Beth Skwarecki

The New York Times says that Emeril is allowed to change recipes, "because he is a highly trained chef." You, on the other hand, are not. If you do, you will be compared in the New York Times to people who substitute kool-aid powder for orange zest. "Gourmet has 8 test kitchens and 11 food editors," says an editor at Gourmet magazine. This means that if you think a Gourmet recipe would taste better with some tweaking, you are wrong. According to the New York Times, anyway.

Snooty food editors would disapprove that I substituted light brown sugar for dark brown sugar in this butterscotch pudding when I made it today. (I was craving the rich puddings I used to get at the Cornell Dairy Bar when I used to work down the street.) The pudding turned out thick, rich, and delicious and was quick to make: mix sugar, eggs, and cornstarch, whisk in hot milk, and finish with blobs of butter. You can eat it right away if you like your pudding warm.

Moving on (see, I've learned there is an order in which to present these), I had a lot of fun today at the website WhoPooped.org, thanks to the Minnesota Zoo. Not just a poop quiz (hehe!), the site teaches you about where animal poop comes from. You can drag the food into the animal's mouth, watch where it goes in the little cartoon digestive system, and read the little info cards while (in one case) an ostrich stands by and farts at you. It (not Twitter, despite what the "social media" people will tell you) is the best website ever.

According to Kathleen Fasanella, fashion industry guru, that law that plans to criminalize "copied" clothing designs is dangerously close to passing. Kathleen explains what's so bad about it here: basically, it will put almost everyone out of business. Use the links in her post to write to your lawmakers. As I said in my letter, there is a reason why clothing was exempted from copyright law. It makes no sense to offer copyright monopolies for functional items like clothing, no matter how "original" the designer says their design is. Nothing is original in fashion; it's all been done before.

Is that enough links for now? I also thought this witch bottle was pretty neat.