Tag: recipe

BOREALIS

Well, this stock that I’ve written about for so many years – that is surely going to zero, but I own a ton of it – has lately been trading just under $6, giving the entire enterprise a market cap of $30 million. (Five million shares at $6 each.)

Its symbol is BOREF, and if you think it is lightly traded, you should see the stock of its ‘publicly traded’ subsidiaries. They barely ever trade at all.

Each Borealis share represents ownership of approximately one share of: CHOMF (Chorus Motors, last reported trade at $6) . . . COLCF (Cool Chips, last reported trade at $10) . . . PWCHF (Power Chips, last reported trade at $6) . . . and RCHBF (Roche Bay, last reported trade at $7). So each $6 Borealis share supposedly represents about $29 worth of its subsidiaries.

This is not for an instant to declare that the market prices of the subsidiaries mean a lot. Their true value is either zero (which I have to assume) or many times the current prices (which is my dream). Only time will tell whether any of this is real. But I’d rather own $29 ‘worth’ of the subsidiaries for $6 than for $29.

SPEAKING OF NUTTY STOCKS

Steve: ‘Actually, the price of SVNX never reached $2400, it reached $240. The quotes you’re getting are inflated by an adjustment for a 1-for-10 reverse split last year. But the 99.9% percentage loss is correct, as an unadjusted original share would now fetch only about 30 cents, down from $240.’

MY SUMMER CORN RECIPE FOR GUYS ON THE GO

It has been a while since I’ve shared a recipe from my work in progress, Cooking Like a Guy™ (remember to slam your open palm on the table for manly emphasis as you say it). So, with summer in the air, here’s one:

Quick Corn:
1. Buy some really nice young sweet corn.
2. Shuck.
3. Serve.

I know this would seem to skip the “cook and slather in butter and salt” steps, which if you have time I would encourage you to take. But I have discovered, at considerable personal risk to myself by trying it out for you, that if you’re in a hurry, this works fine. Tasty, crunchy, with no untoward aftereffects.

“Corn Aldente” I call it.

“Eating Like a Rodent,” my partner calls it.

To each his own.

Just try to avoid the little poison pellets roommates may leave out for you around the baseboard.

SPEAKING OF FRESH CORN

James Redekop: “We use an online grocery delivery company up here in Toronto called Grocery Gateway. Just thinking about Karen Collins’ complaint about the waste of boxes: Grocery Gateway will take the boxes from a delivery back on the next delivery, to reuse (or recycle if they’re wearing out). Very efficient.”

JOGGING AROUND THE GREEN ZONE

Click here for a really interesting Iraqi-American’s account.

SALTED GRAPEFRUIT

Mark Kennet: ‘You might also try salt plus chili powder on slightly under-ripe mangos. That’s how they eat them in Thailand, and it’s really surprisingly good! Here in Peru, I’m so happy to have a zillion different types of fresh fruit every day that I don’t bother to put anything on it – I can’t imagine anything improving a cherimoya.’

John Calkins: ‘Your “Grapefruit” column described exorbitant room service charges at a four-star Beverly Hills hotel, while “Pressing Matters” states that the grapefruit in question was delivered to your hotel room in San Francisco. Jet lag, perhaps, or did you inhale too much steam in Des Moines?’

☞ Oops.

EXECUTIVE COMPENSATION

Tim Bonham: ‘Have you seen ecomponline.com? It uses SEC reports to give you the compensation of the top executives of companies. Very interesting. Looking up ones like Enron, etc. can be infuriating! I just wish they had included a line at the bottom giving the total reported profit (or loss) for the company for that year.’

☞ Neat.

YOU CAN CUT/PASTE FROM MYM12 IN WIN ’98 OR XP!

Michael Rutkaus: ‘For XP Home: Click over little icon at upper left of MYM12 Screen in XP. Select Edit. Now you can mark (you do this to select what to copy) cut, paste almost like in Windows. You also have a better Find than in MYM12. Also if you don’t have the nice MYM12 Icon on your Windows XP desktop, but have a DOS looking icon, you can right click on that, select Program, then select change icon and then Browse in the MYM12 folder to find the icon. For Win98/Me and even Win95, the key, running it inside a window, not ‘full screen.’ (Right-click on the MYM icon on your desktop and select Properties and then Screen. Then tell Windows you want to run MYM in a window, and that you want to Display Toolbar. Next time you start MYM12 it will have a modicum of a toolbar at the top.’

☞ Now they tell me.

