Tabasco

A VOW OF SILENCE? FUNNY YOU SHOULD ASK Griping isn't part of a nun's job description, so for years a convent of kindly sisters living alongside a garbage dump in Oxnard, Calif., suffered in silence. But polite fibbing is taboo, too. Once county officials asked them about it, they told the truth: The dump stinks, and it's terribly noisy. "We don't complain. It is our way to suffer to ourselves. But if someone asks, we have to tell the truth," said Sister Beatriz Gomez, a native of Colombia who entered the Sisters, Servants of Mary convent three years ago. "When you want to talk to your Heavenly Father, you need quiet," she said.

VILLAHERMOSA, Mexico - Air and sea search teams intensified their hunt Saturday for 10 missing oil workers as Tropical Storm Nate headed west, threatening new areas of Mexico's gulf coast. Meanwhile, fishermen's groups reported at least a dozen fishermen aboard two Mexican shrimp boats went missing in the gulf Friday. Nate was still moving toward the coast slowly but was expected to pick up some speed Saturday, said the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. Forecasters said the storm would approach the coast Sunday, most likely just below hurricane strength.

Food doesn't come much fresher than the kind Lonnie Brooks grew up with. "My grandfather was a trapper and a hunter and lived with us, so we ate a lot of pork and wild food: rabbits, coons, birds, squirrels," recalled Brooks, a blues guitarist who grew up in Dubuisson, La. "It's hard to kill a squirrel, 'cause they're so fast. " Blues diva Marva Wright grew up in Louisiana, too, but she was from New Orleans, a city with a wealth of skilled church cooks. "We'd have suppers to raise money: fried chicken, potato salad, spaghetti and meatballs, green beans, chitlins, gumbo.

Pillsbury Oven Lovin' Cookies Refrigerated Dough. Candy cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and cookies with Reese's Pieces. $2.69 per 18-ounce tub yielding 2 1/2-3 dozen cookies. Bonnie: Oven Lovin' cookies are the closest to home-baked, made-from- scratch cookies made by a national food company. Basically these are tubs of dough waiting to be spooned onto a cookie sheet and baked. No need even to slice. But as with most ultra-convenient foods, you pay steeply for the convenience (about 8 cents per cookie)

Here is an excerpt from the blog "My Daughter's Kitchen. " When our three kids come home for Christmas, they always want the meals they remember. It's funny, as I don't think of our dinners together as Norman Rockwellesque. It was always a challenge for me to get home to get it on the table, and someone was always running somewhere five minutes after we sat down. But I guess all of that is part of the family glue. One of the family favorites was this stir-fry dinner that is so old, it was called "Basic Oriental Stir-fry with Chicken.

A 30-second TV commercial for the Super Bowl costs $1.6 million these days. So you can bet sponsors want you to like their ads. Pepsi had the best-liked commercials in three out of the last four Super Bowls. Last year, instead of Pepsi, an exploding mosquito held more attraction for viewers, according to a study by the advertising research firm, Gallup & Robinson. The mosquito starred in a 30-second Tabasco commercial that showed the insect exploding after biting a man who put two bottles of Tabasco sauce on the sandwich he was eating.

The boss assigned Gina Stuardi this task: Make a Bloody Mary that's spicy - but don't use horseradish. That's akin to saying make me a pizza, but don't use cheese, dough or tomato sauce. "[The owner] hated horseradish, so I had to come up with something else," said Stuardi, who tends bar at Marabella's, 401 City Ave., in Bala Cynwyd. "I love mustard. So I tried it, and he liked it. " She used a Dijon variety, along with Lee & Perrins Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce, A-1 steak sauce and fresh ground pepper.

Dear Polly: Small pieces of felt glued to the corners of metal decorative objects will prevent them from scratching the furniture. Find old keys that do not fit anything, spray paint them an appropriate color (gold is excellent), and tack them up at interesting intervals on the side of a cabinet or on a blank, uninteresting wall. They look like wallpaper, and they become an excellent conversation piece. I have 205 on one wall. A narrow shelf over the top of the door frame and extending along the whole length of the wall makes an excellent place for memorabilia.

Jim Hunt spent 12 years pursuing an acting career in New York. Of the small roles he won over time, none was for the part of a chef. Nor a restaurateur. Or even a barbecue-pit boss, for that matter. But that was acting. Real life for Hunt these days is the Hog's Head Tavern in Trevose. "My acting career was going so good that I ended up here, doing barbecue," Hunt said. Actually, life changed three years ago while he was walking in Greenwich Village. "I met my wife. " A short time later he fell in love again - with barbecue.

Here is an excerpt from the blog "My Daughter's Kitchen. " When our three kids come home for Christmas, they always want the meals they remember. It's funny, as I don't think of our dinners together as Norman Rockwellesque. It was always a challenge for me to get home to get it on the table, and someone was always running somewhere five minutes after we sat down. But I guess all of that is part of the family glue. One of the family favorites was this stir-fry dinner that is so old, it was called "Basic Oriental Stir-fry with Chicken.

