Poor John T. Edge.

The food writer who has headed up the Southern Foodways Alliance has issued a pronunciamento so misguided that he must have made it with a foot shoved halfway down his throat.

In the Wednesday New York Times, Edge has an article on breakfast tacos in which he declares, “When it comes to breakfast tacos, … Austin trumps all other American cities.”

And he seems to base his argument on the fact that he was able to find breakfast tacos at a few different places across the city.

Gee!

If he would come to San Antonio, he would obviously find breakfast tacos on most every street corner, many with handmade corn and flour tortillas as well as exceptional salsas and fillings.

But that doesn’t seem to be on his agenda or the New York Times’. In the mind of many at the Gray Lady of American journalism, San Antonio doesn’t exist. (One other example of this comes from the fact that another writer for the paper, Jayson Blair, felt he could plagiarize an article from a local publication and no one would know it.)

Both are interested in Austin only because the hipoisie are gathering for South by Southwest, and minor attention must be paid to the quaint customs of the area during that time.

Obviously I disagree with Edge’s assessment. But what do you think? Is Edge right? Is Austin the breakfast taco capital of the U.S.? Where in Austin can you find a breakfast taco that outshines San Antonio’s best? Please, post your answers below.

Last summer I made a goal. After seeing the movie “Julie & Julia,” I told myself I was going to cook my way through an entire section of a cookbook. The book I chose was the “Avoca Café Cookbook,” a treasured volume I had picked up in Ireland a few years ago, and the section was on soup. (Click here.)

It took several months and not a lot of discipline on my part, but I’m happy to report that the last new soup has been made and consumed – and it was as good as the best of the lot.

I learned as much about making soup as I learned about one kitchen’s approach to this labor of love. Quite a few of the recipes begin with softening an onion in olive oil, which provides a natural sweetness. A good vegetarian stock is added later and magically, the flavors blend together, changing with each ingredient.

But most of all, the recipes were simple and straightforward, not fussy yet full of flavor. If this is what Ireland treasures, then it shares something wonderful in common with that other “I” country in Europe: Italy. The emphasis is on layering a few fresh ingredients in a manner in which they all complement each other, so you can enjoy the best that nature has to offer.

It could be something as comforting as cauliflower and cheddar or something as offbeat as parsnip, rosemary and olives.

Along the way, I revisited some old favorites, such as Courgette and Almond, just to make sure they were as good as I remembered. I also was forced to revisit a few vegetables, such as turnips, that I didn’t care for as a child and have largely avoided as an adult. (I still don’t care for them, but soft baby turnips have a more pleasant flavor than their rock-hard adult cousins.)

Some of the journey was frustrating. I had had a stand of lemongrass in the backyard, but the ugliest of winter freezes took care of that. So I had to buy fresh lemongrass from the market for the Sweet Potato and Lemongrass soup. (I also didn’t have time to visit an Asian market, so I probably paid twice the price for the stalks I needed.)

Most of the recipes were vegetarian, a few were even vegan. The lone exception was a Tuscan Bean Soup that required bacon in it. And what an impact that bacon had on the final product! After the first taste of the meat boiled into the broth, I could understand why a few – not all, mind you – of my vegan friends will have the occasional piece of pork. I will remember the richness and depth of flavor it brought to the soup and use that in other ways.

I made the most of these soups during the worst of the winter, when I had a seasonal job. To save money, I would bring a jar of soup each day and pop it in the microwave. The aroma of Potato and Fennel Soup or Aztec Corn would fill the break room and often drew questions from co-workers who wanted to know where I’d bought it.

The last recipe in the section was Mixed Mushroom, which I made with button caps, brown mushrooms and portobellos. Rich and creamy, it was a fine end to a most tasty experiment.

Another goal I wrote about recently was planting a garden so I could enjoy some freshness from my own backyard.

