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Native Foods Nourish Again
By KIM SEVERSON

Last week, Noland Johnson pulled the season's final crop of tepary beans from the piece of desert he farms on the Tohono O'odham Reservation, about 120 miles southwest of Tucson.

The beans look a little like a flattened black-eyed pea. The white ones cook up creamy. The brown ones, which Mr. Johnson prefers, are best simmered like pinto beans.

As late as the 1930's, Tohono O'odham farmers grew more than 1.5 million pounds a year and no one in the tribe had ever heard of diabetes. By the time Mr. Johnson got into the game four years ago, an elder would be lucky to find even a pound of the beans, and more than half of the adults in the tribe had the kind of diabetes attributed to poor diet.

While researchers investigate the link between traditional desert foods and diabetes prevention, Mr. Johnson grows his beans, pulling down 14,000 pounds this fall. Most will sell for about $2.50 a pound at small stores on the reservation.

Mr. Johnson, 31, began farming beans partly as a tribute to his grandfather, who died from complications related to diabetes. He always saves some beans for his grandmother, who likes to simmer the white ones with oxtail.

"I see my grandmother telling her friends, 'Yeah, I can get some beans for you,' " Mr. Johnson said. "The elders, they're so glad to see it."

But there are other fans, too. Home cooks pay as much as $9.50 a pound for teparies online. Big-city chefs are in love with the little beans, too, turning them into cassoulet, salads or beds for braised local pork.

It's Cheese With a Crunch
By MARK BITTMAN

IT took me until midlife to realize that the beloved Cheez-Its of my childhood (or the inferior but still pretty good Cheese Nips) were based on a real pastry: cheese cracker, commonly called cheese straws. These can be as simple as Cheddar cheese, flour and a little binder, or as elaborate as puff pastry with cheese folded into it. When I finally did "discover" cheese straws, I was so thrilled that I pursued the most difficult recipe possible, and stuck with that for years.

Recipe: Cheese Straws

Kung Pao? No, Gong Bao, and Nix the Nuts
By HOWARD W. FRENCH
GUIYANG, China

IT is 7:30 on a Sunday night, and business is booming at Guixi, a large and popular downtown food emporium here.

In smoke-filled private rooms, boisterous men vie to best each other in downing shots of fiery mao-tai, the rice liquor that is this city's most famous product. In the big open dining room, filled with large round tables where extended families gather, including beaming nanas and cavorting children, there is scarcely an empty seat in the house.

Recipe: Gong Bao Jiding

Scotland Borrows From a Sunnier Climate
By FLORENCE FABRICANT

Orange is one of the few flavors that I find compatible with vodka, brandy and rum, so why not Scotch? Compass Box Orangerie, a limited-edition Scotch that has been infused with orange peel and spices, is decidedly alluring. One sip of Orangerie and you might think of Grand Marnier, but this Scotch is half as sweet.

Compass Box, a company in Edinburgh, specializes in small-batch Scotches that are blends of malts or grain whiskies or both. Orangerie, which will be available only through the end of the year, is $35 for 375 milliliters at Astor Wine & Spirits, Manor House Cellar and Acker Merrall & Condit.

The Judgment of Paris, This Time at Home
By ERIC ASIMOV
BERKELEY, Calif.

ANTICIPATION ran high as we took our places around two tables in the comfortable living room of Dwight M. Jaffee, a finance professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lynne LaMarca Heinrich, a fund-raising consultant. From bottles concealed in brown paper bags, Mr. Jaffee poured measures of red wine into the eight glasses arrayed before each of the 10 participants. Of the eight wines, we knew that four were Bordeaux and four California, all produced from 1975 to 1986, all donated by the participants. Our task was to taste the wines, to identify them as French or American, at least, and then to rank them in order of preference.

Daunting? Of course. Nothing is so humbling as a blind tasting. Experts swirl, sniff and opine, only to find that what they had so confidently pronounced a Margaux was in fact a Pauillac and what they had deemed a Pauillac was actually a Pommard. The blundering is part of the fun, and really, who can complain about the rare opportunity to taste fine aged wine?

It wasn't nearly as much fun in Paris in 1976, the scene of the most famous tasting gotcha of all time. Back then, nine French judges, including some of the top names in the French wine and food establishment, were given 20 wines to taste blind, 10 white and 10 red. Of the whites, all made from the chardonnay grape, five were Burgundy and five California. The reds, all cabernet sauvignon or cabernet blends, were likewise divided between Bordeaux and California.

Crisp Autumn Flavors, By the Glass
By OLIVER SCHWANER-ALBRIGHT

For a holiday rife with rituals, it's surprising that Thanksgiving doesn't have a trademark drink - something to look forward to sipping while waiting for the little plastic timer to pop out of the turkey.

Recipe: Applejack Cobbler

Recipe: Herbed Crackers