VARIABLE UNIVERSAL LIFE INSURANCE

Steven: ‘An advisor wants me to buy a low load, commission-free VUL. What do you think of this product?’

☞ If there’s a load, low as it may be, how can there be no commission? If you mean he/she gets absolutely no commission for recommending this product, that would be a reason at least to listen. But do you need life insurance? (From Steven’s e-mail address, I’m guessing he may not.) If not, don’t buy. And even if you do, why not buy inexpensive term life insurance, that’s easy to shop for, and do your stock market investing separately (and/or use the money to fund a Roth IRA)?

WEEKEND READING FROM GEORGE SOROS

Click here.

Gary Hidden: ‘As a 63-year-old retiree with all retirement savings in fixed income investments, I continue to have serious doubts about the wisdom of my ultra conservative approach since you as well as all the other investment gurus advise a more balanced approach with up to 70% of investments in equities. At 63, is it really too late to start as you say on the last page of your book or should I switch some assets from fixed income to equities at this late date?‘

☞ I wouldn’t rush to switch now. Nor would I have too much of my money in low-yielding long-term fixed income investments, because I fear interest rates may rise. But if/when the market is really scary low – and to me, 10,000 on the Dow is not scary low – you should consider putting some money into index funds. Or how about this? Embark, now, on a program of putting, say, 1% a month, or maybe just 2% a quarter, into a couple of the funds recommended at the back of my book. After three or four years, by which time you’ll have 30% or 40% of your assets in the market, stop. If the market has gone up significantly, you’ll be glad you at least did this much. If it has gone down a lot, you’ll be glad you didn’t do it all at once. And eventually it will come back to where you started and you’ll have a lightly-taxed profit.

There’s nothing like sleeping well. So keep a good chunk of your money safe, especially now when stocks pay such low dividends and tend to sell, still, at high valuations. (This is one of the reasons that – for tax-sheltered retirement money only – I put a chunk of my own funds into TIPS.)

Then again, if you’re not a smoker and you lead a relatively happy, healthy life, your life expectancy is another 20 or 22 years. And each year, it gets a little longer. If you do make it to 85 and haven’t taken up any wild or wicked ways, your life expectancy will then be 7 or 8 more years, to 93. And at 93, it will be longer still. My God, Gary, you could be . . . The First Immortal! So don’t be too short-sighted in your investment horizon, either.

MATH QUIZ

If you lost 1% of your money every month, how much would you have left after 100 months?
(Math Quiz Answer: about 37% of what you started with.)

EVERY CARROT’S FAVORITE

Robert M. Youngman, II: ‘If you like carrot juice, try this: 12 ounces chilled carrot juice and two ounces chilled vodka. In college, we called it a Bugs Bunny.’

Coming Soon: The Wisdom of Dick Davis!

For centuries, people have been trying to produce the perpetual motion machine, or the nuclear fusion process that will produce more fuel than it consumes.

Well, last night Charles and I pulled off the holiday equivalent. We had a small throng over (small because we sort of forgot to invite anyone, and only our most clairvoyant friends and family members showed up), and we received more alcohol than we served. Bottles of wine, beautifully boxed bottles of champagne, a bottle of 20-year-old Port, a bottle of bourbon – are you hearing me? This is the Holy Grail of party-giving. The party that pays for itself – and then some.

So, in the first place, I wanted to share some of that good cheer and wish you a very merry Christmas.

I’d also like to point out that the days are getting longer – have you noticed that? Well, they are. (Still 24 hours, but you know what I mean.) Can Spring be far behind?

But what I’d really like to do is extend this notion of produces-more-than-it-consumes to your own life, by calling to your attention Campbell’s Select 18.6-ounce can of ready-to-serve CHICKEN WITH EGG NOODLES soup in the convenient pop-top can.

It is, quite possibly, the perfect food.

* In the first place, for those of you under the weather, it is chicken soup. Need I say more?

* For those of you concerned with convenience, it is prepared thus:

1. Pop top.
2. Pour into bowl.
3. Microwave a minute or two.
4. Drink. (Or eat, but that requires a utensil.)

In the summer, you could just drink it cold, skipping steps #2 and #3. (In any season, some cracked pepper and coarse salt add zest, though this will kick the sodium content up even with Utah’s largest lake.)

* For those of you concerned with diet, other than the sodium, you’re talking just 200 calories and 5 grams of fat in the whole 18.6 ounce can. Only Roasted White Meat is used in this soup – and ‘50% more chicken*’ (‘*than our previous formula’ reads the explanatory footnote – leaving me, I will admit it, just a tiny bit wary, as I prefer foods that result from recipes to foods that result from formulas).

