You know the story. A mom teaches her daughter how to roast a ham and cuts off one end before placing the meat in a pan. The daughter asks why it's necessary to cut off the end, and mom explains that this is how grandma always did it. An inquiry into grandma's method reveals that grandma always snipped the end 'cause her pan wasn't big enough! Not exactly a tradition worth passing along after all. Sometimes patterns need re-assessing. Just a few blog posts ago, I described the zen-like state I acquire when creaming butter and sugar to create certain sweet masterpieces like chocolate chip cookies. I've been baking since high school and basically drool at the prospect of tasting the warm gooey mess of a freshly baked cookie. Enter a very strange illness a few weeks back that had my doctor and two of her colleagues stumped. Two different rashes and nausea had me thinking for a moment that I might get to be the subject of the New York Time's Sunday magazine sect