News You Can Bruise for 2003 September 20

As Sumana says, on Thursday night we went to a cooking class taught by Christopher Kimball of America's Test Kitchen fame. I did not learn a whole lot because most of the material was rehashed from Kimball's (very good) book The Kitchen Detecive, but you always learn something watching someone cook who's really good at it. I took a lot of pictures, most of which are blurry and are mainly of interest because they have Sumana in the same frame as Christopher Kimball. Here are ones I like:

• The best one: Sumana acting like Christopher Kimball, with Christopher Kimball.
• Christopher Kimball made up a silly little skit in which he turned a strange-looking oven mitt into a sock puppet.
• You know those aggravating tongs that lock together and won't open? Sumana was confounded by a pair of such tongs, but she soon got the hang of it.

While I was at it, I've made that picture directory a more general "celebrity chefs" directory by throwing in two pictures of the trip I took to San Mateo today (for some reason I always mistype that as "San Matero") to see Alton Brown of Good Eats at a book signing. In this rare picture, Alton listens patiently as I expound upon my theory of what constitutes good eats. Here's a more conventional person-with-celebrity photo. Putting our arms around each other was Alton's idea; my putting-my-arm-around-people-for-pictures impulse is fully under control. Fully, I tell you! I can walk! I also got advice from the eats-meister on the construction of an upcoming metadessert (cf. "Beware" passim).