I’m happy to report that the radishes, lettuces and arugula I planted survived the snow/sleet/slush that fell several days after planting. It’s almost time to thin some of the sprouts, which will make a great addition to a salad.

In the meantime, the potted tomatoes are thriving. I know some friends who have planted theirs in the ground already. I’m not quite ready to do that, but I do have them clustered in near the backdoor so they can get some light.

I also planted a pair of olive trees I picked up at Sandy Oaks Olive Orchard. I planted the arbequina, which should survive our freak freezes and bear fruit in a few years. I would appreciate that. The loquat tree I planted eight years ago is only now ready to bear fruit, and I fear I lost some of this year’s potential harvest to the cold.

But that’s the nature of gardening, isn’t it? We never know what nature has in store for us, no matter the goals we set.

When Consumer Reports recently reported that those bags of triple-washed salad greens are really not pristine, cooks find themselves split into two camps: Those who believed and didn’t wash and those who always felt that “triple washed” didn’t necessarily mean clean.

I’m not as fastidious in the kitchen as some, including a friend of mine. She uses a fork or spoon while cooking, then stops in mid-action to take the utensil to the sink, wash it with dish soap and put it into the dishwasher.  I feel this interrupts the creative flow.

But I do always wash those triple-washed salad greens. Not that I think the packer is lying, that the greens weren’t really washed three times — I just can’t imagine that washing and packing something as delicate as lettuces on such a major scale offers too many opportunities for the unwanted to happen.

The report didn’t find pathogens such as E. coli, listeria or salmonella. But other bad bugs turned up.

“Several industry experts we consulted suggested that for leafy greens, an unacceptable level of total coliforms or enterococcus is 10,000 or more colony forming units per gram (CFU/g) or a comparable estimate. In our tests, 39 percent of samples exceeded that level for total coliforms and 23 percent for enterococcus,” said the report.

I wash salad greens in a roomy, stainless steel colander, splashing them around in cool water and shaking them as dry as I can by hand. Some use a salad spinner and that’s fine. I like to shake as much water off as possible, then repackage the greens in a clean, zip-lock bag. The few drops of water remaining on the lettuces seem to help keep them crisper — at least when you use them in the first couple of days.

That brings us to one of the suggestions in Consumer Reports. In addition to washing the salad greens or spinach, you should look at the “use by” dates and pick up a box where that date is as far in the future as you can find. (I do this with dairy products, too, even though I always have the slightest feeling that I’m cheating by taking the containers further back on the shelf.)

Also, and this is just common sense, try to keep the greens away from raw meat, or unwashed counters or cutting boards. In fact, I’d say that where salad and raw meat are concerned, one might wish to be as meticulous as my friend.

I’m not a big fan of processed foods. So, it seemed strange for me to be using Ideal, even though the sugar substitute is said to be 99 percent natural.

The product is made with xylitol, which, according to the package, is a “natural sweetener found in fruits and vegetables.” Our bodies also produce it “as part of everyday metabolism,” it goes on to say.

The carbohydrate count was 1.5 grams per teaspoon with no grams of sugar, which is good news for those, like myself, with diabetes.

Still, I haven’t been too fond of other sweeteners I’ve tried in the past. I grew up on Tab, so I acquired a taste for saccharine at an early age. I even search out a Diet IBC Root Beer on a rare occasion because it’s sweetened with it.

But I don’t want to cook with it. I don’t even like its flavor in iced tea.

If that’s how I feel about my favorite sugar substitute, you can imagine what I think of the rest.

I get woozy whenever I ingest Aspertame, a feeling that’s followed by something akin to a punch in the kidneys – and I won’t even mention the flavor. Splenda, meanwhile, has an aftertaste that’s shrill and acrid. Stevia in crystalline form is more bitter than sweet, when you taste it by itself; used in something, it has no discernible flavor at all.

So, when Don Godleski, better known as “Chef Ozzie,” came to the stock show to talk up Ideal from Heartland Sweeteners, I admit I was skeptical.

