You all might be cooking up stews and london broil, but Hot Plates has a case of the midweek munchies. Our ideal dinner right now would be very snacky: an assortment of small plates with big tastes, complemented by a crisp, cold Veuve Cliquot La Grande Dame. Feeling a little indulgent, aren't we?

But there was so much wholesome food written about today that we have gotten in the mood for more seasonal goodness: broccoli, sweet potatoes, Mark Bittman's smoothies ... yeah. And the fancy Spanish ham and the chocolate sauce? We'll have some of those, too.

More Parsnips, Pumpkins, and Sweet Potatoes

The Washington Post says we shouldn't "underplay" the parsnips. Frankly, those parsnips weren't getting any play at all, but we are willing to read it and consider taking them off the bench. Chefs may be loving on them, but lots of home cooks might not even know what they look like for sure. It's a cute article because it plays with this idea that they are unpopular, and explains how they "fell out of vogue" by the mid-19th century, when the "potato pushed the parsnip aside." Try roasting them the same way you'd do beets, the writer suggests, and see what you think.

How cute do "baby bear pumpkins" sound? Wouldn't you just want to hold one of these close, and not cook it? Those and the antique "winter luxury" pumpkin varieties are written about in today's L.A. Times as produce items that are "peaking" right about now. They highlight sweet potatoes, too, and they include a few lines about why some varieties of this tuber are starchier and therefore better suited to certain recipes.

In Dallas, it's broccoli that's getting the attention. Hot Plates would eat this "superfood" many times a week, easily, but not everyone feels this way. We roast it, sautee it, dress it up with breadcrumbs and onions or with whole cloves of garlic and doused liberally with good olive oil. But we haven't tried a bacon-y broccoli salad: a cold one that would be a nice side dish with a gamey meat of some sort, or by itself if you are feeling virtuous.

The New York Times item on smoothies got us wanting one even though the snow is coming down fast where we are. Maybe it seems like a warm-weather treat, but Mark Bittman's Minimalist column points out that frozen fruit can be even better than fresh fruit for making these healthy blender drinks. The idea of blueberries, strawberries and mangoes is attractive to us right now because we are staring to get a little apples-and-oranges fatigue.

Tasty Black-Footed Pigs and the 'New English Blue'

Whew. All this talk of vegetables and fruit has us ready to move on to the article about $50/pound Iberico hams from Spain, which will make their first-ever American appearance tomorrow in D.C., according to the N.Y. Times. These long-cured hams are "lush, almost mahogany-colored and deeply flavorful, streaked with creamy fat from the famous black-footed (pata negra) pigs of western Spain."

Moldy cheese. Hmm. We know we should grow up and like it, but it can be hard to love, no? No, you say, if you are a lover of Stilton, "the king of English cheeses," which the N.Y. Times says is the holiday cheese of choice across the pond. For the paper's Curious Cook column, the writer goes to a cheese tasting where Stilton's "upstart young cousin," called Stichelton, was on offer. Its cheesemaker, who uses raw milk for his creations, is shooting for flavors from cheeses of old, which had "milky, buttery, rounded-up front flavor, a syrupy sweetness, blue flavors that were cool rather than peppery, and a good long finish."

Babka and Chocolate

Hannukah started at sundown yesterday. Today's N.Y Times has a piece on babkas, the yeasty cakes named for grandmothers (that's what it means in Yiddish) "before they went to aerobics classes and practiced yoga," as one of the people quoted says. The cake "can include rose oil, lemon zest, bitter almonds, cinnamon, cardamom, nutmeg, lemon, bergamot or rose water," but the basic ingredients are flour, yeast, milk, sugar and eggs. Some add fruit; some don't. Even if you don't celebrate Hannukah, you have likely eaten something just like it: "The Italians call their version panettone, the French baba au rhum, and the Viennese and Alsatians kugelhopf."

Now, for dessert -- and it's a good one. What's better, when you're feeling glum and overstressed, than chocolate? There is even scientific proof it can boost serotonin levels in the brain. So hopefully these couple of articles will hit that pleasure center in your noggin and get you through til quittin' time: The first one is an L.A. Times primer on how to make a great chocolate sauce. If you have made a simple one before, you'll be surprised and delighted at how many ways there are to experiment with different kinds of chocolate to suit a variety of tastes. It matters what percent of cacao there is in what you use, for example. And a pinch of salt will help bring out chocolate's flavor.

The complementary piece to the sauce article showcases the results of the L.A. Times' tasting panel -- but there is no drinking at this tasting; just chocolate-eating. Tough jobs these journalists have, really. The panel tried 23 chocolate bars, from Ghirardelli and beyond, searching for ones that would be good for both eating and for baking. They only chose chocolate that had 70% to 75% cacao content. The tasting notes are really a hoot, with lots of talk of textures and finishes. Check it out and take the list to the store with you next time. What is your "desert island" chocolate?

A Truly Civilized Grocery Shopping Experience

Bummer that all we have is a Twix sitting nearby. (Not for long.) We'll be making our weekly pilgrimage to Whole Foods soon, where we know the chocolate assortment is a little higher-end. Speaking of WFM, we'll leave you today with this interesting news out of the Houston Chronicle: A new franchise of the store is opening today in Sugar Land, Tex., and it will be "the first Whole Foods anywhere to feature a supervised play area for potty-trained 3- to 7-year-olds." We were flipping as we read this news, and we know anyone with small kids will be, too.

The play area will be called Sweet Peas Clubhouse. It has no TVs, it connects to an outdoor area, and it will feature a play kitchen, "educational games and two Apple computers." This means you can leave your older one there while the little one sits quietly in the cart with you (ha ha), or you can shop totally hands-free if all of your kids fit into that age range. Great move by this incredible company, since it not only frees patrons to shop longer/spend more, it shores up WFM's reputation for peace, love and understanding. When is one coming to my area? Get thee to a keyboard; the comments box is yesterday's news.