Will you gain weight drinking this soup? Yes. About 18 ounces. But not for long.

* For those of you concerned with economy – and here’s the beauty part – the soup cost us $2.59, but peel off the label and you are left with a handsome ribbed canister that would surely fetch $3 on eBay or at the Pottery barn if attractively photographed and imaginatively merchandised. A pencil holder! A can to drop your spare change into (or other’s spare change if you’ve been downsized). Cans to fill with dirt with votive candles pressed into the top – use them to line your walk for parties. Cans to weld together into a sculpture or a small shiny dwelling.

Everyone’s so focused on the soup, they miss the hidden asset – Campbell’s doesn’t even brag on it – and it makes all the difference in the world. You paid $2.59, you got the soup, the chicken, the 50% extra chicken, and an attractive $3 multi-purpose art deco canister. It’s as if they paid you 41 cents to have lunch.

‘I’ll take the floor covering,’ writes Jack (who asks that his last name not be used). ‘You write: ‘But relatively few folks are delivering mail, trimming hedges, or clerking at Home Depot one decade, piloting their own jet the next. And relatively few doctors’ daughters become hotel maids – at least not for more than a summer on the Cape.’ Well, if people haven’t moved up the income ladder, it’s their fault. There IS an even playing field in this country. People choose for themselves how far they go. I grew up in a lower income neighborhood in Brooklyn (my father worked in a movie theater, my mother was a store clerk). I finished high school at night, and college at night, working during the day as a stock boy at Macy’s (today’s equivalent of the Home Depot job you mention). I paid for college out of my paltry earnings. The people I worked with during the day back in the mid-sixties complained about not getting ahead, but they didn’t take advantage of the even playing field that lay before them (i.e., they never bothered to acquire skills that would enable them to get somewhere beyond where they were). Today, 35 years after graduating from college, I own a business that employs 45 mostly low skill-level people, who, like the people I left behind 35 years ago, complain, as you do, that the government is not doing enough for them, but too much for the rich. Every night as I drive home to my house in an upscale suburb in my luxury imported car, I hear people like you on the radio talk about the lack of a fair playing field. Too much being done for the rich? Not enough for the underprivileged? The song of the lazy and unenterprising, aided and abetted by social engineers. By the way, don’t print my name. I write this not to boast of my success – for there are thousands, no, tens of thousands, of my generation who started with nothing and ended up just fine, without the government doing ANYTHING for them. Let the church and other social engineers complain about poverty. In this country, people don’t-get-ahead by choice.’

☞ Sounds good, if a little tough-minded. But a couple of points, Jack. Is it possible you did get some government help? For example, did you pay for your K-12 schooling, or did the government? And did you pay the full cost of college, or was your tuition subsidized? (At many state schools, ‘full tuition’ does not cover the full cost.) But leave that aside, and anything else I may have left out (was there a minimum wage that kept your Macy’s pay a little less paltry than it otherwise might have been?).

Answer me this (as they say): Do we want people to trim hedges and change sheets in hotels and hospitals and so forth? I think we do. And if so, do we want them and their kids living decently? Or is it OK if they live as the really, really poor in some Third World countries do? If you answer ‘decently,’ then the laws of supply and demand may not be enough. The minimum wage and the earned income credit and unemployment insurance and Medicare may be the kinds of things needed to help the folks who do those jobs for us. Even then, working 60 hours a week at the minimum wage brings you just $15,000 a year, which isn’t much to raise a family. And if one of the parents has abandoned the family, the wage earner must also provide domestic services. Maybe it’s the parents’ fault – but is it the kids’ fault? Should poor people pay as much in tax as rich people? If not, where do you draw the line? What balance do you strike? I’ve been arguing that the balance we had during Clinton/Gore worked awfully well, even for the rich and powerful; and that we’ve made a huge mistake by shifting it even further in their favor.

Jim Batterson: ‘I agree completely that the recent shifts and proposed shifts in tax law are foolish in the advantages that they afford the super-rich, and I strongly support a hefty estate tax and a progressive tax structure. The AMT corporate refunds are obscene.

