Meal

THERE WAS a time not that long ago (pre-2006) when, even in the winter, an overnight trip to an Atlantic City casino with dinner would run well over $200. Not now. I recently enjoyed a fine meal and a beautiful room at Harrah's Resort Atlantic City for just $95.16. Cruising the Internet for room deals, I found one for $44 at Harrah's. I could have stayed at Resorts Atlantic City for $26, but I chose Harrah's for the dinner deal at its Steakhouse and because Harrah's has a poker room.

If the idea of very spicy food as perfect summer fare seems odd at first thought, it is good to remember that the world's spiciest cuisines have originated in regions in which temperatures are always too high. That's because the extreme heat of many tropical dishes works as an efficient and flavorful stimulus to the body's own air conditioner, producing the healthy release of perspiration. A particularly good example of this culinary canniness is the popular Cajun-style seasoning, which comes from America's own Deep South.

They come to Sister Jean for food. And salvation. For the last 10 Thanksgivings - and just about every other day of the year - they have received just what they came for. Jean Webster, known as Sister Jean to those who make their homes on the streets and in the abandoned buildings of this resort city, has been feeding the hungry since, she says, a divine voice told her a decade ago that it was her mission to do so. Early each morning, putting...

It could have happened to anyone. Tim Webster, 32 and new in town, went to a wine party in September sponsored by the Wine Brats, a club of young professionals, at Fish on Main restaurant in Manayunk. Webster befriended three people - two women and a man named Marty. Webster says he "had a decent buzz on" when Marty suggested that they go up the street to Kansas City Prime, a steakhouse, for dinner. "It's not the cheapest restaurant around, but he was very outgoing," Webster said.

With the holiday season approaching, it occurs to me that the population can be divided into two camps - soup people and non-soup people. And there are no obvious predictors of who is which. My mother, for instance, can be a lot like a soup - cozy, comforting, a familiar friend and confidante - but she's not au fond a soup person. Of course, being a grandmother and Jewish, she exhibits the proper chicken-soup expertise required to anoint every holiday gathering that falls in an "r" month.

Last February, caterer Joseph Maloney received an unusual telephone call from one of his regular clients. Maloney, owner of the Sensational Cook in Westmont, recalls that "this gentleman wanted to surprise his girlfriend on Valentine's Day. He wanted me to prepare an intimate dinner for two and deliver it to his home. There was only one catch. I had to dress up as Cupid to do the job. " Well? "I took the job," Maloney says and laughs. "But I only provided the food. Someone else came dressed as Cupid and actually shot the couple with a plastic arrow.

At the wedding reception of Dara Penn and Andrew Newman in June, the maid of honor teased her sister, the bride, before one and all. "I told them how funny it was," Rhonda Penn recalled, chuckling, "that everybody gave her all these great things for the kitchen and she had no idea what to do with them. " But on a recent Sunday evening, the couple's siblings, former roommates and friends - cooks all - ate their words, along with a fabulous meal prepared by Dara and Andrew. The couple, who admit they barely knew a pot from a pan a few weeks ago, were guided by Michael Yeamans, executive chef at Rouge, one of Philadelphia's most popular restaurants.

It's the Fourth of July weekend and you're sitting cross-legged on a blanket spread across a lumpy - though relatively level - patch of green in the local park. All the regulars are there. Dad has the hot dogs. Mom made the usual potato salad and coleslaw - both thick with mayonnaise. And Aunt Betty brought the first ears of corn from a nearby farm stand. The reason you're at the park is because you live in a city rowhouse or in one of the many condo or apartment complexes that have spread throughout the suburbs and into the countryside.

Preparing a school lunch, that predawn ritual for millions of harried parents, presents a unique set of culinary and tactical demands. The meal may not be refrigerated, either for lack of facilities or because of a young scholar's forgetfulness. Simplicity is a virtue, since the lunch needs to be eaten quickly. Durability is desirable, since it may travel to school stuffed between a 500-page algebra text and Moby Dick. And the meal, as one of 180 the student may eat this school year, must be interesting and familiar.

It's 6 p.m. after a long day at work, and you are faced with a peculiarly modern-day dilemma. There's nothing for dinner. Until recently people with too little time to cook relied on frozen dinners, Chinese to go, or greasy burgers, pizza or fried chicken from a fast-food joint. Now it's just as easy to pick up grilled tuna with salsa, pasta with vodka cream sauce, or meat loaf the way Mom used to make it before she got too busy to cook. Where? At the supermarket. "We used to eat a lot more pizza," said Barbara Guckin, a CPA who ordered lemon shrimp with ziti for her and her husband and macaroni and cheese and peas for her 2-year-old son, Alex, at Genuardi's in Langhorne.