In the Sweet Revenge category:

Jenna Charlton sticks it to the "scarf brigade" (everybody's least-favorite farmer's market staple) with a recipe for made-from-scratch hot chocolate that, unlike that particular species of urban hippie, doesn't trade taste for principle. (Recipe for simple chocolate-y hot chocolate included.)

In the Candy Bar category:

Lucy Mercer comes up with an unexpected and creative use for all of your leftover Valentine's Day candy -- turning it into hot chocolate. Ever wondered what it would taste like to drink a Three Musketeers? Here's your chance. (Recipe for candy bar hot chocolate included.)

In the Warm Milk category:

Mamie Chen explains why she developped the baffling habit of ordering a cup of warmed-up soy milk at Starbucks  -- and how a move to Hong Kong cured her of it. (Recipe for soy milk with ginger syrup included.)

In the Immigrant Memories category:

Krishna Shenoy shares her immigrant mother's recipe, which celebrates India's Kojaagari Purnima harvest festival. (Recipe for saffron almond milk included.)

In the Turkish Delight category:

Füsun Atalay explains the tradition and strong taste of Turkish coffee, and how one cup can help predict your future. (Recipe for turkish coffee included.)

AND NOW, FOR THIS WEEK'S CHALLENGE

"We like March - his Shoes are Purple -" With that line, Emily Dickinson greeted the early spring, arriving in new-shoots style. But while she may have been picturing the purple of grape hyacinth flowers, our spring purple is found in the tips of asparagus. Their season doesn't go into full green roar for another few weeks for many of us, but around this time, it's easy to start obsessing slightly about them, readying ourselves for what to do when they start appearing in earnest in local markets.

So, to get ready for that happy, happy time, can you share your finest asparagus recipes and memories? Just make sure to tag your posts: SKC asparagus

Scoring and winning

Scores will be very scientific, given for appealing photos, interesting stories behind your submissions, creativity, execution and hopefulness.

Just as often, when I think of tea time, come images of old Asian men dressed in undershirts and flip-flops, tall glass mugs of tea sweetened with condensed milk, coconut jam covered toast, fish grilled in banana leaf packets, and meat-filled flatbreads dipped in curry sauce. Intrigued? Let me tell you a story about afternoon tea in Singapore.

Singapore, where I spent most of my junior year of college, gained independence from England only in 1965, and many remnants of British culture remain in this still-young country. This is where I first adopted the ritual of afternoon tea. Afternoon tea in Singapore is incongruous in many ways. First of all, Singapore's tropical heat and humidity could beat the conditions in a wet sauna; I could not understand why anyone would willingly drink cup after cup of nearly boiling tea in that weather. (I later understood the traditional Chinese medicine concept of drinking hot liquids to cool the body.) Second, I already liked my tea English-style -- strong, black tea with milk. I was affronted, horrified, and I'll admit, scornful of what the locals knew as tea. Yes, it was black tea, mellowed with milk. But it was also thickly sweetened with condensed milk and often not brewed fresh, but made from an instant powder.

The tea served at the Raffles Hotel, on the other hand, would certainly be more like in the Motherland, England: refined, delicate and just-so. But I wouldn't know, because I never had the privilege of having a cuppa there.

The story behind this is the tale my husband has heard thousands of times over the last almost 20 years, the one during the telling of which he actually will cover up his ears, even in the company of people we might want to impress, or at least not scare away. But it is a good one, so I will share it with you, my new audience.

I was a student (i.e., poor), I was from a liberal university (i.e., a little bohemian), and it was hot (definitely no stockings for me, regardless of the dress code). I had been living there for at least four months at this point, and while I was no longer dripping sweat constantly, I could not wear the sweaters and tights that the local girls could, as if they were in merry old England. There was a lot of excitement surrounding the grand reopening of the famed Raffles Hotel, which had undergone its first major renovation in the years prior to my arrival. This is the place that invented the Singapore Sling (another too-sweet drink) and the former hangout of Somerset Maugham, in the days when tigers might have still been found roaming the streets of this former jungle. It was the archetype of British colonial architecture and society. As such, "she" was considered a venerable institution, to be respected.