Yet he had some persuasive arguments on his side.

One is that xylitol is said to be better for your teeth than sugar, and dental caries can be an increased problem for diabetics. Tom’s of Maine includes it in its toothpaste.

Another is that it is low on the glycemic index, which means it won’t affect a person’s blood sugar levels. Again, good news.

Chef Ozzie also said that using Ideal instead of sugar in tandem with a training program to get him ready for a mini-marathon have helped him lose 17 pounds. That’s something many of us, diabetic or not, could use.

OK, but what about the ease of cooking with it? And, more importantly, the flavor?

If you’re baking, you use the same amount of Ideal as you would sugar. (This is the version that comes in the larger, 5.3-ounce bags you’ll find at your local H-E-B in the baking section, not the packets meant for sweetening coffee and tea.)

And if you want powdered sugar, toss it into your food processor with a touch of cornstarch, he said.

There are only two things in the kitchen that Chef Ozzie has discovered that one can’t do with Ideal: It won’t feed the yeast in bread recipes and it won’t caramelize.

Yeah, yeah, I can hear you say: What about the taste?

Pretty good when tasted by itself. It certainly had a more natural sweetness than other sugar substitutes I’ve tasted, and it didn’t have the purgative affect that maltitol has.

Though Chef Ozzie whipped up a comforting apple enchilada with plenty of cinnamon and whipped cream on top, I had to try the product myself.

So, I whipped up a batch of scones, using Ideal inside the dough and with an egg brush on top. The process in using the new ingredient was no different from using sugar. The dough became as fluffy as before, and it baked at the same temperature.

A pair of finicky friends could not tell that I was not using sugar, and they devoured every last scone in sight. That’s always a good sign.

I also tried it in a pitcher of lemonade, cooking the xylitol into a simple syrup before adding it to the lemon juice and carbonated water. It didn’t interfere with the lemon flavor, which was just fine with me.

I’m still a little skeptical about some of the claims both Ideal and Chef Ozzie are making. But I will say that I agree we could stand to break ourselves from our sugar addiction.

I’m now putting the question to you. Do you use sugar substitutes? Which ones? Why? Please post your answers below.

My husband, David, was driving back from Austin a couple of weeks ago and stopped into a wine store to check out the bargains on his way home.

He brought with him two half-bottles of a respectable Chateauneuf du-Pape, vintage 2004, and we opened one. It was very good.  So, on his next trip to Austin he said he’d picked up more of the famous Rhone red wine since the closeout price was an amazing $2.99 a half bottle.

This time he bought more than just two bottles. But when we opened another a few days later, the odor of badly corked wine assaulted our noses instead of the rich aromas we’d enjoyed previously.

Was this a case of “you get what you pay for”?

As I got a fresh glass and poured a different wine, my first thought was that this bottle might be an indication of why the wine was so way-on-sale. Maybe there had been a flurry of complaints at some point, hurrying the remaining inventory on its way to the bargain bins.

Or, was it just proof of the assertion that out of, say, 100 bottles with cork closures, 3-4 are likely to be bad? (Some say as many as 10 will be bad, but there are no statistics to support the statement.)

It is true that half bottles, at 13.5 fluid ounces, age more quickly than full bottles.  This is partly because the size of the cork and neck on a half bottle, and the amount of empty space between cork and wine inside the bottle,  is the same as those on a regular, 27-fluid-ounce bottle. That means the same amount of oxygen is working on half the amount of wine.

But, would corked wine be the result of the relatively higher ratio of air to wine? Isn’t this fault the result of a tainted cork?

We called Don White at Seazar’s Fine Wine & Spirits, 6422 N. New Braunfels Ave., to hear his thoughts.

“That seems to indicate the cork was at fault, unless it was a batch problem,” said White.  “If it was a batch problem, you could get a whole case of wine that had matterized.”  Also, he noted, half bottles wouldn’t necessarily have a higher rate of corkage than whole bottles.

