**RANT:** It’s no fun to share news of bad dinners, but I don’t want this to happen to anybody else. I bought some mussels at Taylor Shellfish this morning with broiled mussels in mind. For the recipe, I turned to James Peterson’s Glorious French Food. There are plenty of good recipes in this book–the oxtail stew is wonderful, and the basic *moules marinières* recipe is hard to argue with. But beware the broiled mussels with garlic and parsley butter. The recipe says to stir the breadcrumbs into the compound butter. I have no idea why he recommends this, and I have no idea why I went stupidly along, but the result was that the butterfat separated and left behind a chalky green lump. Now I’m not sure whether to make broiled mussels again soon to avenge myself, or never again.

**RAVE:** Iris noted that we’ve had crayon on the wall next to her little table for months. I wonder how *that* got there. I tried scrubbing it with a sponge and my usual Orange Plus surface cleaner. No dice. So I Googled. Lots of people recommended Mr. Clean Magic Erasers. I went to the drugstore and found the store brand of this product on sale, two packs for $2. What rock have I been living under? The crayon came right off, and I used another one in the kitchen for the cupboard doors that I’d thought were permanently stained. I assume these work by being extremely abrasive, which is why there’s a warning not to rub them on skin (it’s oddly tempting), and eventually if I keep at it I’ll need to repaint, but I can live with that.

This week on Gourmet.com:

The science of the humble celery root

> Sitting there all wizened and silent on my counter, celery root resembles a great sensei, like Pat Morita, or Yoda. And like those sages, celery root has taught me important lessons about cooking and life.

Celery root seems to be one of the ingredients of the moment, so I need to move on to even less cool root vegetables, like parsley root, or, uh, bell pepper root?