I'm just watching Gordon Ramsay's restaurant reality show, Hell's Kitchen. The show began with each contestant being asked to prepare a "signature dish" in just 45 minutes for the chef. I was left wondering what I would do in that situation.

Obviously, my stews are out of the question. Roasts wouldn't work either, and my favorite spaghetti carbonara would collapse completely if left for even a minute or two. There's nothing so nasty as slowly congealing eggy pasta.

Frankly, my first idea would be to simply make Ramsay a fried egg, or scrambled eggs, or an omelet, the best way I know how. For the first, by cooking the egg slowly in butter, and then dripping warm butter over the still raw yolk, and then salting only the white to avoid disturbing the yolk's color. The second over a double boiler, with cream at the end. And the last by rolling the omelet around the pan in that way I've never been able to manage.

But he'd probably have thrown those back in my face for being too unambitious. So after thinking about it a bit more, I hit on risotto with morels - and was gratified to see the chef serve a similar dish in the first night of the restaurant's "opening" later in the show.

Of course, by then I would have run out of time to make the risotto properly. Sweating the vegetables at the beginning takes time, as does the rice itself.

Well, better them than me. The difficulty of satisfying a real chef, even one putting on a bit of an act like Ramsay is, is too much for me. I'll stick to what I'm actually good at.

Mid-paper, I have little insight to offer except snarky comments on bad writing (my own and others'). Instead, some interesting links:

• Periodic Table of Condiments: I can't vouch for its accuracy, but the chart is oddly useful. On its advice, My roommate is now risking his all on the dregs of a 9 month old bottle of tahini in the back of our fridge.
• Modern Rock 500: Disappointed about Danica Patrick? Shocked (shocked!) that the first woman to do something interesting racing cars happens to be beautiful? Couldn't care less? Cheer yourself up with my favorite radio (now Internet radio) station. When it had a there, the station was across the street from my K-8 hippy school. Odd for there to be such a station to grow into in my hometown, but there it was. In honor of the Indy-500, they hold a "Modern Rock 500" every Memorial Day weekend. You've already missed Anarchy in the UK, Creep, and that Jane's Addiction song of which I once was so fond, but the rest is still worth your while.
• Quote of the Day [warning: site is racy.]:

  Q: Is there a type of girl that goes for accordion players?
  A: It's funny, because I also play theremin. More girls seem to be into the theremin and go, "Oh, that's sexy" after a show than when I'm playing claviola or accordion. But Josh, whom you'll be interviewing, has a bright orange accordion that girls are into. I think it's the color. I don't know, I think girls just feel sorry for guys who play accordions. Like "this guy plays accordion, he must be a real dork." And there's an attractiveness to guys who are dorks. Dork is in.

• What is this Thing?: Sarah Vowell narrates the love story of Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash alongside clips and discussion of the multiple versions of Ring of Fire. One of my favorites from the This American Life archive.
• Surfing: I imagine myself an East Coast surfer. I'm not, really, but I'd like to be (probably not enough to actually do it consistently though). Like Amanda Out West, I like adrenaline sports, particularly ones requiring one to think with one's body, so to speak. (I was for years a pretty serious rock climber, but I can't stand most team sports). Successive summers I've floundered through Virginia Beach and the Jersey Shore. This year in Brooklyn? (If anyone knows where I could rent a surfboard near the beach I'd be much obliged....)

So long as we're asking for recommendations does anyone know a jeweler in the DC or northern Virginia area that's a front for money laundering or other shady business? There was one such very near my house in Baton Rouge. They had great customer service---recognized me by sight when they ran into me in other parts of town, which is quite surprising given how little jewerly I buy or wear---and charged below market rates for watch repair. I think they also charged below market rates for gold and diamonds bought in bulk, paid in cash, no reports made to the IRS, but I never investigated that side of the business.

I am looking for two good bookstores in the DC area, one source for used books and one source for new books. It is important that they be metro-accessible, although anybody who knows about great bookstores that can be reached only by car should still bring them to my attention. My idea of a "good" new bookstore is the Seminary Coop or Labyrinth. My idea of a "good" used bookstore is Powell's (Chicago) or The Strand.

I have been to Politics & Prose, which is not bad as bookstores go, but not wonderful. The problem seems to be that D.C. bookstores often serve more as social focal points, places for interesting lectures, (e.g. Steven Levitt's visit tomorrow to Politics & Prose) rather than actual dealers in books. I want a place that has a whole lot of books, with many of them being both interesting (slightly obscure, but still the sort of thing you might want to read) and new. I really want large selections of literature (fiction, poetry, drama) and interesting non-fiction (politics, law, other academia). Does such a store exist in D.C.? Where do book addicts by their books?

Comments are open.

I've got to admit that I've always been slightly jealous of Tolkien's beautiful, long-lived, magic-endowed elf population. Happily, Razib at Gene Expression explains why humans beat elves any year of the century.

Oh yeah--and antagonistic pleiotropy. Antagonistic pleiotropy too.

I went up to the Hill last Thursday to attend the Illinois Breakfast that Senators Durbin and Obama co-host. I'm a once and future resident, and my father, who came with me, used to live there, so I hope we'll be forgiven for attending. It's a great tradition, and a form of constituent outreach that many senators do offer, but I'm not sure how many cordially co-host theirs. Residents show up and ask the senators any question they'd like. Several---a person from Head Start comes most strongly to mind---were clearly asking on behalf of a group worried by pending legislation. The senators were excellent, both quite skilled at quickly phrasing the question so that the entire audience understood the concern and giving an answer of how they would approach that constituent's concern, but, crucially and interestingly, explaining the theory or guiding principle behind their decision-making. It reminded me a of a theory that I heard in my course on U.S. Politics in Congress: that fair can beat pork-barrel.

After the breakfast, while walking through the corridors of one of the Senate Office Buildings, I paused in front of the door to the office of one of my favorite senators. Then I looked up and saw him approaching from not twenty feet away. There was really nothing to do but wait and say hello. He was, as expected, quite gracious. This is one of the things I love about my country: the access. All that's required to get into these buildings and approach the Senators and Representatives is that one pass through a metal detector. If I want to see Congress in action, I can walk into any Congressman's office to pick up a pass. If I want to the Supreme Court, the same, combined with a smaller finite seating area, is true: pass through the detector and check my belongings in a locker (understandable; the dignity of the Court probably would be offended by a pile of sleeping bags). There's no check of IDs; no requirement that one be a U.S. citizen. This trusting openness is one of my favorite things about my country and one of the first things I'd proudly show a foreign visitor.

There's a fascinating story in the New York Times about New York (the poster child for liberal federalism) and its attempts to block cigarette shipments through the U.S. Mail. The article is rife about conflicts of different levels of authority. The state is annoyed because it can't force the feds to stop carrying cigarettes in the mail, but argue that shipping cigarettes in violation of local laws also violates federal statutes. The feds point out that searching and inspecting the packages in a way that would be necessary to the state's legal scheme would violate the 4th Amendment (a higher law that trumps even federal authority) and so on. The stuff of which federalism is made.

So not only did I manage to oversightedly miss Sam Waterston's performance in Tom Stoppard's Travesties in New Haven (it runs through next weekend; if I had not found Travesties so unreadable on paper I would be sorely tempted to snatch a train back up to Connecticut for a night), but I also managed to miss the Phillips Collection's awesome-looking Modigliani exhibit, which closed yesterday. Alackaday-- and worse yet, this means I will not have the chance to use the post-title I was going to use to review the exhibit, "Amo, Amas, Amadeo."