Discussing vintage, White noted that while 2004 wasn’t considered a great year in the Rhone, where this wine was made, it was considered a classic year. A full bottle of Chateauneuf Du Pape would do well with 10 years of aging. This half bottle, at 6 years old, was probably just at the peak of its drinkability.

Considering the price and the fact that it was only a bottle that was bad (so far) we already knew we were well ahead of the game, as White noted.

“You got the wine at way below cost, so if you get a bad bottle or two, just write it off. But I wouldn’t plan a party around it,” White added.

Another point or two…

Thanks to my favorite wine guru, Jancis Robinson, I learned a new wine word today: ullage. Not a term one hears everyday, whether you’re a wine geek or not. “Ullage” is the word for that space I referred to earlier, the trapped air in the neck of the closed bottle between the cork and the wine.

A point on wine ettiquette: If you have ordered a wine at a restaurant and it is corked or otherwise flawed, the sommelier will be happy to open another bottle of the same wine or another wine entirely. If the sommelier opens the wine and you decide that you just don’t like it, however, that’s too bad. You should not expect the sommelier to bring you something else and not charge for the opened bottle.

When I was growing up, one of the last things I wanted to do was work in the garden.

For decades now, my parents have planted an annual garden, filled with lettuces, radishes, tomatoes, squash, cucumbers, onions, garlic, corn, kohlrabi and the like, in addition to the fruit bushes laden with raspberries, red currants, strawberries, figs and more. Since I moved away, they have added apple, nectarine and pear trees, all of which can thrive in the Louisville, Ky., climate.

But the idea of digging up earth to plant seeds or, worse, to weed around the tender young shoots was, as a city kid, my idea of torture. I loved the food, mind you, especially those white icicle radishes with their lively bite and the salads made of oak leaf lettuce; I just never wanted to have to work for it.

I certainly didn’t want to get my hands filthy from all that mud. Who knew was crawling in all that dirt! I was never one to play with earthworms or bugs beyond the lightning bugs that sparkled each summer evening.

Times change, and people change.

Over the past few years, I have been planting more and more herbs in pots. Basil, thyme, sorrel, rosemary, chives, lovage – you name it. Last year, I added peppers and tomatoes to the mix, but everything was largely in pots. Why?

Pots are easy. If a plant dies, you just pull it out of the dirt and start all over.

And many of my plants don’t make it. Friends claim I have a black thumb. I prefer to think of myself as a Darwinian farmer. I’ve taken the time to plant the plant, but if it doesn’t survive on its own, then that the plant’s fault.

Last year, I began to change my mind. I was going figure out ways to make my plants healthier. I gave them compost plus rich soil that worked into the clay. I also learned when to water many of them. Some, like the sorrel, got water sometimes twice a day in the nasty heat; others got water every other day.

The recent deep freezes took a few of the herbs, including the thyme, the basil and mostly likely the lemon grass. But others, including the mint, are already starting to come back.

Yet I want to go further.

This weekend, I dug up a chunk of my backyard and dug in both hands to work through some of the muddy clumps. I rejoiced in the sight of all the worms and crawly things in the rich soil under the layer of grass that died in last year’s scorching heat. Digging up the soil didn’t break my back and I was finished a lot quicker than I thought I would be. Of course, my MP3 player helped.

Planting seeds has changed somewhat since I was a kid. Ferry-Morse seed company now offers something called planting strips. Forgive me if I am as out-of-date on these things as George H.W. Bush was when he first encountered a bar code scanner, but I had no idea you could by seeds already spaced out and placed inside a strip. Simply plant the strip in the soil as deep as the package says and wait. The lettuce strips should sprout within seven to 10 days, the package promises.

But I didn’t stop there.

I had to plant some old-fashioned seeds, which were for arugula and radishes, the latter of which remains a favorite food and one that is better when just picked.