So I combed my hair, which went crazy wild in that humidity, put on a neat outfit of a top and shorts, and excitedly walked inside, where I saw lots of other tourists milling about, in similar or even more casual attire. I gazed at the beautifully restored woodwork, and made my way back toward the famed Long Bar to have a taste of the Singapore Sling, at its birthplace. But I didn't quite make it there. I was stopped by a uniformed employee, who gently directed me outside. "No shorts are allowed. This is an expensive hotel."

"Pardon me?" I asked. "What about all those other people?" I gestured to the long-haired Australians in their board shorts and flip-flops, lounging casually and having a raucous good time.

"They are guests here."

I was embarrassed, but wondered what made me look like someone who could not possibly be a guest at "an expensive hotel." It wasn't my clothing that made me stand out. In fact, I suspected that my welcome was because I didn't stand out-- I looked like a "local."

I discussed the incident back in the hostel's canteen (dorm cafeteria) with my local friends. They immediately and unanimously concluded that it was the customary discrimination against locals, while pandering to Western (appearing) tourists. They shrugged it off, it was such a commonplace occurrence to them. But I was enraged, on my own behalf but also theirs.

I wrote my first ever letter to the editor to the Straits Times, the local/national newspaper (it's a very small country), in which I implied that the hotel had race-based double standards. I kept the clippings from my letter, which I think still emanates heat 20 years later. In it, I concluded, "It reminded me of what the glorious Raffles must have been like in colonial times -- attentive Asian staff catering to every caprice of their esteemed Western guests. Perhaps the newly renovated Raffles hotel should also update her thinking."

Like a harbinger of blog posts gone viral, this letter generated a month of responses. A few sadly sympathized that there were post-colonial attitudes, but the vast majority threw insults at me, someone they had never met or seen. I was called "scruffy and sloppy." The best insult was "Raffles hotel is no place for ...  scruffy or unkempt visitors. For these people, there are lots of coffee houses, beer lounges, karaoke joints and perhaps even hawker centres."

The Sunday Times had a full editorial dedicated to the subject of ... me. And the major tabloid did an investigative report where they sent two journalists, separately, to reenact my actions. One was Caucasian, one was a local Singaporean Chinese. They were both dressed in bike shorts (I would never!), and each went in the lobby, as I had done. In the end, both were thrown out, though the Chinese one by a good 10 minutes earlier. The conclusion was that there was no discrimination. Yes, these were my 15 minutes of infamy.

So, very long story short, this is why I never got to have afternoon tea at the Raffles. I am sure it is lovely.

But for the riffraff like me, I got to drink with the locals. You could wear anything to the kopi tiams, or coffee houses, all over the city. Most people wore flip-flops, T-shirts, shorts, and the older men would wear their uniform of yellowed cotton tank tops, scruffy shorts or pajama pants, and flip-flops. I learned to love the condensed milk sweetened tea. I also enjoyed two other variations, all considered somewhat crass, and favored by recent immigrants or serious local food buffs: teh tarik and teh halia. Teh tarik, Malay for "pulled tea," is the same strong and sweet black tea, but poured from great heights between two cups to create a bubbly froth on top. Teh halia is a potent black tea, again sweetened with condensed milk, offset by a spicy ginger bite, and lightened with the tarik method.

These hearty teas would overpower the frou-frou tea sandwiches that pair well with English teas. Instead of those, you might have kaya toast, thick cut, heavily buttered and spread with this coconut milk-based jam. Or you could have otak-otak, a fish paste grilled in banana leaves. Plain roti paratha (Indian flatbread) or murtabak, a spicy meat filled flatbread served with a curry sauce, make good accompaniments as well.

Any of these teas would make a great hot drink for a cold winter's day, or for a hot (or hot-headed) one in the tropics.

