Anyway, my mother made the best meatloaf. Here is the recipe, which I know by heart because that is where it is stored.

Ground Beef (don’t know how much, but enough to fill a meatloaf pan or bread pan, whichever you use)

One onion, diced

One jar of Heinz Chili Sauce

One egg

One cup of Wheaties

Cheddar cheese (the kind that comes in a box, like Velveeta)

Salt and pepper

Mix everything together (making sure to wash your hands first), and then work it into a loaf shape. Then cut it in half horizontally, put the cheddar cheese in the middle, and smoosh it back together. Then put some of the cheddar cheese over the top.

Cook at 350° for a long time. (Not sure about the temperature, but whatever.)

This is my mother’s finest accomplishment. My sister, who is a real writer, included a slightly different version of this recipe in her cookbook. I have pitted my mom’s recipe against my friends’ mothers’ recipes at these table discussions, with great success.

“Wheaties? Really? Not Cornflakes?”

“Nope, Wheaties. Try it, you will never go back.”

“Does it have to be Heinz Chili Sauce?”

“Well yeah, it does. Are you daft?”

Everyone has their own recipes. My Aunt Nancy has been collecting them and plans to put them in a cookbook containing just meatloaf recipes. I think it would do really well in this world of single-ingredient recipe books. A person who wrote a cookbook—a hundred-page cookbook on just scallops, mind you—was speaking at a breakfast I recently attended, at which I learned that “single-ingredient recipe books” is a new genre in the cooking industry.

My beloved Cousin Pam (we are really sisters, but our parents think we are cousins) has a fabulous recipe for Turkey Meatloaf, and since it has things like green peppers in it, I can pretend it’s really good for me. She gave me the recipe a long time ago, but I lost it somewhere between the Hamptons and LA. I have asked her numerous times to send it to me again, and she has promised to do so, but never followed through. I’m hoping my mentioning it here will shame her into sending it now.

Anyway, meatloaf recipes abound. While I think a meatloaf-only cookbook is a great idea, I also think it might be nice to expand it to meatloaf and mashed potato recipes, because everyone knows meatloaf without mashed potatoes is like one shoe on and one shoe off. But I’m just grateful that meatloaf is back in, and I will not ask for more than that. I hate to be gluttonous.

I’m glad that meatloaf is back in style. I really am.

“Are you kidding me? They gave you the recipe with the food?”

“Yep. Usually hand written on a piece of stationery. One night about a week after he died, my brother in law asked if we could possibly go out for dinner instead of eating ‘dead man’s food’ another night. We had to laugh. Each of the women also brought me a little envelope of pills and explained to me about taking them. It was a regular pharmacy.”

I decided to ignore the pill thing and just deal with the recipes. “Maybe they were just making sure you knew who to return the plate or dish to without asking for it. Tape the recipe on the bottom of the plate and you would know who the plate really belonged to.”

She just looked at me.

I am still thinking about it. When I was around seven or eight, I got the stomach flu after eating cinnamon toast. I never ate cinnamon toast again, and I loved cinanamon toast. Loved it. I would assume that the same thing would be true after eating dead man’s food. Who would possibly want to ever taste that particular dish again, let alone enter it into the hall of fame recipe drawer where you put favorite recipes that are usually associated with wonderful ‘food’ memories. I have those kind of recipes. My Aunt Molly’s Apple Cake that she used to bring me when she visited me at school. Years later I made her spend months looking for the recipe because I just needed to make it for my daughter. Or, my grandmother’s Christmas Cookies that are pecan balls. Those are the recipes you put on your stationery. Not dead man’s food. But believe me, no judgement here.

I’m sure it’s a Texas tradition thing (she was living in Texas when her husband died). Get a grip people. Drop off food, for sure, but use a paper plate or throw away tupperware to send it in, and please, leave the recipe at home. But, no judgement here.

But Cheerios don’t stop there. They cure your heart disease. And, if you don’t have heart disease but you do have high cholesterol, they cure that. And, if you don’t have either of those maladies, no worries, Cheerios will start your day with oats, the cornerstone of our health pyramid. Let’s see, boys and two out of the top ten dangerous things to one’s health. Cheerios could be the best food ever.

But, we are not finished. I also received an email that had fun projects for the winter and one of them was to make a Cheerios bird feeder. Not only will Cheerios cure us, but birds need Cheerios too. This is all a lot of responsibility for one cereal.

