Good morning. This is not an easy newsletter for me to write. I’ve taken a new job writing marketing materials for Aldrich Tilly, a start-up retail company that is seeking to disrupt the world of cooking sites like this one, primarily by offering customers better access to printed recipe assets. Elevator pitch: It’s an analog TikTok for food. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know what that means. We’ve secured $17 million in seed-round funding to make the whole thing a reality. So, later, gators: I’m taking my Tesla and moving to Presidio Heights.

Just kidding! April Fools’ Day! I wouldn’t leave you for commerce for anything. This is all I know how to do. Pay the joke forward by making this cake this tonight, for deployment after a fine feast of fettuccine with ricotta and mint (above). The table will swoon: It’s delicious. But you’ll get them good with the no-joke-joke ingredients: cherry cola, chocolate, mayonnaise and sauerkraut. And that’s no April Fool! It’s true, and we’re all indebted to Rozanne Gold for bringing it into our pages back in 1994. (Chicken in a watermelon is no less real, though it takes a long time to cook. Here’s proof!)

More seriously, you should check out this new David Tanis recipe for chicken paillard with black-olive tapenade, arugula and shaved Parmesan. Also, this terrific new Kay Chun recipe for hot and sour dumpling soup. And this big baked ziti with sausage meatballs and spinach.

Make yourself a top-of-the-month promise. April is when you’re going to get your pantry together, when you’re going to step up your sheet-pan dinner game, when you’re going to stop spending a gajillion dollars a month on yogurt and start making your own.

And absolutely while you’re at it pledge to make things you maybe haven’t made before: Portobello patty melts, say, or scallion pancakes with squid; veal Pojarski; tamarind ketchup; clam-chowder pizza.

Thousands and thousands more recipes to cook right now are lined up in neat rows on NYT Cooking, waiting on your attentions. Just make sure you have a subscription to our site and apps, so you can search and save unhindered.

Follow along with our work in and out of the kitchen on our Instagram and Twitter feeds — and see what your neighbors and colleagues in the delicious are up to by joining the NYT Cooking community on Facebook. If you run into trouble along the way, with your cooking or our technology, please ask us for help: [email protected]. We will get back to you.

Now, it’s nothing to do with pranks, potatoes or the smell of saffron, but I recently pointed out to a friend that you can tell what side of the car the gas cap is on by looking at the indicator arrow that’s on the gas gauge on the dashboard. Does it point left? That’s where the cap is! Right? Right! He looked at me as if I’d shown him a room in his apartment that he didn’t know he had.

Anyway: Road & Track has a nice guide to all the letters and numbers and such that are printed on the sidewall of your car’s tires. Watch and learn, and the information will hold you in good stead when you replace them because they’re bald.

I don’t know how I missed it before, but I love Wee Ling Soh’s “A History of Singapore in 10 Dishes,” in Roads & Kingdoms.

Finally, Jon Caramanica introduced us to the Norwegian singer and songwriter Marie Ulven, and now all I want to do is listen to her perform as girl in red. See you on Wednesday. I promise!

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