Teh Halia (Ginger tea) (Serves 4)

Black tea, 4-5 teaspoons leaves or 4 teabags
1 inch fresh ginger root, peeled and sliced into quarter-size pieces
4 cups of water
Condensed milk

1. Boil ginger slices in water for at least 10 minutes (the longer your boil it, the stronger the ginger flavor).
2. Add your favorite strong black tea to the ginger/water brew and allow to steep for 5 minutes.
3. Add a few teaspoons of condensed milk to each of 4 teacups or mugs. Strain tea into teacups.
4. "Tarik" the tea by pouring back and forth between a filled and empty cup, until frothy. Enjoy immediately.

Kaya (Coconut Egg Jam)

2 cups of coconut milk (ideally from two fresh coconuts, but canned is more than fine)
10 large eggs
1 1/2 to 2 cups of granulated white sugar, adjusted to taste
1 teaspoon pandan extract (extract of a tropical leaf, added for both fragrance and green color. May be omitted.)

Accompaniments: bread and butter

1. Beat eggs with an electric mixer until just blended.
2. Add in sugar until well combined. Then add in coconut milk and continue mixing until the mixture has a smooth consistency.
3. Pour mixture into a heavy pan, then cook over low heat, stirring constantly until mixture caramelizes and thickens. Take off heat and add pandan extract, if available. (Without pandan extract, the jam will be caramel colored.)
4. Toast thickly cut white or wheat bread. Spread lots of butter on top. Spread kaya on top of butter, and enjoy with teh tarik or teh halia. 

Writing about the weather for a national audience is always a bit of a weird endeavor. It can, of course, be gray-slush freezing where I sit in New York, and flip-flops-and-rum-punch time in Gulf Shores, Ala. But in any event, we'll all be out of the wintry woods soon, and so we propose a final hurrah to the cold weather.

The challenge this week is to heat up your favorite hot drink. Maybe your thing is hot chocolate, pudding-thick. Maybe you like to restore yourself with a spiced, mulled wine. Or maybe you like to get sloshed after the slush with hot toddies. (And has anyone actually tried the Flaming Red Hot Ale? I mean, not that I'm looking forward to getting sued, but ... it's awesome in every way.) Whatever your poison or pleasure, let's get one more steamy round in before it's time to put the mugs away.

Be sure to tag your post: SKC hot drinks

Scoring and winning

Scores will be very scientific, given for appealing photos, interesting stories behind your submissions, creativity, execution and steaminess.

AND NOW, LAST WEEK'S WINNER!

Mamie Chen! For creating Peking Duck Cassoulet, the best kind of "fusion" cuisine, the kind that comes naturally from memory, from travel, and from good old-fashioned making-do. (Recipes for Chinese roast duck cassoulet, duck and tofu soup, and moo shu duck wraps included.)

. . . . . . . . . . . . . .

AND HOW ABOUT A HAND FOR OUR CATEGORY WINNERS?

In the Smoky Butterbeans category:

Bellweather Vance, for a gorgeous memory of her grandmother's friends and a Southern/Latin feast in their honor. (Recipes for smoky butterbeans and rice, sweet potato "tostones," and brown sugar braised kale included.)

In the Pork, Beer and Chilies category:

Beth Fortune, with an awesome pressure-cooked stew that she has yet to try on her ever-honest Korean in-laws. (Recipe for black beans with pork, beer and three chilies included.)

In the Beans for Good Times and Bad category:

Constance Moylan, for a story of raising her children in much posher style than how she grew up and the challenge of teaching them that humble beans are good and noble. (Recipe for a foundational white bean soup included.)

In the Boston Baked Beans category:

Rebecca Farwell, for memories of hiding in trees with a cup of her mother's beans. But these are not her mother's beans. They're better. (Recipe for Boston baked beans with coffee and Cognac included.)

In the Inspired by Cassoulet category:

Kevin Weeks, for his delicious-sounding sausage-and-smoked turkey beans with Mediterranean herbs. Quick recipe note: Don't forget to bring the mixture up to a simmer on the stove before putting it in the oven! (Recipe included.)

