• It's spring, and time for salads.
• The bread basket: good or bad?
• Restaurant reviews: Mulan and MKT.
• This Vermont company is making soy milk, tofu, and other alternative dairy products.
• Maple syrup: the first crop of spring in Maine.
• This week's recipes: Vegetable Cutlets, Fromage, Tuna Noodle Casserole, Baked Fennel and Tomato Casserole, Coleslaw, Maple Baked Beans, Lemon-Walnut Loaf Cake, and Nonna Santopietro's Cookies.

• This week, we not only find out which store-bought marinara sauce is the best, but we also find out just what the hell that is in the picture on the right (at first I thought it was something from Lileks' Gallery of Regrettable Food, but maybe that's too harsh).
• Don't freak out about what to make for dinner. How about a stew or casserole in a big, cast-iron pot?
• Mmmmm...marinara sauce.
• Who makes the best moussaka?
• A frat boy's wet dream: beer...coming out of faucets!
• Ask the cook: should you rinse your pasta with cold water after you cook it? (Scroll down)

I've decided to finally approach my fears head-on and make cassoulet. I've searched high and low for a good recipe and found a couple of great blueprints. I linked to this extremely detailed post on cassoulet when I spoke of it before, and I'm printing it out to use as a guide through my adventure.

Before you can make cassoulet, you have to decide how you're going to handle the meats. Most cassoulets are centered around duck, and use several parts of the bird. A classic rendition has the chef roasting the duck, rendering the fat, and making a 'confit' of the leg and a demiglace (French for stock) of the carcass. What's more, after all that, you have to select which other meats to include.

I made a critical decision when faced with my favorite butcher's meat counter and decided to buy duck confit already made. Brilliant no? It's pictured here. I also decided to go without the authentic duck stock and just buy storebought chicken broth. Hey, I don't have 48 hours to make this thing. I need cassoulet to be easy, or it's not happening.

Want to cook this live with me tonight? You'll have to head to the market. Here's what you'll need:

Tuna casserole is, likely, the ultimate in American food. It's not hamburgers, no, it's not meatloaf, and it's definitely not apple pie. The French invented apple pie, after all, and the Viennese probably developed the precursor to meatloaf. They eat hamburgers everywhere.

But tuna, mixed with noodles, cheese and one of a variety of canned or frozen vegetables: that's got to be America's very own. Tuna casserole is to America what cassoulet is to the French: every homey cook has her own recipe, one of endless variations on a common theme (a blueprint, if you will).

Every tuna casserole has one thing in common: tuna. Let's say, for the sake of argument, two cans of the stuff - that's 12 ounces, or 1 1/2 cups, or about 350g. And let's say every casserole is cooked in a three-quart casserole dish, in a 400F oven for 25 minutes. For most of these recipes, you can basically follow my aforementioned tuna casserole blueprint; I'll point out differences in procedure along the way.

I'm going head to head these days with some of the uber-popular, uber-convenient packaged foods out there, just to see how well they compare with the homemade originals. Yesterday I tried beef stew in a therapeutic attempt to overcome my childhood spent with Dinty Moore. Today, it's a meaty cheesy noodle casserole. Will it do better than than Hamburger Helper to help her hamburger make a great meal?!

Yes, homemade did a bazillion times better.

It's not that it was much different in appearance, but the difference comes from the quality of the ingredients. Unless you're making it from scratch or buying super-premium pasta, the noodles are about the same. However, there is a big difference when you make a meat-based tomato sauce from scratch and add your own hand-shredded cheese.

As someone who wasn't around for the 1950s, I have to ask, is this what it was like?

I recently stumbled upon Plan59, "the museum (and gift shop) of mid-century illustration." While Plan59 has all manner of illustrations and advertisements from the 1950s, what really drew me in was the Gallery of Demonic Tots and Deeply Disturbing Cuisine. That's where I found the charming young lady you see here. I thought of including a different illustration, but I didn't want to freak anyone out too much right off the bat. Personally, I think these images are great (they sort of have an eerie, Loretta Lux quality). However, I don't know what the original advertisers were thinking. I don't have kids, but I don't think I'd ever want them to feel the frenzied, lock-jawed type of glee this little girl seems to be experiencing. Especially not over a loaf of bread or a can of beans.

Oh, and if the kids are too much for you, there are ads with just pictures of food. Truth be told, these no less disturbing (ok, maybe a little less). But really, the Velveeta Golden Glory Casserole? It appears to be a bowl of mac and cheese, topped with hard boiled eggs and more Velveeta, all ringed by some less than ideal tomatoes. Oh, and remember, keep the box of Velveeta on the table for good measure.

What exactly is a casserole?

It is a slowly cooked mixture of a number of foods, often including meats and vegetables. Pies both sweet and savory are the forerunners of the modern casserole. The word casserole comes from a French term meaning "served in the dish used for cooking."  While this does describe the modern casserole, it is much too broad a definition. Today, many meals are served in the same dish they are cooked in, from soups to baked and roasted chicken. To really pinpoint what defines a casserole, a more specific description is needed.

Cakes and other "baked goods" must be excluded, though they can be baked and served from casserole dishes. Cakes and brownies do not maintain the distinction of their various ingredients as they cook; they change to result in a wholly new product.

Dishes like tuna noodle casserole and lasagna are classic and familiar examples of casseroles. They both contain a mixture of ingredients baked together and are served straight out of the baking dish. The ingredients do not meld together in any significant way, remaining mixed, yet separate. Both dishes also hold their shape fairly well when cut, so many think of casseroles as having a high degree of  sliceability.

When I was focusing on slow cooking last week, I picked up a couple of 1950s and 1960s cookbooks. Immediately all we could talk about on the Slashfood chatline was retro cookery, casseroles, and fifties recipes. We were tittering about "Oriental cookery" and the overuse of canned, condensed soups. We were waxing eloquent about tuna casserole. (Well, I was waxing eloquent about tuna.)

Tuesday, then, we'll be taking you back to the 1940s, 50s and 60s. We'll be making tuna casseroles 20 ways. We'll discuss MSG - then a miracle ingredient called for in nearly every cookbook - and we'll reprise our favorite meatloaf and macaroni & cheese recipes.

We'll take you through a few more vintage cookbooks, we'll explore the wonders of 50s-style Chop Suey, we'll delight in frozen peas & carrots, we'll put "hidden surprises" in everything we can. We'll bring you back 50 years to the era where "housewife" was a designation of pride and little boys wore sailor suits. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have Chicken Pie De Luxe to start baking...

I think I may have finally cured my family of the green bean casserole.

Every year I try to introduce new dishes to my family's Holiday dinner tables in order to get replace some of the ones that I *ahem* hate. Okay, so I don't hate creamed corn, and mashed potatoes aren't terrible; it's just that we have the exact same thing every effin' year, and the dishes that we could "jazz up" into Parmesan and Roasted Garlic Smashed Potatoes or Cornbread and Sausage Stuffing, are rejected the next year for the boring, plain traditional ones. The one I hate the most is the ultimate poster child of the Food Network show Unwrapped - green bean casserole. It's made from frozen vegetables, canned soup, and pull top canister onions.

But this year, I blanched fresh green beans for a few minutes, wrapped them in bacon, and roasted them at 350 for 15 minutes, a la Paula Deen. They were awesome. Not a single one left. My sister made them the next day for her party, too.

We'll see if the green bean casserole makes it to the table next year.