Nice chatting with you

Thanks again to everyone who joined in today's live food chat. Answering questions that fast doesn't live much time for thinking them over, so I hope I gave information that was correct and useful.

As promised, we did a random drawing from the names of people who submitted questions. Kirsty won the autographed copy of Ree Drummond's "The Pioneer Woman Cooks" and Caity gets the copy of Steven Raichlen's "Planet Barbecue." If you'll both send your contact information to me at kpurvis@charlotteobserver.com, I'll put the books in the mail.

And to the person who wanted to know how to cook a roadkill possum, I do actually have an answer: Possum are scavengers who eat carrion, so the only way to make the meat palatable is to catch them live and pen them up for a week while you feed them clean food. My grandmother taught me lots of useful things like that.

Let's do lunch next Thursday

In the ever-expanding world of online journalism, The Observer is delving into live online chats and I've volunteered to be a gastronaut. Mark Washburn has already done it, and I was never the type to let the boys get ahead of me on the playground.

Next Thursday, July 22, I'll take questions live from noon to 1 p.m. It's easy to do: Just go to http://www.charlotteobserver.com/ on Thursday and you'll find a link. If you want to just eavesdrop and read other people's questions and my answers, you can do that too. (But how much fun is that? It would be like one of those parties where no one says anything.)

The questions will be moderated to keep things clean and on topic (cooking, food, cooking, shopping, cooking, travel, cooking, world history, cooking - you get the drift).

Just to keep it lively, let's make it a giveaway. I have TWO books this time. Anyone who posts a question and gives me a name to recognize them by gets entered in a random drawing for a copy of "Planet Barbecue" by Steve Raichlen, or an autographed copy of "The Pioneer Woman Cooks" by Ree Drummond right after the chat is over.

Any questions? Good - save them for next Thursday and let me hear from you.