1) You can get a restaurant-quality flame on your home burner by using a very small drill bit to enlarge the hole the gas comes out of. I haven’t gotten around to doing this myself, but Peter has successfully done it on two stoves. He’s just done one burner, which he always uses for his wok. Needless to say, it’s very important to _start small_.

2) Australian Homemade is the best freakin’ ice cream ever. I’m not even a huge ice cream fan, but this is worth a long trek on a cold night. After years of ignoring the stores in Amsterdam, I finally tried them when they set up shop on St. Mark’s between A and B. Oh, the delight, but also the crushing regret of having missed several years of eating this stuff: it’s almost a different substance from ice cream, very soft and glossy like gelato. The sorbets are incredibly intense. Last night I stopped in and tried the pistachio and was charging down the street devouring it and wanting to tell everyone I passed how fabulous it was. Fortunately at the next corner I ran into my friend Maureen, who was with a woman who said, “Wow, I love pistachio!” And did she ever.