Michael Prager

CAMBRIDGE - Carving turkey the traditional way has never been a strength for Harvey Baumann, a plastic surgeon who practices in Providence. "I get one or two good slices, and then it looks like an explosion in a meat factory," he says. "It's embarrassing. Here you are a surgeon and you can't carve a turkey."

I lost more than 250 pounds on the Atkins diet.

It's exactly the sort of statement the doctor himself would love, would seize upon for another notch on his smugly cinched belt. But just like the subheading of a recent New York Times Magazine cover story - which suggested that "maybe Dr. Atkins was right" - it's an incomplete thought.

Gordon Hamersley, Chef/owner, Hamersley's Bistro, Boston

"I could not do without my cast-iron braising pot. It's a 15-quart, very heavy, black cast-iron pot with a lid, and I bought it years ago. It's what I cook all my braises in. It's just this fabulous piece of equipment that conducts heat beautifully. You can lower the heat in your oven to almost nothing and it cooks beef stew, lamb shanks, or veal osso bucco in a wonderful way."

The listing at 10 Buick Street is pretty impressive: seven-and-a-half furnished rooms, including full kitchen and two baths; totally wired and well-maintained; air-conditioned; 24-hour security; exercise facility; and other generous amenities.

But it's the view, from the Harvard boathouse to the Blue Hills, with the Charles at your feet and the best parts of Cambridge and Boston in between, that sells the place. When they tell you the rent, only about $1,000 a month per person, your elation comes with a queasiness that tells you there has to be a catch.

The freshness of fruit teams with tarragon to add zing to simply prepared salmon. For each serving:

4 ounces salmon (or preferred portion size)

1 stalk tarragon

1 tablespoon diced fresh figs

1 tablespoon diced nectarine

few drops lemon juice

salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

The Patriots may be on a hot streak, but vice chairman Jonathan Kraft, 39, has a hot streak of his own that goes back to childhood.

He’s a jalapeno man, on eggs, crackers, or on burgers, pickled or plain.

“When we were just down in Houston [for a November game], I had some that were deep-fried with cheddar cheese, and that was pretty good. But that was a dish,” he says. “Jalapenos as jalapenos, I don’t think you could improve them. I guess you could make them spicier, but I’m pretty much happy with the taste as they are.”

On a typical weekend, the Food Network serves up four hourlong helpings of "Iron Chef," the campy cook-off show from Japan that approximates what would happen if you folded Julia Child into an hour of World Championship Wrestling.

Cory Doctorow, the uber-blogger and award-winning science-fiction writer, says that all science fiction is about the present. That truism shows itself repeatedly in "World Made by Hand," a novel by James Howard Kunstler set in a post-oil, post-climate-change, post-pandemic, and post-holy-war future that's not too far off.

I still remember the mid-1980s day when my friend Chris strode into the office with his box of vinyl records, plunked it down onto a desk, and told us to take what we wanted. He was going CD.

It was a radical act that forever repositioned Chris in my estimation. How could anyone just throw away his musical past, even if CDs were more convenient? I'd never just jettison mine, I thought.

But the next time I moved, the turntable stayed in its box, and the records stayed next to it in the closet - for more than 15 years.

It's fair to say that Tom DeVesto, president and cofounder of Tivoli Audio, still has issues with Creative Technology, the Asian electronics company that invested in, and then took over, DeVesto's previous cocreation, Cambridge Soundworks. Six months after the sale in 1998, DeVesto was gone, having resigned under heated circumstances.