Walnuts

DEAR SOS: My friend Jane, 94, fondly remembers moist molasses cookies from her childhood called Cry Babies. She thinks they were called that because after tasting them, people always cried for more. She lost the recipe she got from her father, who got it from the cafeteria of the company where he worked between about 1910 and 1920. I would be grateful if you could find the recipe, and so would Jane. ELISABETH MacCURDY Sierra Madre DEAR ELISABETH: We found several recipes for Cry Babies, each slightly different.

Going on looks alone, Mistral is one of the most appealing restaurants in the Valley. With is wooden chairs and white tile floors, its green faux marble tables and chandeliers and long, gleaming bar, Mistral provides the perfect setting for nightlong arguments on structuralism, deconstructivism, neo-reconstructivism. More likely, however, you'll hear the short, fast-talking fellow at the next table say: "Yeah, well, I come out every year for pilot season. I get something, I stay; I don't, go back to New York.

When it comes to my kitchen, I'm not strictly practical. If I were, I'd have stainless steel cupboards instead of painted wood glazed with beeswax, or a concrete floor instead of wood. And I certainly wouldn't have a copper sink that threatens to turn furry and green every other day. The way things look matters to me. And that instinct for the beautiful follows me into the kitchen too. Before I begin to cook, I lay out all my ingredients in bowls and baskets. I'll pull out the shallots and garlic I keep in glazed ocher bowls that I carried back from Provence, or the bouquet of red peppers and Sicilian dried oregano that are stored in a basket a friend brought me from South Africa.

A year and a half ago, Gloria Smith returned to her hometown of Rincon, Puerto Rico, to re-establish ties with her relatives. When she stepped into her childhood home she began to laugh. Then she began to cry. "Returning brought a lot of good memories," said the 57-year-old resident of Rancho Palos Verdes, "and a lot of bad ones too." Half of the wood frame house had been swept away in a hurricane but parts of it were recognizable.

For patients with high levels of so-called bad cholesterol, doctors routinely reach for two remedies: cholesterol-lowering statin drugs and a diet that cuts out foods high in saturated fat, such as ice cream, red meat and butter. But new research has found that when it comes to lowering artery-clogging cholesterol, what you eat may be more important than what you don't eat. Released online Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., the study found that incorporating several cholesterol-lowering foods — such as soy protein and nuts — into a diet can reduce bad cholesterol far more effectively than a diet low in saturated fat. In fact, the authors assert, levels of LDL, the "bad" cholesterol, can drop to half that seen by many patients who take statins, sold under such names as Lipitor, Crestor or Zocor.

Figs, it seems, have been around forever. Adam and Eve were said to have clothed themselves with fig leaves, so one could assume that they were also eating the fruits in the Garden of Eden. Ancient Egyptians knew that figs were an extremely nutritious fruit, and in Greece, the first Olympians not only savored the fruit, but wore them as medals for their achievements.

- The cherimoya is a peculiar-looking, almost intimidating fruit - "like a pre-Columbian jade pine cone or the finial for a giant Inca four-poster bed," in Elizabeth Schneider's memorable words. But at its best it tastes sublime, with sweet, juicy, flan-like flesh and rich flavor blending papaya, banana and pineapple. Mark Twain famously called it "the most delicious fruit known to men," and if taste were all that counted, cherimoyas might outsell apples. Alas, cherimoyas are exceptionally tricky to grow, select and ripen, and thus not well adapted to American industrial fruticulture and marketing.