How cute is this: an online Chinese take-out party. Hong Kong-based blogger Mocochocolata Rita invited all her food blogging friends to contribute recipes and pictures for Chinese dishes, which she posted together, menu-style. What a feast!
There are several Hong Kong 'set meals' - a main with noodles and soup; a multi-course dinner for friends - potstickers, beef braised in chou hou sauce, pina colada milk pudding; sides of kimchee gyoza and baked tofu; several different takes on kung pao chicken; desserts of sweet peanut soup and homemade fortune cookies.
The recipes all look delicious - I'm particularly keen to try the pineapple sesame chicken recipe. It's also a great introduction to a lot of neat food blogs - Rita must have a lot of friends.
Have I mentioned how much of a geek I am? Well, just in case I haven't, now you know. I just love it when two of my passions cross over each other, especially when the results are this great!
Check out the post on Gizmodo for the whole story, but this is a wedding cake for, you guessed it, a Star Wars wedding. It's hard to tell how much of it is edible, exactly, but some of the details are amazing. The chef who made this cake used camera lens with a blue bulb behind it for R2's sensor for added realism. Have you ever seen a geek-y cake this awesome? I'd love to hear about it!
If you're in the market for some new knives, especially if you're new to the professional knife world, OnlyKnives has some great advice for you. Seriously, check it out. The article talks about how many knives you actually need, knives in different price ranges, what to really look for in knives, and even a little (tiny) bit of kitchen knife history.
My favorite piece of advice is that you don't actually need to go with the biggest knife set available. You can get along wonderfully with a smaller set, if you don't have any yet. Actually, you can get along wonderfully with only a few knives. I work in a professional kitchen, and I end up using the same few knives for everything (not counting specialty knives like the oyster knife and such).
If you want to get your collection started, this is a good place to start. If you want to replace a few knives, this may be a good reference source. Either way, it's some good advice and interesting reading.
What did you do to mark Victory Day this year? Well, some members of the US Navy and the Russian naval force got together for a friendly sandwhich competition. According to the BBC, sailors from the USS Stetham, which is visiting the Russian port of Vladivostok, battled their Russian colleagues in a tasty challenge.
Turns out a Russian won for best tasting sandwhich, while an American won for most creative presentation. More importantly, everyone got a welcome party with traditional Russian food and vodka. The American winner got a bottle of vodka and handed out USS Stetham hats and sweatshirts.
One of my favorite bloggers, Amber on My Aim is True, recently blogged about her "veganniversary." For a year now, she's been posting her unbelievable vegan recipes, and I've been lusting over them and drooling over my keyboard.
Obviously, her vegan Flickr photo montage was too good not to post. Girl tackles everything from banana bread to black bean burgers to chana, an Indian dish made with chickpeas.
A lot of Amber's recipes come from Vegan with a Vengeance, La Dolce Vegan, and Veganomicon, books that should definitely be in every veggie/vegan's arsenal. Oh, and while a play on the word "vegan" isn't a necessity for a book or blog title, it certainly helps...
Last week, my local produce market devoted an entire shelf of their display space to these pint boxes of fresh, local strawberries. They were selling for $3 a basket and I bought one (I wish I had gotten two or three more). When I got them home, I took them straight into the kitchen, washed a few and stood by the sink to eat the deep red fruit. The seeds were more assertive than those you find in those sturdy, pale California berries and while it was a surprise at first, I found myself enjoying the crunch, as it added a satisfying textural counterpoint to the fruit.
It seems like everyone is enjoying the abundance of berries right now. Over in the Talk section of Serious Eats, people are trading Strawberry Cake recipes. At Coconut & Lime, Rachel made Strawberry Thyme Cupcakes. Strawberry Kutchen is the dish du jour at Sunday Nite Dinner (the recipe is posted along with lots of tantalizing pictures). Or you could be like me and just chop up your fruit and eat it with yogurt and a drizzle of honey (only if the berries are tart).
What are your favorite ways to use fresh strawberries?
They've unveiled the first in a new line of products that will come with Jane's seal of approval, Tanzanian Gombe Reserve Coffee. It's made from beans, as the name implies, from in and around the Gombe reserve in Tanzania, which is where she has done all of her research on chimps.
The new coffee came from an effort to improve the lives of people around the preserve by turning them onto cultivating their land instead of clear cutting it. Jane Goodall hopes that by improving the lives of the people, the lives and habitat of the chimps will also be saved.
The coffee should be sold in major grocery chains. If you see some, consider buying some in order to help save vital habitat in Africa. I love that: coffee with a heart.
I look at this picture, and I swear I start to smell the charcoal burning and the chicken charring. It gets me excited for a season of outdoor festivals, street fairs and the occasional grilling session in my cousin's backyard. You can see other images from this event here. Thanks, Ohad, for adding your image to the Slashfood Flickr pool.
France's Environment Minister and Resident Party-Pooper Jean-Louis Borloo is pushing a proposal that will force bars open later than 2 a.m. to administer breathalyzer tests to patrons before they leave the establishment.
The move is in response to a spate of fatal car accidents involving drugs or alcohol.
Some immediate obvious questions: Who will be in charge of administering the tests to everyone who leaves? What happens if a patron argues, or refuses to take the test? Will he or she be chased down and fined?