So, of course, you know me, I had to go to the history of Cheerios. Cheerios was first produced on June 19, 1941 and is marketed by the General Mills cereal company of Golden Valley, Minnesota as the first oat-based, ready-to-eat cold cereal. It was called Cheeri Oats at first, later changed to Cheerios because of a trade name dispute with Quaker Oats. The name fit the “O” shape of the cereal pieces. In other words, Cheerios was the first fast food, possibly the beginning of the American health crisis. Hmmm. We are celebrating Cheerios today and not going to the dark side of things this early in the new year, so we won’t go down this road at this time.

I was with friends for New Years and had Cheerios for breakfast at their house. When I poured it out of the box, I got the prize inside. I was so excited. It was the cutest plastic hippo you ever saw with a little wheel on the bottom for easy rolling on the breakfast table. I used to love to be the first to open a box of cereal and get the prize inside. In our house, you were not supposed to search through the box for the prize, you were supposed to wait and see who got it naturally through just pouring out your portion. I’m sure this was the first setup by my parents for cheating between my siblings and me. This type of rule does not build joint cooperation.

There is actually a book out about the prizes in cereal boxes. It’s called Cereal Boxes and Prizes: 1960s – A Tribute and Price Guide. This just goes to show you that you can write a book about anything and someone might publish it. Apparently the coolest ever cereal box prize was the Captain Midnight secret decoder rings that must have been before my time, because I don’t remember them.

Anyway, back to Cheerios. I want to thank Cheerios for being so many things to so many people. For those of you who wish to become Cheerios aficionados, Cheerios is on Facebook and you can become a Cheerios Fan, not to be confused with a friend, who we all know might not work as it could be unfriended when you are sick of them and move back to Frosted Flakes. I’m glad we had this little Cheerios chat.

Still Intimate at 10,000 by Liz Neumark

24 hours from now, I will be “elbow deep” in turkey, stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, green beans and more. Only it will not be at a traditional family gathering; it will be on Washington Avenue in the South Bronx. This Bronx venue is just one of 10 where Great Performances, under the auspices of the Salvation Army, will be feeding 10,000 New Yorkers a traditional – healthy and wholesome – holiday meal. My team will prepare and serve 900 meals, in quantities not familiar to most people. (We will serve 360 lbs of turkey alone and over 2,000 of food in total.)

I heard some industry buzz that our participation in feeding 10,000 hungry people was not a good reflection on our brand. That a true high end, boutique, catering company would not embrace or proudly talk about this “mass feeding” opportunity. That stopped me dead in my tracks.

Feeding New Yorkers has been my job for close to 30 years. It is the gala social and non-profit events, glamorous movie premieres, intimate CEO level private dinner parties, celebratory life cycle events from cradle to matrimony, and Fortune 500 events that we specialize in. Politicians, movie stars, rock stars, sports stars, star CEO’s – our client list is pretty cool.

And yet, I feel honored to be part of the catering company that is bringing this delicious meal to the tables of thousands of hungry, some homeless, some just down on their luck neighbors – a table we will decorate and serve with the same warmth we bring everywhere.

Our 4,000 sq ft commissary is not the largest in the catering industry, but it has seen many days of multiple events and our culinary staff knows how to make magic happen. Our cooks, chefs and dishwashers have spent the past several days (which would have otherwise been quiet for us) cooking turkey after turkey after turkey. Sure, they are happy for the work, but I think they are so proud to be a part of this effort.

Over 250 co-workers and business associates of the company will join together tomorrow from early in the morning through the afternoon to make the meals happen. The trucks will start to roll to the various destinations beginning at 5:30 AM. Crews will load the trucks in the middle of the night – in about 12 hours.

And the same care that goes into creating a glamorous gala dinner will go into 10,000 dinners.

One thing I have learned above all else, being able to give to others is the richest form of getting. I cannot believe that what we are doing should be commended for being the right thing to do any more than it should be criticized for being the wrong thing to do. And if this act has negative impact on our high-end brand equity, then there is something wrong in thinking that the elite are worthy of better food than anyone else.

I am so proud of my co-workers, friends and family who have chosen to give up their holiday to help serve others. And whenever the day ends tomorrow, and wherever we all go to put our feet up and rest, it will be with a sense of true thanksgiving for what we have, a good feeling for having shared the day with others and a small measure of humility and guilt for our good fortune.

They said there was an outlet store there where you could get Twinkies and other Hostess treats. I told them you should never eat a Twinkie because the ‘cake’ is not cake at all and they grow it; they don’t bake it.

“You made that up!”

“No I didn’t. I read it a long time ago, I swear.”

No one believed me so I did a little research when I got home.

In the 1920s and ’30s, Continental Bakeries sold baked snacks under the Hostess brand name. Many of the snacks were seasonal, with fruit filling. Hostess Little Shortbread Fingers were made with strawberries, so for several months of the year the equipment used to make them sat idle because strawberries weren’t available.

