Penzeys loves me. I don't have to ask. I just know. Spice companies have to adore customers like me, who, like clockwork, place 2-3 enormous orders per year and turn all their friends into customers as well.

I emailed Jody in my typical frantic, brusque way a few days ago, wondering if he could jot down the ingredients for that lovely salsa he made for a group of my friends a few years ago. I'm fairly certain that it was three years ago, but I could be wrong about the date; it was the night that Heather and Jody played dueling Iron Chefs in Thomas' kitchen, and a lot of food resulted. I remembered nothing but the salsa, which was unlike any salsa I'd ever had before.

"This is great!" she said between forkfuls of pad thai. "You picked the one Thai restaurant next to a Books-A-Million. I was so craving a mocha…and now I can take care of my sushi cravings and my mocha cravings!"

After we all finished our lunches, Rick and I pronounced ourselves the chile fans at the table, agreeing that the three-pepper heat level of our noodles wasn't much more than a nice tongue-tickling heat.

I haven't actually tried this recipe yet; I found it on a box of "Santa Sweets" grape tomatoes. Geeky name, true, but the tomatoes were sweet, and that's saying something in the depths of October.

This recipe was tucked under the lid. It looks promising, and since I'm going to be doing some major kitchen work this weekend, I suspect I should archive this recipe now before I give myself the chance to lose it amidst this weekend's kitchen upheaval (more on that soon enough).Penné Bosciaola

Normally, I post recipes here. But, in this case, Jeff's already done the work for me. If you check out this page on his site, you'll find his recipe for baked beans, which as far as the locals around here are concerned, is crack.

I'm not going to steal his thunder and reprint his recipe here, but I did want to add it to the slowly-growing recipe repository.

Quests are bad. Not bad as in "world-ending" bad, but as in "my friends will all need antacids and my spouse will be praying for pizza tonight" bad. Quests usually involve my blowing nearly half a tank of gas on the back streets of Huntsville, with addresses scrawled on sheets of paper and a eerily determined look in my eye.The last quest was to find a restaurant supply store in Huntsville that had some very specific equipment I needed. Half a tank of gas and one rainy afternoon later, I came to the conclusion that there wasn't a single restaurant supply shop in Huntsville that had what I was looking for. Afterwards, I came home and received a very thorough list of complaints from Tenzing and Edmund, namely:

1. that the owners of the house, namely Tenzing and Edmund, were left alone in the house for a period of five hours, and