In one of my first most painful days as a line cook many moons ago, when the slightest error on my part provoked near nervous breakdowns, my head chef discovered I was about to serve perfectly fried crabcakes that were frozen within. The refrigerator had run too cold the night before, and in my over-reliance on tongs I hadn't noticed my cakes were all ice. She turned to me in my panicked state and said, "Emily, I can't have a blabbering line cook. Watch me." As she deftly, subtly split the frozen thing in half to blitz it a moment under the broiler, she continued, "99% of being a good cook is knowing what to do when you screw up, because you're going to screw up all the time."

Advice for living, indeed. Fast forward 10 years: earlier this week I invited friends over for dinner, got stuck at the office and had only 20 minutes before they showed up to make them the roast chicken I'd promised them – mistake number one. I sallied forth, cutting up my chicken into quicker-cooking parts and switching from roasted baby yukons to faster mashed potatoes, when I discovered mistake number two: I'd somehow managed to run clean out of salt, and forgotten to get any more. I gave myself 2 long minutes to really savor my idiot status before I decided to get resourceful. I reached for my saltiest pantry items - soy sauce and fish sauce – and sprinkled a little of both on my chicken parts as they steam-sautéed in my skillet. A tablespoonful of each, and my caramelizing chicken skins turned that much darker and sweeter. As I gloried in my tasty triumph, I heard the doorbell ringing as I discovered goof number 3: no milk for the mash. Yogurt worked even better – somehow the tang made up for the salt-free status (as did loads of freshly ground pepper). My friends arrived and we sat down to a delicious meal, where I managed to avoid mistake number 4: confessing to them the extent to which I'd nearly screwed the whole thing up.

When you break it down, America’s two greatest contributions to the culinary universe are barbecue and cocktails (buffalo wings finish a distant third). On this patriotic weekend, I plan on celebrating both, with a pile of pulled pork (from our June 2008 issue) and this spunky drink made with applejack, the original American spirit, which I’ve turned into a pork-friendly pitcher drink.

Big-Batch Applejack Cocktail
Makes 8 drinks

Ice
2 cups applejack
1/4 ounce Rich Simple Syrup
1/2 ounce Angostura bitters
8 lemon twists, for garnish

Fill a pitcher with ice. Add all of the ingredients except the lemon twist and stir for 30 seconds, until chilled. Strain into chilled martini glasses and garnish each drink with a lemon twist.

Over the weekend, I threw a baby shower for a friend and made the most crowd-pleasing, addictive chicken-salad tea sandwiches. The recipe here for the chicken salad will be my go-to recipe in the future. It was enough chicken salad for 24 small tea sandwiches, which I made with slices from a grainy, seeded loaf. Adding sprouts to the sandwiches gives them an extra bit of fresh crunch.

1/3 cup mayonnaise
1 1/2 teaspoons Dijon mustard
2 skinless boneless chicken breasts, poached  and diced
1/4 cup finely diced celery
1 tablespoon minced flat-leaf parsley
Salt and freshly ground pepper
1/2 cup seedless red grapes, quartered
1/4 cup slivered almonds, toasted

In a large bowl, mix the mayonnaise with the Dijon mustard. Add the chicken, celery and parsley and season with salt and pepper. Gently fold in the grapes and almonds just before serving.

For many mixologists—both professional and amateur—naming a new drink is the best part of the job. Not only does one get to baptize his or her own original creation, the rules for naming drinks (versus the rules for naming appetizers, say, or species of beetles) are quite informal.

Our 2008 Cocktail Guide (which comes out in April) is proof positive, and I’ve been able to glean a few drink-naming conventions, thanks to a quick read through the book’s index of 160-plus recipes: riffs on classic cocktails (Noir Sidecar, Napa Valley Fizz); allusions to ingredients (Guavarita, Gin-esaisquoi, Pinch of Basil); geographical references (Puerto de Cuba, The Ipanema, April in Paris); historical tie-ins (Boston Tea Party, Remember the Maine); number-based (87 Ways, Basil 8); political winks (Long Live the Queen, Filibuster Cocktail, The Chancellor); B-list celebrity references (Ewing No. 33, The David Carradine Martini); danger words (The Stinger, Tommy Gun, The Stiletto, The Wreck) and the downright oddball (Blueberries Gone Wild, Tante’s Medicine, Honey Don’t).

Myself, I’m an awful namer-of-drinks. I have a notebook on my bar filled with recipes that lack titles. I routinely ask friends, strangers and teetotaling relatives "what should I call this?" Don’t believe me? Here’s the list of cocktails I’m planning to make for an Oscar party this Sunday:

There Will Be Bloody Marys
The Diving Bellini and the Buttered Rum
Atone-Mint Julep
No Country for Old Crow
La Vie in Rosewater
Charlie Wilson's Ward Eight
Sweeny Tonic
Into the Wild Turkey
Americano Gangster

See what I mean?

