"Curiouser and curiouser," said Alice.

Now, Alice didn't go looking for that White Rabbit. He simply happened by one lazy afternoon. But, she could no more have ignored him than she could ignore hookah-smoking caterpillars or bottles labeled "Drink Me." So, Alice followed that rabbit. And she had an adventure.

Alice is in all of us. She IS a child’s engagement with the world— the wide, unjaded, unblinkered eye we are all born with. The unpolluted nose, exquisitely sensitive skin. The open door of the unencumbered mind. We often grow away from that state. We forget about it or drop it absently along the way. But, there's a very good reason that Lewis Carroll's tales of Alice are read so often by grownups. We, too, plummet right down that rabbit hole without a second thought, don't we? Without hesitation. It's not only adventure that pulls us there, it's that we respond to that automatic, elemental rightness, even the need, to pursue the odd, the original, the new. Rabbits, topsy-turvy worlds, Ultimate Dressing.

Ultimate Dressing? Did I say "Ultimate Dressing?" Sure did. Ultimate Dressing, like unbirthdays, is a tool. It happens to be the tool of choice for those of us who are acquainted with the wisdom of falling down holes, sailing off the edge of the world or taking a particular road for the simple reason of never having taken it before.

Recipe trading, in all its forms, is more than just a lark. It's more than finding wonderful, new dishes. It's more than finding marvelous places or meeting amusing, well-traveled people. Those are things that can simply happen to us any old day. Without our permission. While we're doing something else. When we've taken the third turn instead of the second one. Sometimes we notice the rabbits, sometimes we don't. Sometimes -- perish the thought -- they look a little like rhinos. But, picking up that pad of recipes, setting out, traveling that road with a quixotic, wacky, not-quite-definite plan— that's what defines a true Recipe Ranger.

"How do I know where I'm going?"asked Alice. "You’ll know when you get there," said the Cheshire Cat with a Recipe Ranger-type smile.