This article is a tribute to my friend, Rene Mancino, owner of CARROT TOP Bakery on Broadway in Upper Manhattan. Rene died this past year as a victim of a self-inflicted gunshot wound....inside the business in her office. As her husband, friends and customers mourn her, I remembered that I had written this article years ago for a local New York publication and thought (as a tribute to her memory) it might be a good idea to post pieces of the interview. As a child, the only times Renee Allen Mancino was sure to be at her Cleveland, Ohio home was when her mother was baking. A self-described little hellion for most of her childhood, constantly at odds with her mother and six siblings and eluding her grandmother's strap, a sweet tooth for her mother's chocolate fudge, breakfast rings, cakes, pies and cookies was her only taming influence. The memory of these occasions may have ultimately saved Mancino's life, and was the genesis of her thriving CARROT TOP restaurants, and ...