How are we celebrating the Fourth of July up in Bernal? We're harvesting the tater bucket! You might recall, back in the early, chilly days of spring, right around St Patrick's Day, a handful of ugly sprouting potatoes were thrown face-down in a bucket of dirt, given their chance for producing the next generation. And now, the resulting crop of new potatoes has been dug up, rinsed, steamed, browned in butter and chives, and eaten.

To be true red-white-and-blue homesteaders, we could have whisked up some homemade mayonnaise and made all-American potato salad. But the patio potatoes were too few, and too precious, for that. They needed to be appreciated just for their dainty little selves.

You might be saying to yourself, wow, those sure are some small potatoes. And it's true. The original potatoes planted were fingerlings, which are naturally small, but these are rather petite even for those.

What happened was, alas, a fungal infection of some kind. Might have been early blight, might have been a wilt like fusarium. All of a sudden, about a month ago, the lovely healthy leaves got brown-spotted one by one. The brown turned to yellow, and eventually the whole stem got limp and died. The brown turned to yellow, and eventually each cluster of leaves faded and died while the stem below the soil line rotted. And once the leaves were gone, the pizza delivery to the potatoes stopped, so to speak, and so did their growth.

These, then, were my teenage potatoes, kicked out of the nest a little young. I think it was partly my fault, due to some overwatering that probably spurred the blight's progression, since fungal diseases are spread and exacerbated by moisture.

Luckily, though, this happened pretty far along in the tater-growing process, meaning we still got a few good handfuls. And there is something pretty wonderful about harvesting your own dinner--not just picking a few tomatoes or plucking a little basil but plunging your whole arm past the elbow into a bucket of warm dirt, fishing around for what slender gold treasures might be hiding in there. These were true new potatoes, fresh and moist, their skins tattered off merely by washing. Not to mention really, really delicious, if I say so myself.

And just in case you were wondering what a potato looks like when it's still growing, well, it looks like this, only deep in the dirt. You can see that the potato itself isn't a root, like carrots or beets, but rather a stolen, or swollen stem, branching off from the main stem above the roots.

Since most potatoes take about 100 days from sprouting to harvest, there's still time for another crop before the winter wet weather comes on. Will tater bucket #2 be more successful? Stay tuned!

Photos by Sally Carter

Where I work, there are a small handful of men who occasionally begin their sentences with the phrase "In my village..."

"In my village, we have a festival." "In my village, we would never treat an octopus in such a way."

These men can get away with saying such things as easily as they can get away with calling women "baby" because they are Greek. They have the accent, they have an old world charm about them that clings like the smell of clove and stale cigarette smoke.

And I have always been a little bit jealous. If I were to ever pepper my sentences with the words "In my village..." People would most likely assume it was Greenwich Village. And I can just forget about using the word "baby." Ever.

Well, I can get away with things they can't, too, like speaking only in Sondheim lyrics. And giving Greeks a hard time about, well, being so damned Greek. But it's only because I love them, I really do.

We clearly have our differences, but that is something I cherish. For example, in my childhood village of Anaheim, summer outings often included salads made from fresh Jell-o and organic, vine-ripened mini-marshmallows from my neighbors' gardens.

In the villages of my Greek co-workers, however, one will find strange, unnatural combinations. Things like tomatoes and cucumbers or, ripe watermelon and feta cheese.

They are crazy people, these Greeks.

Crazy good, I mean.

If you haven't tried this flavor combination, then you have not tasted summer. I know, that sounds like bad advertising copy, which is why I remain poor, but it's true, nevertheless.

Give it a go this weekend. I mean it. You'll thank me for it later, baby.

Karpouzi me Feta (Watermelon Salad)

Serves whoever, wherever and as many as you need.

I've brought this dish to a few picnics in my day. The initial reaction to it is usually one of strange curiosity. Watermelon and, what? Feta? How interesting. I would never have thought to pair watermelon with cheese.

