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This week we talk to journalist Dave Plotnikoff about his hike from the Mexican border to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail and the food that ended up being the touch point of the trip. He is the author of "Hungry Man" from the July 2007 issue of Saveur Magazine. Jane and Michael Stern are eating planked whitefish and ice cream "Thunderclouds" at Juilleret's in Harbor Springs, MI, and Russ Parsons, author of How to Pick a Peach explains the rules about produce and the refrigerator.

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Sourdough Bread

Good bread takes time, but it does not take time from you. Think of it as gardening, if you are a gardener ... plants grow in their own sweet time, and though you can adjust a great many things about their environment you can't do the growing for them ... you have to wait. And while you wait, for your sourdough or your onions, you can do the hundred and one other things you want to do. Get the full recipe.

New Potato and Green Bean Salad with Green Goddess Dressing

All cooks have a few basic recipes that they turn to again and again over the course of a year. Potato and green bean salad is one of mine. I make it different ways depending on the season and my mood. It's very good dressed with just olive oil and lemon juice, but it becomes absolutely superb when bound with homemade Green Goddess. Get the full recipe.

Features

Jane and Michael Stern: Juilleret's, Harbor Springs, MI.

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Juilleret's is an old-fashioned dining room/ice cream parlor/bakery/café in Harbor Springs, a classic Northern Michigan summer town.

Jane loved the green pea and peanut salad with Miracle Whip, a quintessential Upper Midwest composed salad. Michael went for the milky-sweet planked white fish surrounded by great mashed potatoes. They topped it all off with a Thundercloud-vanilla ice cream drizzled with bittersweet chocolate sauce, a sprinkle of chopped nuts, and a cloud of marshmallow fluff. If you go for breakfast don't miss the grilled raisin toast.

Juilleret's

130 State St

Harbor Springs, MI 49740

(231) 526-2821

Open for breakfast and lunch

Closed in the winter

David Plotnikoff's Guide to Food and Lodging on the Pacific Crest Trail

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When San Francisco journalist David Plotnikoff found himself in a classic midlife crisis, he decided the way to sort out his thinking was to embark on a trek that would take him from Mexico to Canada over the 2,650 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail. He set out with what little food he could fit in a knapsack and a desire to separate "the essential from the trivial." Along the way, he experienced Zen moments with freeze-dried beef stew and the hiker's debate over road kill. It was a diet that could kill a goat.

Read David's article "Hungry Man" in the June/July 2007 issue of Saveur magazine. For his guide to food and lodging on the Pacific Crest Trail log on to www.emeraldlake.com/pctguide.

Summer Reads

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Ruth Reichl, editor-in-chief of Gourmet magazine gives us her summer reading recommendations.

Produce That Should Not Be Refrigerated

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Russ Parsons, food and wine columnist for the Los Angeles Times and author of How to Pick a Peach: The Search for Flavor from Farm to Table (Houghton Mifflin, 2007), says never refrigerate these fruits and vegetables:

Bananas

Basil

Underripe stone fruit like peaches and nectarines

Tomatoes

Potatoes

Onions - except sweet onions like Vidalia, Maui and Walla Walla

Garlic

Meatpaper

Meatpaper is a new print magazine of art and ideas about meat. Log on to www.meatpaper.com to see what it's all about.