Everyone who's done a little cooking knows that the type and quality of the fat you use has a dramatic effect on the final product. That's one of the reasons why mass-produced cookies made with hydrogenated shortening, rather than butter, are markedly different in texture and mouth-feel compared to the ones you bake at home.

That's why it's especially upsetting (well, to those of us who take our food very seriously) that the FDA is trying to change the definition of chocolate so that it doesn't need to contain any cocoa butter at all - cocoa butter being the key ingredient that gives chocolate its creamy texture. Instead, manufacturers would be allowed to use vegetable oils or other fats, instead.

American chocolate is already laughably terrible by international standards, as our current definition allows a waxy product with less cocoa and cocoa butter onto the market. Do we really want American chocolate to become even worse than it is today? Well, the good news is it's not a done deal yet. We're still in the public comment period for this policy change.

The deadline to submit a comment to the FDA is April 25, so hurry to submit a comment to the FDA today. No, really. Go do it right now!

You know how you buy a dozen bagels and then by the end of the week you're left with three bagels as hard as a rock and you can hardly cut them without breaking a knife and you have to toast them in order to render them somewhat-edible? ...What, is it just me?

Endure the ravages of stale, rock-hard baked goods no more!

This magic trick comes to me via Zingerman's. In order to revive dried-out baked goods, sprinkle the exterior with some water - enough to make it moist but not soggy - and shove your bread or bagel into a 325-degree oven (or toaster oven) for several minutes. Call it five or six minutes for a bagel, or fifteen for a full loaf of bread.

Magic, I tell you. The bread comes out of the oven looking, smelling and tasting like it was fresh-baked. You'll never suffer from the stale again.

For years, I've taken the "buy fresh, quality ingredients" gospel at face value. When I switched to these quality ingredients - the organic cage-free eggs, the King Arthur flour, the sun-ripened tomatoes - I've never noticed much of an improvement, except with the tomatoes (Who wants a tomato that doesn't even have an aroma? Aren't aroma and taste almost the same thing?), but it seemed like the right thing to do.

Lately, though, I've has occasion to use some sub-par ingredients. I didn't expect to see much of a difference, but boy howdy was I wrong.

First: About a month back, I ran out of flour. (I know, I know, how do you run out of flour? But I did.) When I ran to the grocery, they didn't have any of my good ol' King Arthur, so I bought Gold Medal instead. It used to be good enough, right? And then I set out to make pizza dough with this stuff. I have a bread machine pizza dough recipe I've been using without fail for many years now. And with the Gold Medal, for the first time, it was a disaster. The dough was sticky and lacked any sort of body; it wasn't gloopy, not quite, but there was no way it was going to turn into a nice flat disk for me, either. I tried again a few days later, and this time I watched the machine during the initial mix cycle, adding flour until it got to that just-right texture where it had spring to it.

Would you believe it took an extra half a cup of flour? And the resulting dough just... wasn't that great.

Some time later, a relative going on vacation gave me some extra eggs so they wouldn't go bad, and I hard-boiled them for breakfast. I'm used to using the fancy-schmancy cage-free, hormone-free, antibiotic-free organic brown eggs. These were your standard white commercial eggs. Again, I expected no meaningful difference, but I couldn't have been more wrong. The subpar eggs looked beautiful, to be sure. I had hit the perfect point in boiling where the yolks are firm and golden, with no grayish ring around them. But they tasted just awful; so bad I couldn't even make myself eat a whole one. They weren't spoiled, mind you, they just lacked a certain ineffable egginess that I look for in a hard-boiled egg. Also they tasted faintly of burning rubber.

So I guess the necessity of good ingredients has won me over, if in a backwards fashion - you don't necessarily know what you're missing unless, well, you KNOW what you're missing.

I have long had a mild revulsion for potato-based soups. I've blamed the potato-cheddar soups my mother used to make. Lately, though, I've found myself quietly reminiscing about this childhood nemesis, suspecting it just wasn't as bad as all that. And also my mother insists it used to be my favorite, and she isn't usually delusional about this kind of thing.

So when I found myself with a few potatoes hanging around, and some leeks, I of course thought I should have a go with a highly-rated creamy potato-leek soup.

I used the recipe as more of a loose guideline, though. I took five potatoes, peeled and diced, and simmered them in about three cups of chicken broth. Then I took nine pre-cooked bacon slices (cut into chunks), a couple of tablespoons of butter, and two sliced leeks, and tossed them all into a pan together until the leeks were soft and turning golden. When the potatoes seemed sufficiently cooked, I threw the leek mixture into the pot with a cup of skim milk and a healthy dollop of reduced-fat sour cream. For decoration, I put a sprinkle of freshly ground pepper on each bowl.

I am cured of my aversion to potato soups forever and ever, amen. This was quite possibly the most delicious soup I have ever made. The flavors in this soup blend just perfectly, rich and comforting on a chilly autumn day. I made it for lunch, but it would make a great dinner with some crsuty sourdough bread and a plate of sliced tomatoes or a salad.

It wasn't very quick to throw together, mainly because of the potato-peeling. I suspect this recipe would be faster and just as delicious if you left the skins on the potatoes, though I didn't try it because mine had all turned weirdly green.