Whisk

Score a pint Step up to the defensive line for a drink from these House Rules glasses. Each pint glass features a referee signaling the rules: No rooting for the opposing team; dip fumbles may result in loss of possession; no guest shall intercept another's seat; extra points for getting your own refills. Different strokes This colorful flat-bottomed whisk, designed for use in shallow skillets and roasting pans, is one of 11 new whisks from Kuhn Rikon. This one is ideal for making gravy and it is made of silicone so it withstands heat in the pan as well as the dishwasher.

Texas Sheet Cake Makes 24 servings         1. For the cake, grease an 18-by-13-inch rimmed baking sheet or sheet pan. Whisk flour, granulated sugar, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl. In another medium bowl, whisk sour cream, eggs, egg yolks, and vanilla together. 2. Cook chocolate, oil, water, cocoa, and butter together in a large saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until smooth, about 5 minutes. Off the heat, slowly whisk in flour mixture until just incorporated.

Sweet desert puddings are a delight to cook in the microwave; no scorching, no sticking to the pan, no lumps and no constant stirring. Use a 4-cup glass measure or a 2-quart batter bowl for measuring the liquid, cooking the pudding and for easy pouring into serving dishes. Stirring once or twice during the last half of cooking time is important. A stainless steel whisk is handy for stirring smooth. Make your own pudding from scratch for a fraction of the cost of commercial mixes.

Normally hot fudge is not classified as a necessity of life, but when the thermometer does business on the far side of 100 degrees and there's humidity to match, we deserve some reward just for making it through a day. There are 48 more days before we hit the titular end of summer on Sept. 5. Although Labor Day does not guarantee a break in the weather, it is at least a heartwarming signal of cooler days to come. So here are 48 short, easy-to-prepare, no-hassle, low-heat, low-fat, high- flavor sauces with which you can top an ice cream, gild a fruit salad or crown a humble slice of cake while you thumb your nose at the weather.

Dear Polly: Can pudding be cooked in a microwave? - Janet Pudding is especially easy in the microwave, and it comes out smooth and creamy. Here is a recipe for a basic cornstarch pudding that you can cook up quickly. In a 1-quart, microwave-proof bowl, whisk together 3 tablespoons cornstarch and 1/3 cup sugar, then gradually whisk in 2 cups milk and 1 tablespoon vanilla extract until well-combined. Cook in the microwave for 3 minutes on HIGH. Whisk again. Then cook for 3 to 8 minutes more, whisking after each minute, until the pudding comes to a full boil and thickens.

You might think that creme patissiere, the elegant pastry cream, could never be fodder for a fast-food column. To shatter the first myth, basic creme patissiere is a cooked mixture containing only six ingredients, none of which is cream. The liquid is whole milk, but part-skim milk may be used with equally perfect results. Second, the procedure is so simple that a batch can be made from start to finish in less than 15 minutes. "Just make sure the mixture comes to a full boil or the cream will taste floury," chef Richeux reminds us. Creme patissiere is the base of a variety of dessert-cart specialties.

A Taste of the Mountains Cooking School Cookbook (Simon & Schuster, $16.95) takes the approach that, to understand cooking, you must understand fundamentals. The hardback is authored by Steven Raichlen, a classically trained chef and food writer who founded A Taste of the Mountains Cooking School in New Hampshire. His theory is that by mastering techniques, one can create an almost unlimited number of dishes. Raichlen's book follows the principles of his school and offers 53 lessons, each divided into three parts: a particular technique or combination of techniques, the master recipe that employs the techniques and variations of the master recipe.

The transformation was simple, done in about 20 minutes with cold cream, greasepaint, spray-on hair tint, a tailcoat and a pince-nez. But the watching children were awed. Suddenly, Carmen Pirollo, someone they knew well, had become Teddy Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States. Pirollo, whose vocation is teaching and whose avocation is acting, recently completed a run of Arsenic and Old Lace with the Sketch Club Players Inc. of Woodbury. He played Teddy Brewster, the befuddled Brooklynite - and murder accomplice - fixated on Teddy Roosevelt in Joseph Kesselring's classic.

Yo, Chefs! After a visit to Beau Monde on Bainbridge Street, I was impressed with their dinner crepe, which was fashioned from buckwheat flour. (Very healthy, as it is rich in the B vitamins, as well as a different flavor than the run-of-the-mill wheat variety.) I also enjoyed the mushroom filling and sauce that accompanied my crepe. So all of the above would make a worthwhile request for a featured Ask the Chefs column. Thank you for considering it. Marcy Green, Philadelphia Dear Marcy, Owner Jim Caiola and Chef David Salama have recently opened an authentic Breton creperie at the corner of 6th and Bainbridge streets.

Dear Polly: Even junk mail has its uses: Those peel-off, stick-on address labels can be used for return-address labels. Or enclose one in a personal letter, anticipating return correspondence. The pre-addressed envelopes are good for carrying lunch money or as coupon carriers. The blank backs of advertising letters make good drawing paper for preschoolers or can be folded into note pads. Mail-order catalogs make great picture books for little ones: They're colorful, and there's no problem if they're torn.

