Ingredients

If the Black Eyed Susan were a race horse, it would be a sprinter. It makes one strong move, then fades quickly. The strong move occurs this weekend when the cocktail will be in demand at Pamlico Race Track, during both the running of the Black Eyed Susan Stakes on Friday and the Preakness Stakes on Saturday. Over these two days, about 25,000 servings of the libation, poured into commemorative glasses, will be sold at $8 apiece, track officials say. But as soon as Preakness weekend ends, so does the does the local thirst for the Susan.

I want to start a compost pile, but I'm worried that kitchen scraps will attract animals from the woods nearby. Any thoughts? Usually kitchen scraps are a small portion of a pile's ingredients. Most kitchen scraps are small pieces, damaged or bruised. They begin decomposing while still in the pail. Kitchen compost pails made with lids that have a filter are very effective is eliminating odor. By the time you dump the pail, scraps are usually beyond being palatable to animals. Throw other organic matter on top. You can also bury the scraps in garden soil.

Frances Smith of Fayetteville, N.C., was looking for a recipe for a cheesecake made in a bundt pan. It had a graham-cracker crust and when the cake was turned out of the pan, the crust was on the top. It was sliced like a regular bundt cake. Cheryl Lisi from West Monroe, N.Y., sent in a recipe she found for a cheesecake that is designed to be made in a bundt pan. It is prepared just like a traditional-style cheesecake except that it is made in a bundt pan, not a springform pan. It makes a beautiful and deliciously rich cake with a nice hint of lemon.

  When we first heard about Birroteca, it was described as an artisanal pizza joint. Birroteca does have pizzas - good, wood-fired pizzas with chewy crusts and fancy ingredients, but there's more to it than that. Some of your friends and neighbors have already started staking claims to Birroteca, so don't wait too long. For one thing, there's an appetizer of grilled calamari that you need to have before the next fortnight passes. There are also promising pizzas, terrific salads and hearty autumn pastas.

NEW YORK -- The bombing conspirators used 1,200 pounds of explosives -- triggered by nitroglycerin -- to blow a six-story hole in the bowels of the World Trade Center, sources say.Working in a dimly lit, 10-by-10 storage locker in Jersey City, N.J., the bombers mixed the deadly brew in the days before the blast, coming and going often as they created their lethal package, sources said yesterday.The ingredients form a TNT-type explosive called "nitro-urea," a highly volatile substance used by terrorists in the Middle East to create pipe bombs.

Corn, the all-American vegetable, is being discovered as the perfect addition to ethnic dishes as well. Corn has turned up recently in trendy foods like chutney, salsa and ratatouille.Here's a new ethnic twist on a traditional recipe for corn -- Mediterranean Corn Salad. It combines corn with ingredients and flavors so popular in cuisines along the sunny Mediterranean. Corn is mixed with cubes of mozzarella cheese, chunks of ripe red tomatoes, black olives and herbs in a simple lemon-vinaigrette dressing.

Traditional police work made way for exacting science yesterday at the site of Monday's station wagon explosion near the Middlesex Shopping Center.The scattered remains of the blown-apart white Taurus wagon were hauled to a county police facility for further examination, but not before federal and Baltimore County bomb experts searched through each piece -- trying to separate vehicle particles from bomb remnants.Such evidence, it is hoped, will determine what kind of ingredients were used to make the explosive that killed the vehicle's five occupants, authorities said.

Can you tell from the labels on cosmetics whether the products contain ingredients that may be harmful? In most cases, no, although a coalition of environmentalists known as the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics (safecosmetics.org) is trying to change this, with some success. In 2005, one of the members of the campaign, the Washington-based Environmental Working Group, issued a report comparing ingredients in 7,500 personal care products against lists of known or suspected chemical health hazards.

You come home from work tired, hungry and with no idea of what to make for dinner. You don't even crack open a cookbook during these daily crises, because you know that somewhere in every recipe's list of ingredients is something you do not have. Instead, you make that tried-and-true grilled chicken breast with an improvised mustard sauce. But you could use more ideas for meals whose ingredients will, without fail, be in your head and at your fingertips. That's where the brother-and-sister team Robert Hildebrand and Carol Hildebrand come in, with 500 3-Ingredient Recipes (Fair Winds Press, 2004, $19.95)

Beauty may only be skin deep, but the products used to primp and polish your way to fabulous could be hazardous to your health, a Washington-based advocacy group said yesterday. The nonprofit Environmental Working Group (EWG), released the results of a six-month computer investigation that found thousands of beauty products, including shampoos, nail polish and lotions, contained potentially harmful ingredients that have been linked to cancer or other health problems. Naming brand names and products on its Web site (www.

