If it is shelf-stabilized, watch out. Get fresh pork back fat, cut it into cubes and cover in cold water in a saucepan. Bring to a simmer and simmer until it stops popping (basically, until the water is cooked out), but do not leave it unattended, as it could get too hot, start smoking, and the lard is ruined.

Strain the cracklings out (save them. You can crush them with salt, pepper, allspice, a little garlic and fresh thyme or sage, moisten with hot fat and spread on slices of baguette), and keep the rendered lard in an airtight jar in your fridge. It lasts for quite awhile.

This same method applies to rendering goose or duck fat, and if you get a duck or a goose and throw away the interior body fat, you are being very wasteful. Duck and goose cracklings are very good on salads and in risotto as well. Duck and goose fat are the best cooking fats known to man. I once made a pastry crust for a pate with goose fat, and it tasted great, although it was the hardest thing to work with I have ever had on my hands. I am sticking with pork lard.

Tongue can be marvelous. I recommend the Chez Panisse recipe for lambs' tongues with herbs found in the Chez Panisse Cafe Cookbook. To do it you should have a very good herb garden that includes rue, savory, calamint, as well as the usual. You could do it with standard kitchen herbs, but those three add something unbelievable.

I also like beef tongue in agrodolce, which is Italian sweet and sour. There is a great Mexican dish with boiled tongue slices served with salsa verde. And then there is the cold weather classic tongue tacos. I do not make those, as I can get excellent ones at the local taqueria for around $1.35.

I love soup with tripe, but am a frothing at the mouth fanatical partisan of trippa alla fiorentina, which is quite possibly the best dish there is. Whether you have a small helping on a hot day or a big steaming bowl in winter, trippa alla fiorentina is amazing. If I weren't reviewing a restaurant tonight, I would probably make some this afternoon.

I'm the only one in the family who dares to eat Pepper Pot soup, and I prepared some tongue once. I wasn't crazy enough about tongue sandwiches to buy an entire tongue again; but I could eat tripe in Pepper Pot Soup till it comes out my ears!

I presume that Joy of Cooking will tell me how to render lard...I was sort of hoping that you could buy it off the shelf that way in the supermarket, but suddenly I'm sensing not...

I always use the livers for my ragu. The gizzards and necks go in the stock pot. Melanie graciously tolerates my love of organ meats and does not object to my annual Variety Meat Festival. Not that she loves the stuff, but she tolerates it (and will try anything once).

As for using pure butter, I don't think that it gives quite the right texture. Lard gives both texture and flavor. Remember, use fresh rendered lard. The hydrogenated stuff from Armor is awful. It tastes terrible. I use the classic European method of water rendering, but oven rendered Mexican-style lard is even better tasting. It might be too roasty tasting for pastry work, though.

I thought i'd heard of using lard before; but Martha Stewart swore by butter (and I presumed that her book was where I had heard it), so I dropped the lard idea and stuck with cold Crisco.

I did try butter before, with passable results, but I just don't go for the butter flavor in crusts that much. I grew up with Crisco (and perhaps lard, too--my mom was a great baker, and we did have lard around).

Next time: pure lard! I'll have to keep it hidden in the back of the fridge, along with the big pack of chicken gizzards and hearts I buy to flavor up my turkey giblet gravy (I get a magnificent broth with the turkey parts plus the plethora of smaller chicken gizzards--simmer 'em up for a couple hours, then sneak away with the turkey neck and a few gizzards. The rest I slip to the dog, before the family catches me cooking --EW!--ORGANS! And EATING them, too--UGH!

Actually, my mom used to simmer the turkey stuff, too (except the liver)--she even chopped the heart and giblets up for the gravy. My husband begged me never, never, NEVER to do that! I think he suspects the truth about my gravy, but he tacitly looks the other way (it's flat-out great).

I love tender neck meat fragments and gizzards! I like the gizzards almost better than the plain old white meat and drumsticks (they need a lot of gravy to liven 'em up)!

Well, we always have a selection of cheeses (you can count each one as a dessert, we usually have Humboldt Fog, Camembert, a blue of some sort, reggiano parmeggiana, a pecorino, it depends on what looks good at the cheese shop), a variety of Italian cookies (biscotti, panforte slices, riciarelli, amaretti, brutti ma buoni), homemade bouche de noel, a couple of different types of candies, then if we are short we put out dishes of chopped chocolate or nuts or dried fruit, to get the count up to 13 (stands for Jesus and the 12 Apostles). Sometimes I have made spumoni (from scratch, including candying the fruit) and panna cotta. I am not sure what they will all be this year.

As for pie crust, there are two tricks: ice water and lard (or 1/2 lard, 1/2 butter). The lard must be fresh rendered. If you get the hydrogenated stuff, you might as well use shortening. The flavor and texture imparted by the lard is fantastic.

What were the thirteen desserts last year, and what will they be this year?

I've been cookie-ing and pie-ing to death. I'm finally beginning to get the crust thing down...

I had a very entertaining time over Thanksgiving with Leftover-Apples-and-Hot-Buttered-Rum-Mix Pancakes Foster. If I had known that flambeing was that simple and fun, I'd have done it years ago!