To make these, I followed the basic scone recipe from Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything. I added a tablespoon of chipotle pepper, half a cup of sliced almonds, about a cup of queso fresco, and a teaspoon and change of Mexican vanilla. The result was lighter than expected and just spicy enough, with the cheese fairly blended in but still tempering the chipotle.

The event I attended was — as the photograph above suggests — a look at assorted bars and clubs across nearly seventy years of film. Nora Maynard covered a series of films, ranging from Laura to Almost Famous, with four cocktails to be consumed over the course of the afternoon. (Two came pre-made; two were assembled in the space.) It was a very enjoyable way to spend ninety minutes, and it reminded me that I really, really need to watch Hannah and Her Sisters.

After the course, we headed into the main space, in which assorted spirits companies had bars set up at which cocktails could be made. It was there that I tried the drink pictured below, made with vodka, grapefruit and lemon juice, and topped with freshly-ground salt and pepper. Which was not something I’d have previously thought to put into a drink, but which worked remarkably well.

I found a restaurant called the Boiling Pot on Sixth Street, sat down, and ordered a large meal in which crawfish were in fact the primary ingredient. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the slightest idea of how to eat them: were the shells removed, like the lobsters that they somewhat resembled, or left on? I glanced around as best I could, hoping to get some indication of how to proceed from diners at adjacent tables. I felt like an interloper into Cajun cuisine, and it was that unease that kept me from doing the obvious and logical thing — which is to say, flagging down one of the servers and saying. “Look, how exactly do I eat these?� I feared a public shaming, basically.

I haven’t tried my hand at crawfish-eating since then — I was tempted later that same year, while on vacation in Helsinki, but quickly learned that an inexpensive food in the southern US is, as it turns out, a luxury dish in northern Europe.

On a walk through Hell’s Kitchen after work today, though, I came across The Delta Grill; on a chalkboard outside, a crawfish boil was advertised. Perhaps it’s finally time to see what they taste like sans shells.

Subsequently, I’ve been craving liège waffles pretty fiercely. Specifically, though, I’ve been craving Off the Waffle’s particular ability to do interesting things with the savory/sweet divide. New York has the Wafels and Dinges truck, but from what I’ve seen, their wares generally fall mainly on the sweet side of the spectrum. I suppose what I’m looking for is some sort of waffle equivalent to Greenpoint’s Paulie Gee’s — which I realize is an unlikely combination. Still, it’s a big city out there, and one where the food options never fail to surprise.

• Warren Ellis on the hyper-concentrated coffee known as The Black Blood of the Earth.
• Scott Gold on the meat and butcher shops of North Brooklyn.

Two: In which the esteemed Scott Gold talks whiskey. (Technically not “writing on writing,” I’ll admit, but close enough.)

Two: Also returning: Kat Bakes, with a post about weddings, cakes, and their union.

Three: Shla Scanlon — whose serialized novel I really need to start reading — profiles the Seattle band ULGM for The Rumpus. I’m presently listening to the songs on their myspace page, and I like what I hear so far — notably, how there’s just a slight Dead Kennedys-esque air of menace to the vocals that contrasts nicely with the restraint of the music.

Four: Also being listened to around these parts a lot lately: 24-Carat Black’s Gone: The Promise of Yesterday, “I Want to Make Up” in particular.

*-this is in no way a technical term.

Kat Bakes, which concerns itself with, well, baking;

The Internet Food Association, in which a number of political and cultural essayists shift gears to the preparation of food;

Table Matters, a relatively new general survey of all aspects of food, which includes a regular column from Scott Gold.

Less successful may have been my attempts at a side dish: here, a hastily conceived/improvised red lentil soup. Other things I now realize: that’s a lot of legumes. But I somehow didn’t glean, until I sat down to eat, the extreme similarities between the central ingredients of the two dishes I was making. (I would now make some sort of clever comment, possibly using wordplay to reference the word “legume”, but I don’t thing it’s actually possible.)