This week’s Wednesday food pages are stocked with recipes and ideas for Passover cooks bored with their usual routine. If you are hosting or attending a potluck, this edition of Hot Plates will provide some ideas on ways to switch it up this year while still staying true to tradition.

Also of note are pieces on the politics of what foods we eat — a personal fave topic/pet peeve of ours — as well as potty-mouthed TV chefs and news of a Washington-area baker who went to Texas and won a million big ones.

Before we get into these, though, we’ll share a few other items, like this piece in TWP about D.C.-area farmers’ markets expanding their offerings to become “one-stop shopping” for some residents. Our very own Francoise Galleto was ahead of the curve when she brought us a preview of this news in last week’s Farm to Table.

The Post reports that “As the number of farmers markets continues to grow — there are 211 in the District, Maryland and Virginia, up from 126 a decade ago — market managers are hearing from customers who love the Honeycrisp apples and freshly picked kale but also want a nice pork chop and chunk of cheese.” Indeed, as you may have read here last week, “At the Dupont Circle location, shoppers can stock up on choice cuts of pork, beef, lamb, chicken and bison from seven producers, cheese or yogurt from four producers.”

Also: Meatloaf and butane. What do they have to do with each other? You’ll have to read this mishmash of selected messages from Tom Sietsema’s e-mail and voicemail to find out. Most everyone has a gripe or two they’ve never had the time, nerve or interest to share, but it is always fun to know what others decide merits a message to someone of note.

The Minimalist is worth reading this week if you have eyed the canned, shucked oysters at the store but have shied away from buying them. If you’re an oyster-eater and have never cooked with them, you could try this bacon, egg and oyster scramble that Mark Bittman writes about in today’s Times.

Chefs are buckling down and trying to conserve, and patrons are scaling things back too, reports Tom Sietsema in the Post. The opening anecdote, about a Northwest D.C. American restaurant, is stunning: Colorado Kitchen chef Gillian Clark says that “seven years ago, eggs sold wholesale for $13 a case. Now a case goes for $32.50.” John Manolatos of Cashion’s Eat Place in Adams Morgan “says he has watched his dinner-check average drop from about $65 to $50 a person in the past year.” Equinox chef Todd Gray has taken foie gras off the menu. There are lots of examples of creative ways chefs are saving as they feel the squeeze; manpower is, unfortunately, another thing that sometimes has to go.

This article in the N.Y. Times is a nice lead-in to the one about politics. It’s about chefs “cursing in front of rolling cameras and reporters’ notebooks.” Some say this is no biggie, because kitchens are “testosterone-fueled places where guys almost revel in their profanity,” as Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl said. And chef Tom Colicchio chimed in, saying potty-mouths are getting airtime more than they were even last year due to “a loosening of standards in the whole of American culture.”

Speaking of culture and our American scene, did you know conservatives like Dr. Pepper and liberals like Pepsi? And if you drink gin or white wine you’re a lefty, but if you like “brown liquors” you’re probably voting for McCain? These are tidbits from an interesting article in the N.Y. Times about how what we eat not only “says a lot about who we are, it also says something about how we might vote.”

We have to admit that we, personally, do not like it when people guess at our views based on our love for clementine oranges or the cut of our pants (this actually happened). According to the article, attaching preferences to how people vote is called “microtargeting.” Maybe some people believe that in general, “what we buy and how we spend our free time is a good predictor of our politics.” It’s not a slam-dunk by any means, but it’s still a good read.

All of the papers included stuff for Passover, which is this coming weekend, so we’ll pass on four items of note.

First, there’s a profile of Susie Fishbein, author of the popular Kosher by Design cookbooks and a recent new one, Passover by Design. “I would rather be the kosher Rachael Ray than the kosher Martha Stewart,” Fishbein says. “My books speak to harried everyday cooks like me.” There are four of her recipes along with the story, including one for quinoa that sounds intriguing (grains are prohibited during Passover).

The L.A. Times has a profile, too, of area chef Todd Aarons. The article’s sidebars include his ideas for a Passover feast — more high-end than most home cooks would try, but good for ideas nonetheless (chicken soup with dumplings, pomegranate lamb).

Here is a link to a page with TWP’s most popular published Passover recipes, going back at least to 2000. And here is the same kind of archive, but from The New York Times.

Last, but not least, is a report in The Dallas Morning News about our D.C.-area cookie hero: Carolyn Gurtz of Gaithersburg, Md., which is a short ride out I-270 depending on traffic, won a cool mil at the Pillsbury Bake-Off, held this year in Dallas. Her Double Delight Peanut Butter Cookies finished first in the Sweet Treats category. The recipe is included, and it’s pretty simple, for anyone craving “crunchy and sweet on the outside, creamy on the inside.”