Well, I'm glad somebody did.

This is such a pleasantly simple dish to make. And it takes about five minutes to create a big bowl or platterful. The watermelon, which smacks of summertime, offers a bit of sweet refreshment and hydration, while the cheese lends a bit of salty protein. And the olive oil, of course, gives you a shiny, healthy-looking coat. It is the perfect antidote to drinking alcohol in the hot sun and, therefore, the perfect Fourth of July picnic salad-- all Red, White, and Green, just like the American flag is to the marginally colorblind.

Ingredients:

One of the best things about this recipe is that there really is no recipe, just a list of ingredients. You want a lot of cheese? Go for it. Lots of olive oil? Absolutely. And let it dribble down your chest a little and rub it in for a deep, dark, Bain de Soleil-like golden tan. Delicious.

1 small, ripe seedless (or not) watermelon, rind removed and cut into reasonably-sized cubes

Feta cheese. Good feta. Greek Feta. From Epiros, if possible. Cubed or crumbled.

Good olive oil. Extra virgin. No, it does not have to be Greek.

Fresh basil, torn into small pieces. Or even oregano.

Toasted pine nuts or pumpkin seeds. I thought pumpkin seeds were an inspired choice given the pumpkin's shape and vine-grown status. That, and the fact that the pine nut bin at the store had been ravaged by the time I got there.

Preparation:

1. On a picnic platter or other, preferred serving dish, place cubed watermelon.

2. Crumble the feta over the watermelon, drizzle with olive oil, and sprinkle the mass with herb-of-choice and nut/seed-of-choice.

3. Serve immediately.

4. Watch the he-men crow and sweat over their grills while you kick back, have a drink, and accept compliments about your brilliant salad.

"On Independence Day, Americans will enjoy 150 million hot dogs, enough to stretch from D.C. to L.A. over five times."
--National Hot Dog and Sausage Council

My first reaction to this quote was "is there really a national hot dog and sausage council?"; while my second reaction was mild nausea mixed with a hankering for my own dog slathered in mustard and relish.

The all-beef American hot dog should not be confused with its namesake the frankfurter, which is a German regional sausage made from pork. Nor should you think it tastes much like an Austrian wiener, which is a pork and beef delicacy. Sure, frankfurters, wieners and hot dogs are all sausages, but there's very little that is European about a hot dog. Mass produced, precooked, and stuck in a bun it's as American as a food can get. Dirty Harry even eats one right before famously saying his "Do you feel lucky" line. So here's Clint, eating his dog, for you to enjoy.

Unlike Harry, my family and I don't eat a lot of hot dogs. Nothing against them; we just tend to eat more sausage when we want some sort of meat product in a tube, probably due to my Italian upbringing. I'm also not a big fan of processed foods. But there are certain occasions when a hot dog is the perfect meal, especially if you have a couple of hungry kids with you. Baseball games and the 4th of July top that list.

So in celebration of National Hot Dog Month, and also to better educate myself about American hot dogs, I have created an unscientific comparison of the major brands. Included in the list are organic, nitrate-free, and standard hot dogs that you can find locally. I am not recommending one frank over another as I did not try every brand, and, honestly, I've only tasted a few. Rather, I wanted to share the nutritional information and ingredients lists provided by the manufacturers so people can make their own educated decisions.

The following list is also limited to beef hot dogs as these are the traditional choice at block parties, backyard barbecues, and baseball games. Plus including chicken, turkey and tofu dogs would make the list ridiculously long. Please note that my inventory is in no way complete. I am not attempting to compare all the brands; just the ones I see most often. If I have missed something obvious, or something you really like, feel free to add the information in the comments section. Finally, I should say that I don't distinguish between kosher and non-kosher brands.

When comparing the hot dogs on the list, you should note that each brand's hot dogs vary in size. So while the Nathan's Famous beef franks look at first to have the most sodium, they are also twice the size of many of the other hot dogs, so be sure to look at the size column when comparing products.