VILLAHERMOSA, Mexico - Air and sea search teams intensified their hunt Saturday for 10 missing oil workers as Tropical Storm Nate headed west, threatening new areas of Mexico's gulf coast. Meanwhile, fishermen's groups reported at least a dozen fishermen aboard two Mexican shrimp boats went missing in the gulf Friday. Nate was still moving toward the coast slowly but was expected to pick up some speed Saturday, said the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. Forecasters said the storm would approach the coast Sunday, most likely just below hurricane strength.

It doesn't take much imagination to step from the Center City sidewalk into a piece of the French Quarter. Just give a little blink as you stroll down 12th Street north of Sansom, pull the door handle, and head into Les Bons Temps. Inside the elegant facade, where the name of a long-gone florist, H.H. Battles, is still scrolled in stained glass above the door, you could be inside a Bourbon Street Creole palace. There's a grand staircase just beyond the bar that sweeps up to a mezzanine where tables perch behind wrought-iron-trimmed galleries.

The boss assigned Gina Stuardi this task: Make a Bloody Mary that's spicy - but don't use horseradish. That's akin to saying make me a pizza, but don't use cheese, dough or tomato sauce. "[The owner] hated horseradish, so I had to come up with something else," said Stuardi, who tends bar at Marabella's, 401 City Ave., in Bala Cynwyd. "I love mustard. So I tried it, and he liked it. " She used a Dijon variety, along with Lee & Perrins Worcestershire sauce, Tabasco sauce, A-1 steak sauce and fresh ground pepper.

Jim Hunt spent 12 years pursuing an acting career in New York. Of the small roles he won over time, none was for the part of a chef. Nor a restaurateur. Or even a barbecue-pit boss, for that matter. But that was acting. Real life for Hunt these days is the Hog's Head Tavern in Trevose. "My acting career was going so good that I ended up here, doing barbecue," Hunt said. Actually, life changed three years ago while he was walking in Greenwich Village. "I met my wife. " A short time later he fell in love again - with barbecue.

A 30-second TV commercial for the Super Bowl costs $1.6 million these days. So you can bet sponsors want you to like their ads. Pepsi had the best-liked commercials in three out of the last four Super Bowls. Last year, instead of Pepsi, an exploding mosquito held more attraction for viewers, according to a study by the advertising research firm, Gallup & Robinson. The mosquito starred in a 30-second Tabasco commercial that showed the insect exploding after biting a man who put two bottles of Tabasco sauce on the sandwich he was eating.

Hurricane Emeril - that's Emeril Lagasse, the chef and TV Food Network host - has blown into town. If Monday night's crowd at the Barnes & Noble store in Marlton is any indication, Lagasse is one hot dude. More than 600 people snaked around the stacks, and Lagasse wouldn't leave until he had signed copies of his new cookbook, Emeril's Creole Christmas, for everyone - four hours of scribbling. Yesterday, he hosted a sold-out cooking demonstration at Chef's Market on South Street for 200 people who paid $45 a head.

FAT CAT SHEDS SOME POUNDS AFTER A MOVING EXPERIENCE A fat cat named Panther lost weight the hard way - she spent 27 days in a packing box without food or water when her owners moved from Florida to Oregon. The black cat flecked with orange was inadvertently shut in the box when Linda Monroe and her daughter, Carolyn, packed up in Miami. When Panther was found Tuesday, she had slimmed down from 14 to 9 pounds. Panther probably survived because she was overweight, said veterinarian Lynn Erdman, who treated Panther for dehydration.

A guest at Cape May's venerable Chalfonte Hotel described the hotel's cookbook thusly: "It's like putting folklore in your stomach. " The Victorian-style hotel, built in 1876 and listed in the National Register of Historic Places, collected its most enduring recipes in 1986 for a cookbook called "I Just Quit Stirrin' When the Tastin's Good. " The title pretty much sums up how chief chef Helen Dickerson went about her business for 32 years in the Chalfonte kitchen. "Miss Helen," the third generation of her family to work at the Chalfonte, was there for more than 70 years and continued to cook until shortly before her death in 1990 at age 81. Her mother, Clementine Young, had been head chambermaid for more than 60 years.

The rabbit died at the three-quarter pole. The Cat was passed by The Dog. The Dog chased The Bull. The Bull outran The Rabbit, The Cat and The Dog. Nobody beats The Bull. That, in a nutshell, is the story of the $725,000 Travers Stakes, the 125- year-old Midsummer Derby that ended in a photo finish here yesterday and left Holy Bull the undisputed leader in American thoroughbred racing. Before a steaming crowd of 46,395 at Saratoga Race Course, Holy Bull held off a spectacular late charge by underdog Concern, nipped him by a neck with his final stride and perhaps silenced his last critics.