I love to read Is My Blog Burning? so that I can stay updated on all of the contests circulating around the blogosphere. I'm usually shy about participating (though I did enter a cupcake contest just once), but I think it's great when people create dishes and posts for the sake of the blogging community, and I love to see the results. Anyway, Is My Blog Burning? alerted me today to a contest called Haiku That Blog, in which contestants write a haiku poem about a particular blog and one lucky winner receives a fabulous prize. The blog for the contest is Lunch Bucket Bento, which I'd never seen before, but it looks adorable.
The contest got me thinking, however, about haiku for Slashfood and food blogging in general. I wrote three. My favorite is this one (note: for an English major, I was never very good at writing poetry):
Read it for Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner, and in between Slashfood – keeps me fed
My friends make fun of me because I find the internet hilarious. I can't help it. I love LOLcats, Rickrolling, and, of course, The FAIL Blog (and FAIL Dogs). For those unfamiliar with the FAIL trend, it's basically when people find funny pictures of things not working as planned, and then label them "FAIL."
Reading The FAIL Blog has me thinking about all of my personal food FAILS, and how funny FAILS can be when they happen to you. The blog has some pretty awesome food pictures, such as this Salad FAIL, this Vending FAIL and this Dogfood FAIL. One of my favorite cooking blogs, Jumbo Empanadas, also wrote a FAIL post about a strawberry cheesecake -- though it certainly didn't look like a FAIL to me.
I think my biggest cooking FAIL was an attempt to make a cauliflower mash with beautiful purple and yellow cauliflower. Somehow, I thought that I could make it wasabi flavored because you can do that with normal mashed potatoes. I was very wrong, and they turned out disgusting. Please, make me feel less badly: share your FAIL food experiences with us.
Clotilde over at Chocolate and Zucchini has a lovely spring-appropriate post about how to keep greens fresh. "Keeping one's greens fresh and happy seems to be the culinary equivalent of keeping one's skin young: it's a losing battle, but everyone hopes to find the magic technique," writes the ever-witty Parisienne.
Clotilde likes to rinse the greens several times, removes excess moisture with a salad spinner, lets them sit in the spinner to dry for 20 minutes, then stores them in a sealed plastic container lined with paper towels. Her blog commenters have chimed in with dozens of their own helpful tips. I'll try to remember this for next time, as I've just finished cleaning rotten spinach goop out of the crisper drawer again.
The beet has always been my bête noire, the last food I genuinely hated in all forms. I wanted to like beets, I really did. They're so pretty. The stunning magenta of borscht, baby red and yellow beets laying like rare gemstones on a salad plate.
But I always thought they tasted like sweet dirt, with an undertone of something rotten, a whiff of burps and garbage pail. After college I lived with a girl who ate beets out of the can, enjoyed beet-and-goat cheese sandwiches piled as high as corned beef on a Katz's Deli rueben. I had to turn my head.
But it wasn't until I had a grated beet and carrot salad in vinaigrette at a bistro in Paris's Belleville neighborhood last fall that I began to understand the magic. Something about the strong vinaigrette modified the beet's rotten-ish sweetness, brought out the earthy flavors. I'm about to try this recipe, for Clotilde's Grated Carrots and Beets from the venerable Chocolate and Zucchini. Damned if that girl couldn't make a decaying sardine look like a delicacy.
The last of the March snow is still on the ground and I was wearing my down coat all day, so The Tasty Island, a Hawaiian food blog, struck me as drool-worthy in two ways - the reviews of yummy Hawaiian food and the amazing palm tree and beach backgrounds in the pictures.
Check it out - coconut shrimp, fried mahimahi, lychee yogurt, takeout Japanese chicken katsu and way more, all rated on blogger Pomai's own Spam musubi rating system (Spam musubi, or spam on rice with seaweed, is an iconic Hawaiian snack) - five Spam musubi means superb, one means average. I'm considering trying to make the sweet, glutinous rice cakes called kakanin with coconut topping, which Pomai describes as the lovechild of a Rice Krispie treat and a mochi (Japanese glutinous rice dessert). I wonder if there are any cheap tickets to Hawaii on Travelocity?
I wanted to tell Mark Bittman that I own his entire cookbook collection, and that I read his blog and columns religiously -- but I didn't. I admire Bittman, the Minimalist for the New York Times, so much precisely because he wouldn't give a hoot either way. In fact, he didn't even seem to care whether we finished our interview after two disconnects (I, however, frantically scrambled from corner to corner of my room praying for better reception). He has a straightforwardness that I think translates remarkably into recipes, and he is my go-to source for breads, soups and countless other basics. For a taste of the bluntness (and I would say, brilliance) that put Bittman on the foodie map, read on.
You just returned from Europe. How did your blogging for [your new blog] Bitten affect your trip?
I would say it affected it by me writing fewer emails. I spent more time blogging, but I didn't spend more time at the computer really. When you write your New York Times column, your audience is already decided for you. Do you envision a different audience when writing your cookbooks or for your blog?
I think the answer is no. I think I pretty much do what I do. It's not as if I don't take my audience into account, but people who like I what I do are going to find me and read me by any means. I'm not saying, "Oh I'm writing a blog so I have to a different style." I wouldn't know how to do that anyway.
I've recognized some of the recipes on the blog from your cookbooks, how do you choose which ones to post?