Here are the lists. I have grouped the brands by type for easier viewing and listed the size, calories, calories from fat, saturated fat grams and sodium levels, along with ingredients lists. I was very interested by what I found. I hope you will be too.

Organic and Grass Fed Hot Dogs
These hot dogs are all made from organic, and often grass-fed, beef. No nitrates are used for organic hot dogs.

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Nitrate-Free but not Organic Hot Dogs
Non-organic beef but no nitrates are used.

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Standard Hot Dogs
The hot dogs are all beef and the meat has been preserved with nitrates and other preservatives.

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Happy Pride! The Gay High Holy Days—or week, or month, depending on your stamina and affinity for dance music, tank tops, rainbow balloons, sign-waving, marches, guys in banana thongs, and standing in line, endlessly, for tickets, beer, and/or bathrooms—are coming to their sunny, sweaty close today. Time to get off the Blue Angel-martini-and-popcorn diet and put those silver latex shorts back in the closet, at least til the Folsom Street Fair.

Or that's how it might be in other cities, where Pride comes around but once a year. Here in our lovely fog-bound burg, though, we can be prideful every day, even if we still-still!-can't get married in City Hall.

But there is something particularly fabulous in seeing the typical straight-to-gay ratio of just about everything upended this month. I still remember walking into 2223 Market one night near the end of June last year, and feeling like everyone there was gay. Gay couples, gay friends, gay parents--it was just like being in the straight world, except this time it was all ours.

Naming all the LGBT chefs and business owners who have made the SF food scene what it is would turn this column into a faygelah version of Adam Sandler's Hannukah Song, but still, let's raise a glass to Traci des Jardins, for running a fancypants place in Hayes Valley and a taqueria with a conscience, and never turning down the chance to help out a good cause; to bad boy Jeremiah Tower, for making Stars sparkle; to Elizabeth Faulkner and her partner Sabrina Riddle, for giving the dyke food mafia an official clubhouse, first at Citizen Cake, now at Orson; and to food photographer Frankie Frankeny, because she shoots what we want to eat, and finds a way to sneak her daschunds into every shoot.

And let's not forget a toast to vinologist Pamela Busch, of the late Hayes and Vine and the current Cav Wine Bar, and to Absinthe's Jamie Lauren and her Top Chef Team Rainbow, for making "hot chef" replace "folk singer" as the default lesbian occupation. Also heating up the room is Gialina pizza diva Sharon Ardiana, turning Glen Park into Naples, and Celia Sack of Omnivore Books, for bringing us cookbook-browsing perfection with nary a 30-Minute-Meal or celebrity diet in sight, just up the street from the ever-charming Lovejoy's Teahouse, run by Muna Nash and Gillian Briley. Were we getting married, we might just drag pastry chef Yigit Pura of Taste Catering out to Iowa with us, just so we could show that corn-fed state just how divine his chocolate-hazelnut daquoise with passion fruit filling wedding cakes can be.

And thank you Rainbow Grocery, for letting us shop for veggie dogs on the 4th of July but closing for Pride Sunday, so your collective members can be out and proud rather than stuck restocking the spirulina. Even Food Not Bombs gets into the spirit now, serving up free eats (in tuxedo shirts and fake mustaches) at their mobile Chez Gay Cafe in Dolores Park before the Tranny March. We're here, we're queer, let's eat!

Well happy Pride weekend and all that.

Frankly, I had conveniently managed to forget about it until my friend Sean mentioned that Cloris Leachman was to be Grand Marshall in this weekend's big parade.

I've never much cared for Pride Weekend. It's not that I don't enjoy being gay, because I do. I can reference old movies with abandon, not worry about child support payments, and get away with saying things that most straights would never dare to.

