We like our alcoholic beverages the same way we like our panty hose, perfume, and boyfriends--strong and cheap. The process for making this barroom staple isn't hard to master. Put ice in a plastic cup. Pour in Jack Daniels. Hose in some Coca-Cola. Sure, it happens all over town, but here it will cost a least a buck or two less per drink than other places. And with the potency, you'll save even more in the long run.

If you're looking for a quick, inexpensive meal, check out the Corner Bakery in North Dallas. Take-out or eat-in, pasta is prepared fresh as you wait. Entrées include fettucine Alfredo, pasta with pesto, pasta with tomato, pasta with ragu, and pasta with marinara sauce. Each dish is served with a salad of your choice, and a fresh assortment of bread--all for less than $10.

In the Tex-Mex state, salsa has a lot to prove. Heat (as in spice) must make itself known but not so strongly that a full glass of water is needed after each bite. For us, the tip-off to a perfect salsa is a reaction after the initial taste of wanting to pour it on everything we order. But we weren't even thinking about salsa when we dipped that first chip at Margarita Ranch. That changed instantly as we tasted the warm, smoky near-puree. We wanted to drink the entire bowl. We would've rolled in it, it was so good. Forget whatever entrée we ordered, because it ended up drenched in the mix of peppers, fine bits of tomato and garlic. It's sweet and sultry lava that eases down the throat.

Now that the weather's cooled down--oooh, that 89 degrees gives us goose bumps--what better way to bring in the morning than by sitting on the Bread Winners' patio drinking a little java, eating some French toast (a real highlight), and reading the morning paper (we take The New York Times, which makes it easier to digest)? The food's always excellent here (so it tastes a little better on Sunday mornings), and the ambience puts the exclamation mark at the end of the experience. The first time we took our wife here, she thought she had moved to another city--like, a really nice one that had some ambience.

Jerome Hunter's family farm in Gilmer produces the best peaches around--far better than those California croquet balls masquerading as fruit at the supermarket. Each of Hunter's beauties is a globe of tender, meaty pulp that virtually explodes when you bite it. Take a towel for your wrists, which will be slimed by waves of peach juice pouring from the bite mark. Hunter's hangs its shingle in Shed 3 at the Farmers Market, where it is flanked by other delicious fruit vendors. They're good, but Hunter's peaches remain the Elvis of the shed.

If there is a single dish that represents the idea of comfort food, it's shepherd's pie. It's warm, meaty and soft, and there's no worry of combining bites or elements since that's already been done for you. We've been known to tuck into some welcoming shepherd's pie, and in our experience, the Tipp's is the best. The ground meat is slightly peppery, the peas aren't watery and the mashed potatoes make for the perfect cloud topped with a crust of cheddar cheese. It has to be the best, actually, because no matter how full we get, the dish turns on the "glutton" switch in our head and we keep trying to finish...until the waitress is kind enough to take it away before we explode.

The tables are filled with them: lone gnawers, grazers, and nibblers fiddling with cell phones, flipping through newspapers, or fumbling with Palm Pilots. With so many solo gourmandes taking down plates of Caesar salad, soups, sandwiches, rotisserie chicken, and daily specials (all obtained cafeteria-style so you don't have to feel like a lonely shmuck while a server takes your order with one of those ridiculing gazes), no one will notice you. Which, for once, is just what you want.

What do you want? Bulgarian, French, or Greek? For those who make such distinctions, the differences are obvious, with the Bulgarian being the richest and creamiest. At this import shop, you can have your choice, and the proprietors will reach down into the water- and cheese-filled containers and pull out a chunk of bright white cheese that, when served with watermelon--the way the Bulgarians eat it--is unbeatable.

It's not so much that Breadwinners has the kind of coffee that could turn a three-toed sloth into a crazed New York commuter within three sips. It isn't even so much that Breadwinners has the kind of fresh-baked muffins, sweet rolls, cakes and fresh breads that make you almost fall in love with the cellulite and spare Firestones they will turn into with just a little butter. It's the scrambles, the omelettes, the velvety pancakes and the lush interior courtyard. Plus, Breadwinners serves breakfast until 4 p.m. If you can sleep until 3 and still get a hot breakfast, why mess with an alarm clock?

Brunch is a natural for a venue whose first name denotes a street bar--a natural disaster, that is. But Greenville Bar and Grill, a white-tablecloth retrofit of a once gunked and grimed watering hole that's been hovering around Greenville Avenue since 1933, beats the odds. Greenville's eggs Benedict is like no other. Slathered in a smooth, tangy hollandaise sauce, the fluffy and plump poached egg sits on a chewy sheet of Canadian bacon bedded down on a muffin so tender and pliant that it disintegrates as soon as it hits the mouth (and it isn't one of those watery, predigested muffins either). Perhaps even more amazing--and rare in the world of Benedicts--is that this version is actually hot through and through. Not cool, not warm, not piping hot hollandaise over a chilled egg with icy whites and golf ball-hard yolks, but hot, from muffin bottom to hollandaise tarp. There's no rubbery egg white or watery poach discharge either--grave hazards after a night of serious drinking or a morning of serious molten brimstone lingo. Omelettes are constructed with the same exacting care. They're fluffy and light, almost like little soufflés. Even the fruit plate--typically a thoughtless ensemble starring the mealy and the insipid--is riddled with the plump, the bright and the fresh. Greenville Bar and Grill's brunch is so good, you'll find yourself forgetting about that dog-hair remedy you're convinced you need to help the eggs and the head whir stay down. But there's plenty of that behind the handsome bar if your memory is extra sharp.