A note: We never add salt while we cook. We think that salting just before you eat takes much less salt than salting while you cook. If you follow these recipes, you'll need to add salt at the table. If you like to salt while you cook, and your blood pressure is low, do it your way.

Start with several cloves of your favorite garlic. (The regular variety from your local grocer works. This is fantastic with Music.) Chop them as finely as your patience permits. Then put them in a sauté pan over low heat and stir, stir and stir. You want them nicely browned. The lower the heat—and the longer the time—the better. Doug's patience goes near a half hour. Mine doesn't.

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Chop an onion the size of a tennis ball and sauté, medium heat with extra-virgin olive oil. Chop some cloves of garlic (use a lot! or skip it—make yourself happy) and add them to the onions. Sauté until translucent (were going haute here). Add a pound of bay scallops and grate in 6 ounces of Havarti cheese. I use a plain Havarti, but there are lots of Havarti-based combinations if you have a good cheese selection—make yourself happy.

Havarti melts easily and the stuffing is almost ready, but it's too runny. Add bread crumbs to take up some of the liquid. When you have a sinfully rich texture, remove from heat.

Take a thick, three-pound salmon fillet and a sharp knife (a ham slicer is perfect) and cut down the middle of the fillet, knife parallel to the cutting board. Cut not quite all the way through, so you can fold the top part open. Put the Havarti-scallop stuffing on the bottom part and fold the top over. (The scallops won't quite all fit? Put the extras in a dish with a spoon; give one scallop to each cat or dog in the kitchen and the rest are just for the cook!)

To grill, put the fish into a hotdog grill (the kind that holds a dozen dogs between two wire mesh sides), close and grill over medium heat, turning once. (Salmon changes from pink to greyish pink. You want it to just barely change.) Or put the salmon into a large baking dish, cover and bake at 300, checking often for doneness. Or use a fish poacher on top of the stove. A bit of Chardonnay in the poacher or baking dish will add a wonderful flavor touch. (In Washington state, where they know salmon, a native told me they simmer in beer. Blue collar, and also delicious.)

Serve on a bed of baby spinach (see Marty uses Doug's garlic) as suggested above. (That will take a lot of spinach. If you only have a little, put it in the salmon, under the Havarti-scallop stuffing.)

If you don't have bay scallops you could use ocean scallops, but cut into smaller pieces. Lobster meat or crab would also work. Steelhead trout or another fish that is fairly assertive and thick enough to be cut open will also work.

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You now have a surprisingly rich stock. Strained (blended smooth for thick soup), it works well in any recipe calling for chicken stock. (Sauté the onions to a medium brown and you'll have a substitute for beef broth.)

Quiz answer: eight. This is important to understand, because it's nearly eight times more work to peel and chop eight 1.5" onions as it is to peel and chop one 3" onion.

For the mathematically inclined, the volume of a sphere is proportional to the cube of the diameter. If you don't like math, think up some kid's blocks. Picture one in front of you. That's a cube, one block wide, one block long and one block high. To get a 2-block cube, arrange a 2-by-2 square of blocks. That's four blocks, but it's only one block high. Add a second 2-by-2 layer to get a cube, 2 blocks wide, two blocks long and two blocks high. It takes eight blocks.

Note: this stock is far simpler than the standard vegetarian stock recipes, and, to me at least, much closer to a true substitute for a meat stock. I'd like to credit my culinary genius for this brilliant combination, but the truth is otherwise. I'd bought my first anise, cut into it, smelled the licorice (which I heartily dislike) and said, "What in h@#$ am I going to do with this?" Tossed it into a pan where some onions were sautéeing, added some water after a bit and tasted. Voila! Rich stock, no licorice. Better to be lucky than smart.

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Optional: a wee bit of allspice is a yummy addition, but you may prefer to leave it out, so the veggies can speak for themselves.

This soup is very thick and filling, rich in fiber and very low in calories. It is high enough in vitamin A (and lots of other good things) that you'll be able to see all the way to another galaxy.

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Chop, not too coarse and not too fine, an onion the size of a softball. In a very large pan, set the chopped onion in some olive oil and sauté over medium heat. This is American barbecue, not French haute—we want the onions browned.

While the onions brown, chop some garlic (use a lot, or none at all — it's your sauce). Add to the onions.

Now take a half dozen large jalapeno peppers and slice them, nacho-style, for a hot sauce, or carefully cut the flesh away from the pith and seeds (which are the hot part) and chop the flesh finely, discarding pith and seeds, for a very mild sauce. It's probably best to start with slicing some and using just the flesh from the others, then adjust per your taste. If it's too hot, set it aside for a couple days. It cools with time.

Coarsely chop one pound of mushrooms, add them and keep simmering.