I also picked up some tomato plants, not to plant in the soil but to do something the Bexar County Master Gardener Hotline calls “potting up.”

“Do you believe homegrown tomatoes are superior to store bought?” David Rodriguez, Texas Agrilife Extension service horticulturist for the county, writes in a handout I picked up at the stock show recently. “If so, February is the time for you to ‘pot up’ your spring tomatoes.”

What is this exactly? “Planting tomato transplants into containers to take advantage of growth and still be able to protect them from cold weather,” Rodriguez explains. “Until mid-March or the first of April when the weather stabilizes enough to place the transplants in the vegetable garden or plant them in large containers with a 16- to 20-inch diameter.” (Think of the forecast that it will drop below freezing on Tuesday.)

For more information on potting up or starting your own garden, call the Master Gardener Hotline at (210) 467-6575 or click here. And don’t be as silly as I was all these years. Yes, I now have a speck or two of dirt under my nails, but that will disappear with the help of a nail file. But it’s worth price to get my own fresh vegetables.

Get your kids involved, too. They may not thank you now, but they should eventually.

The cover of the book says it all: “Famous New Orleans Drinks (And How to Mix ‘Em).”

Well, almost all. This gem from one Stanley Clisby Arthur was first printed in 1937, a few years before the introduction of the Hurricane by Pat O’Brien, whose name still graces a chain of bars, including one on the River Walk.

But don’t let that deter you from searching out this slender volume, because it is a treasure trove of facts and stories behind the potent potables that dominated the Big Easy, and many a Southern bar, during the era. It’s little wonder the book is still in print today.

My copy, given to me by dear friends who understand the joys of a well-mixed cocktail and a well-spun story, is from the book’s fourth printing, which was in April 1941. The country was still months away from the second world war at that time, and some areas were only beginning to emerge from the Great Depression.

Though Prohibition had ended only a few years before, Arthur proudly hails his city as “the home of civilized drinking” for more than a century.

He doesn’t stop there: “The flowing bowl and the adept mixing of what went in it has constituted as high an art in this Creole city as the incomparable cooking for which it is famed.”

To prove his point, Arthur offers recipes for drinks that are still shaken, stirred and layered at many a New Orleans haunt, including the Sazerac, the Absinthe Frappé, Ramos Gin Fizz and Planter’s Punch.

“The quality of mixed drinks as served in New Orleans has always appealed to the sophisticated taste,” Arthur writes. “It was here that your most modern of American beverages, the cocktail, first came into being and was given its jaunty name.”

Etymological stories are of particular interest to the author. The term “julep,” for example, dates as far back as 1400 A.D., he writes, “long before we ever heard of the Southern States of these United States, where the julep is popularly supposed to be indigenous.”

But Arthur doesn’t stop there. He goes on to give advice about how to make a julep that will keep you smiling: “Don’t use rye whiskey in making a julep. If you do use whiskey, let it be Bourbon, which serves its highest purpose when it becomes a component part of that prince of all thirst-quenchers known as the Mint Julep.” As a Kentuckian who honors the derby each May, I heartily concur.

I also love the fact that so much of the lore remains up-to-date more than 70 years after the book’s initial publication. Take this passage on one of the Latin Quarter’s still-popular nightspots: “Of all the ancient buildings in New Orleans’ famed Vieux Carré, none has been more glorified in story and picture than a square, plastered-brick building at the corner of Bourbon and Bienville streets, known as the Old Absinthe House.”

The building, erected in 1806, was originally used for importing, then bartering foodstuffs and tobacco. Over the course of its history, it became a grocery, a boot shop, and, in 1846, “a coffee-house, as saloons were then called.”

Today, you can taste a cocktail made with real absinthe there.

Absinthe, or actually something called “absinthe substitute” (which I would take to be Herbsaint, Pernod or a similarly anise-flavored alcohol), is a key ingredient in the Sazerac recipe included in the book. But it wasn’t always part of the mix. And Arthur is more than happy to offer the evolution of a drink, when he can. Especially when the drink in question is considered “the best known of all New Orleans cocktails.”

