Reader Appreciation Day

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Carl and I would like to thank you, our readers, for providing us with hours of entertainment via our statistics page. A quick look at the phrases that led Google searchers to whatweate.com offers a pretty accurate inventory of our readership. For the most part, our readers fall into the following categories:

1. Looking for recipes, or trying to recreate favorite recipes: "recipe for apricot buttercream cake," "steingarten potato gratin," etc. The most common requests seem to be for the Starbucks spice cookies, hot wings, cinnamon buns, vodka cream sauce, holubtsi, and swedish meatballs. Go figure.

2. Questions about cooking techniques, ingredient substitutions, etc.: "how to bone a duck," "how to make spaetzle without a spaetzle maker." When you've got a question, whatweate.com is always glad to help.

3. Where did we go wrong? Attempts to fix recipes that for some reason didn't work: "why cookies came out hard," "panna cotta not firm enough," "pork brine mistake," "my roux in my gumbo not brown," "stupid hot bbq sauce recipe" (you know you're in trouble when you're cursing the recipe).

4. Kitchen disasters / medical emergencies: "how to get rid of grease smell," "burnt taste getting it out," "how we can tell if our meat is bad," "reason for a stomachache," "ate raw chicken," "i ate crab shell?," and many more. It's called 911, people -- use it.

5. Uncommonly curious about and/or concerned with fat: "pictures of fatty foods," "fattiest foods ever," "what is the flavor of greasy beans." There's a surprising number of these.

6: Obviously looking for something else: "huge breast," "buns of steel," "we are 18." No comment.

7. And my favorites, the utterly inexplicable: "sweet potato air fries," "picture of bloody deep fried," "dancing fruit," "pictures of soup and bread lines during the great depression," "whisk turbulence," "meat that the irish ate." I wonder what exactly these folks were looking for, and whether they found it at our site.

I would also like to give a special shot out to my personal favorite, "we smell like butter." Wherever you are, I salute you.