Jar

On a seemingly typical shooting day recently at a stage in El Segundo, a director in a baseball cap was hunched over video monitors, burly grips were moving lights, and the producers were arguing about just what it was they were making. "I swear we need a tip jar for every time somebody calls this 'television' or 'marketing,'" said an exasperated Elan Lee, chief creative officer of Fourth Wall Studios. "I want a jar for every time we say 'transmedia' too, but I don't know what else to say sometimes," added Jim Stewartson, Fourth Wall's chief executive.

The gift shop at the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, Ky., has voluntarily recalled five condiment sauces due to mislabeling and undeclared allergens, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.  People who have an allergy or severe sensitivity to wheat, soy, anchovy or milk risk serious or even life-threatening allergic reaction if they consume these products. No adverse reactions or illnesses have been reported. The receall applies to the following products sold under the Buffalo Trace Distillery brand name: --Bourbon Flavored Caramel Sauce, 8-ounce jar, UPC 795436001058, best buy date 2/16/14.

Want to make gourmet herb vinegar? Organic Gardening magazine says it's easy with white or cider vinegar and fresh-picked garden herbs. Thyme, basil, marjoram, tarragon, rosemary, fennel, chervil, dill or mint are good choices. Put about a cup of fresh herbs, chopped coarsely, and two or three cups of vinegar in a clear jar or bottle. Cap the jar and set on a sunny windowsill for about two weeks to let flavors mellow. Strain the vinegar into a clean jar and insert a fresh herb stalk for easy identification and an attractive appearance.

Jar hosts guest chefs: Israeli chefs Assaf Granit and Uri Navon of Machneyuda in Jerusalem will be paying chef Suzanne Tracht's restaurant Jar a visit April 13 for a one-night-only dinner collaboration. In honor of Israel's 65th Independence Day, Granit, Navon and Tracht will prepare a four-course dinner comprised of dishes such as sea fish tartare; shikshukit , cooked minced beef and lamb in a Mediterranean spice mixture with tahini and yogurt; calamari with dates, honey, pomegranate concentrate, porcini mushrooms, harissa, cherry tomatoes, confit of onion and garlic with tahigort and burnt aubergine paste; and basbousa , a wet semolina cake with tahini ice cream and fresh fruit.

Rillettes is a traditional type of potted meat, poultry or fish, slowly cooked in seasoned fat then made into a paste. It makes a wonderfully rich hors d'oeuvre when spread on French bread and accompanied with small gerkins. Put the jar of rillettes in the refrigerator to chill and solidify before serving. Edouard Artzner goose rillettes, 6.7-ounce jar, $8.99 from Picholine, 3360 W. 1st St., Los Angeles. (213) 252-8722.

Police say a 15-year-old who put a straight pin in a jar of his family's baby food apparently did it to get some attention, solving the last of three food-tampering cases reported in the state within a week. There were no injuries in any of the cases. A Jacksonville family reported Monday that they had found a pin in a jar of baby food. Jacksonville Police Chief Thomas Weeks said Thursday that after investigators interviewed the family extensively, the 15-year-old son admitted placing the straight pin in the jar. The Jacksonville incident followed one in Springfield in which a baby-sitter trying to impress her employers said last Friday that she found pins in two jars of baby food.

El Cajon police evacuated a motel and nearby residences during the weekend after a crude bomb was discovered, authorities said. The sheriff's arson and bomb squad was summoned to the Budget 6 Motel in the 500 block of Montrose Court about 3:30 p.m. Saturday to disarm the bomb, a small jar filled with gunpowder with a fuse sticking out of it, police said. The bomb, apparently made with a cosmetics jar, was about an inch tall and 1 1/2 inches in diameter, police said. No one was injured, police said, and they had no suspects.

Thanks for your article about pot roast ("The Simple Pot Roast Hits the Big Time," Jan. 23). I inherited my grandmother's heavy cast iron braising pan. Everything I cook in it is delicious (friends say exceptional!), but I've never had anything as delicious as the pot roast at Jar. A friend took me there last weekend--too noisy, too crowded for me, I'm afraid. But once I tasted the pot roast, the outside world faded away. Thanks for the recipes in the article. If anything can attempt to do justice to Jar's recipe and technique, my grandmother's pan can. MAUREEN MARR West Hollywood

Your writer failed to mention one other important plus for peanut butter: Besides tasting good and possibly helping to lower cholesterol, it has a long shelf-life and you don't have to refrigerate it after opening. I've never had a jar of peanut butter go bad, even when it sat around a long time after being opened. LOUISE HAUTER La Canada

There is an even easier way to make pickled eggs than the one you described ("Getting Eggs Into a Fine Pickle," April 16). When you eat the last dill pickle from a batch, save both juice and jar. Drop in a few peeled hard-boiled eggs, and let them sit in the refrigerator for a day or so. The longer they sit, the more pickled they get. Rich Varenchik Valencia

Debi Austin looked into the camera, swallowed - the hole in her throat as big as a half-dollar coin and as black as nothingness - and said she had her first cigarette when she was 13, that she had tried to quit but couldn't. And that "they" say nicotine is not addictive. Then she picked up a half-burned, still-lit cigarette from an ashtray, titled back her head and took a drag from the hole in her neck. She winced, and as the smoke wafted out of the hole she said: "How can they say that?"