In the category of Mexican Pork n' Beans:

Paul Hinrichs, for a serendipitous run-in with a beautiful Mexican bean pot that inspired him to create these luscious pink beans with Mexican herbs. (Recipe for pink beans with roasted ham hocks included.)

In the Cuban-Chinese Black Beans category:

Linda Shiue, for sharing her family's story of the larger tale of the Chinese diaspora, and sharing a feast in honor of her husband's uncle, who set sail from China and landed in Cuba. (Recipes for Cuban black beans, fried plantains and mojitos included.)

In the War Rations category:

HenryR, for combining one can of C rations with another can of C rations and heating them with C-4 plastic explosives. And for reminding me of how very, very easy my life has been.

In the Vegetarian category:

Lynn Schwadchuck, for honoring tradition with her "Beans, beans, the magical fruit" rhyme, and an all-red fiber-fest: red rice, red beans, red cabbage, red beets. OK, so the carrots are orange. It's kind of a nightmare for people who are afraid of healthy food, but having made similar soups myself, I can vouch for the tastiness of such a thing. Seriously. Honest. No kidding. (Recipe for beet and bean soup included.)

In the "Tasteful Jokes About Eating Too Many Beans" category:

Elizabeth Kirby, for a story that does not mince words on the subject of gas. It's only questionably tasteful, but the story of her father's memory is moving. (Recipe for Blue Danube bean soup included.)

In the category of Shelf Life:

Mumbletypeg, for breaking out beans she's been hoarding since Bill Clinton was president. (Recipe for Black Beans for the Apocalypse included.)

In the category of Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know about Garlic:

Fusun Atalay, for writing, well, everything you've ever wanted to know about garlic. (Recipes for Pilâki -- garlicky Turkish beans and potatoes -- and chicken with 40 cloves of garlic included.)

In Memoriam:

Both Jenna Charlton and Trez gave us recipes in honor of loved ones who have gone on. (Recipes for black bean chicken chili and red lentil soup included.)

And finally, in the category of Bean Dessert:

Lucy Mercer, who apparently can't stop thinking about dessert, ever. Last week, we had our first-ever inter-Salon Kitchen Challenge battle, as two contestants rubbed each other's reputations in the dirt while writing about bourbon slushies. But this week, there's a sweeter turn, and Lucy Mercer's entry is the story of a friendship building week after week of Kitchen Challenge entries. Lovely. 

As a first-generation Chinese American, I guess I had a head start in getting exposed to more "interesting" foods. It's something I never realized and appreciated until I was interviewed for our high school French exchange program, when the teachers tried to gauge our cultural sensitivity and asked what I would do if my French host mother served fish one night, with its head still on.

I responded: "Personally, I don't really like the head. But my mom always says it's the best part. So I would make sure to offer the head to the eldest person at the table. Especially the eyes. But if they absolutely insisted, then of course I would eat it." I guess that satisfied them, and soon I boarded a plane with my friends, bound for Toulouse.

I'll never forget my first taste of cassoulet. We were visiting Carcassonne for the day and my friends and I spent most of it trying to identify locations from "Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves." "Oh my God! Kevin Costner probably touched this rock!" Our French teacher took us to a small restaurant for lunch and had us try a regional specialty: cassoulet. Of course, she first had to warn us that there would be duck in the cassoulet, but that we should just try it. Again, I had to wonder what the catch was? We always eat duck at home. In fact, my parents tried to get away with serving duck for Thanksgiving once. But my brother and I are traditionalists when it comes to American holidays, and we quickly pulled the plug on that silliness.

I guess ducks aren't as common in most non-immigrant American households, but offering a legal glass of wine to help wash it down is a way to win over American teenagers. "We love France!" Everyone tried it and most everyone loved it.