And, of course, I am proud of the fact that I know who Cloris Leachman is. I think every homosexual is required by law to quote freely and liberally from The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

I love being gay. I just don't love big parades-- they make me wonder how I'm supposed to get across town. It's kind of like how I feel about Christmas. I love the spirit of the thing, but I hate the clothes, the crowds, and the decorative motifs.

So no pink today, no Sarah-Tucker-there's-a-rainbow-on-your-table.

But there is fruit.

That's the best tie-in I can think of for clafoutis.

Clafoutis

Many of you know this dessert already-- it is, at heart, baked pancake batter dotted with fruit. There are recipes for apricot clafoutis (delicious), clementine clafoutis (if you don't know how I feel about clementines, please visit here), and eggplant clafoutis (?). If you can stick it into pancake batter, it's probably been made into a clafoutis.

A traditional clafoutis, however, is to be made with cherries. Amen.

Some folks run with the pancake theme, serving them warm and puffy and fresh from the oven for breakfast like one would a Dutch Apple Pancake. Do what you will, but the flavors blend together and texture becomes more custard-like if you have the patience to allow it to spend the night in your refrigerator.

The clafoutis is sort of like a Pride weekend trick-- if light and fluffy, fresh and hot is your thing, go for it. Out of your life and on to the next dessert, as it were. I just happen to prefer my clafoutis after it has hung around my kitchen for a little bit and settled down.

And I'm kind of proud of that.

Cherry-Almond Clafoutis

Serves: 4 to 8-ish, depending upon how you slice it.

This charming, no-fuss little number hails from the Limousin region of France, located not quite in the heart of the country, but more or less where the liver might be located.

Traditional clafoutis calls for leaving the pits in the cherries, the wisdom being that the pits lend a pleasant almond-like flavor to the dish. Of course, there are so few people left living in the Limousin region and those who remain are mostly elderly, that chipping a tooth is not considered much of a risk.

Ingredients:

1 pound of cherries (or enough to populate the surface of an 8-inch pan without touching each other), pitted or not pitted. The choice and the risk is yours.

1/2 cup all-purpose flour

2 large eggs

3/4 cups heavy cream (you can get away with using milk, but the day-after texture will suffer greatly, I promise).

6 tablespoons sugar

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon almond extract

1/3 to 1/2 cup toasted slivered almonds

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

Powdered sugar, for dusting

Preparation:

1. Preheat oven to 350° F

2. In a blender, combine eggs, flour, cream, salt, and 2 tablespoons of sugar. Blend well, scraping down the sides of the blender from time to time. Or whisk aggressively. Your choice. When blended, add half the slivered almonds to the batter and stir them about.

3. In an 8-inch cast iron skillet or heat-proof baking pan, add butter and 2 tablespoons sugar until all is melted, slightly nutty-smelling, and syrupy. Add cherries; cooking and coating them for about two minutes.

4. Pour the batter gently into the pan around the cherries. Sprinkle the remaining sugar over the and pop into the center of your oven.

5. Bake for about 45 minutes, or until sufficiently browned and puffy, remove from the oven and let cool.

6. If your clafoutis is not sufficiently browned and puffy, do as I both say and do-- sprinkle the remaining almonds over the top and pop it under the broiler. Works like a charm unless you burn it.

7. Dust with powdered sugar for garnish just before serving with crème fraîche, lightly whipped cream, or all by itself.

Awesome smoked-salmon sandwiches from Cap't Mikes at the Ferry Plaza Farmers Market

Buying a Father's Day card is not that much different from buying pajamas for a 3-year-old boy: your thematic choices are pretty much limited to baseball, cars, trucks, and fishing. Want to get Pops a cookbook to go along with the card? He better like to set stuff on fire. Panna cotta? Green papaya salad? Nope: according to every bookstore display this time of year, it's grilling or nothing for manly Dad.

