There is profanity on these pages. Not a lot, and no profanity for profanity's sake (nothing you wouldn't see in, say, The New Yorker), but because when you change the words, you change more than the words. Although I heartily disagree with the contention that swearing is evidence of an uncreative mind, I respect individual preferences regarding profanity. These pages reflect my preference. If profanity offends you, stop right here and don't read the story below. The recipes, though, are a curse-free zone – I'm just not creative enough to work curse words into double tomato bruschetta.

Loretta Young, an upright Catholic, had an affair with the married Clark Gable, the result of which was a child. For publicity's sake, she "adopted" her own child, a fact she denied until after she died, when it was published posthumously in an authorized biography. To atone for the affair, the out-of-wedlock birth, the lying, she became even more uprightly Catholic and had a swear jar on all of her movie sets, with the .25 per curse that she collected going to a charity – Catholic, one might safely assume. As Ethel Merman (Robert Mitchum, whoever) was leaving the set one day, she (he, they) said, "Here's twenty bucks. Now go fuck yourself."

Another version goes something like this:

At the end of a movie shoot, Robert Mitchum puts a $20 bill in the jar and says, "That should cover just about everything I've wanted to say to Miss Young."

See? Changing the words changes more than the words.