There are three regions that claim to make the best cassoulet: Castelnaudary, Toulouse and Carcassonne. Their rivalry is not unlike the New England versus Manhattan clam chowder debate. (New England clam chowder all the way, baby!) I thought long and hard over which cassoulet to make, having an affinity with both Toulouse and Carcassonne. And Castelnaudary just sounds cool. But one day while walking through a local Hong Kong market, I passed a restaurant with roast ducks hanging in the front window, and the decision was pretty much made for me. I would bring home a whole roast duck and make a Chinese roast duck cassoulet.

Serendipitously, there were enough leftover duck parts for bonus recipes. So I present to you my bastardized version of Duck Three Ways: Roasted Duck Cassoulet, Tofu Duck Soup, and Moo Shu Duck Burritos.

Chinese Roast Duck Cassoulet
(adapted from James Peterson's Cassoulet recipe in "Cooking")

4 cups of dried beans -- I used haricot lingots (white kidney beans) because they were the only white beans I could find in my local Hong Kong grocery store and the French packaging seemed promising. But had they been available, I would have preferred to use navy beans.
2 carrots, chopped into 1-inch pieces
1 large onion, cut into 8 large chunks
1 stalk of celery cut into 1/2-inch chunks
Fresh thyme (roughly 1/3 ounce)
Fresh Italian parsley (roughly 2/3 ounce)
Bay leaves (6 leaves)
Leek greens (4 leaves)
1 quart of chicken broth
1 quart of water
1 Chinese roast duck
6 slices of white bread, blended into bread crumbs
1/3 cup of butter, melted

1. Rinse beans. Then cover the beans with 2 inches of water and soak overnight.
2. Make a bouquet garni (bundle of herbs) by wrapping the thyme, parsley and bay leaves inside the leek greens and tying the bundle up with kitchen string.
3. Take the meat and skin off the duck, and reserve. Discard the head and butt, but keep the neck and bones.
4. In a large stockpot, add beans, carrots, onion, celery, the bouquet garni, and duck neck and bones. Pour in enough chicken broth and water (50/50 mix) to cover everything by 3 or 4 inches. There should be no need to add additional seasonings, as the stock and roast duck bones should be salty enough. Bring to a gentle boil, then cover the pot and simmer for 60-90 minutes, until the beans are soft.
5. While the beans are cooking, remove the crusts from the bread and cut the bread into cubes. Place cubes into a food processor and blend into crumbs. Push the crumbs through a fine-mesh strainer. Set aside crumbs. 
6. Shred the duck skin and meat. Reserve 1/3 for the cassoulet. Set aside the remaining 2/3 for the Peking Duck Burrito recipe below. 
7. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Strain the soup into a large saucepan and reserve. Discard the bones and bouquet garni. 
8. Gently mix the 1/3 duck skin and meat into the beans and vegetables, and spread in a large baking dish. Add 2 cups of soup. Sprinkle half the bread crumbs and drizzle half the melted butter over everything. Bake for 30 minutes until the crust turns golden. 
9. Gently fold the crust into the beans. If the beans look dry, add more soup. Sprinkle the remaining bread crumbs and drizzle the remaining butter over everything. Bake for another 30 minutes until the crust turns golden. 

Tofu Duck Soup

Extra soup from the cassoulet recipe
1 bag of fried tofu, or 1 box of hard tofu, cut into cubes
Napa cabbage, cut into 2-inch pieces

1. Add tofu and cabbage into soup. There should be no need for additional seasoning, but add salt if necessary.
2. Bring to a gentle boil and reduce to a simmer. Simmer with pot covered for 30 minutes.

Moo Shu Duck

2 tablespoons of cooking oil
1/2 carrot, shredded
1 stalk of celery, thinly sliced against the fiber
pinch of salt
Remaining shredded duck skin and meat from cassoulet recipe
1 tablespoon of hoisin sauce

1. Heat the oil in a frying pan and stir-fry the carrots until tender. Add the celery and stir-fry until tender. Add a pinch of salt and cook vegetables for another minute or two. 
2. Mix in the shredded duck skin and meat and 1 tablespoon of hoisin sauce. Set aside.

