Food cravings are strange. They can come on for no reason at all sometimes, and we have to rush off to market or restaurant to procure the roasted peppers/pork ribs/black cod/Mallomars we are lusting for.

Most often, we get cravings because we smell something great while walking home from the train station, we see something very lovely at the supermarket, or because we read a description of something in the newspaper (more on that one shortly). Maybe your best friend from college calls you up on the phone and you get to thinking about the black bean salad the two of you used to eat at midnight, and suddenly you have to have it; perhaps you overheard people at the park talking about the fabulous fried chicken they made the other night. 

Hot Plates knows people who don’t have these kinds of irrational, sudden urges; for some people, food is almost always a thing of hunger or nutrition or practicality. Their menus are planned days or even a week in advance, and changing gears at the last hour is not considered.

It seemed time to write about cravings when we opened the paper and saw a couple of things that got our taste buds dancing. That does happen to us a lot, but something about today’s offerings were especially affecting.

If you don’t like liver then you won’t understand this, but if you do, you might get hit by the liver love bug as well: The New York Times’ Melissa Clark writes about the Jewish versus the Italian preparation, and she tells us “I love them equally.” One style is the “classic paste, laden with egg and onion,” and the other is “zesty” with anchovies and capers. Clark tries blending the two recipes to come up with a “multicultural” hybrid — read it to find out what she thinks when she tastes her concoction.

From New York, there’s a story about modern Greek food that is close to Hot Plates’ heart (we used to live in New York City’s “Greektown,” Astoria, if we haven’t mentioned that before) since we have eaten our share of Greek food, the high and low kinds. This story is about a chef, Michael Psilakis, who does a new take on classic Greek dishes — and along with the article comes recipes — we want the crispy cod with skordalia and sweet-sour beets and the broiled feta with roasted peppers and olive salad, but all sound wonderful.

Meanwhile, Frank Bruni stokes our appetite for big ‘n’ rich with his “Defense of Decadence” review of Le Cirque. Excess doesn’t excite everyone, but it is true what Bruni says: some eateries are great because they “speak not to our better angels but to our inner Trumps, making us feel pampered and reckless and even a little omnipotent.”

Now, we know we are late bloomers (it’s February!), but we are finally in full-on red wine mode, and we felt semi-desperate for a sip of The Broken Road Red that was written up in the Dallas Morning News. It’s the right price for us at the moment, and its “vivacious blackberry and raspberry fruit with black-pepper spice” sound hard to argue with.

More about the ferrying of food than the food itself is this really good essay in The Washington Post about the plastic grocery bag, “that staple of modern life.” First of all, the writing is really good. There are many good lines we could share here, but our favorite of all might be the comment that on a trip to Whole Foods, “As usual, it was so packed you’d think they were giving away the food, not just the plastic bags, for free.” So true. Anyhow, no matter your politics or where you live and shop, you’ll likely have many “me too” moments reading this.

There are two great obituaries to read this week. The first is that of the 96-year-old Fatburger founder (get this name: Lovie Yancey), and the other is the Illy espresso guy (82 — not too shabby).

We may be back tomorrow with wine offerings, but for now we will leave you with this L.A. Times must-read about “getting juiced at wine tastings.” If you have done a tasting circuit or two before, you may have witnessed this kind of stuff first hand. It is sort of sad, but also kind of funny to read the opening graph: “Disheveled, unshaven and reeking of booze, he demanded a glass, rested his head on the tasting-room counter and loudly moaned.”

There are some new rules on the books in California’s Temecula Valley, where 21 winery owners now require transportation companies to look after the revelers they bring to tasting rooms. It’s so awesome to see some newspaper writers haven’t lost their cornball sense of humor, too: “The Temecula growers were not the first to aim the grapes of wrath at companies driving drunks to their doorsteps,” writes Steve Chawkins. Sadly, it had to be done: “Throwing up in the shrubbery, shouting, singing, flinging off garments — these are not signs of exuberance over the arrival of the Beaujolais Nouveau.”