If you can't stand the heat, don't sit still for the 60-Second Stir-Fry. This week’s Last Chance Foods guests, Vinnie Calabro and Robert LaValva, may have hooked a lot of fish in their time, but when confronted with the lightening round of questions they were left fishing for answers.

Note to self: invite 66SquareFeet blogger Marie Viljoen to the station more often. The writer, cook, gardener and forager brought a little picnic of goodies made from knotweed for this Friday's Last Chance Foods.

Feeling adventurous, I ordered a fancy-pants coffee at Starbucks. A "lite" caramel macchiato, tall, extra foam. I could taste the artificial sweeteners in the sugar-free, vanilla syrup, but otherwise, it was pretty tasty.

I usually travel the same, well-worn route with salmon, letting it cure briefly with a rub of salt, sugar, crushed coriander and zests — a mix of lemon, orange and lime. Then I bake it in the oven. But I decided to steer a different course this time.

I decided to make my own gravlax.

I always thought butter-making involved Laura Ingalls Wilder, Ma and Pa Wilder, a cow, and a big wooden churn. But my sister showed me all you need is a jar.  And little kids eager to do the work.

I love eating. I mean, like, cutting and spearing and chewing and swallowing. Eating's pleasurable, especially in the company of others.  

So it took some convincing to get me to try smoothies in the morning.  A liquid meal doesn't seem like a lot of fun.

The creator of the vegan, gluten-free energy Bum Bar seeks a bigger foothold in a crowded field.

I'm not a big soup fan, but I changed my mind after I made some mind-numbingly awesome roasted beet soup.

I'm still on the hunt for the perfect burger. Got any recommendations?

Every place has its food institutions, its "bests" (best pizza, best tacos, best cheesecake, best chicken feet). What are your food institutions? Tell us where you like to shop, and why ... especially if it's in Cleveland. 

A regional candy and childhood favorite gets a makeover.

At Roman's Famous Meats and Seafood, an Eastern and Northern European specialty store in Honesdale, Penn., I expected to find spaetzle, flatbreads, herring and stollen.  

I didn't expect to find a little man made of marzipan, excreting a silvery paper coin.

The Brandenburger Pastry Bakery in Jeffersonville, NY has only been open since April, but it's already got loyal customers.

When Farmer Lee Jones comes to visit Last Chance Foods, he always brings half his farm's yield with him. As our topic this week was sweet potatoes, I wonder if he had to pay a heavy bag fee at the airport.

I wanted to make lamb this weekend, and I did. I made a leg of lamb, which would have turned out quite lovely if I hadn't overcooked it.

Overcooking would NOT have been a problem with my original lamb plan: a tagine, or Moroccan lamb stew, recipe courtesy of the now-defunct and much-missed Gourmet Magazine. But I had to change that plan after the butcher talked me out of the cut of meat I wanted.

Wandering back to the break room to get a cup of tea, I stopped to take a cucumber pickle break, courtesy of WQXR host Jeff Spurgeon.

The latest musings on food from All Things Considered host Amy Eddings. In this post, ruining a leg of lamb by leaving it in the oven a little too long.

I've been reluctant to eat kale raw.  The curly versions in the supermarket seem too tough and dominated by thick stems and veins to forego steaming or boiling. But then I tried New York Times food writer Melissa Clark's recipe for raw kale salad, using lacinato kale, and I'm hooked.  

Did you see that full page ad in The New York Times last Wednesday? The one that asked, "Since when did agriculture become a dirty word?" 

Fresh off my successful, but tiring, completion of Melissa Clark's "Stupendous Hummus" recipe, I tried two others in her new cookbook, Cook This Now.