You know how sometimes a recipe will call for, say, a pound of spinach, and it will be listed like this?

> 1 pound spinach (about 16 cups)

Whenever I see that, I get this image of myself trying to measure out sixteen cups of spinach leaves with a one-cup measure, and the spinach is falling all over the floor and I’m saying, “Wait, was that 13 or 14? Crap.” This is thoroughly irrational, because I have a scale, and no recipe depends on using precisely the right amount of spinach anyway. Also, sixteen cups of spinach cooks down to about one cup ten seconds after it hits the pan.

Still, when I see a recipe like that, I tend to make something else. Tonight, though, I’m making salmon with creamy spinach-poblano sauce. It involves ten cups of spinach. This may end in tears.

Along with every other family around, we’ve been enjoying Mo Willems’s books about The Pigeon. The first installment, Don’t Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus, is about how you should not let the pigeon drive the bus. The second book, Iris’s favorite, is called The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog. It’s about…okay, I’ll stop now.

Anyway, Iris and I were reading _The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog_ for the zillionth time, and I realized that Iris had never had a hot dog. This would have to be rectified. We got some hot dogs and had them for lunch, and Iris loved it, of course. Who wouldn’t love a hot dog? We had to cut Iris’s hot dog into pieces too small to be a choking hazard, but she had a great time stuffing the pieces into the bun, which she called “hot dog bread.”

In New York, there’s a place called Papaya King that’s been at Third Avenue and 86th since 1932. It’s the place featured on Seinfeld where Kramer gets a hot dog. I’ve only been there once, but it has spawned a dozen imitators in the tropical drinks and hot dogs genre. For some reason, the imitators are all called things like Frank’s Papaya and Gray’s Papaya, not things like Papaya Duke and Papaya Viscount. All of them have the same shtick, which involves playing up the health benefits of papaya drinks. None of them play up the health benefits of hot dogs. I never compared side-by-side, but I thought the dogs at our local papaya stand on the Upper West Side, which I think was Mike’s Papaya, were indistinguishable from the King’s.

In 1999, two hot dogs and a papaya drink at Mike’s were $2. Good times.

The papaya stands start out with good all-beef hot dogs, but their greatness lies in the cooking method. They roll the dogs around on a hot griddle all day. The longer the frank stays on the grill, the crustier and better it gets. I realize this is unnervingly similar to the 7-Eleven hot dog rolling machine.

Most people boil or grill hot dogs at home (or maybe microwave them these days), but the papaya method is the way to go. Heat a skillet (cast iron or stainless works better than nonstick, because the dogs won’t stay put on nonstick) over medium-low to medium with the barest sheen of vegetable oil. Put in the dogs and roll them occasionally until they’re crusty all over. This will take at least ten minutes. To warm the buns, I open them and nestle them over the dogs until the bun is a little toasted on the edge that hits the pan. Ten-cent supermarket buns really can’t be beat here.

What’s the best brand of dog? I think all of the major kosher beef dogs are fine, but my favorite (which I tried based on a recommendation in a freebie issue of The Rosengarten Report) is Boar’s Head. You want the skinny all-beef dogs with natural casings.

Cook the Boar’s Head hot dogs in true papaya fashion, and you will be forever known as the Papaya Marquess.

Probably inspired by too much Top Chef, I woke up with an idea in my head for a great pretentious restaurant name.

**The place:** An upscale cafeteria located on the fourth floor of a large hospital.

**The name:** IV

We’re still eating our way through the Anson Mills grits. Iris and I tried the quick grits the other day. In Anson Mills country, “quick” means half an hour of cooking instead of 90 minutes (but see below). They’re good, but they’re not really that different from Albers quick grits, which cook in ten minutes and cost much less. So if you’re ordering from Anson, which I recommend (especially since they just redid their [web site](http://www.ansonmills.com/), stick to the antebellum grits.

Sticking to the old-school grits doesn’t mean you have to stand watch by the pot, like they did before the Civil War. If you soak them overnight (just combine the grits and water in the saucepan and put the lid on), they cook in 30-40 minutes. I’ve gotten better at removing the chaffy bits, too. But the best thing to do with your cooked grits is to put them in the fridge so you can slice them and make gritcakes.

If you’ve had fried or grilled polenta, you know what I’m talking about. These are even better. Just slice the cooked grits about 1/2-inch thick, dredge them in a little flour, and fry them up. As for my preferred cooking oil, it rhymes with “chard.” The cakes cook about four minutes per side on medium-high. Iris dipped hers in syrup. But it’s hard to improve on plain.

There sure are a lot of good fried leftovers. It’s been far too long since I’ve had a risotto cake.

I managed to nab one of the last two bunches of ramps at Frank’s Produce yesterday.

Ramps (also known as wild leeks, ramsons, and probably some kind of cool hillbilly name like stinkgrass) are one of those stubbornly seasonal and wild crops. They appear for a few weeks in the spring and that’s it. Ramps have beautiful floppy broad leaves and an unforgettable aroma. I held one to Iris’s nose and she said, “Smells like ramps!”

They’re native to the eastern US and grow profusely in various parts of the country, including parts of the Northwest. I tried to forget this fact while paying $3 for a tiny bunch of ramps at Frank’s.

I’ve eaten ramps at fancy restaurants, but never cooked with them at home before. Luckily, I found that a few ramps go a long way. Last night I made ramp pizza. I kind of buried the ramps–probably I should have ditched the tomato sauce–but it’s hard to smother a ramp completely. Iris didn’t like the ramp leaves, but she ate all the stem pieces off the pizza before biting into each slice. (Although she insisted those were not “ramp stems,” just “ramps.”)

There were a few ramps left in the fridge, so I asked Iris, “Should I make some scrambled eggs with ramps for breakfast?”

“For Iris!” she replied.

So I did, using mostly stems. Predictably wonderful. Iris wasn’t very hungry, but she pulled a few ramp stems out and ate them. Our house smells like ramps. A guy I know, Allen, lives in Texas and says that every spring when people mow their lawns, you can smell ramps for miles. I’m not home, but I think I smell some now. It’s probably coming from my skin.

Oh, I learned one more important piece of information. According to this page, “ramp pizza” is a slang term associated with the great sport of barefoot waterski jumping:

> “Ramp Pizza” is what you are if you fall on the ramp.

I have big flat feet, so I’d probably be awesome at barefoot waterski jumping.