A FRIEND WRITES , apropos of roasting a chicken on a vertical roaster, "It turned out better than any other attempt at roast chicken. The one problem I had was excessive splattering and resulting smoke. My fan is not very strong, so I probably won't do it again unless I can find a way to reduce the smoke."

It occurs to me that I did not address this issue in my chicken-roasting opus of last spring ("The Chicken Has Landed," 3/20/02). Of course, the first order of business, before you begin any method of roasting, is to make sure excess fat (in particular, those two pockets on either side of the tail, and the tail itself) has been removed. Smoke is especially likely if you're using Barbara Kakfa's high-heat roasting method: oven at full blast (500 or 550 degrees Fahrenheit), bird roasted 10 minutes a pound. One answer is to reduce the heat and increase the cooking time; give the bird 10 initial minutes at, say, 475 degrees, then dial back to 350 for another 45 or 50 minutes. Another possibility is to roast the chicken on an outdoor barbecue. Even on a charcoal-fired Weber, I've never had height problems with birds on vertical grills. A third alternative is to install a more powerful exhaust hood; but even the mighty (and pricey) ones, like Vent-a-Hoods, can't always keep up.

A flamer, meantime, e-mails to say it is "unbelievable" – in a not-good way – that I reviewed a Mexican restaurant whose menu includes a $14 item. Evidently it does not matter to this writer, mounted on a high horse indeed, that I didn't think much of the $14 item (especially as compared with a similar item for $9) or that I pointed out the menu's abundance of tasty offerings for $1.50 to $2.75. These facts do not matter, because, apparently, I am just "hoping to be snapped up by San Francisco Magazine at some point" (I must say I found that charge agreeably rich) and to that end "go out of [my] way to overspend." Yes! It's all falling into place, as Mr. Burns once gloatingly intoned.

And (jumping the fence once more) another friend told me that when she makes her morning coffee in the plunger pot, she pours the boiling water directly onto the grounds. I think I yelped at this news. Boiling water is never supposed to touch coffee grounds; the resulting brew tastes off. My solution is to pour the (carefully premeasured) boiling water into the empty carafe and let it stand for about 10 seconds (with maybe a stir or two), so that when the (premeasured) grounds are added and stirred, the water is well off the boil. Voilà.