‘But it is also fair to observe why it is that there is no revolution taking place in America over this issue. I am not quite as old as you, but I have traveled and lived in third-world countries, and do have recollections of the 1950s. Something is true in the United States that has never been true before, not here, not anywhere else in the world. Skilled tradesmen – auto mechanics, plumbers, carpenters, roofers, painters, electricians, factory workers, guys who do heating and air conditioning and construction and a thousand other jobs that require training but not a college education – jobs that 50 years ago we hoped our children would ‘do better than’ – these people all own, or can own, nice cars, pickup trucks or SUVs, bass boats, comfortable houses, entertainment centers with big-screen TV’s, VCRs, TIVO, good sound systems, cell phones, computers, internet access, summer cabins, you name it.

‘Explain to someone in China or even Japan that in the United States, carpenters and plumbers live in 1800-square-foot houses and drive SUVs, and there will be nothing but disbelief. When you look at the country as a whole, you should not see an upper class and a lower class. The dominant theme of our times is an enormous middle class with a very high standard of living.’

☞ Well said. About the only guy who can easily afford to call a plumber these days is an electrician.

OYSTERS – PART 3

Mark Harris: ‘Like you, I love Oysters, and they can be found on many of our nearby shores. In this area (and many others) bivalves become infected with Paralytic Shellfish Poisen (PSP) when the dreaded “ride tide” arrives (often June, July, or Aug). However, it’s important to know that PSP is NOT destroyed by cooking – raw or cooked, if they got it – you’ll get it. Here’s what you do: Eat a tiny (dime sized) chunk of oyster. Wait about 30 minutes. If your lips feel like you’ve gotten a shot of novacaine (i.e. they tingle), throw away the rest of the oysters. Otherwise, eat more – but remember PSP is only ONE of the several different deadly fallouts from eating oysters (actually on most of our Washington/Canadian seashores near population centers the fish and game guys have erected bivalve harvesting prohibited signs due to sewage contamination.’

☞ Bon appetite.

Steve Gilbert: ‘What’s this compulsive ‘fork‘ behavior all about? You wash forks every time you use them? I don’t think that a REAL GUY would be so picky. I mean, if you’re already eating something that might kill you, why worry about the next guy who’s going to use the fork? I’d at least wait a few hours to see if the oysters were fatal before I’d bother washing the fork.’

☞ Point taken.

Mike Koltak: ‘For recipe #1, I would add a shot of vodka. Dip the oysters into the vodka before dipping them into the cocktail sauce, or add vodka to the sauce. It is supposed to help kill the bacteria – probably not true but it is a good excuse to have a nip and it does taste great.’

☞ So that’s why they call it cocktail sauce. Who knew?

Alan Caroe, M.D.: ‘Cholera (epidemic diarrhea caused by Vibrio cholerea bacteria) is the disease most closely associated with raw oyster consumption. Death from this infection is uncommon (less than 1 in 100) if adequate nursing and oral rehydration is provided. (Chicken soup and Gatorade, in sufficient quantities, are live-saving.) Cholera epidemics appear to arise only in warm, salty water containing untreated human feces. This is the historic reason to avoid unrefrigerated oysters in the summertime. American oysters harvested outside of the Gulf of Mexico may be safer. Hepatitis A is also associated with ingestion of raw shellfish. It may be avoided by a commercially available Hepatitis A vaccine. It may be wise for any individual with immune deficiency or pre-existing liver disease (especially Hepatitis C) to talk to their health care provider about Hepatitis A immunization before eating raw oysters. P.S.: Cooked oysters do taste good. Ten minutes in boiling water should kill the most likely pathogens.’

Jim Summers: ‘No self respecting guy would eat oysters without first putting the oyster on a saltine with a spoonful of horseradish along with the cocktail sauce. A squeeze of lemon is also critical. This has extra shock value as it allows the guy to eat it in two bites, with a swig of beer in between, while the uninitiated gag at the sight of oyster liquor dripping from the soggy cracker between bites. Judging from the size of the Hilton oysters, it would appear that this would be a two-bite delicacy. If you don’t have horseradish, then a couple of shakes of hot sauce will do. As no cooking or measuring is involved, and it is eaten with fingers, it still qualifies as a guy recipe.’

Brooks Hilliard: ‘What? You can cook oysters?’

Rob Schoen: ‘You are entitled to think whatever you choose to think, though I may find it wrong-headed and duplicitous. Today’s column was the first in my recollection, however, where you essentially called your critics stupid, or at least not as capable of reasoned thought as you. That’s a slippery slope and I hope not your intent.’

☞ I appreciate reasoned criticism. But those whose e-mails just lash out with insult rather than logic are intellectually lazy, in my view – though, you are certainly right, not necessarily stupid. I would suggest that to call someone’s thinking wrong-headed is fine (even I think I am wrong-headed from time to time, not to mention tedious, self-indulgent, or – my favorite – just plain dopey). But calling someone’s thinking duplicitous may be a slippery slope of its own.