It took a Tasting & Testing assignment (just wait for the May issue!!)  for me to find the perfect cupcake carrier—one that transports enough cupcakes to feed a New York City-public-school size class (more than 24). After years of digging out shirt boxes or aluminum roasting pans, always at 8:00 in the morning, just as my kids are heading out the door, I've most thankfully found the ideal solution.
The carrier is a little bulky, but is the most efficient  (and pretty and relatively inexpensive) way of hauling  36 standard-size cupcakes—even ones with an oversize pile of butter cream—without  them teetering or toppling over.  Plus the cupcake tiers are removable, making room for a large 3-layer birthday cake (with candles)  or 9 x 13 inch sheet cake.  I figure that after two more birthdays (for each of my two kids)  and a picnic or two,  the carrier will pay for itself. 

I somehow always avoid disastrously overindulging during the holidays. January – the month when most people revert to detox mode – is when I really do myself in. For me, January means weekends and many weeknights spent watching college-football bowl games, the NFL playoffs and the start of the NCAA basketball season. More often than not, I’m at less-than-Food & Wine-worthy sports bar with friends who are happy to make a meal of radioactive-looking buffalo wings that cost five cents apiece.

After a sketchy incident involving a hot-sauce-shellacked wing that had somehow never been plucked of its feathers, I now refuse to order the popular sports snack from any bar. Luckily, a friend just bought the most enormous TV I’ve ever seen, and lately, we’ve been watching the games at his apartment. So I’ve been trying to create the ultimate wing to coax the rest of our friends from the bars. The Baked Buffalo Chicken Wings I made two weeks ago were superfast, but not spicy enough for my taste. This weekend I wanted something with more heat, and I made the Spicy Sriracha Chicken Wings that Cleveland chef (and Browns fan) Michael Symon of Lola and Lolita restaurants created as part of his ultimate Super Bowl menu for our February issue. The fiery kick from the Thai hot sauce made the crispy wings a huge hit.

One hot-sauce-loving friend boasted that the Sriracha chile sauce was still too “wimpy” for his high heat tolerance, so I’m sending him to Jake Melnick’s Corner Tap Savina chile—one of the hottest peppers. To avoid crises, each pile of wings comes with a personal fire alarm. If the alarm is sounded, the staff will run over with a supply of heat numbing foods like sour cream, milk and white bread.

When a friend emailed me a link to this site, which offers the services of a man known only as “The Fondude,” I thought it was either an ironic joke fueled by nostalgic kitsch or a clever piece of viral marketing, perhaps tying up one of Lost’s many frustrating loose ends (Spoiler alert! Jacob is really the Fondude).

According to the site, you give Fondude 48 hours' notice and he will show up at your home with all the trappings for a proper cheese fondue feast. After preparing the meal, Fondude promises he'll leave you to stab and dip in privacy. He offers two packages: “Tête a Tête” (melted cheese for two, $150) and, uh, “Fromage a Trois” ($175 for three). The site lists only a phone number (no email), which I called immediately. No answer, no mention of Fondude or fondue or anything remotely cheese-related.

Maybe, I thought, the site is a front for a far more sinister operation. You call up Fondude and ask him with a nudge and a wink for “the works”; he shows up a couple of days later with much more than a wheel of Emmentaler. At best it’s the culinary equivalent of paying someone to come over and run a bubble bath for you and the sweetie. A certain amount of awkwardness—and interrogation—is inevitable.

So I did what any good journalist would have done minutes sooner: I Googled “Fondude” and found this article in the Chicago Sun-Times. It turns out the Fondude is a real dude, a 30-year-old “molten cheese hobbyist” who already has many satisfied customers in the Chicago area. My bad, Fondude.

But let me assure you, preparing cheese fondue isn’t project cooking (if you can make oatmeal, you can make fondue). But if you don’t live in the Chicago area and/or prefer your fromage en privé, follow this recipe (from the January issue of F&W) or one of many others from our online database.

There, I just saved you $150 and the chore of explaining to your sweetie that mysterious man in the kitchen with skewers.