A November chill fell on drizzly Chinatown streets Wednesday, but inside the Trocadero, Saharan blues heated up the night. Abdallah Ag Alhousseyni, one of the two frontmen for the transfixing Tuareg guitar band Tinariwen, wore a white Tagelmust head scarf as he stood center stage and offered the crowd a succinct greeting, with four of the handful of words spoken in English on this transporting evening: "Welcome to the desert. " For a decade, the members of Tinariwen have been the best known and most widely touring musical representatives of the Tuaregs, the African desert nomads who inspired the name of a Volkswagen SUV spelled with an added "o. " The six-man band's meditative and mesmerizing show - in support of the new album Tassilli , which features superfluous guest performance from members of TV on the Radio, Wilco, and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band - was its first-ever appearance in the 215 area code.

Texas Sheet Cake Makes 24 servings         1. For the cake, grease an 18-by-13-inch rimmed baking sheet or sheet pan. Whisk flour, granulated sugar, baking soda, and salt together in a medium bowl. In another medium bowl, whisk sour cream, eggs, egg yolks, and vanilla together. 2. Cook chocolate, oil, water, cocoa, and butter together in a large saucepan over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until smooth, about 5 minutes. Off the heat, slowly whisk in flour mixture until just incorporated.

Score a pint Step up to the defensive line for a drink from these House Rules glasses. Each pint glass features a referee signaling the rules: No rooting for the opposing team; dip fumbles may result in loss of possession; no guest shall intercept another's seat; extra points for getting your own refills. Different strokes This colorful flat-bottomed whisk, designed for use in shallow skillets and roasting pans, is one of 11 new whisks from Kuhn Rikon. This one is ideal for making gravy and it is made of silicone so it withstands heat in the pan as well as the dishwasher.

Bedros Vosbikian had ironclad rules in his Melrose Park home. Lo and behold, one evening in 1950, his wife, Vartanoush, failed to promptly serve dinner when he returned from his hardware factory. Vartanoush! The floors, Bedros, the floors, she pleaded as she scrubbed. I have to finish the floors. A year later, Vosbikian introduced one of the unheralded inventions of the 20th century: the automatic sponge mop. He patented the self-wringing action and designed the mop with chrome-plated parts and stainless-steel springs for department stores.

Christmas was simple in the 18th century. But for colonials such as Thomas Janney in Bucks County, things could get a little complicated, as they did in the winter of 1777. With the Redcoats camped west of his property and the colonial militia holed up in the east, Janney had to make the best of the situation as the Revolutionary War moved closer to his door. And so he did, as visitors will see at "A Colonial Christmas: A Family Celebration of Christmas Past," a holiday open house scheduled for Dec. 8 and 9 at Crossing Community Church, the site of the former Janney Plantation in Newtown.

Just as every child ought to have a playhouse, every adult deserves a hideaway - a garden folly, a gypsy caravan, a clapboard cottage in the woods. As Jane Tidbury writes in her new book, Little Retreats (Clarkson Potter, $30), the urge to escape to a tepee, a turret, or a moss-covered woodshed lingers into adulthood, becoming "stronger as the pace of life quickens and the distance from nature increases. " Even Marie Antoinette, surrounded by gold and luxury, felt hemmed in by Versailles.

They pay the highest fares, collect the most frequent-flier miles and sometimes get the most legroom on the airplane. Now business travelers stand to get the fastest service inside the airport. Unisys Corp. is working on a biometric ID-card system that would whisk frequent business travelers through airports without waiting in lines. The Blue Bell company said yesterday that it was working with LaserCard Systems Corp. to develop the "ConciergeCard. " It would store biometric information on passengers, such as their iris patterns, which are as unique as fingerprints.

Terrance Williams sees the women walking briskly from the supermarket in Olney, one carrying a bag of groceries in each hand, the other pushing a loaded cart. "Need some help, ma'am?" Sure, one of the women says. Terrance, 12, walks with them to the parking lot. He carefully puts the groceries into the car trunk, then wheels the cart to its station. In return for the fifth grader's help and considerable charm, the woman gives him some coins. "Thank you," Terrance says as he walks away, pockets jingling with an afternoon's worth of coins.

Do you prepare to wage war on dust balls when the daffodils start blooming? Feel compelled, duty-bound to do spring cleaning? Or are you looking for an excuse to scrap the practice? How's this: Even some experts aren't sold on the idea. "Spring cleaning is a ridiculous ritual," says Carol Seelaus, owner of Somebody's Gotta Do It, a cleaning business in Norristown. "You wind up doing a lot of work - knocking yourself out for days - and your house only ends up looking moderately better - for a little while.

For the best sense of how the third round of the 127th British Open went yesterday, understand that more than one-quarter of the field couldn't break 80. The wind blew that much, that hard. Nobody was under par. Two players, astonishingly, equaled par. The average score was more than 7 strokes over par, 77.5. Justin Leonard shot 82, which must have looked good to Phil Mickelson, who shot 85. "Yeah, I've played in stronger winds than this," said Englishman Lee Westwood, exhausted like so many of the players as he left the 18th.