used to be better, but if Bud ever offers to share with me again I'll politely tell him "no thank you"! Annie

I have posted this link before, to Pete Wells' hysterically funny "Nibbled to Death" column in the NY Times (he's their primary food critic). What you won't find in the original article is the followup he did a couple of weeks later, saying that he had never had such a heavy and overwhelmingly positive response from readers. There were 248 Comments. I read most, not all of them. The following are the ones I found the funniest: Reader comments to Wells' column: - "Rodger Lodger" A couple of years ago I ate Per Se's tasting menu. I recommend it as a technique to get Guantanmo detainees to talk. - "TonyaNew York" I went to Atera and this is my yelp review: I feel like all the people who like Atera are the same people who saw "The Master" and pretend like it was a good movie. It's pretty to look at and you go in not knowing what to expect, but with high expectations. However, in the end it's boring and you have no idea what the last 2.5 hours were really about. Then you try to make sense of it all, try to interpret what it all meant (because there must be a reason everyone likes it) and finally give up because you realize nothing is wrong with you, and that when it comes down to it, it just sucked. The service was awesome and the space was fun and the courses were plenty. But the food was not good. There is nothing enjoyable in eating what seems to be the contaminants of the soil in your garden. I felt like we were on candid camera and any minute someone was going to come out and say JUST KIDDING !! Don't eat that dirt, you silly goose. - "CAS115" Thank you for this! I recently had a celebratory dinner - a tasting menu, of course- at one of these restaurants, where my partner and I found that we did not get to talk to each other for more than 5 minutes at a time until the end of a 2-hour meal. We were constantly interrupted by a phalanx of servers who were intent on explaining our meal to us, negotiating complex serving rituals, making sure our table always looked immaculate, and asking us how it was. The food was great, the service impeccable. But the dominance of the food and service sadly made us feel like we, as people, and our desire to connect to each other, were unimportant. It was more like attending a performance than sharing a good meal with someone you love. - "Jen in Astoria" I've had the good fortune to have many different tasting menus at some very good places in NYC, including Aureole, Del Posto and WD-50 (all for very special occasions). However, I agree with the general tone of the article. These tend to be REALLY expensive, and at the end of the night you have no recollection of what the standout items were. I see these adventures as just that--an adventure not a meal. At least at Del Posto, I was full afterwards. While the tasting menu at WD-50 was fun--along with the backstage tour that Wylie Dufresne generously gave my group--I admit that after our dinner party broke up, I slunk off into the bowels of the Lower East Side for noodles because I was starving and tipsy (the wine pours were generous but the portions were not). The tasting menu at Aureole was "just right," I wonder if it still is (did that back in 1996). What made it work? It was really more of an extended meal and not a "teeny tiny eensy beensy 247 "stains and crumbs" on 247 plates" affair. If I recall correctly, it was 8 or so plates paired with 4 wines (split into bunchings of 2), and a dessert trolley with just-right-sized dainties to go with an espresso. There was no time limit or other obnoxiousness, and the service was the best I've ever encountered before or since. Let me also add that someone else has always paid for these tasting menus, which perhaps takes some of the sting out of the experience and expectations. - "Nomadsheart" Reading Mr. Wells' comments, I wholeheartedly agree. Chef's tastings have run amok. Chefs are too willing to create the obscure and the wonderously beautiful at the expense of the diner. I am of the school in which the meal is about the diner and not about the chef. A tasting meal has indeed become an endurance test; if there were a German word for this, it would be "Makenziebutthürten", which indeed it does. A great meal is a combination memories of conversation, friends, location and food; tasting menus are more often about worshiping the craftsmanship of the chef. I have indeed experienced a moment at Daniel's in NYC (years ago) at which Daniel himself came to my table and asked me what I would like to have and how much time I had. It felt as if he cooked for my pleasure and it made him happy. We had a true tasting - 15 courses - that felt like a wonderful afternoon with a friend avoiding a blizzard outside. His hospitality and the graciousness of the moment linger with me; the courses do not. Dining should not be about the "experience", just as wine should not be about drinking "only Parker's 90+s". Let's put the joy back in our food and remove the collective mentality of Chef Trophy Hunting. - "Beatrice" I worked in fine dining restaurants for 8 years, and I worked for some of the management groups mentioned in the above article. Let me tell you - the food in those restaurants is no better than a great, reasonably priced ala carte restaurant. What you PAY for in those restaurants is the precision in the execution of the food - which is unrelated to the actual flavor of each component. If your basil is a perfect half-inch chiffonade, it doesn't actually TASTE better, but it is more precise. Ultimately, if you're looking for a sky-diving equivalent to eating (essentially eating as novelty) then you HAVE to remove the actual element of expecting to be full. No one sky-dives and expects feel rested when they get to the bottom - the point is to THRILL. Go ahead with the tasting menus - but remember that they aren't there to make you full, and the food isn't actually any better. It is more precise, it's there to amuse, to THRILL and for it to be an unusual once-in-a-lifetime experience. It's unfortunate that we may be losing great ala carte meals to this profit-driven trend of creating tasting-menu only restaurants. But as all things - this trend too will pass. - "moretolifethanfoodearth" No problem. The rest of us can eat cake. Here is a link that might be useful: Pete Wells: Nibbled to Death

