The absence of Dino was the first sign that the owners of my favorite Italian deli, Minelli’s, have passed the torch to a younger generation.

Not too long ago, Minelli’s moved to new quarters. One thing that apparently didn’t move with them was the bobblehead Dean Martin doll that used to watch over the meat case.

You pretty much gotta be over 45 to remember who Dean Martin was. (For the youngsters among you, Dean Martin, born Dino Crocetti, was an Italian-American singer, actor and comedian who was very popular from the ’50s through the ’70s. He was part of the Hollywood “Rat Pack” that also included such luminaries as Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr.)

I was happy to see that a portrait of Jesus and a statue of St. Joseph (patron saint of Italy) still presided over the meat case. One of my food rules is to never trust an Italian deli where Jesus and/or Joseph are nowhere to be seen.

Thankfully, Dino’s absence hasn’t affected the quality at Minelli’s. The deli serves up unpretentious, reasonably priced, good Italian foodstuffs. Homemade meatballs and ravioli. Mama Minelli’s olive salad. Mortadella that even the counterman swoons for. (”Try this,” he urges, offering a piece. “It melts in your mouth. It won’t go sour.” ) Hot Italian sausage that strikes just the right flavor balance among the fennel, garlic and hot pepper. Provolone that tastes like real cheese instead of flavored plastic. Sicilian rice balls and tiramisu and Italian amaretti.

Thank you, St. Joseph, for places like Minelli’s. With or without Dino.

In cooking, as in life, sometimes the simplest things can be the most vexing. Take the perfect boiled egg. If you have not quite mastered this skill, you know how unappealing a pitted, rubbery, sulphuric, green-yolked egg can be.

With Easter on the horizon, a lesson in how to boil eggs seems in order.

First off, the egg isn’t really boiled–or shouldn’t be. Briskly boiling water will crack the egg and toughen it. It’s more accurate to refer to it as a hard-cooked egg, but since just about everyone calls them boiled eggs, I will too.

The perfect hard boiled egg has a firm but not rubbery white, a velvety yolk, and an uncracked shell that doesn’t cling to the egg white with the stubbornness of glue when you try to peel it.

As for technique, the most foolproof I’ve found is this:

1. Place the eggs in a heavy-bottomed pan with enough cool water to completely cover them.
2. Place on medium-high heat.
3. As soon as the water comes to a boil, turn off the heat.
4. Cover the pan and let the eggs stand for 15 minutes. Subtract 5 minutes if you like your yolks on the soft side. Add 1 to 2 minutes if you like the yolks harder or if you’re cooking jumbo eggs.
5. Drain the eggs and rinse under cold water. (I fill the cooking pan with cold water and ice to immediately cool down the eggs.)

Starting the eggs in cold water and heating them gradually makes the egg shells less likely to crack. Turning off the heat allows them to cook without overcooking. And putting them under cold water stops the cooking and makes the shells easier to remove.

It’s important to pay attention so you know when the water begins to boil. When you hear the eggs begin to rock in the pan, it’s time to turn off the heat.

If you plan to dye the eggs for Easter, be sure to add vinegar to the dye-water mixture (most dye packets will instruct you to do this). The acid helps dissolve the eggshell’s natural waxy coating so the dye can permeate the shell.

Have a bunch of Easter eggs to use up? Try using them in my recipe for a rich, buttery cookie.

I had a friend whose 4-year-old son would eat only white foods. As many mothers can relate, this is not an unusual phase for young kids to go through. For a year, she gritted her teeth and served him nothing but pasta, rice, potatoes, white bread, and chicken breast.

I was thinking of this recently when I encountered yet another rant against “white” foods, the evil food du jour. You know, that whole glycemic index thing. Avoid white bread, white potatoes, white sugar, pasta, white rice. They’ll make you fat and lead to heart disease and foggy brain and no sex and who knows what else.

It’s like toddlerhood in reverse.

There’s a delicious spoof of the no white foods trend (killer potatoes! killer milk!) on a witty new blog by the earnest but nonexistent organization The Health Institute of Nutrition (T.H.I.N.—get it?).