Now, my dad hit the ol' Weber a few times every summer at our house in New Jersey. We had some good steaks and burgers, sure. But he was much more likely to be inside sifting through piles of restaurant reviews instead, wondering if that new Indian place in Kenilworth would have lamb rogan josh worth trying, or driving over to the Lower East Side to round up a Jewish brunch spread of smoked sable, kippered salmon, bagels and bialys, some pickled green tomatoes and scallion cream cheese, maybe a few rugalach, and kibbitzing with the guys from Russ & Daughters and Gus's Pickles all along the way.

It's too bad that my dad, now 82, doesn't use computers, if only because Chowhound was made for him. He would be in his element, an instant message-board pro, the first to crow over an unlikely strip-mall find, warning when a favorite biryani lost its oomph or a chef went back to Fujian, waxing rhapsodic about long-gone dishes like the nut cake at the Hungarian Bake Shop, Uncle Tai's Hunan lamb with scallions or the cinnamon babkas at Gertel's.

My dad loves to tell stories, and he loves to talk about food before, during and after eating. He would be an ace Chowhounder, I know it, smart, helpful, opinionated, a little cranky maybe, not one to suffer fools or blandness easily.

People often ask how I came to be a restaurant reviewer, a position I was lucky enough to hold in both San Francisco and New York City for some dozen years. I wasn't a chef, nor had I gone to cooking school, which made a lot of people wonder about my qualifications. But what I did have was an appreciation for the theater of restaurants, a little thrill of anticipation that comes straight from my father, who loved going to the theater, the opera, and the ballet but probably loved going out to dinner best of all.

More importantly, I had, oddly but usefully, as it turned out, grown up reading piles of smart, funny, and thoughtful restaurant reviews, all the time. Back in the 1970s, my dad subscribed to The Restaurant Reporter, a monthly newsletter, and kept back issues in binders. My sisters and I read these for fun, because the reviewer, Seymour Britchky, didn't just write rants or raves about food. Instead, he had a keen ear and eye for the absurdity of New York City social life, writing like Tom Wolfe with an razor-sharp palate, and his reviews happily skewered any pretense that arrived with the vichyssoise.

Weekly reviews in the New York Times and New York magazine got discussed, and, if sufficiently intriguing, torn out and put aside as aide-memoires for future visits. Bad reviews, of course, were the most entertaining. I can still remember my father's glee in one of the Times' rare "poor" rated reviews, a scorched-earth masterpiece about a place called Dish of Salt.

My dad shared a lot of his favorite things with me and my sisters growing up, but it's his lifelong love of food, his curiosity, his refusal to be intimidated by unfamiliar flavors or snooty maitre d's, that I've made my own. At 3, I'm told, I loved to sit on my dad's lap, sharing a plate of raw cherrystone clams and trying to sip at his beer. And in that, close to 30 years later, I'm still my father's daughter.

It may not be sunny, but it is Memorial Day weekend, and you know what I'm thinking? Pink! Rhubarb and strawberries, shrimp Louie, cherries, pink boxers, and yes, rosé.

Stand up and be counted, pink wine drinkers! Personally, I love it when a date seconds my order of rosé. A person who embraces pink wine is a person who's not afraid to get a little girly. It means he or she is a hey, why not? sort of person, happy to take a little vacation from the hopped-up IPAs and tannin-slugging Cabs to sip on what your aunt Cherrie would call a "swimmin' pool wine."

I have fond associations with rosé--chaise lounges, love, the South of France--but I've found that rosé really cheers anyone up, if they're man (or woman) enough to drink it.

So, what's worth pouring this weekend as you lounge under the patio umbrella? My two faves remain Bonny Doon's Vin Gris de Cigare ($15) and Domaine Tempier's Bandol Rosé ($32). The Bandol 2008 vintage has just arrived at Kermit Lynch in Berkeley; get over there now before they drink it all up. Both these wines are supple and elegant, perfect for a sunny summer lunch with cold salmon and a salad full of flowers.