The original recipe called for Peychaud’s bitters, which were created in New Orleans by a druggist named Antoine Amédée Peychaud. It remains a key ingredient today; not so the alcohol it was meant to complement. It seems brandy was a little too European for American tastes, so rye whiskey elbowed its way into the mix. With that change came the addition of absinthe.

“But this history delving is dry stuff,” Arthur notes, “so let’s sample a genuine Sazerac.”

Indeed.

A Genuine Sazerac

1 lump sugar
3 drops Peychaud’s bitters
1 dash Angostura bitters
1 jigger rye whiskey
1 dash absinthe substitute
1 slice lemon peel

To mix a Sazerac requires two heavy-bottomed, 3 1/2-ounce bar glasses. One is filled with cracked ice and allowed to chill. In the other a lump of sugar is placed with just enough water to moisten it. The saturated loaf of sugar is then crushed with a barspoon. Add a few drops of Peychaud’s bitters, a dash of Angostura, a jigger of rye whiskey, for while Bourbon may do for a julep, it just won’t do for a real Sazerac. To the glass containing sugar, bitters and rye, add several lumps of ice and stir. Never use a shaker! Empty the first glass of its ice, dash in several drops of absinthe … enough will cling to the glass to give the needed flavor. Strain into this glass the whiskey mixture, twist a piece of lemon peel over it for the needed zest of that small drop of oil thus extracted from the peel, but do not commit the sacrilege of dropping the peel into the drink. Some bartenders put a cherry in a Sazerac; very pretty but not necessary.

M-m-m-m-m! Let’s have another!

From “Famous New Orleans Drinks (And How to Mix ‘Em)” by Stanley Clisby Arthur

One of the standby desserts in Mexican restaurants where I grew up in Southern Arizona was pink cake. Not strawberry cake,  pink Jell-O cake, raspberry cake or Big Red cake. Just pink cake.

When I moved north to live in Flagstaff, and made trips through the Navajo and Hopi reservations, pink cake was there, too.

So, I was happy to find that restaurants in San Antonio also knew about pink cake. (Sometimes it’s really white or yellow cake with pink frosting, but if you’re lucky it’s pink inside and out.)

Two summers ago, while clearing out my mother-in-law’s house after her death, I came across two antique, but not-too-battered, heart-shaped cake pans. What was my first thought?  “Pink cake,” of course. Though, mine would have a whipped cream filling and be pink cake and pink frosting. Since raspberries are my favorite kind of “pink” food, it would have raspberries in it, too.

Looking online for just the right recipe Valentine’s Day recipe, I found this cake and a creamy lemon frosting, to which I added a little red food coloring. Have pink cake — for a party, for your sweetheart or to share with friends.

Banana-Raspberry Cake with Lemon Frosting

Cake:
Cooking spray
1  tablespoon flour
1 1/3 cups  sugar
1/4  cup butter, at room temperature
3  large eggs
1 3/4  cups flour
2  teaspoons baking powder
1/2  teaspoon  salt
1  cup low-fat buttermilk
1  cup mashed ripe banana (about 2 bananas)
1  teaspoon vanilla

Frosting:
3/4  cup  (6 ounces) 1/3-less-fat cream cheese, chilled
2  tablespoons  butter, at room temperature
2  teaspoons  grated lemon zest
1/2  teaspoon  vanilla
Dash of salt
2 1/2  cups  powdered sugar, sifted
1-2 drops red food coloring
1 1/2  cups  fresh raspberries (optional)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

To prepare the cake, coat 2 (8-inch) round or heart-shaped cake pans with cooking spray; line bottoms with wax paper. Coat wax paper with cooking spray; dust each pan with 1 1/2 teaspoons flour.