What do you think? Are mandatory breathalyzer tests a good idea, or an invasion of privacy and a waste of time? Would you agree to take one, even if you'd had one beer, or weren't driving home?
From the time I was 11 years old, when I was sick, I would be allowed to stay home alone. I loved the freedom of having the entire house to myself, and despite my coughs and sniffles, would often take advantage of the solitude to do a bit of kitchen experimentation. My favorite thing to make was homemade hashbrowns. I didn't know much about the properties of frying back in those days, so I never used enough oil to get a crispy mound of shredded potatoes. Instead, I'd end up with a pile of grey (albeit, still tasty) potato bits.
Last Friday, a friend sent me a link to the xkcd cartoon you see above and it immediately made me think of those days at home, sneakily making hashbrowns. How about the rest of you? Anyone else have a home-sick-from-school specialty?
One of the best things about living half a mile from Trader Joe's is access to cheap Greek yogurt. Thick and tart, Greek yogurt gets its rich texture from straining, not from stabilizers, and lacks that sometimes slimy feel of many commercial American brands. Full-fat Greek yogurt mixed with honey and nuts makes for the most hearty, luxurious breakfast; it's also terrific doctored up with lemon juice, salt and paprika and used as sauce for cold chicken or lamb.
Gena, over at Big City, Little Kitchen, has found another great use for Greek yogurt: cupcakes. She simply used full-fat Fage (pronounced fah-yeh) as a substitute for sour cream in a Gourmet golden cake recipe. Though the yogurt is dense, the cupcakes came out as light and fluffy as if she'd beaten in egg whites. Mixed with sugar, butter, and lemon juice, it made a tart, cream cheese-like frosting. As a lover of sweet-sour yogurt gelato, I say mmmmm!
A couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to attend the Philly-area food blogger potluck. I love these gatherings, because it is an opportunity to taste a huge variety of foods, all prepared by people who more than usually interested in such things. At the last potluck, someone had brought a tray of what looked like plain tea sandwiches. Triangles of white bread, crusts removes, and a thin layer of orange-y cheese in the middle.
I steered clear of this particular tray for sometime, a little appalled that someone would have brought something so seemingly basic. Then, as I was talking to a friend, she said, "Have you tried the pimento cheese sandwiches? They are amazing!"
Upon her urging, I walked over to the food table and picked up a triangle and bit in. I discovered that what I had taken for soul-less white bread was actually a bit chewy and sour, with a fresh, newly baked aroma. And the cheese that was holding the slices together? Pimento cheese that was pungent, sharp, tangy and wonderful. These were not my Aunt Doris's tea sandwiches.
Earlier this week, Cookthink ran a post about the many ways that it's possible to reinvent pimento cheese, which made me start thinking of those potluck sandwiches. I think that there is pimento cheese in my very near future.
I have to admit, I've never heard of Peanut Butter Bread before, but it sounds rather perfect.
I mean, if you're a fan of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, this might be just the thing to make them with. Just think: you won't have to take the time to spread that messy peanut butter anymore, it's already inside the bread. Just add some jelly and grab a glass of milk and you're good to go (unless you love peanut butter so much you want to add more). I wonder if it makes a difference whether it's creamy or crunchy?
They say that the greatest form of flattery is imitation, but what do you call an outright swipe? I guess that would be stealing. I have to admit right off the bat that I swiped this right off of Smitten Kitchen. I came across it one day, and it was so beautiful that I knew I had to include it on this menu idea list. Instructions are on the blog.
Wouldn't mom absolutely love this salad? It would be a colorful, flavorful, and seasonal addition to any brunch menu. I generally think of brunch as more breakfast-y, but (a) lot of people include lunch or dinner items in brunch and (b) who wouldn't want something as beautiful as this salad at breakfast? Anyway, it's just a suggestion, but one I know I wouldn't want to pass up!
Chew on That poses a question to food bloggers each month in a feature called the Monthly Mouthful. This month, they asked, "Do you plan on cooking for your mom this Mother's Day? Please tell us why it's such a special dish and why your mom is so great!"
Gilli fromSo So Simple Food responded that on Mother's Day in her family, it's the men who cook: "All the women in our family are Mothers so it's boys (except for my husband, who can only cook toast) on the case." This makes sense to me - just because you can cook well doesn't mean you should always have do the cooking for every event. As an example, Gigi of Gigi Cakes recently blogged about a birthday cake she made for her own birthday! While the cake looked amazing, many people left comments questioning why she had to make her own cake.
Jessie from Cakespy wrote that her mom is too far away to cook for, but if she could do it, she would make her mom's famous silver cake, "a beautiful and delightfully moist layer cake topped with a creamy buttercream frosting." I love the idea that someone who bakes all kinds of mouthwatering creations still loves the cake her mom makes and would choose to make it as a testament to her.
How cute is this: an online Chinese take-out party. Hong Kong-based blogger Mocochocolata Rita invited all her food blogging friends to contribute recipes and pictures for Chinese dishes, which she posted together, menu-style. What a feast! 
I have to admit, I've never heard of 
A fraking amazing Battlestar Galactica cake
Iced Tea 101
Pierogies + cheese + onions + kraut = Parmageddon!