Wrappers

4 cups all-purpose flour
1½ cups boiling water
sesame oil

1. Mound the flour in a mixing bowl and scoop out a well in the middle. Pour the boiling water into the well, then mix vigorously with a fork.
2. Knead the dough on a lightly floured surface until dough is firm.
3. Set aside the dough in a covered bowl at room temperature for 1 hour.
4. Briefly knead the dough again.
5. Pinch off dough and roll into balls roughly the size of golf balls. With lightly oiled hands, flatten the balls into disks about 5 mm thick.
6. Brush the top of the disks with sesame oil. Then place one disk on top of the other, with the oiled sides facing each other. Roll out the dough to be slightly thinner than the thickness of Mexican tortillas.
7. Heat a frying pan, lightly sprayed or brushed with sesame oil. Fry the wrappers on medium heat for 30 seconds on each side.
8. Immediately pull the wrappers apart, making two thin wrappers.
9. Stack the wrappers one on top of another, with the oiled side facing up.

To serve Moo Shu Duck Burritos

Moo shu duck
Chinese roast duck cassoulet
stir-fried green beans, scallions or other vegetables (optional)
hoisin sauce
Peking duck wrappers

1. Spread a teaspoon or two of hoisin sauce on the wrapper. Spoon on desired amount of moo shoo duck, cassoulet beans, and any other vegetables or garnishes. Roll up tightly like a burrito and enjoy! 

After a really big snowfall, to mark the occasion my father would fetch a pan from the pantry and go outside to dip up some fresh stuff with which to make snow ice cream. He was mostly a Texan, so this tradition either came from memories of his hardscrabble Kentucky boyhood, or a WWII stint in North Dakota. I don't know. It was definitely not part of my mother's Minnesota repertoire, and she usually declined the offering. My sister and I were always game, though. Snow ice cream had that magic of being instant and conceivably available in quantities beyond our capacity to eat it.

If you've ever looked up the history of ice cream, you've heard all about the guys running down the Italian mountains to bring snow to Rome for Nero's dessert chef. More likely it was the Chinese or the Persians who invented ice cream. But knowing kids, it's hard not to think that some early Neolithic parent didn't consider what would be better than plain snowballs, and come up with the idea of adding some goat milk and honey. Then there'd come the mix-ins like sumac or candied chick peas.

Snow ice cream hearkens back to those simpler times, before manufacturers figured out how to pump a Macy's parade balloon's worth of air into half a gallon of "real ice cream." (That this opaque air is sold as "real ice cream," I view as another sign of the apocalypse.) The ur-version is not much of a rival for Ben and Jerry, but it's oddly thrilling to eat, veritable manna from heaven, biting back at winter. It's also extremely easy, and it's really, really cheap! What's not to love?

Oh, yeah -- the dirt. Eh. There are worse things than eating dirt.

Ur-Ice Cream Dogpatch

So here is what you do after a good snowfall. You could even make this while sitting in a snowbank with your skis on, if you had brought the few ingredients in your backpack. This is not the kind of food to linger over preparing. Either be prepared to eat with your coat on, or go out to fetch the snow coatless. Whatever, commit to the process at the start. And I should point out here that the archetypically Vermont snow concoction, "sugar (i.e., maple syrup) on snow," does not involve eating the snow.

2 heaping cups snow, freshly laid and fluffy
1/2 cup milk, any kind, but skim is a good complement to the essence of snow. Cream would be excessive.
2 tablespoons of white cane granulated sugar. No point getting fancy here.
Vanilla, to taste. Real vanilla. If you don't have any, you might as well stick with plain snow.