The company vice president, James Dewar, wanted to make a product that could use that equipment and improve efficiency. His idea was a simple sponge cake with a flavored cream filling. On the way to a marketing meeting, he saw a billboard advertising Twinkle-Toe Shoes. And so, the Twinkie was born in 1930.

The first Twinkies were quite different from the ones we know. For one thing, they were made with banana cream filling, not vanilla. But in World War II, there was a banana shortage, and vanilla became the standard flavor. The eggs, milk and butter in early Twinkies gave them a shelf life of only two days. Dewar had his salesman replenish store shelves every other day, but the practice was expensive. So, the need for a longer shelf life led to many changes in the Twinkie recipe.

Today’s Twinkie has a much longer shelf life than the ones made in 1930, but not as long as some people think. A variety of myths and urban legends have sprung up around the Twinkie’s longevity, claiming that it stays fresh for decades, would survive a nuclear war and that the company is still selling off the original batch made in 1930, still fresh almost 80 years later. In fact, a Twinkie’s shelf life is officially 25 days. It’s also a misconception that Twinkies are chemically preserved. Most of the chemical ingredients are replacements for the ingredients that allow a Twinkie to spoil, but they aren’t strictly preservatives. Replacing eggs, butter and fats is what keeps Twinkies from going rancid. In fact, the airtight plastic packaging does far more to keep the cakes fresh than any of the actual ingredients do.

There are claims of Twinkies that have “lasted” for decades, such as one kept in a high school science classroom for 30 years. While it is true that the Twinkie continues to exist (like pretty much anything in a sealed plastic wrapper would), it is described as brittle. Reports that it is probably still edible are dubious, since no one seems willing to put that theory to the test.

Now, why is this important you ask? I am clueless. But a little nostalgic trivia now and then is a good thing.

Precious

Precious isn’t going to bomb. The topic includes everything that is at the height of societal review; incest, obesity, education. And it’s all in one film. How could it lose? Well, it could have. Biting off so much and not going over the line where someone wants to look away – needs to look away – is an art, and they mastered it this time.

Stunning performances by everyone in the cast makes this all come together in a precious few hours of time well spent by each of us. Mariah Carey - well done. You clearly have a soul that has suffered. It’s written on your face. And, Mo ‘Nique, who plays Precious’ evil mother, brings a rawness to the screen that shows she is not afraid to stand naked – butt ugly naked – in front of the world. I guess comics have that strength, they just don’t use it normally in a serious place and time. Gabourey Sidibe, who plays the large Precious, was made for the role. She takes her time with it, hurries nothing and brings a real sense of layers to the person beneath the fat. I loved her and know that she brings to the part the pain that hides underneath obesity. Trouble is, there are no roles for people her size and thus this might be her finest hour on screen, which would surely be a shame.

Mo'Nique

Precious is about someone’s awakening from that which has been thrust upon her, to that which she chooses to go out and find. What is it about some people that enables them to rise above adversity so great they should be buried beneath it? There was the homeless girl who lived on the subway and ended up at Harvard. There is Oprah herself who came from abuse, mother rejection and other challenges to become the most powerful woman in media. These are not accidents, but there is something in these people that helps them rise above.

I had the name of the film with me throughout. The fact that her mother named her Precious when she was born tells us that she loved her at the start. The road her own life took created the hatred for Precious. I’m not sure that is so unusual in terrible situations. For me, it wasn’t about Precious finding the precious part of herself as much as it was her mother losing it. Don’t you just love titles that take you to the questions?

See it. If nothing else, it puts your own life in perspective and gives you the inside look into others that are just inside the windows of the houses you pass as you drive through the Harlems of our country’s cities.

Did you also know that Halloween is the second highest grossing holiday after Christmas? That’s gross. Truly. What is the point?

Now that I live in LA, I wasn’t even sure if the kids go trick or treating here. From what I’ve seen about LA eating habits, they might go biking instead; dress up and ride five miles with their parents on their bikes in the perfect weather. Or, maybe they give out granola bars if you go from house to house. I dunno. I can comfortably say that I doubt very much if it’s business as usual on Halloween. Nope. I do believe that they give out little Tootsie Rolls if they give them out at all and the kids eat one a day or something. Whatever. Suffice it to say that I didn’t buy candy or put the paper on my door welcoming kids from the building.

And, last but not least, the original jack-o’-lanterns were made out of turnips, not pumpkins, which actually are fruits. And, that wraps up my Halloween information. Happy Halloween.