Over at Bi-Rite Market, assistant wine buyer Sarah Bouldin puts the Robert Sinskey Vin Gris ($22.99) on the top of her list. "We can only get 10 cases at a time, so it goes fast. It's really well balanced, with strawberry fruitiness, a little melon." And then there's the Unti Rosé ($18.99), a biodynamic wine from Mick Unti in Healdsburg. Says Bouldin, "It's lighter than the Sinskey, a little more acidic. We're always happy to get our hands on anything Mick produces; his wines are always delicious, really outstanding."

Rosés are featured right now at the Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant, both as a flight on the tasting menu in the bar as well as in their adjoining shop. Wine buying manager Drea Dedona likes their classic Provencal rosés, of course, but also points out the Botasea Rosato di Palmino ($18), from Santa Barbara, made by winemaker Chrystal Clifton. Actually, it's hard to miss; it looks like strawberry Boone's Farm slapped with a lipstick-pink label. "I know the color's a little scary," Dedona admits, "But it's got great fruit and a little spice," thanks to a 50/30/20 blend of dolcetto, nebbiolo, and barbera grapes. There's also a reason for the pink: part of the purchase price of every bottle goes to support breast cancer research.

Were money no object, though, I'd throw down for the Billecart-Salmon Brut Rosé ($80), a fabulously glam and grown-up French Champagne that glows like sunshine on pink marble.

But what if you're looking for a rosé that's more naked Carla Bruni, less Dior-clad Mme Sarkozy? Then you want Jean-Paul Brun's FRV100 ($16.99). Say it like the French do: eff-air-vay-cent. (Get it?) This is Brun's sparkling answer to soda-pop Beaujolais Nouveau: a light, fast-fermented wine with some residual sugar that's a goofy, picnic-perfect good time, not just overhyped grape juice.

From the glittery black label to the fan-dancing fizz inside, this is an unapologetic disco wine, made to get the party started. "It really should have house music pumping out of the bottle," laughs Bouldin. It's also a good way for a girl to drink and have fun without ending the evening as a drunk-dialing hot mess, thanks to an alcohol content that's just 7.5%.

Don't want to drink pink alone? Drop by Piccino on Sunday, May 31st from noon to 9 pm for Dogpatch's own festival of rosés. On the menu: pizzas, salads, a few lovely specials, and lots of rosés, all guaranteed to charm.

My birthday is this month, so I have requested a luscious and rich home-baked chocolate cake. And by chocolate cake I mean the kind you can put candles on, not the flourless variety. My husband has gallantly offered to make it, but if he gets too busy, I have no problems getting in the kitchen and whipping it up myself: my birthday, my cake, my prerogative.

I have tried many chocolate cake recipes over the years, always searching for the perfect one. But as with a search for anything great (say a life-changing novel or the perfect kiss), so much can go wrong. Some had a deep chocolate flavor, but were a little dry, while others just weren't chocolaty enough. Worst of all were the cakes the barely held together. Like sloppy kisses, they were well meaning, but a little too wet.

After many calorie-filled attempts, I have settled on a recipe that I feel is truly the ultimate for chocolate cake. Beatty's Chocolate Cake is made with good cocoa powder, buttermilk and freshly-brewed coffee. With an intense chocolate flavor that is both nuanced and bold, this flirt of a cake teases out its flavors and leaves you wanting more. I didn't create this recipe. Ina Garten, aka The Barefoot Contessa, gets all the glory; or, rather, her friend Beatty for whom the cake is named. Take note that the coffee makes the batter a bit soupy (which worried me a little), but in the end, its flavor accents the chocolate nicely and gives the cake a velvety richness it wouldn't have had otherwise.

Although I love Ina and Beatty's cake, I veer from their advice when it comes to the icing. Skipping the chocolate frosting Ms. Garten pairs with her cake -- as I find a chocolate on chocolate combo a bit overwhelming -- I instead went with a vanilla cream cheese frosting. I have found over the years that vanilla makes chocolate taste more robust, and this is definitely the case here. The frosting has the added bonus of having a thick but not stiff texture, so it lays evenly on the cake. It also takes only about three minutes to make and is delicious.

