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Catching up on old business: this birthday was the most book-centric one I've ever had, and I love it! Tip for other history/folklore geeks out there who find themselves with Amazon gift certificates: a lot of really fun books are available through the Amazon Used Marketplace for between $1 and $5! Beginning four days after my birthday the packages started arriving in the mail, and can I tell you how fun it is to get home every day and find one or two more packages waiting for me? For over a WEEK? No, I cannot.

So, besides rounding out my Barbara Tuchman and Herbert Asbury collections (did you know he'd written a sequel to 'Gangs of New York'? As well as 'Gangs of Chicago' and 'Gangs of New Orleans'?? I'm drooling as I type this), and indulging my interests in animal stories, sideshow anecdotes and commedia books, I've also gotten 'The Gourmet Cookbook', from the 'Gourmet Magazine' editors. Oh, it's taken over my life.

Here's how my obsessive-yet-chaotic brain works: I've gone through the book from cover to cover, jotting down each entree and dessert that sounds good. 68 entree/side dishes and 50 desserts made it onto this list. I've then had D choose random numbers between 1 and 68 and 1 and 50, and made whatever recipe corresponds with that choice (adding on side dishes when necessary).

The results have shown odd patterns! discojesus was present for the Yellow Dinner, when we had parmesan chicken, cheesy polenta and roasted cauliflower; last week I got more ambitious, and snowwand, ah42, and superrob got to experience the Mushy Meal of ma po tofu over rice with lemon custard swirled with raspberries for dessert. And (SPOILER FOR UPCOMING MEAL), this week? Long, stringy things.