I love whole grains. Always have. I actually prefer whole-wheat bread and whole-grain pasta. (I do confess to a weakness for sugar, white and otherwise.) For diabetics, refined carbs can indeed pose a problem. And people in America and the rest of Western civilization probably eat way too many refined starches. (I do have to wonder why there aren’t more fat people in eastern Asia, given the vast quantities of white rice they eat.)

But I can’t help but notice that even as the diet books trumpet the glycemic index and your sister-in-law refuses to eat any vegetable with eyes, the “frozen treats” aisle in the average American supermarket keeps getting bigger. And bigger. And bigger. Any day now, “ice cream novelties” will engulf the entire store. Call me suspicious, but I have the sneaking feeling that maybe just a few of the folks who shun white aren’t counting the white sugar in Fudgesicles.

Come to think of it, the friend’s kid who would eat only white foods did make exceptions for things like, say, chocolate and red licorice.

I guess we never really outgrow toddlerhood.

Van Gogh supposedly was under its influence when he lopped off his ear. It was blamed for murder, mayhem, and depravity of all sorts. It inspired a painting by Edgar Degas that enraged Victorian England. Its reputation was so bad that the United States, Switzerland and France banned its sale in the early 20th century.

Now, absinthe is back. Not only that, but as the New York Times reports, it is being crafted by artisans as a high-end (read, expensive) liquor. The U.S. legalized sales of absinthe earlier this year, so absinthe is slowly trickling into bars and liquor stores.

At its best, absinthe, traditionally nicknamed the Green Fairy, is an emerald green, multilayered liquor with a licorice flavor and hints of other herbs, including a trace of the bitter herb wormwood. At its worst…well, let’s just say “medicinal” is the kindest word to describe it.

To drink absinthe the traditional way, pour it into a tulip-shaped glass, set an absinthe spoon (a decorative, slotted spoon) over the top of the glass and top that with a cube of sugar, then pour ice water into the glass. The water turns the liquor cloudy and, fortunately for the mad artists among us, reduces its potency.

Modern absinthe makers say the sugar is unnecessary for a well-made absinthe, which should not be bitter.

Absinthe’s alleged (and highly exaggerated) tendency to induce madness was often credited to one of its ingredients, the medicinal herb wormwood, which contains varying amounts of thujone, a hallucinogen. Of course, the madness may owe even more to the fact that absinthe is 100+ proof before it’s diluted. Enraged at his friend Gauguin, Van Gogh, not the model of sanity in the best of times, had been drinking that and who knows what else for hours when he lopped off his left earlobe and presented it to a lady of the evening.

Modern, properly distilled absinthe contains only trace amounts of thujone. It’s still high in alcohol, though. So be careful how much you drink if you value your ears.

A couple of weeks ago I was visiting friends in Pennsylvania and worked in a trip to Philadelphia’s Reading Terminal Market, one of my favorite places to visit. It’s a feast for the eyes and senses of every sort of food imaginable, from freshly butchered meats to just-picked produce to marbled cookies.

The Chocolate by Mueller display, tucked away in the 12th and Fulton Street corner of the market, grabbed my attention. It’s hard to walk past an anatomically correct chocolate heart without stopping. (Mueller is famous, or maybe infamous, for eccentric chocolate creations.) Then there were the chocolate pretzels. Top-quality Pennsylvania pretzels are robed in dark chocolate, white chocolate, milk chocolate, and/or peanut butter milk chocolate. The blend of salty crunch with smooth sweet chocolate is irresistible. I brought some home, and they disappeared fast.

Milk chocolate is the favored coating among Mueller’s customers, though I prefer the dark chocolate. You don’t have to travel to the Reading Market to buy these treats. You can buy the chocolate-covered pretzels, chocolate heart, and all sorts of other candies, ranging from sugar-free jelly beans to truffles, in the Chocolate by Mueller online candy store.

By the way, the best place to get plain Pennsylvania pretzels is the Sturgis Pretzel Bakery, the oldest (and to my mind, the best) commercial pretzel bakery in the United States.