I can't disclose the cake's recipe here -- it isn't mine, after all -- but can share my frosting recipe. So if you're having a birthday soon, or are just in the mood for a good old-fashioned chocolate cake, it's time to indulge.

Vanilla Cream Cheese Frosting

Makes: Frosting for one cake

Ingredients:
8 oz cream cheese
1/4 cup softened butter
1 box of powdered sugar
2 tsp vanilla

Preparation:
1. Combine all ingredients together in a bowl and mix with an electric mixer until smooth.
2. Frost cake and devour.

There is a tradition in my house around this time of year. Come Easter Sunday, a cake must be made, and it must be made in the shape of a bunny or a lamb, using a special bunny- or lamb-shaped cake pan (preferably the one passed along to me by my mother, from her mother). Once the cake is baked, it's frosted with white icing and lavished with pastel-dyed coconut (to represent bunny fur or lambswool, if bunnies had a thing for Manic Panic hair color). Jelly beans stand in for eyes, mouth, and general bejeweling. The type of cake--white, yellow, lemon--is less important than the fabulousness of the decoration.

Now, if you're the sort of person who notices bylines, you might be a little curious by now. Why is someone named Rosenbaum waxing rhapsodic about bunny cake? Shouldn't a Rosenbaum be making matzoh kugel this time of year, chopping charoseth and grating horseradish, whipping up a batch of Marcy Goldman-via-David Lebovitz chocolate-covered toffee matzoh crunch?

Well, as a matter of fact, I'm doing that too. On a line for religious affiliation, I'd have to write "Baking Jew." My Hebrew skills are nonexistent and my grasp of Torah imprecise, but I can whip up a mean Rosh Hashanah honey cake, an excellent Purim hamentaschen, a swell matzoh ball and a pretty great Seder spongecake, even in a studio apartment with a kitchen counter smaller than a newspaper.

So, where does the bunny cake come in? The short answer: my mother converted when she got married. So my sisters and I were raised Jewish, with no bacon, Hebrew school three times a week, challah French toast on Saturdays and lox and bagels on Sundays. But we still got to have fun on Easter, in a purely secular, egg-dyeing way, up at my grandmother's house. We would spend a gleeful afternoon on an Easter-egg hunt around her house, filling our plastic-grass lined baskets with Peeps, Cadbury creme eggs, and hollow-eared chocolate bunnies.

But therein lay the moral quandary. For understandable reasons, there is no such thing as kosher for Passover Easter candy. If, as commonly occurs, Easter fell during the eight days of Passover, we couldn't eat those marshmallow chicks and foil-wrapped eggs until Passover was over, which could be up to a week away... When this happened, my grandmother would take pity on us and make her bunny cake with a kosher-for-Passover cake mix: an absurd but also wonderful gesture, as I see it now.

This weekend, I'm out in Minneapolis with my sister and brother-in-law (a Methodist), and their 3 children. We're having a Seder tonight, with an Easter ham stashed in the fridge for Sunday. Her bunny cake mold is made of pink silicone now, already pre-portioned into kiddie-sized chunks. My sister and I are sharing matzoh and averting our eyes from the rest of the family's morning waffles. She's added a Sephardic date-and-ginger charoseth to the mix, and my brother-in-law is providing the pot roast. It may not be totally kosher, but it tastes like home.

I'd never thought much of the carrot in terms of dessert food. Before you ask the obvious "But what about carrot cake?" question, yes, I know it exists. I just choose not to acknowledge it any longer, thanks to my volunteering to bake that particular dessert for a friend's wedding several years ago. 150 people to feed and a Barbie-sized oven left me exhausted, but proud of the mission accomplished. I have since moved on. I don't think I'd even uttered the word "carrot" in years.