Place granulated sugar and 1/4 cup butter in a large bowl; beat with a mixer at medium speed until well blended (about 3 minutes). Add eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition.

Lightly spoon 1 3/4 cups flour into dry measuring cups, and level with a knife. Combine flour, baking powder, and 1/2 teaspoon salt, stirring well with a whisk.

Combine buttermilk, banana, and 1 teaspoon vanilla. Add the flour mixture and buttermilk mixture alternately to the sugar mixture, beginning and ending with flour mixture (mix after each addition just until blended). Pour batter into prepared pans.

Bake cake at 350 degrees for 25 minutes or until wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean. Cool in pans 10 minutes on a wire rack; remove from pans. Peel off wax paper. Cool layers completely on wire rack.

To prepare frosting:  Combine cream cheese, 2 tablespoons butter, zest, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla, and dash of salt in a large bowl. Beat with a mixer at high speed until fluffy. Gradually add powdered sugar and 1-2 drops food coloring. Beat at low speed just until blended (do not overbeat).

Place 1 cake layer on a plate, and spread with 1/3 cup frosting. Arrange raspberries in a single layer over frosting, and top with remaining cake layer. Spread remaining frosting over top and sides of cake. Store cake loosely covered in refrigerator. Garnish with more fresh raspberries, if desired.

Makes 14 servings.

From www.myrecipes.com

I’m not a true cookie baker. That’s always been my mother’s job.

For some reason, I can spend countless hours putting together an elaborate tart or a chocolate cake that is tortured past belief. I recently started whipping up cupcakes and frosting them with decadent buttercreams. But ask me to do a few dozen cookies, and not only do I lose interest, but I also seem to tense up. They take too much time, I say to myself, and call for too much equipment.

Overcoming that prejudice has been one of my resolutions this year. So, I have become repeating to myself that I will sharpen my cookie cutting skills this year, and I will use a cookie press more regularly. That’s all there is to it.

But maybe next month.

To get myself started, I decided to make a pair of cookies this past weekend. Both recipes had similar ingredients, yet the two ultimately could not have seemed more different.

They were alike in that they both had chocolate and almonds in them. And, of course, some sugar, flour and a touch of salt. But that’s as far as they got.

The first was a drop cookie from one of my mother’s recipes. The name was what drew me like a moth to a flame: Chocolate Almond Cookies. Except there was a problem when I looked at the recipe: The ingredients list called for 1 cup M&M’s, but made no mention of almonds whatsoever.

Rather than call her, I decided to fiddle with the recipe on my own. I substituted slivered almonds for the M&M’s and went to work. I added a touch of almond extract and ended up with a cookie that was comforting to the eye in its rustic appeal and pleasant to the palate because it wasn’t terribly sweet. What an old-fashioned treat. (I talked with Mom after making the batch, and she had no recollection of these whatsoever.)

The other recipe was for Mexican Chocolate Crackle Cookies, and it came from a new cookbook I recently picked up, Cindy Mushet’s “The Art & Soul of Baking.” In this recipe, the almonds are toasted and ground into a flour seasoned with cinnamon and achiote chile powder.

The chocolate, meanwhile, isn’t cocoa powder, but 70-percent bittersweet melted into butter with a touch of coffee liqueur for added richness.

The dough balls you form from these are rolled in sugar and then powdered sugar before baking. Yet the end result, while snowy white on the outside from the powdered sugar, wasn’t a sugar bomb, either. And the cookies managed to be both chewy and light at the same time.

These were the obvious winner with most, but the Chocolate Almond Cookies had their fans, too.

They’re both great for Valentine’s Day. Great for sharing. And great for someone who has to ease into this cookie-baking process.

To the football fanatic, there is no greater day than Super Bowl Sunday. For Super Bowl 44, the two teams vying for the championship, the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints, are busy working on their strategies, their plays, their strengths and their weakness.

The rest of us are busy working on the food we plan to consume on this festive occasion.

