Oh, hot peppers -- they've created a big divide between those who love a little spice in their food, and those who recoil at the littlest bit of tongue sass. Michael Ruhlman is, no surprise, in the former category. He just put up a great blog about the lovely spice of peppers, and said, quite aptly: "These fruity, spicy wonders make life better in so many ways." Indeed! Now if only I could get my friends on board so that I don't get looks of startled pain when I throw a little bit of spice in. (Says the girl who can only handle a strong medium heat herself, but she's learning.)

Anyway, the post holds one little bit of knowledge that makes me wish I had The Elements of Cooking a few years ago: "The heat in chillis (capsaicin) resides in the white flesh to which the seeds are attached..." See, a few years ago, during the height of cheap tomato season, I prepared to make a lot of salsa. So, I sat myself down and prepared a slew of jalapenos to go in the mix -- and I stupidly cleaned out the insides with my fingernails.

I washed my hands a few times, but once that juice gets under the nails ... searing pain! Imagine putting your hand in an oven or fire and feeling it burn, but your skin staying in tact -- for a good twelve hours. So, my friends, it might be easier to scrape out the insides with your fingers, but it's so very worth it to use a knife.

The only vegetables you really need for chili are onions and garlic for flavor, jalapenos for heat, and of course canned tomatoes to create the "gravy." However, I know that people like to add other vegetables either because they like particular vegetables, or they're trying to sneak some nutrition into their friends' and family's diets. Naturally, if you're making a vegetarian chili, additional vegetables like celery, carrots, and bell pepper make sense, but in a beef chili, why would you add carrots? Why?! You aren't fooling anyone.

Adding Vegetables to the Chili
To the oil that's left in the pan you used to brown the meat, add 2 chopped medium onions, ½ to 1 whole head of smashed garlic cloves (depending on how much garlic you like), and 5-7 chopped fresh jalapenos. If you are adding other chopped vegetables, add them here, too. Cook for about 10 minutes to soften, then add to the beef in the crock.

Add 1 28 oz. can of whole tomatoes with the juice, crushing the tomatoes with your hands as you add them to the pot. Also add 3 cups of beef stock.

As you know, there is an enduring battle at breakfast time for me between Savory and Sweet. For almost all of my life, I've loved sweet breakfast foods, whether that was cold cereal in the form of Cinnamon Toast Crunch or Belgian waffle with sweetened fruit and whipped cream. However, savory has taken the lead in recent years, and it's everything I can do to keep myself from ordering the same egg white, vegetable, and cheese omelet.

Food blog What Did You Eat has put a break in the battle, if at least for one morning. Jalapeno Corn pancakes (a recipe from Ask.com) look like normal pancakes, and with a small amount of sugar in the recipe that "lends a subtle sweetness to the pancakes," may even taste like regular pancakes, but the addition of masa flour and jalapenos, makes these all kinds of spicy and savory. You could eat them as is (I don't think I'd add any syrup), or do like Sher did and throw a fried egg on top!

Way back last October I had the distinct privilege of attending a taping of Iron Chef America with my fellow blogger, Jonathan. The challenger that day in Kitchen Stadium was cowboy chef, Tim Love. This was well before Chef Love was ridden out of Manhattan on a rail out after a wave of negative reviews of his restaurant, Lonesome Dove. Frank Bruni slammed the New York City outpost of Chef Love's much acclaimed restaurant in Fort Worth. The Brunster didn't even dole out any stars. He was reduced to a kindergarten sort of rating system, citing the Dove as "satisfactory."

In the interest of fairness, I must admit that I never ate any of the dishes such as "bony, dry antelope ribs," which caused my man Frank such dismay. I did, however, get to sample the Prairie Butter, which caused the Village Voice's Sietsema to wax rhapsodic. After what seemed like an eternity watching the taping, this signature appetizer proved quite the pick-me-up when Jonathan and I chowed down on it afterwards at Lonesome Dove. The jalapeño margarita and ice-cold shot of Tuaca, and Italian liqueur flavored with vanilla and citrus, also helped shake off the fatigue and the remnants of a raging hangover. I'm not quite sure what Tuaca has to do with cowboy cuisine, but Love seems to like it quite a bit. And just what is Prairie Butter? Well let's just say that any cowboy who gets city folk to belly up to the bar and chow down on split buffalo femurs and the gloriously greasy marrow therein can't be all bad.

But enough of the trials and tribulations of the New York City restaurant scene, as they say in Kitchen Stadium, "Allez cuisine!" By now you're probably wondering why this is being written so far after the actual battle took place. Two reasons: It just aired last week, and more important, due to ICA's strict privacy restrictions no one can reveal the secret ingredient or winner of the battle until after the episode airs. So if you haven't seen Morimoto vs. Love, I advise you not to read the jump.

Do you have a specialty pan at home? It could be something as simple as a specialized bundt cake mold or a bit more unusual, such as an aebleskiver pan. These pans all have fairly limited uses, but if you use them often enough, it's worth the extra cabinet space to save time in the long run.

Some pans, however, might take the specialty concept a bit too far. The Jesus pan might be a good example, except you can still use it for many different kinds of food. This pepper griddle, on the other hand, is made from cast-iron and has eight pepper-shaped indentations that are "recessed to evenly blister the Jalapeno pepper halves." It can be used to make stuffed peppers, and little else.

Stuffed peppers are good, but do you really need a pan dedicated to making them? If so, they're only $15.95 each.