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• Desperation Dinners Recipe: Amazing Steaks

Revamping recipes and our website

Know how some people are always rearranging their furniture, adding pillows or a new coat of paint? We're a lot like that -- only with recipes. As our grandmothers used to say, we just can't seem to leave well enough alone.

Today's recipe for Topsail White Shrimp Spaghetti started out as Topsail Spaghetti with a red sauce when it appeared in our Desperation Dinners cookbook. But as we often do, we started to wonder what it might taste like ''if . . .'' The result is shrimp bathed in an Alfredo sauce studded with bits of fresh tomato and basil -- but still atop spaghetti and still sporting a hefty dose of garlic. It's delicious!

Much as we ''redecorate'' our recipes, we've been busy redesigning our website, and we can't wait to show you around. Technology has evolved since we launched desperationdinners.com in 2002, and readers began asking for updates to make it more helpful and easier to use. But the old site had reached its technological limit.

The greatest shortcake recipes . . . for the moment

Many years ago, when I was younger and even more foolish than today, I took it upon myself to perfect the shortcake. I spent a week going through a dozen or so recipes from my favorite writers, baking each version, plotting the ingredients on a spreadsheet and then testing different combinations until I came up with the shortcake of my dreams.

What's so foolish about that? Absolutely nothing (although a tad obsessive, maybe). But then I had to go and proclaim it in print as ''The Ultimate Shortcake.'' And of course you know what happened then -- within a couple of months, I found a shortcake I liked better. ''Sic transit gloria pastry'' and all that.

The reason I'm bringing this up is that I was recently bitten again by the shortcake bug. I guess that's practically unavoidable at this time of year, when the markets are full of fragrant strawberries just begging for a little lightly whipped cream and a bite of something crunchy.

Desperation Dinners Recipe: Amazing Steaks

MAIN DISH

AMAZING STEAKS

Start to finish: 20 minutes.

Recipe: Green Bean Salad With Feta and Lemon

MAIN DISH

GREEN BEAN SALAD WITH FETA AND LEMON

Make Ahead: The salad may be assembled and refrigerated up to 3 days in advance.

Recipe: Sirloin And Black Bean Chili

MAIN DISH

SIRLOIN AND BLACK BEAN CHILI

1 ½ pounds sirloin steak (can be in 2 or 3 pieces)