And then I went to a potluck dinner at a home I once partly owned, hosted by a man I used to live with, and a dog who used to know me.

The theme of the dinner was Cal/Asian, which gave people a lot of wiggle room with savory dishes, but not so much with dessert. Whole roasted petrale soles, rices dishes, green onion pancakes and a host of other items crowded the dining room table. Just off center, however, was a bowl of bright orange that caught my attention, as though I had just spotted Lucille Ball standing in the middle of some crowded Beijing shopping center smoking a Phillip Morris-- a beautiful standout, if a little out of place amid the beige-y, earthen tones.

"I suppose I should have put that to the dessert buffet, but I didn't want to move the booze." was offered by a woman named Razili, who had brought the dish. In my brief assessment of her offering, I hadn't thought that it was a dessert.

She explained that it was a carrot pudding, or Gajar ka Halwa-- a specialty from Punjab, her family's place of origin.

"We changed it a little," she said. The milk, the cardamom, almonds for cashews.

It got me thinking about how, as Americans, we all inherit the dishes and traditions of our ancestors from their various distant origins. In my family for example, it's the cannoli. Every holiday, silver trays of the confections were placed on the table for dessert-- one studded with candied citron, the other with chocolate. While the older generations consumed the citron, the kids went for the chocolate. As the years passed and the older folks-- some of them actual Italians-- died off, so did the use of citron. The cannoli we make today are only with chocolate, to suit our Americanized tastes. They are still cannoli, just not ones my Sicilian great-grandmother would be likely to touch. They are still recognizable, but they bear the branding of adaptation, of assimilation.

I know my family isn't alone in this morphing trend. It's how we as a country traditionally have made anything "foreign" or "other" its own. Think pizza or nachos or just about anything Chinese. We take an idea from one place, adapt it to our own needs or desires (the blander version of something exotic perhaps, made with ingredients easily obtainable in our own markets), and the results are familiar, yet different.

That's how I saw Gajar ka Halwa when it was described to me-- strangely familiar (carrots and almonds), yet exotically different (dessert?). Of course, when it was being described, Razili never called it by its Punjabi name. "It's carrot pudding."

It was my favorite dish of the night. And, believe me, there were some great things on that table.

Carrot Pudding

Serves: 4

That's what I'm calling it. The ingredients are hardly exotic, unless you think cardamom is fanciful. In that case, you most likely don't have Central European, Indian, or Persian ancestors, to name a few.

It's a remarkably easy dish to prepare (if you don't mind a lot of stirring), inexpensive, and really, really delicious. I've changed Razili's recipe slightly to suit my own tastes, but of course, that's to be expected, given the sub-theme of today's post.

Ingredients:

3 cups shredded carrot
2 cups whole milk
3 tablespoons of unsalted butter
1/3 cup of sugar
10 to 15 cardamom pods or a heavy pinch of ground cardamom powder
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
Toasted sliced almonds for garnish. I candied mine.

Preparation:

1. Melt butter in the bottom of a wide pan over medium heat. More surface area= faster cooking time, I promise. Add carrots and stir occasionally until soft and thoroughly cooked. About 5 minutes.

2. At the same time, heat milk in a saucepan or microwave, if you're that kind of person. I am, but mine broke and it's low on my priority list to replace it. Add cardamom pods to milk. Bring to a boil, then turn off the heat and let the cardamom steep. Stir occasionally to prevent the milk from forming a skin.

3. Remove cardamom pods from the milk. Add milk to the cooked carrots. Stir constantly to prevent burning. Continue this form of exercise until the all the milk has absorbed/evaporated. The carrot mixture should be a little wet. About 10 -15 minutes. Add sugar and stir for another 3 minutes or so, just until the sugar has melted and absorbed. Turn off heat and stir in almond extract.

4. Place in serving bowl, top with almonds slices and serve warm. Of course, it's still really good eaten cold out of the fridge at midnight as well.

Do what you will, it's your tradition now.