To the onions, garlic, pepper and 'shrooms, add one large can (28 oz.) of tomato puree and one large can of crushed tomatoes. Stir. (My first time, I was looking for two cans of crushed, but didn't find a second can so I substituted the puree. This might have been better with all crushed — you try it. This would be fantastic with fresh tomatoes, but here in the Hudson Valley, the fresh tomato season lasts only a few weeks each year, so we get by with canned.)

Pour in half a jar (6 oz.) of molasses. (Not at all by coincidence, my companion Baked Peppers and Beans recipe will use the other half of that jar's contents.)

Now chop the pineapple into rather small pieces (a quarter or less of a nice bite) and add it to the sauce. (This is a lot easier if the pineapple isn't fully thawed.) Simmer long enough to marry the flavors.

Last, and definitely least, your sauce at this point doesn't look like barbecue sauce — it looks more like a stew or thick soup. So using your food processor or blender or boat motor make it smoother until it looks right. I did this the first time, but decided I liked all the lumps, so I don't blend any longer. If you do it my way, be prepared for someone to point a finger and say, "That's barbecue sauce?"

Now what in the world are you going to do with all this sauce? You've got enough to serve barbecued chicken and ribs to your closest thousand friends. Try making my Baked Peppers and Beans to use a third of the sauce. Then make some Barbecued Veggies to go along with (or even replace) the chicken and ribs.

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You'll need to be in the kitchen with your beans, but you'll only need look at them every fifteen minutes or so. That means you'll want to have other things to cook. If you haven't already made a Jalapeno-Pineapple Barbecue Sauce now is a good time for that project.

When the beans start to get soft, turn your oven on to 350 and then take a pound of good sausage and cut it into smaller than bite-sized pieces. sauté until browned all over. (Vegetarian? Skip the sausage. These are still great beans. Serve with a rice dish to get perfect proteins.)

Chop the flesh of four really big bell peppers into bite-sized (big bites!) chunks. Coarsely chop one onion the size of a softball.

When the beans are just soft enough to eat, get out a large mixing bowl and toss beans, sausage, peppers and onions together. Then add one third of your Jalapeno-Pineapple Barbecue Sauce, plus half a jar (6 oz.) of molasses and toss some more. Pour into a large baking dish (or several smaller ones) and bake, covered at 350 for an hour. Uncover and cook a bit more. (Don't cook forever — you want the bell pepper to keep its shape.)

You now have the perfect side dish for your barbecued chicken and ribs.

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Slice a fat onion and brown in olive oil, separating the rings as it cooks. Nuke (or parboil) some yam slices. Slice an Italian (small kind) eggplant. Sauté or grill the veggies. Add the onions to a baking dish. Add a bit of Jalapeno-Pineapple Barbecue Sauce . Add the veggies in layers, each with some more barbecue sauce. Cover and bake on the grill or in the oven.

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This is my first solution to the potato problem. The recipe serves two.

Experiment with the various brands of vegetarian "sausage." Find one that you like. (None are perfect. Almost all work in this gravy.)

Put two baking potatoes, into the oven. (Regular oven? Put nails through the center to speed things along.) Don't forget to cut an X into the top of each potato. (Without the X, they explode. Guess how I know this.)

Put three ounces of veggie sausage patties into saute pan at above medium heat with a silver-dollar sized drizzle of canola or olive oil under each patty. (Use half a teaspoon per patty, if you like to measure things.) Turn just before the bottom starts to burn. (You will need to experiment. Learning when to turn requires leaving at least one patty on too long.) Flip patties and sear the other side.

While the patties are searing, mix two tablespoons of cornstarch into 8 ounces of milk. In our house, we use 1% milk. For a smooth blend, pour the milk, then sprinkle the cornstarch while whisking vigorously. (Lumps? Continued whisking helps. Straining may still be needed.)

Remove sausages to cutting board. Set pan off heat. Reduce heat to below medium. Chop sausages until the largest pieces are under 3/8" (8-9 mm) in the longest dimension.

Add milk to pan (quickly, so it cools the pan). Return sausage to pan. Return pan to heat. Stir continuously. (Rubber spatulas are wonderful, but be sure you have the kind that can be used over the stove.) As the milk approaches boiling the cornstarch will thicken it. I don't understand the chemistry, but the result is magical. If it is taking a long time, step up the heat. When you have a thick, creamy gravy, remove from heat but keep stirring a bit longer so the pan can cool.

Split the potatoes open wide. Drown them in the sausage gravy. Add a pinch of sage, if you like. A sprig of fresh sage is a perfect garnish. Salt and pepper to taste.

Calorie count, per serving: potato, 128-278, depending on size; sausage, per packaging (probably 75-150); 1% milk 51; cornstarch, 30.4; oil, 18.8; total, 303.2-528.2. Whole milk adds 24 calories.

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