Lemon

Bettie Vogt of Bend, Ore., was looking for a lemon pie recipe to replace one that has been a family favorite for more than 30 years. Her original recipe from the Eagle brand milk company called for the use of raw eggs yolks, but she is no longer comfortable serving a pie that contains raw eggs. I found a luscious recipe for a lemon cream pie on the Eagle Brand website (www.eaglebrand.com) that is made without raw egg yolks. The yolks in this recipe are fully cooked, and the cooled pie is topped with whipped cream.

Flowermart, the official start of spring in Baltimore, is as much about food as it is about flowers. So it makes sense that among the women wearing hats covered in blooms there would be a guy dressed as a slice of pizza. Antoine Hays of Baltimore — he was a slice of pepperoni — was at Mount Vernon on Friday to promote an online food delivery service, as another edition of the century-old city tradition got under way. Even the plants eat at Flowermart. Carnivorous Plant Nursery, located inf Derwood in Montgomery County, was featuring a hanging basket of tropical pitcher plants that are guaranteed to attract, trap and eat your stink bugs.

The big hats, the beautiful flowers, the maypole, the lemon peppermint sticks — those are the hallmarks of Baltimore's Flowermart, an oasis of old-fashioned gentility that its organizers promise will stay that way. Which is why it's a little disturbing when its president starts talking about computers and relevancy and modernization. "We're moving into another generation," said Carol Karcher Purcell, president of Flower Mart at Mount Vernon Ltd., which has been running the century-old Baltimore street festival since 2000.

There's the 15-foot orange tree with its menacing 11/2-inch-long thorns, a bushy affair that sprouted from small seeds like those most of us just spit out. Nearby is a kiwi plant, its aggressive tendrils snaking vertically up a nearby tree. And then there's the ramrod-straight, 100-foot-tall sequoia that appears happily unaware that its natural home is in California. Welcome to the Ellicott City property of Donald Dunn, where the uncommon is commonplace and unusual species thrive in blissful ignorance of the fact that they're spectacular misfits beating long odds.

What if Downton Abbey was set in a fast-food restaurant, but kind of like with the same characters. And what if that guy from "Mad About You" and "Spin City" was in it? But there's no Dowager Countess character -- I don't think - that wanders pointlessly into a scene, makes a lemon-sucking face and says something like, "Toasted buns, indeed. " Seen on Eater

An article in the Feb. 17, 1912, edition of The Argus recognized an enormous lemon grown by a local botanist. What is believed to be the largest lemon ever grown in Maryland has been plucked from a tree in the conservatory of J H Kummer , at his home on North Bend road. The lemon is four inches in diameter and weighs a pound and a quarter. It is of the variety known as the Ponderosa and the developed fruit represents months of painstaking care on the part of Mr. Kummer, who is intensely interested in fruits and flowers.

For a limited time only, Baltimore-based Berger Cookies is bringing back three iced cookies that they stopped making when Spiro Agnew was vice president. The throwback icings are strawberry, lemon and rum. They're available for order on the Berger Cookie website . Has anybody seen them in stores? I've been told that the TV commercials say that they're only available by order.  

Hersh's Pizza & Drinks is exactly as its name advertises — a low-key restaurant and bar serving good Neapolitan pizza and simple pastas alongside old school cocktails and a wide selection of beers. Brother-and-sister duo Josh and Stephanie Hershkovitz opened the spot last November, inspired by their mutual love of good food and throwing fun dinner parties. Stephanie runs the front of the house while Josh, who earned his chops in the kitchens at Charleston and Petit Louis, handles the food.

Janet Brunner from St. Augustine, Fla., was looking for a no-bake recipe for lemon Jell-O cheesecake. Mercedes Shideler from Sebastopol, Calif. shared her recipe for lemon cheesecake that she hopes is the one that Brunner is looking for. This likely is the cheesecake many of us grew up with. Unlike the real deal, even a novice cook can make this and expect good results. With this recipe, you get all the delicious lemon cheesecake flavor without all the extra effort. It's light and tangy — and best of all, it is no-bake.

I share the outrage of Mary Pat Clarke at her fellow council members for voting down the property tax credit allowance to those who are investing the kind of energy this and every urban center needs to survive the challenge of attracting new taxpayers to the city ("City council committee nixes tax breaks for urban farmers," Nov. 23). Marta H. Mossburg wrote recently about human nature being risk-averse in trying to explain how city voters might choose to reelect officials who follow a familiar path toward failure.