LAS VEGAS -- Manny Pacquiao was seeking to definitively affirm Saturday night the judging that gave him two decisions and a draw in his three tight fights against rival Juan Manuel Marquez at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. But Marquez, who earned a draw in their first meeting and lost two controversial decisions in their second and third bouts, caught the former welterweight champion from the Philippines with a jarring right to knock him out just before the bell to end the sixth round in their non-title welterweight bout.

Wendy Aylsworth fixed her eyes on a screen at the Landmark theater in West Los Angeles, carefully studying a scene of hobbits preparing a lavish feast. "We're seeing good detail and a richness in the characters," Aylsworth said. "It's right on. " The Warner Bros. senior vice president of technology was reviewing a test reel for the "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," and a new projection technique that will show the highly anticipated Peter Jackson movie at 48 frames a second.

EXCLUSIVE: Hard-core fans of HBO sensation "Game of Thrones" will know the name Brian Kirk -- he directed several key episodes in the first season, including the well-regarded "The Wolf and the Lion. " Now he'll get a crack at a different beloved genre piece. Kirk is coming aboard to direct the American remake of Icelandic crime drama "Jar City," according to a person familiar with the production who was not authorized to speak about it publicly. Based on an Icelandic bestseller, the 2006 film was an art house and festival-circuit hit. Kirk is now attached to direct the film and negotiations are underway to hammer out the legalities, the person said.

CAIRO - As night fell Saturday and cars swerved around Tahrir Square tooting their horns, a stout woman in a black veil and robes screamed herself hoarse: "The president is an agent of the Americans!" But the protesters who had tried to charge the U.S. Embassy during four days of violent demonstrations had already gone, driven out by the police that morning. Pedestrians covered their mouths and winced when they passed the spots where the police had sprayed hundreds of canisters of tear gas. Even as Cairo settled back into its normal rhythms, and capitals around the Arab world did the same, the protests over an anti-Muslim video produced in California delivered the same jarring message of uncertainty to ordinary citizens from Tunis to Cairo: They were prisoners of a political transition whose happy ending was far from assured.

"Chicken With Plums," the second movie from the directors of the animated feature "Persepolis," is a live-action work that uses animation as a flourish. Yet it's more of a cartoon than its predecessor, with Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud adopting a self-contained visual scheme for nearly every emphatic emotion. And there are no other kinds of emotion in this time-shifting memory poem: The romance is absolute, the despair unquenchable. Even more than its source material, Satrapi's graphic novel of the same name, the film is a luxuriant lament.

The gift shop at the Buffalo Trace Distillery in Frankfort, Ky., has voluntarily recalled five condiment sauces due to mislabeling and undeclared allergens, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.  People who have an allergy or severe sensitivity to wheat, soy, anchovy or milk risk serious or even life-threatening allergic reaction if they consume these products. No adverse reactions or illnesses have been reported. The receall applies to the following products sold under the Buffalo Trace Distillery brand name: --Bourbon Flavored Caramel Sauce, 8-ounce jar, UPC 795436001058, best buy date 2/16/14.

When Rick Santorum's campaign announced that the GOP presidential candidate would deliver a major foreign policy address today, the venue instantly raised eyebrows - the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield, Calif. The candy maker has decades-long ties to California politics - among the candidates to stump there in recent years were gubernatorial hopefuls Richard Riordan and Bill Simon as well as vice presidential nominee Jack Kemp. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger served Jelly Belly beans at his first inaugural festivities; his then-young children reportedly pelted one another with them.

When Campanile introduced grilled cheese night on Thursdays with then-co-owner Nancy Silverton at the panini press, those casual evenings perked up the dining scene. Sometimes it seemed as if all of L.A. would stop by for her variations on the grilled cheese theme and a festive, bargain-priced meal. And those Thursdays are still going strong. Now theme nights are catching on with other restaurants. Think of it as a one-night pop-up. Why should restaurants have to be exactly the same every night anyway?

Cronkite Douglas Brinkley Harper: 820 pp., $34.99 Walter Cronkite was not inclined to introspection, and historian Douglas Brinkley emulates his subject in this thorough biography of the news broadcaster who in 1972 was declared "The Most Trusted Man in America. " Brinkley's lengthy narrative spends as much time on Cronkite's stints as a paperboy as on his father's alcoholism and his parents' divorce. The author seems more interested in the ins and outs of Cronkite's strained professional relationship with Dan Rather than in his 65-year marriage - though smart, sardonic Betsy Cronkite gets her due as the woman who could cut Walter down to size.