My friends and I have thrown some wacky dinner parties through the years. First prize would have to go to a “Dangerous Foods” party, in which the host served (to quote his invite) “food combinations which purportedly cause death, nausea, and general malaise,” with drinks and dishes inspired by an esoteric Burmese chart titled “The Food That Shouldn’t Eat Together”. A sampling of what we ate and drank (and survived): Pomelo and lime Caipirinhas, Chocolate Star Fruit cookies, and Cucumber Ice Lollies (lollipops).
For New Year’s Eve, another friend held a “Good Luck” party, based on her research from various daily newspapers, NPR, Chowhound.com, and food blogs, on the dishes and ingredients meant to offer luck for the year. While I’m not a superstitious person (or, at  least, I’m trying not to be one), I thought her menu was a fun and delicious way to incorporate dishes from various cuisines. A sampling:

-Zaru soba noodles served cold with a shoyu (Japanese soy sauce)-based dipping sauce
-Pickled herring with sour cream and onions
-Kale chips (she drizzled olive oil and sea salt over cut-up pieces of kale and roasted them on a baking pan for about 5-10 minutes at 400 degrees)
-Hoppin' John (a Southern dish of black-eyed peas and rice).
-Vasilopeta (a Greek cake baked with a silver coin inside for luck to whoever gets the piece with it)
-Doughnuts (She originally planned on making making Ollie Bolens, a Dutch New Year’s Eve sweet similar to a doughnut)
-Grapes (12 eaten at midnight)

My friend Beth could easily be the next Martha Stewart, though a sassier, hipper version. Saturday night she threw a perfectly executed Christmas party with spiked apple cider, mistletoe and a tree that looked like it stepped out of the Williams-Sonoma catalogue. The only thing missing was the Christmas music (her husband insists on James Taylor).    

Always on-trend, she had a red cast-iron fondue pot bubbling with Gruyère (Apparently fondue is making a comeback. In our January 2008 isssue, you’ll find the luscious version that chef Ryan Hardy serves on New Year’s day.) and a table full of tasty appetizers. I’m always impressed with the delicious, super-simple snacks she comes up with. The biggest hit at the party were addictive, bite-size chocolate-pretzel sandwiches. I couldn’t keep my hand out of the bowl and I couldn’t believe how easy they are to make. The recipe:

Take Snyder’s of Hanover square pretzel snaps and place a Hershey’s Kiss (Beth used the peanut butter-filled and caramel-filled Kisses) on top of each pretzel. Warm it in the oven until the Kisses are slightly melted, then place another pretzel snap on top and sandwich them together. They’re great (but messy!) right out of the oven, but just as delicious if you let them cool and then serve.

Punch season is upon us. I’ve been to a half-dozen holiday parties so far this year, and at each one a punch bowl made a guest appearance. This isn’t proof that the year-round punch service trend (see our January ’08 issue) has trickled down into our homes; punch is as much of a Christmas tradition as holly boughs and drunken Santas. As Wall Street Journal drinks columnist Eric Felton points out in his awesome new book (stuff it in your favorite cocktail-lover’s stocking), “For Dickens, Christmas wasn’t Christmas without a steaming bowl of punch.” When a reformed Ebenezer Scrooge makes amends with Bob Cratchit, his final reparation is a ladle-full of Bishop, a warm, port-based punch popular in 18th- and 19th-century England (Felton’s book contains two versions of the recipe)—essentially what we’ve come to call “mulled wine.”

At my own holiday parties, I too like to greet guests with a mug of mulled wine: It’s my way of saying “Welcome to my home. Here, defrost your hands, inhale some Christmas nostalgia, and get working on that buzz.” The first glass is usually appreciated, but I can’t remember a single guest ever asking for a second. Why? Because it’s hot wine. No matter how you gussy it up, wine—good wine, at least—is best drunk at much lower temperatures. Same goes for beer: Another punch mentioned in A Christmas Carol is waissail, a bowl of hot ale swimming with roasted apples. I’d rather do shots with the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.

With this in mind, I developed two chilled, wine-based punches for the Ray Isle's essential Holiday Wine Survival Guide in our December issue. (In the story we call them “pitcher drinks.” Pitcher or punch bowl, there’s no difference.) A third, slightly more complicated punch was left on the cutting room floor. It’s about as Christmasy as punch gets. I hope Dickens would agree.

Plum Pudding Cocktail
8 servings
One 750ml bottle Zinfandel
3/4 cup Becherovka (a cinnamon- and anise-flavored Czech liqueur)
3/4 cup Spiced Plum Syrup, recipe follows
3/4 cup Cointreau
1/3 cup fresh lemon juice
Orange twists, for garnish
In a pitcher or punch bowl, stir together the wine, Becherovka, plum syrup, Cointreau and lemon juice. Refrigerate until cold, at least 2 hours. Stir again and strain into punch glasses. Garnish each glass with an orange twist.

Spiced Plum Syrup
1/2 cup plum jam
1 cup water
6 cloves
10 allspice berries, crushed
In a small saucepan, bring all of the ingredients to a simmer and cook for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and let cool. Strain.