These are tasty if you have everything on hand. I've made these many times to serve with a cream cheese roulade, but that's for another time than now! Blue Cheese Shortbread 3 1/2 oz. crumbled blue cheese (about 1/2 cup) 3 T. unsalted butter, room temp. 1/2 cup flour 1/4 cup cornstarch 1/4 tsp. kosher salt 1/8 tsp. ground black pepper 1/3 cup walnuts, finely chopped Blend blue cheese and butter in food processor until creamy. Add flour, cornstarch, salt, and pepper. Using on/off turns, process until mixture resembles coarse meal. Add walnuts and process just until moist clumps form. Gather dough into ball. Flatten into disk. Wrap dough in plastic and refrigerate until firm, about 1 hour. Preheat oven to 325°F. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper. Roll out dough between sheets of plastic wrap to 1/8- to 1/4-inch thickness. Remove top sheet. Using a small cookie cutter (2 1/2" is good), cut out cookies. Transfer to prepared baking sheets. Gather dough scraps and reroll to cut out additional cookies. Transfer to prepared baking sheets. Bake until golden brown, about 20 minutes. Transfer to rack and cool. (Can be prepared 3 days ahead. Store in airtight container at room temperature.)

I figured out a way to use my strawberry cranberry jam--it turned out good on a graham cracker spread with Hershey's chocolate spread and then the jam on top of that. Good with one of our favorite wines, "Old Vin Zin" (fandel). It was a very good taste combination, the chocolate and the cranberry and the wine counterbalanced each other. I don't think that "charcuterie" is for wine tasting per se because yes, you are not going to really be able to "taste" the wine if you pair it with other strongly flavored things. But I like to drink wine with food too. I think any type of snack with wine is for sitting and enjoying both wine and food. And if you are winos and foodies like we are, you are going to want to do that a LOT, and not just with friends. So what I was thinking of is little easy peasy wine snacks that aren't necessarily formal of fussy and can easily be put together when the mood strikes. Could also work really with cocktails. We just came back from two days at a beach town. Alcohol and small bites "al fresco" are big right now. People don't want to be inside anymore in the summer. Honestly, unless it is cold and rainy, I am totally on board with this trend!! It could just as easily be called "tapas" I guess, although for me, tapas is something a little more involved. The best foods I found from our meager samplings were plain stuff but with high quality ingredients and simply prepared. We had some deep fried breaded portabella mushrooms strips which were excellent. Just a simple take on the bar standard of deep friend mushrooms, but with the more flavorful portabellas and a home made breading so not the salty, soggy cloying stuff that is basically thawed from the freezer and fried at most bars. I won't be making that at home any time soon, although I might give my marinated mushroom salad another try. I had it once at a restaurant salad bar and liked it so much I got the recipe. But that's not really a "poof" or "poop" (pantry) kind of thing, but definitely a good tapas food, anything with mushrooms. I used to keep the phyllo cups in the freezer. I maybe can again, but right now gonna have to put on hold as I am desperately trying to clear out our freezer so I can clean it before I have to fill it with summer harvest things . . . Those phyllo cups make any type of thing taste gourmet. I used to make jam tarts with them all the time . . . absolutely a poof item since they do not hold up well once filled, they get soggy. I once served them at a party filled with store bought spinach dip and topped with a sliced water chestnut and I got raves. No one at the party had ever thought of that before . . .