I recently made my first strawberry rhubarb pie of the season and served with it an ice cream made from scraps in the fridge. I had an open container of sour cream, the dregs of a pint of yogurt, a lemon on its last legs, but no eggs. The resulting tangy sour cream ice cream was, like many kitchen inventions, a happy accident because along the way I discovered the perfect ice cream flavor for pie.

My adventure with this big fish peaked as I tried shoving it — lovingly stuffed and carefully sewn up with pink thread — into my twenty-inch apartment-sized oven. There was swearing and a little dance of frustration. Maybe even a lump in the throat. Then I hacked it in half and moved on.

Spaghetti alla Carbonara: when it's good, it can make your eyes roll back in your head with pleasure. It lurks there, beckoning, batting its eyelashes on Italian menus. When you don't order it, you usually end up wishing you had.

Do you ever make it at home? Seems easy enough, right? It's basically just bacon, eggs, and pasta. But like most things with few ingredients, there is a technique that binds all the magic together and if you don't have really great ingredients and a grasp of a few key pieces of technique, you'll be let down — possibly with scrambled eggs on your pasta.

To help you avoid this bummer and give you the opportunity to experience a classic in its greatest form, I spoke to several ace chefs and got the scoop on how to make really authentic spaghetti alla carbonara.

We're rolling ahead with video: it's time to start showing you all some basic techniques and we'll start with the onion, that pungent bulbous bundle of flavor, so essential to so many cuisines. Watch the video above, then click through for a quick run-down on onion types and the secrets to keeping your eyes dry while you chop.

I was born in LA in the seventies which meant, among other things, there were margaritas, a cedar hot tub, and Eagles and Steely Dan records playing a lot at our house.

I remember my dad in bell-bottom jeans with woven Guatemalan belts and tied his hair back with a scrap of leather while letting his massive beard spread across his chest. My mom also wore flared jeans, hers high-waisted, with flouncy pastel tops and long silky blown-out hair. If you are over a certain age, these are probably familiar images.

I'm still catching my breath from a quick trip (my first!) to Mexico last weekend. I went to learn about avocados and came back with an intense hunger, not for food — there was plenty of that — but to return and drink in more of this stunning place, using every sense.

While I love the idea of a little hand-held, deep-fried ringlet of sweetness, most doughnuts make my teeth hurt and coat the roof of my mouth with a fatty film, so I avoid them, and most other overly sweet desserts. But I do like a challenge, so lately I have been playing around in the kitchen with the idea of a savory take on sweets. This week my inspiration came as I eyed a bag of sour cream and onion potato chips at the corner deli, displayed next to a box of powder sugar doughnuts.

At home I had Vidalia onions, scallions and even some garlic scapes so I toyed with some recipes using all three of these onion relatives plus sour cream to help with the leavening. The result was a barely sweet, cakey, light doughnut that I couldn't stop eating.

We'd gotten a little casual about where we ate, with most meals at the butcher block island, its wood top sometimes kale or beet stained from dinner prep, and usually still damp from a quick wipe-down. I was craving some formality. Not the kind that dictates which side of the plate the fork goes — I admit I still get turned around on that one — but the kind of formality that comes from giving something its own special place. The way a dancer has the stage, a photograph has a frame, or a tree has its earth. The formality I craved was to give the food bound for our bellies its own place of honor.

Last week I spoke on a panel with my friend Melissa Clark at the International Association of Culinary Professionals conference in New York. The topic was recipe voice. As I was considering what I might say, I asked myself what it is that I hear when I read a recipe and what I want my readers to hear when I write one. I immediately thought about Judy Rodgers' book, The Zuni Cafe Cookbook, and how it was her recipe voice that first caught my attention as something unique: it was playful, breezy, sometimes annoyingly lengthy, and full of wit and memorable lessons, particularly her five-page recipe for roast chicken.

Dyed Easter eggs have wandered in many directions in their history, from dying them red in remembrance of Christ's blood, to what a lot of kids will tell you now: they color eggs to make them look like jelly beans.

This time of year there are some pretty amazing craft-tastic ideas online and in magazines making it entirely possible to devote days to creating museum-quality ova. I prefer the less design-y and more rustic approach. After all, they're eggs you might be stashing somewhere in the lawn. And with a small child in the house, this is not a project likely to involve X-Acto knives and tiny electrical tape stencils.

Easter is a reminder of fertility and abundance, so I say turn on the color and let loose.