Bruce Zabov

This issue we’re doing homemade pizza and, as it turns out, the house is sold, and this will also be my final column so we’ll celebrate with a pizza “party” before we return to the U.S. in June.

Whether you’re settling in for a quiet afternoon or evening at home or planning a party there’s always something festive feeling with pizza on the menu! ( In Italian “pizza literally means”pie”). Or it’s handy to have in the freezer so it’s ready for a quick snack or you need a quick bite to eat if you’re in a rush.

When it comes to creating salsas, it’s a cook’s opportunity to let the imagination run free, and to be as imaginative and creative as you like. Let your own food preferences be a guide and you can’t make a bad choice!

For myself, I’m fond of the clear, light, clear taste of cold cucumbers, and the fresh brightness of ripe pineapples and mangoes and they often appear in salads here. And if you like certain fruits and vegetables in salads, you will probably enjoy them in a fresh salsa, too.

I originally began baking this bread as a holiday gift for the neighbors at Christmas until I sampled it for myself, and thought “This is really good!!” The other good thing in addition to its appealing flavor is you don’t need to wait for holidays to make it. You can treat yourself to it any time you like.

With North American Thanksgiving holidays and Christmas coming up I thought this would be a good issue to go over a basic stuffing recipe you can individualize as you wish. Too, the availability of the packaged stuffing mixes can be pretty variable and being able to whip up your own reduces your dependency on its being avalaible or not. And YOU get to decide on its fat and salt content as well. This is the season weight tends to increase as we feast and it can help to be aware of what we’re feasting on.

This one-dish dinner is a variation of the red-cooked dishes so popular in all regions of China. They all have in common the seasoning of soy sauce as one of the ingredients central to them, but there are also some regional variations. In Shanghai they contain sugar, in Peking just the soy sauce is favored and in Szechwan they are made hot and rich, full of garlic, ginger and scallions or green onions with a flash of hot red pepper.