Northern Exposure

My mother, an Orange County resident and L.A. Times subscriber, saves the Food Section each week and sends it up to me, a temporarily transplanted Southern Californian in Fairbanks, Alaska.

I have a great time reading it all and have particularly enjoyed your recent feature on Great Home Cooks (I write a monthly “Hometown Cooking” column for the food page of the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner) and your February 6 article, “$10 a day.”

It was fascinating to read all the different approaches to the same problem and to see the resulting menus. The shopping lists, though, made me wistful. Finding milk at a Fairbanks supermarket for $2.57 is a cause for celebration--the regular price is about $1 more.

TERI GRIFFING McKAY, Fairbanks, Alaska