Frank McC: ‘Even if the worst about Enron turns out to be true, is it any worse than Chinese businessmen financing the Clintons and the Democratic Party?’

☞ It might well be worse, but let’s assume they are equivalent. Is your point that no fuss should have been made about the Chinese contributions? Or is it that since a huge fuss was made about them, that’s enough fuss for now and we should fuss no more? I think both were/are subjects of legitimate inquiry. Enron is, after all, the largest bankruptcy in our history, and energy policy affects us all.

Frank continues: You write: ‘I certainly hope it doesn’t require special prosecutors or any of that – I don’t think any of us wants to go through that again.’ Really? Honestly? You mean you wouldn’t love to see the Bush Presidency destroyed and Democrats benefit?

☞ I sure would NOT love to see it destroyed. And when it does something good, like appoint an openly gay ambassador to Rumania, or handle the aftermath to 9/11 so well for the most part, I try to say it. And we all should say it. And I think you will find that a lot of Democrats do – most recently, Senator Clinton on ‘Meet the Press’ this past Sunday, loud and clear.

Frank: ‘Fairness, I say. Fairness.’

☞ Yes! But fairness for the 95% of Americans who are not at the top of the pyramid, too. Thanks, Frank. You’re right about the level of partisanship. Who doesn’t yearn for more collegial, frank discourse? But until we get that, how about a nice oyster cocktail?

*

Let me tell you something about HILTON’S FRESH PACIFIC EXTRA SMALL WILLAPOINT OYSTERS. They’re huge. I don’t know whether Hilton is being ironic by labeling them extra small, or merely trying to frighten people from swimming in the Pacific. Oysters are one of the few ocean dwellers I ordinarily do not fear; but if these are extra small, I can only begin to imagine those that would be extra large – and I don’t want to risk being swallowed by one. (‘What’s this, Orville – a pearl?’ ‘No, it looks more like some guy’s head.’)

Oysters are a dangerous food. Any school kid knows they should be eaten only when they ‘R’ in season – months with an R in them (i.e., not May, June, July and August), except that with the advent of refrigeration, they may not be much more dangerous when they Rn’t than when they R. Hilton sells them in pint containers – all raw oyster, no shell – in the refrigerated (let’s hope) section of some supermarkets’ fish departments, and warns that if you suffer from liver or stomach problems, you should eat them fully cooked.

Now let’s back up. Why would anyone eat raw oysters, you ask? (And how do they have sex? But that’s a separate column.) Two reasons: First, once you get over your initial revulsion, you may well decide that the good ones taste just great. Second, oysters have long held allure as an aphrodisiac.

‘Keep away from oysters, whatever you do,’ ran a sprightly line from Bottoms Up, the acclaimed 1969 Hasty Pudding Theatrical, ‘and just for the hell of it, you can be a celibate, too – da-doo-da-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo!’

And sure enough, if you click here, you will find this slogan: Forget Viagra, Eat Brady’s Oysters. With it comes an offer to buy some very pricey oysters, flown to your door, still in their big, heavy, clunky shells.

The beauty of HILTON’S FRESH PACIFIC EXTRA SMALL WILLAPOINT OYSTERS (which have made it all the way from South Bend, Washington, to South Beach, Florida, though very possibly not to your supermarket) is that for $7.99 you get a pint container filled to the brim with oysters in their ‘liquor’ (as the liquid oysters live in is called). Because the extra smalls are so large, it’s probably about 10 oysters to the pint. To fill the same pint with the kind of oysters you get in some restaurants for $2 a pop it would probably require 50 of them, once you shucked and chucked the shells. (How many shells, he yells as she sells seashells, could a woodchuck shuck, if a woodchuck could shuck shells?)

So look what’s happening here. You’re getting maybe $100 of oysters for $7.99, and you don’t have to put on a jacket and tie to eat them. You can eat them at home . . . like a guy.

And how, exactly, does a guy do that?

Well, I have two recipes to offer, neither requiring dishware; just a fork.

Raw. I accept absolutely NO liability for this – if you eat raw oysters you will probably die – but here is what I do.

• Step 1: Open the container.
• Step 2: Open a jar of cocktail sauce.
• Step 3: Seize the above-referenced fork.
• Step 4: Use the fork to drop one of the oysters into the jar of cocktail sauce; mush it around a little, remove, and eat. Mmmm, mmm, good!
• Step 5: Repeat.
• Step 6: Wash fork. Call 911.