1. Inside, mix up the milk, sugar and a dash of vanilla in a small bowl. Double the quantities if you plan to share. Have serving bowls and spoons out within reach.
2. Take a pan with a handle outside and scoop up your snow of choice. (If you're sharing with the dogs, or someone else, you need a quart for those doubled ingredients, of course.) If you want to be precious, you could chill the pan in the freezer first. Or, if it's snowing hard, you could leave it outside and wait for it to fill up.
3. Bring the pan of snow inside and rapidly stir in the milk-sugar-vanilla mixture. The snow will start to melt when hit with the milk, but if you work fast, a recognizable, if primitive, version of ice cream will result.
4. Dump in bowls and eat immediately, in your coat and boots, probably standing up, while contemplating your ancestral foodways, global warming, Snowflake Bentley and the transformative power of vanilla. 

One of my warmest memories was at the house of a stranger, eating beans. I was living on the Mississippi Coast for post-Katrina work, and I knew exactly one person -- whom I'd met exactly once before -- within a 600-mile radius. She brought me to a friend's in New Orleans, the home of the excellently named Pableaux Johnson, a true Cajun-in-the-City who'd been holding a standing Monday night dinner party of red beans and rice for years. Made with the andouille and hot smoked sausages of his people, splashed with shakes of Crystal hot sauce, the beans glowed with pepper. And yet, to a stranger to this beautiful, wrecked world, sitting around the table Pableaux inherited from his grandmother, making fast friends with my fellow communion-takers, it was his feeling of welcome that warmed me.

So this week, in tribute to my friend and his red beans and rice, let's hear your stories and recipes for your favorite bean stews and soups.

Be sure to tag your post: SKC bean stews

Scoring and winning

Scores will be very scientific, given for appealing photos, interesting stories behind your submissions, creativity, execution and only the most tasteful jokes about eating too many beans.

AND NOW, LAST WEEK'S WINNER!

M.L. Cook! For a wonderful story of the origin of ice cream, the ur-ice cream, if you will, made of snow and eaten in your boots and mittens. (Recipe for snow ice cream included.)

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A SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:

This week marked our very first inter-Salon Kitchen Challenge challenge! A vicious, internecine Bourbon Slushie Beatdown between Iamsurly and 1_irritated_mother! These bloggers battled each other with booze, ice and untoward remarks about each other's intelligence and sexuality. Surly had an early advantage with a glove-handed slap, but then Mother came back with lemons "zested on the teeth of orphans and baby chicks." It's getting brutal over there! Who will win? You be the judge! (Recipes for Bourbon-tea slushies included.)

AND HOW ABOUT A HAND FOR OUR CATEGORY WINNERS?

In the Recipes in the Real World Category:

Sueinaz, for a hilarious account of what a simple, 2-step lemon sorbet recipe looks like in her kitchen. "I missed out on the whole coke fad in the '80s, for some crazy reason 1/8 of a teaspoon is the smallest measure in my kitchen. Eyeball what may be 3/4 of the 1/8 teaspoon of xanthan gum. Hope for the best." (Wait a minute, is she making fun of me?) (Recipe for lemon sorbet included.)

In the NOM NOM, Must Eat Now category:

Lucy Mercer for an amazing sounding dessert tribute to the Jamaican bobsled team of old. (Recipe for Coconut-roasted banana ice cream baked Alaska included.)

Linda Shiue, too, for another dessert tribute to the Jamaican bobsled team (how they captured our hearts!) and a memory of discovering the Jamaica that exists beyond resort gates. (Recipe for Guinness ice cream included.)

In the category of the Great Northland:

JK Brady, for representing Canada and explaining the charms of winter sports. And if words won't do it for you, she's enticing you with Champagne sorbet (though, if I may nitpick, her recipe more closely resembles a granité than a smooth sorbet). (Recipe included.)

In the category of Density:

Gianfalco! Well, his entry wasn't dense, but I fear I am. Can anyone explain his cartoon to me?

And in the Parenting Advice category:

Mamie Chen, for a brilliant way to keep kids occupied: have them kick around an ice cream maker shaped like a soccer ball. "After two minutes, the kids got bored and ran off to fight over the [real] soccer ball, and I was stuck shaking the [ice cream] ball by myself for the next 20 minutes." OK, so maybe the plans looked better on paper.