I was around five years old the first time I had a steamed artichoke for dinner. They were a favorite of my parents' and so we'd often eat them for dinner, dipping the leaves in melted butter and then finishing the meal up with some salad. However, sometime around my high school years, they fell out of favor (I think my mother couldn't handle the volume of butter our family of four required to make them palatable).

While I was in Portland last week, I picked up three nice looking artichokes and took them back to my parents' house, in order to re-live old times and satisfy a longtime craving. We steamed them for about forty-five minutes, until they were fork-tender at the stem. While they cooked, I stirred a few tablespoons of Best Foods (Hellman's on the east coast) Mayonnaise together with a pressed garlic clove and some lemon juice, in place of our traditional butter dip.

Sitting around the dining room table, we quietly ate our artichokes, scraping the tender bits at the bottom of the leaves off with our lower front teeth and commenting occasionally on how good they tasted (we all determined that the mayo sauce was far tastier than the old butter dip). My parents both reminisced about their first artichokes (my mom was in high school, while my dad grew up eating them) and we ate them down to the stem (scraping out the prickly bristle under the leaves).

I've been thinking about artichokes since I got back to Philly and I do believe that they'd make a perfect starter to a mellow New Year's Eve meal. They're easy (steam in a pot with a couple of inches of water until they're tender), they're delicious and you get to eat with your hands. Add some bread, a light soup or salad and a simple dessert and your dinner is complete.

I grew up on the west coast, where Best Foods mayonnaise reigned supreme. It was always a little confusing to me when we'd come east each summer, to discover that mayonnaise changed its name to Hellmann's as soon as you crossed the Rocky Mountains, but I learned to accept the inexplicable shift as the contents of the container were so familiar and tasty.

Back in those days, while I pondered at the length the two names my mayo wore, I never spent any time thinking about the eggs that were used to make the creamy emulsion. However, in Britain, thanks to the actions of Jamie Oliver and Hugh Fearnley-Whittenstall, Hellmann's is changing their ways and shifting production to use free-range eggs. The transition has been in process since 2006 and by this summer, people will be able to obtain Hellman's Mayonnaise made with free-range eggs.

My only question is why isn't Hellmann's making the same switch in the US? I'd be more inclined to buy their product (these days I tend to go with Trader Joe's mayo or make my own) if it was made with free-range eggs.

[via Green Daily]

Food bloggers love food to the point where they have made a hobby out of not just finding, cooking and eating it, but out of sharing it with the world. Melissa, at The Traveler's Lunchbox, came up with a brilliant way that food bloggers could share their recommendations on the very best of what and where to eat in the world with the The Foodblogger's Guide to the Globe. The Guide is a meme in which every participating food blogger chooses their top five things to eat before you die. The original post has a shorthand list of all the suggestions, with links to their full descriptions on individual blogs.

The only problem is, of course, that there are so many food bloggers that you might never be able to try them all - or if you decide to start, you could find yourself jet-setting around the globe in search of food.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

Health magazine put together their list of what they considered to be the "best foods for busy women." What they clearly meant to say was the "best pre-packaged meals/snacks for busy women". There isn't anything necessarily wrong with this sort of meal, but I would hardly go so far as to say it is the "best," since my definition of "best" does not generally include a lot of shelf-stable pre-packaged meals. Nevertheless, here are their picks:

Breakfast
South Beach Diet Denver-Style Breakfast Wrap
Post Raisin Bran Cereal Bars

Lunch
Starkist Albacore Lemon & Cracked Pepper Tuna Fillet
Thai Kitchen Thai Peanut Noodle Car

Dinner
Lean Cuisine Dinnertime Selections Chicken Portobello
Uncle Ben's Ready Rice Whole Grain Brown

Snack
Kettle Brand Bakes Hickory Honey BBQ

Dessert
Edy's/Dreyer's Slow Churned Light Ice Cream French Silk
100 Percent Whole Grain Chips Ahoy! Cookies

Some foods are meant to go together. In fact, many of them pair so well that they have become the most classic comfort foods. In an effort to bypass the well-known, I first set out to collect the 8 worst food pairings, but was so disgusted by the idea of pickled herring and cheesecake that I was forced to stop. I realized that it is for good reason that some foods get paired: they taste great together and make such good combinations that it is hard to think of one without the other. These are definitely a few of the best:

1. Peanut butter and jelly
2. Macaroni and cheese
3. Fish and chips (or burgers and fries)
4. Bacon and eggs
5. Milk and cookies
6. Pancakes and syrup
7. Gin and tonic
8. Spaghetti and meatballs

Salt and pepper is, arguably, the ultimate combination, though they are seasonings and not exactly "food". Here are some of the runners up from the list above: Butter and toast, cupcakes and sprinkles, tomato soup and grilled cheese, cheese and crackers and Ben and Jerry’s.

I know there are lots of others. What are we missing?