But what will that be? Sandwiches have long been a favorite, whether the coach in charge of the food offensive prefers to serve up a table-long sub sandwich or a series of sliders. Before you place your bets, however, consider the two sandwiches, listed alphabetically by hometown, that fans from each of the home teams will likely be serving their guests.

Indianapolis Colts: Pork Tenderloin Sandwich

Take a pork cutlet, pound it until it’s broad and flat, bread it and fry it. It’s as simple as that. Yet a good pork tenderloin sandwich has a hold on anyone who ever tried one at any of the countless drive-ins that dot the Midwest. There’s something about the hot, slightly greasy patty and the cool mayonnaise on the toasted white bun that has made it a perennial favorite with millions.

Fan testimonial from Chuck Lundquist, formerly of the Midwest and now of San Antonio:

I’m a fan of the Colts …  and I’m certainly a fan of the pork tenderloin sandwich.

When I was in college, a small drive-in diner called Porky’s was on University Avenue in Des Moines (I went to Grand View College , a Lutheran junior college for two years before transferring to the University of Iowa).  They had a great big pork loin sandwich that just hung over the outside of the bun.  Pork is fairly inexpensive up north, and we always had big pork (and chicken) family meals.  On Sunday night when the dining hall was closed, Porky’s was the place to go.  We would have that big sandwich, soda and shake and walk around and talk to the ladies who had driven in.  Lots of fun on a Sunday evening.

That big sandwich would stay with you.  Plenty of meat and always tender and moist.  Over the years, the pork tenderloin has become too packaged with too much breading.  There is still a Porky’s in Des Moines, and I still like to eat there, but the sandwiches aren’t quite the same.

For a recipe to make your own pork tenderloin sandwiches, click here.

If you want to buy a pork tenderloin sandwich in San Antonio: Check out Which Wich, with two area locations: 11224 Huebner Road, (210) 561-WICH (9424); and 10730 Potranco Road, (210) 682-WICH (9424), or click here.

New Orleans Saints: Muffalletta

New Orleans’ version of the pressed sandwich is the muffuletta with its blend of cheeses melted into Italian meats and the salty, tangy appeal of olive salad. The sandwich dates back to 1906 and is still served today.

Fan testimonial from Sandy White, who grew up in the Big Easy and now lives in San Antonio:

Growing up in New Orleans I remember the times we would go down to Central Grocery for a muffuletta sandwich.  We would always go in multiples of either 2 or 4 as one of Central Grocery’s creations had to be shared, the final number determined by the level of hunger.  Since there was no table service, one would approach the counter to get the sandwich and proceed outdoors to find a suitable place to consume the masterpiece.

For those not familiar, the muffuletta is the quintessential New Orleans sandwich —A large, round Italian sandwich loaf, sliced in half like a English muffin, is piled high with Italian delicacies such as mortadella, capicola and salami, layered with provolone and Swiss cheeses.  What really sets the muffuletta apart from your garden-variety lunch-meat sandwich, however, is the generous helping of rich, tangy olive salad that serves as the only condiment.  The olive oil moistens the bread while the olives, garlic, peppers, and giardiniera add texture and spice to the meats and cheeses.  For a real treat, build the sandwich, wrap in foil and heat it in the oven until the cheese has melted, then add the olive salad and enjoy the finest sandwich you ever tasted.

Geaux, Saints, Geaux!

If you want to make your own muffuletta, click here. Central Market, 4821 Broadway, has the round Italian bread needed, while many supermarkets carry the olive salad.

If you want to buy muffulettas, check out Murphy’s Deli with three area locations: 300 Convent St., (210) 212-8833; 116-123 E. Houston St., (210) 299-2600; and 7702 Floyd Curl Drive, (210) 692-9852. Or click here.

(Pork Tenderloin image provided by Which Wich, Inc.)

(Muffaletta image provided by Murphy’s Deli)

(NFL Team helmet images provided by the NFL)