I'm not ashamed to admit it: I love a good Cosmopolitan. I like to order the sweeter, flirtier cousin to the Martini for when, you know, I don't want to end the night on the floor. Sure, it still conjures images of Carrie Bradshaw traipsing around Manhattan - or the immature sorority girl trying way too hard to emulate her at a bar. But a Cosmo, the right Cosmo, can be playful and fun. So imagine my intrigue when I spotted a gin-based Cosmo at the newly opened Adam's Eve Gastropub in Canton: the Bluecoat Continental Cosmo.

To make a cocktail, a bartender performs a complicated ballet involving spirits, mixers and garnishes, somehow juggling them all and finally bringing them in for a graceful, neat landing in your glass. At Heavy Seas Alehouse, bartender Will Helfrich has a simpler approach. He grabs a tall glass, sets it underneath the beer tap and pours eight ounces of sudsy, golden beer, Heavy Seas Classic Lager. And then tops it off with homemade pomegranate lemonade. Add a sprig of fresh rosemary and you have the Little Italy bar and restaurant's Sea Shandy.

The Village Square Cafe is a modest, bright and spotlessly clean place in Roland Park with few pretensions. It understands that delivering the right experience must begin with the owners and run down the line to servers, cooks and bus boys. It seems a simple enough credo for success, and here, they do it well. The lunch menu is understandably heavy on sandwiches, but there are also pizza, wraps and omelets. The great list of sandwiches ranges from $7.95 for the BLT to $9.95 for the half-pound burger and fries, with the other sandwiches, including a stellar Reuben, priced at $8.95.

Tucked in a house in the maritime-centric neighborhood of Eastport, VIN 909 proves that Annapolis cuisine has more to offer than crab cakes and rockfish. The duo behind the wine cafe, manager/owner/sommelier (and Annapolis native) Alex Manfredonia and Chef Justin Moore, met while working in a San Francisco restaurant. When they decided to head back to the East Coast to open a restaurant of their own, they moved into the space that formerly housed the Wild Orchid Café. The duo brought along a love for the Mediterranean-inspired cuisine of California, plus a commitment to environmental sustainability — working with local farmers and using organic ingredients.

Of the 11 cocktails on the menu at Wit & Wisdom Tavern at the new Four Seasons, several automatically jump out. They carry unexpected ingredients, like Fernet Branca, a herbaceous liqueur, and bitters with a dominant orange flavor. But before I ordered, I asked my bartender to suggest something. Choosing the Aviation, a gin-based cocktail, she explained every detail about its ingredients. She knew that the Luxardo Maraschino gave it a cherry flavor, and that the creme de violette added a floral element.

A New York company that makes vanilla rugelach sold in Maryland stores is recalling the product because it contains undeclared eggs, which may cause a life-threatening illness if consumed by anyone with an allergy or severe sensitivity to eggs. Bloch's Best Inc., doing business as Laromme of Monsey, N.Y., is pulling its Laromme brand vanilla rugelach because the 14-oz. round containers do not list eggs among the ingredients. The product was distributed in stores in Massachusetts, Maryland and New Jersey, according to the release posted on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration website.

Summer is a time when even nonvegetarians think about fixing a vegetarian meal or two. Local tomatoes and sweet corn are enough for me, but my family -- like a lot of families -- needs something a little more elaborate. Serious cooks will want to take a look at Jack Bishop's A Year in a Vegetarian Kitchen (Houghton Mifflin, 2004, $35) for inspiration. I say "serious cooks" because while the recipes are easy and quick, many of them involve exotic ingredients. Bishop, executive editor of Cooks Illustrated and a cast member of the PBS show America's Test Kitchen, uses vegetarian staples like pasta, cheese, eggs and produce to create dishes from the world's cuisines -- Thai, Mexican, Indian and Chinese, as well as Italian and French.

The fumes that waft from top-selling air fresheners and laundry products contain dozens of chemicals, including several classified as toxic or hazardous, says a University of Washington study published yesterday. None of the chemicals was listed on product labels, nor does the federal government require companies to disclose ingredients in fragrances, said study author Anne Steinemann. "I was surprised by both the number and the potential toxicity of the chemicals that were found," said Steinemann, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and public affairs.

The key to the perfect tailgating offering is impressing your fellow sports fans with foods that are flavorful and hearty. When you're a gourmet chef like Cinghiale's Julian Marucci, using fresh ingredients helps give classics a fresh spin. "You want to impress people by showing them different types of food that people wouldn't usually make," said Marucci, the 28-year-old executive chef for the Harbor East Italian restaurant. "It comes down to seasoning, execution and technique.

The words "beer food" bring to mind items like pretzels, peanuts and pizza. But at Red Brick Station in White Marsh the term means mussels steamed in ale, fish dipped in a beery batter and meat marinated in stout. Here, the beer is often in the food. It works, in part because the beer is fresh. There is a brewery on the premises, between the bar and the dining room. It also works because the kitchen has a nice touch with spices. The concept here is to serve English-style ales and English pub fare.