Roberts is a partner in a popular chain of tavern/bowling alleys in San Diego (too bad he hasn't opened one here), so he has a lot of experience making crowd-pleasing wings. So much so that Frank's RedHot Sauce has signed him up as their national spokesman and brand ambassador. He is also the official wing consultant for Yankee Stadium. Now that's a position I was unaware was available.

I spoke with Roberts about grilling and winging it for about an hour last week while attending the Memphis in May World BBQ Championship, where he was presiding over the Frank's Hot Wing Eating competitions that took place next to the main stage every couple of hours. As a representative of Frank's, which is a member of the French's family of products, Roberts naturally prefers some of their other wares like Cattleman's BBQ Sauce and French's mustard when he is grilling.

This isn't as much of a pander as you might think, as many of the winning competitors at Memphis in May endorsed Cattleman's, and Frank's is the original buffalo wing sauce. When Roberts makes ribs, he slathers his ribs in French's to add just a little tang to them, but more importantly to keep them moist while they cook. Most of the mustard burns off anyway, so you'd probably only notice a slight nuance in the flavors afterwards. For his wet rib sauce, he mixes Frank's and Cattleman's to make what he calls his "Tavern-style" sauce.

For wings, he suggests boiling them in your favorite craft beer for about 10 minutes until the wings are cooked through and really tender. Since nobody likes soggy wings, you need to crisp them up somehow, so he recommends either flash-frying them or grilling them until the skin is crispy before tossing them in the Tavern-style sauce.

I tried some of his wings, and I have to admit that for ease of preparation and the sweet/hot flavor that I usually prefer, they were spot on. I have generally preferred Alton Brown's preparation in the past, but dang, those things take two hours to make. I can use that extra time to eat more wings.

Roberts shared his easy recipe with Bites readers:

• www.wusthof.com

I did take a mess of knives down to Davis Cookware in Hillsboro Village to let their resident "knife whisperer" have a crack at my Wüsthofs. I wasn't that impressed by the edges or how long they they stayed sharp under normal use, plus whatever stone they used scratched the heck out of my blades — but sharp is much better than good-looking. (At least that's what I keep trying to convince my girlfriend.)

Finally last year, the same girlfriend gave me some really nice Shun knives and this slick little whetstone/honer combination. So far so good as the combination of good knives and a fairly foolproof sharpening system has allowed me to get them sharp and keep them sharp for quite a while. But now I may have found an even better solution at the Nashville Farmers' Market.

Cathey Grossman runs a little business she calls "Edges." Every first and second Saturday from 9 a.m. until 1 p.m., Cathey sets up her very professional rotary grinder and whetstone system and will sharpen your cutlery while you shop at the market. I saw the evidence of some of her work, and I must say she does a remarkable job and really understands the art and science of creating and honing an edge. Bandying about terms like "double grinding" and "included angles," Cathey impressed me as she tried to teach me.

Most algorithm talk is over my head, but I like to look at pictures, so algorithm visualizations work for me.

Yasiv turns your Amazon search into a web of pictures, along with a list. The screen fills with items you can see, much more interesting than a listing of entries.

I typed in the title of a cookbook I authored, The All New Square Foot Gardening Cookbook (Cool Springs Press, 2009) and Yasiv came alive with a tangle of tomes that unwound themselves gradually into a design that reflected their connection to the original title, and to each other. It's like opening a drawer full of electrical cords and watching them spring out.

Each item is clickable, with a full description to help you see why Good Bug, Bad Bug might be related to the square-foot gardening cookbook.

Typing in 660 Curries, Raghavan Iyer's immense volume, gives a triple web: one part comprises Indian cookbooks, another strand is curry cookbooks from other ethnicities and countries. A third connects to the main web by a single book: an Indian slow-cooker book, and comprises only slow-cooker cookbooks.

Books are cool and all, but searching for small kitchen gadgets is more fun. The "silicone whisk" visualization bounces out like the contents of the gadget drawer leaping into space, or a bowl of spaghetti dumped on the floor.

Yasiv, which may be an acronym for "yet another similar items visualization," is a participant in the Amazon LLC Services Associate program.

But I can recommend the fantastic search function, which allows you to sort choices by nutrition, ease of prep, course, cuisine, season and so much more.

Meanwhile, the idea behind foodie.com is reminding me a little of Chowhound: recipes, travel, dining and reviews.

To sign up, you must provide Twitter or Facebook info, because the point of foodie.com is to combine food and social. It also wants you to follow some other chefs and bloggers, which I didn't want to do. To repeat, though: It's in beta, so a lot could still happen.

Benjamin Surmi and Jenny Vaughn Harrison are the co-directors of FEAST Together, an organization founded to empower the community by creating community kitchens to provide healthy and sustainable foods. Their model is a little bit complicated, but basically they have established two kitchen spaces where local chefs can work to create meals for distribution to subscribers.

And they've already enlisted three pretty prominent cooks to lure subscribers for the upcoming winter term: Martha Stamps, Matt Bolus and Casey Dailey.

