Gosh Annie, how old is my birthday twin now-22? How time flies! This birthday kind of snuck up on me, I had no real plans and when anyone asked me "what do you want to do for your birthday I could only come up with, "Oh, I dunno.........."

I was intrigued, since that seems to be the universal description, so I ran it down. The All-Clad site even says "porcelain" but doesn't explain. A customer review on Cooking.com says "heavy, non-metal insert". Here's a description from Metrokitchen.com: With the All-Clad Copper-Core porcelain double boiler insert, you can melt chocolate or gently reheat foods with confidence. This duo features a 2 quart sauce pan made of five layers of metal, including a core, copper layer to generate optimum heat distribution and conductivity. The 1.5 quart insert has a porcelain base to be placed over gently simmering water. You'll gain optimal temperature control of delicate ingredients without the threat of scorching or burning foods. This set comes with two lids to fit each piece individually. The All-Clad Copper-Core porcelain double boiler insert includes the following items:* Exterior pot is a 2 quart All-Clad Copper Core sauce pot* Insert is white porcelain with a capacity of 1.5 quarts* The porcelain comes with a stainless ring that fits around it. This ring has a handle to make the insert easier and safer to remove from the exterior pot* All-Clad stainless lid* Fully-clad All-Clad Copper Core cookware is made in the USA. Lids are currently being made in Asia. AHA! Progress! Then I found a much better picture on good old Houzz: Here's another view from Jlhufford.com It's a porcelain bowl grafted onto an All-Clad pot handle! It's actually a pretty cool design. It gets to be their signature stainless steel, but still a perfectly non-reactive interior. They have a larger one that they say is non-reactive because it's 18/10 stainless, and that's sort of true, but the porcelain is better. :) The picture at Chef's Arsenal that confounded you is probably of that bigger insert. OTOH, the shape isn't the most convenient looking. I haven't found a picture of the interior, but, for whisking, a true bowl shape works better, and, especially, a wider opening so you have room to work sideways, rather than up and down. Pyrex, Duralex, Arc and Anchor Hocking all make appropriate glass bowls. :) They're often sold as cheap open stock at grocery stores that have housewares sections, and they also come in nesting sets. Very useful things to have around. I have the Arc set, an extra from the "Arcoroc" days that was my mothers (most useful size and most used) and an extra set of the four smallest. You could check the market for a good bowl to use as a double boiler. :)

Thanks for the encouragement (sushipup and ColleenOZ) and the warnings (Scarlett). Could I ask you all to describe how you think I should do it? The ceremony is off site, so people will be arriving at our house around 1 (after hiking up a long, steep driveway). There they will be offered some cool drinks which I think have to be passed on trays in glasses. Maybe those drinks could be water, lemonade, iced tea, sparkllng rose? Then I'm thinking lunch will be put out as a buffet, maybe from several different stations, for people to take plates to eat either at a table or a blanket, or anywhere else they want. Do you think the bottles of wine and interesting beers (small bottles or larger, for sharing?) should be chilling in some big barrels, next to a pile of blankets? Or should servers be assigned to circulate with them, pouring a glass or leaving the bottle on a table? Help me picture the whole scene, and how we can be gracious and casual, but not wasteful. When do toasts occur at a wedding like this? Our property is very spread out so once people take off it will be not be until cake time (inside) that we will be corralled back to one place. By the way, the bride and groom are Californians, so I love the idea of having a west coast vibe for this east coast event!

Strata is an Italian layered casserole. It's very similar to the Passover minas we recently discussed. There are a lot of American dishes called "breakfast strata" that are sort of halfway between a bread pudding, savory pie and a regular American style casserole, with eggy custard to bind. A normal stata is held together with egg rather than custard, though adding some dairy can be nice for breakfast. The breakfast recipes are shallower and less layery than normal strata (besides the milk), but have strata in their history. Another way to think of it is layered kugel. Below is a link to a Southern Living recipe that's in one way an extreme example of non-layeriness, but on the other, still has more stock and wine than dairy, so more like its roots than average. Most of the recipes for breakfast strata that I've seen are really just bread puddings. To truly have the name "strata" there should be layers of fillings between layers of bread. Or filling between layers of potato. Or squash. Or it can be levels, like in a 9 layer dip, rather than repeating layers like in a lasagna. Layers is the issue, not what's in it. :)