Cooked. This involves a lot more work and doesn’t taste as good. But it’s still pretty awesome.

• Step 1: Pour the pint of oysters and their liquor into your smallest pot or pan.
• Step 2: OK, go crazy – toss in half a stick of butter or, if you’re cooking like a guy with high cholesterol, a big spoonful of I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter Lite™.
• Step 3: Salt and pepper are always good.
• Step 4: Cook on low to medium until you think that whatever is wrong with the oysters is dead. Ten minutes? You can throw in a little milk, too, ala “oyster stew,” although I have a feeling a little beer might go well with it instead, but I haven’t tried that yet.
• Step 5 (the most important step): Restrain yourself! This sucker is hot! But then, after an appropriate cooling off period, seize the afore-referenced fork and eat from the pot, eventually (checking first to be sure you won’t burn your lips) drinking the salty, buttery liquor that remains at the bottom. Mmm, mmm!
• Step 6: Clean fork and pot.

For elaborate recipes I have not tried – if you’re not really a guy, in other words – click here.

Have a great weekend and please come back Monday or I’ll worry that I killed you.

Mike Leboeuf: ‘Didn’t want you to miss this column from the Washington Post.’

☞ Good column. Thanks. Let’s tie the Arctic drilling he favors to the $1-a-gallon gas-tax hike he also favors . . . use every penny of that increased revenue to cut the FICA tax (giving people more take-home pay to spend and save, as well as a greater incentive to work), and let’s fund the hell out of alternative energy research instead of – astoundingly – cutting it in half.

The problem a lot of us have with the administration’s energy policy is that it seems 100% designed to benefit the oil industry, from which our president and vice president came, as if that were even more important than doing whatever is best for the country as a whole.

COOKING LIKE A GUY™ – GETTING TO KNOW YOUR HARDWARE

I’m 54 and learned how a toaster-oven works today. It’s got two settings. One for toast, one for oven. Cool! This was much less complicated than I realized, once I really focused. I made some toast, then I made salmon. (My secret: salt, lemon, and first pretend the salmon is a piece of toast.) Before cooking, I actually drenched it in some fancy flavored olive oil someone gave us long ago – a kitchen decoration, is how I had always thought of the bottle, until inspiration struck.

Hint: it’s OK to put a naked slice of bread right on the toaster-oven rack, but it’s a good idea to put the salmon in something, like an aluminum pan.

Pieter Lessing: “I thought you might enjoy this investing adventure I had. I was between Las Vegas junkets and had an itch that had to be scratched . . . so off to IPO land I went, with redherring.com as my trusty companion. Here are some of the IPOs I “evaluated” — ARTD, CALD, DDIC, EEEE, ETIN, INSN, NETP, OPU, RVSN. Today, most are trading near all time lows – down about 80% on average from their highs. The stars were: Radvision (RVSN), down ‘only’ 57% and Insilicon Corp (INSN) – down a ‘mere’ 37%. The superstar (exception that proves the rule??), DDI Corp (DDIC) IPO’ed at $14 and is now trading at $45 1/2.

“Well, I bought only one of the IPOs above. Can you guess which one? . . . suspense . . . drum roll . . . No, you guessed wrong — I bought DDIC! Genius, huh? Well, I have to confess — I put in buy orders for all of them, but my broker always said: ‘Sorry, too popular, you didn’t get any.’ Except with DDIC. Nobody wanted it, so I got it.”

☞ Thanks, Pieter. There is definitely a lesson in there someplace.

Meanwhile, two suspect comments on last Thursday’s Cooking Like a Guy™ Recipe #6 (stale bread):

Craig Furnas: “Microwave ovens are a fabulous way to de-stale rubbery tortilla chips.”

☞ So you say.

Parks Stewart: “Knave, knave! Every bona fide single guy knows that reviving pizza (after you peel it from the coffee table where your friends left it during the party the night before) is an advanced two-step heating process. To wit:

1) Set the oven to 350º.

2) Sprinkle some water on the pizza.

3) Wet a paper towel and completely cover the pizza.

4) Nuke all this about a minute and a half (on high, of course — is there any other setting?).

5) By now the oven is hot enough (the temperature setting was just for show) for you to put the pizza on foil (or not) for a minute or two to recrisp the various parts that really need to be crisp, as opposed to the whole thing being crisp when you started this endeavor.”

☞ You are on very thin Guy ice when you begin setting forth five-step recipes. But to revive a slice of pizza, it just might be worth it.