Think of the concept as a kitchen version of a CSA. Subscribers pay a fee to sign up for a particular chef for a quarter and then can buy prepared meals at discounted rates for pickup or delivery once a week. If you don't want to sign up to support a particular chef, you can also buy from any of the chef's menus to plan your own weekly dining, albeit without the cheaper rate.

No matter which way you do it, the chefs commit to use local seasonal ingredients whenever possible, so you can be sure that you're purchasing the freshest food available. FEAST Together is still looking for new kitchen spaces to expand the program, but the roster of chefs they've already signed up is impressive.

The first to toss her toque into the ring was Chef Stamps, a longtime local favorite and an early advocate for local and organic food. The structure of her meal plan involves a membership fee based on the length of the term and the number of diners participating. Basically, it works out to about $7.50 per meal per person for chef-prepared, healthy food and admission to a regular Wednesday night supper that Martha hosts at West End United Methodist Church, which is the same night and location of her weekly meal pick-ups. All her dishes are packaged in either glass jars, BPA-free reusable plastic or recyclable aluminum tins.

• Laura Wilson

The proof is in the pudding — or the beef hearts or the bento box or the crawfish etouffée. Wilson has shared a preliminary list classes for the coming year, and they sound not only fun, but fairly — dare we say — cutting-edge.

Two of the most popular buzz phrases in contemporary cuisine are "farm to table" and "nose to tail." The former is what farmers' markets are all about. The latter refers to the idea that to reduce waste and improve the health of the planet, it's a good idea to use every part of an animal that's been butchered. And there's a whole camp of foodies who say that less popular cuts like organ meats are actually fabulously tasty as well.

Hence the "Offal Good" series of classes. Wilson is working on a whole lineup, and the first class is on Monday with accomplished chef Matt Bolus, a veteran of Charleston restaurants and Watermark here who's currently working in the kitchen at Flyte. Check out the details:

As they say in biz speak, if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail. Don't succumb to indecision; spend a moment strategizing your personal approach to the wonders of Restaurant Week. Check out the website; there are 40 or so deals listed, with more possibly to come.

Should you try a new place you've always wanted to visit but somehow never made it there? Ever been to Jimmy Kelly, or Goten?

Another useful strategy is to use your Restaurant Week visits to support longtime favorites; just ask legions of MafiaOza's, Jackson's, and Caffe Nonna devotees.

You might dispense with the restaurant and let the food itself call to you. Watermark is making shrimp ravioli on fennel mousseline, Rumours East is stuffing portobellos, Red Pony has Parmesan grilled trout, and Nero's has a peppermint snowball with your name on it.

No need for a spendy meal: you can eat local at the lowest prices — Provence and Drink Haus have your number with a $2.12 soup and bread or $2.12 for a coffee drink.

All 43 of the participating restaurants are offering good value, but some values are extra valuable. Tomorrow Chris will tell you about something special planned at ChaChah. And that $10.12 lunch at Sunset Grill is a tough competitor.

Whatever your Restaurant Week strategy, don't forget to make reservations, if possible — it works out better for everyone.

First and foremost, plan your game and work your plan. Trying to drive or get a cab from place to place and party to party is difficult enough on a regular Saturday night let alone the mother of all amateur nights. Try to schedule your visits around a centralized spot and walk from place to place. It'll probably be faster than trying to drive or hitch a ride between stops — and undoubtedly safer. As always, if there is nobody in your group sober enough to drive, take advantage of public transportation, especially from one of two Sober Ride bus stops at 2nd & Church or 5th & Broadway to catch a free, safe, and sober ride home, AAA's 1-800-AAA-HELP "Tow to Go" deal or for Pete's sake, just call somebody and wake them up to ask for a ride home. Any friend worth his or her salt would much rather drive you home from the Exit/In rather than bail your sorry butt out of jail — or worse.

Another real and present danger you might not even think about comes from annual tradition of popping the old Champagne cork. I'm more of a gentle uncorker myself, because I hate to waste good hooch just for the sound of a "pop' and a shower of bubbles. But if you insist on opening your bottles with panache, here's some official advice from the American Academy of Ophthalmology:

In many Louisiana households, after the Thanksgiving meal is eaten, along comes the moment when a crucial decision must be made: whether to make the gumbo. I can remember my brother, Chuck, some six or seven years ago, holding a bird carcass over a big boiling pot of water, and saying to no one in particular: "See you in three days." (This is the same brother who often says, "Some people's body is a temple; mine is a carnival.")

Properly executed, a gumbo takes time. First, it's very labor intensive. And second, the pieces just need hours and hours to come together. It's nothing short of a mystery, to be honest, how the disparate parts produce the final taste. Sure, any gumbo recipe can show you the "how," but it sure can't explain the "why."

When I see people take their carved-up Thanksgiving turkey and throw it in the trash, I want to shake them hard, convert them, explain the gumbo that awaits if they only take the time. And so, herewith, the map down Gumbo Road. ...

Read the rest for step-by-step instructions, some of which leave us more than mildly apprehensive (microwave roux?).