Actually most of the recipes that have been on the blog are former Minimalist columns, the Recipes of the Day are being drawn from Minimalist Columns that have been in the New York Times Book – Quick and Easy Recipes from the New York Times. The ones that are called "What I had for dinner" are literally that and they may or not be variations of something I've done before. But they haven't been "let me take this recipe out of How to Cook Everything and throw it on the blog." I'm not saying it won't be that, but I don't feel the need yet.
A former Slashfoodie herself, Nicole is the extraordinary baker behind Baking Bites -- a recipe blog for anyone with flour on their sleeves and a taste for the divine. She stepped away from the kitchen (actually, the horse stable) to chat with us a bit about life since Slashfood, and why her brownies are fudgier than mine. What have you been up to since leaving Slashfood? I write Baking Bites now. That's pretty much what I've been doing food-wise since I left Slashfood. It's not a very exciting answer.
So are you dedicating more time Baking Bites now? Well, before I wrote for Slashfood, I had a blog for a couple of years called Baking Sheet, which I updated a couple of times per week. I kept that going while writing for Slashfood, but after I left, I changed the name of the site and made it more formal. I dedicate more time to my personal blog now than I did while I was writing – and before I was writing – for Slashfood.
It's clear from reading about you that you love to cook everything, so why a site mainly baking? Because I like baking. All cooking is great, but for me, baking is really interesting. I like the flavors and how everything comes together. I love the magic and the science of the oven. Cooking for me is ... I don't want to say it easier, because I don't find baking difficult, but it is just not just as interesting to me usually. You can go from grilling a chicken to grilling a steak, but baking a cake is a little more special.
Anything happening in the kitchen today? Not at the moment. Last night I made a lemon cake and later I might make some flatbread. The flatbread isn't set in stone yet. I'll make a list of things that I want to make but it changes. I'll get a whim for something with mint or vanilla and I'll totally change my mind.
Forget Obama versus Hillary, the debate heating up over at Apartment Therapy has to do with dish racks. Some people consider them another fun piece of kitchen gear, buying bamboo or ultra-modern stainless steel versions. Others can't stand them (including the Apartment Therapy bloggers), finding them a waste of space, a silly unitasker easily replaced by a dish towel.
I've got one, but honestly I never really thought about it. But, judging by the number of comments on the post, it's a real Coke/Pepsi divide. It reminded me of a cool book, Emotional Design: Why We Love (Or Hate) Everyday Things, by Donald Norman. Norman, a consultant to design firms, analyzes why people feel the way they feel about things like teapots and juicers. It's a good read for the kind of design junkie who has genuine emotions about things like dish racks (or vintage toasters, or enameled cookware, or the "perfect" coffee thermos etc.).
How is it that I've never heard of these new Chocolate Mix Skittles until this very moment, when I popped them out of a vending machine? The bag features s'mores, vanilla, chocolate caramel, chocolate pudding and brownie batter Skittles, in various shades of cream and brown. This is the kind of stuff that gets sugar freaks like me all excited.
The vanilla and brownie batter flavors taste a bit off to me (and since when is vanilla a chocolate flavor?), but the s'mores, chocolate caramel and chocolate pudding are tasty. Similar to Jelly Belly jelly beans of the same flavors, but with a Skittle's crunchy outer coating.
Candy Addict gives a good rundown of the flavors. They describe the brownie batter as "someone took fake, store-bought chemical-y brownie mix and blended in a tablespoon of cold butter."
Now if Mars would just bring licorice Skittles to America (they have them in Italy, in a black bag, with flavors like aniseed and licorice mint), I'd be thrilled. If anyone knows somewhere in the US or online that carries these, I'd be grateful for the info.
Do you consider "fish sticks and liquor" a legitimate dinner? Appreciate the radioactive glow of freeze-dried gravy? Then check out Trashy Eats. It's the blog Divine from John Waters' Pink Flamingos would have written, had "the filthiest person alive" lived in the Internet era.
The new blog features recipes for things like Bachelor Food (Betty Crocker's Potato Buds mixed frozen veggies and a flavoring packet from ramen noodles) and Frito Pie (canned chili, Fritos, cheese, onion), and reviews of stuff like Banquet Homestyle Bakes. Stuff that costs about $1 a serving and can be nuked in less time than it takes to pop open a can of Mountain Dew. Stuff that makes Slow Foods members cry.
Got your own trashy favorites? The webmaster is looking for contributions.
Bored at work? High tolerance for grossness? Check out this B3TA (a juvenile, crude and quite hilarious British "arts" site) message board on "the worst thing you've ever cooked or eaten." The board is closed for posting, but there are 20 pages worth of responses. Some are almost certainly made-up, many are obscene, others so British they may be nearly meaningless to American readers (Bovril? Walkers crisps? Fry-ups?). But a lot of them are pretty darn funny.
Outstanding responses include turkey-wrapped sheep brain, roadkill badger, maggots meant for fishing bait and a chunk of cigar.
As for me, I'm going to have to pick the soggy tripe stew I ate in Argentina. Tripe is fine when all the stomach-y flavor is well cooked out, but this tasted of wet dog and gym socks and old burps, with the texture of snot-slicked rubber tubing. You?
Molly Wizenberg, the Seattleite behind the lyrical food blog, Orangette, is now appearing in Bon Appétit. Wizenberg's first monthly "Cooking Life" column is in the March issue, on stands now. In it, she tackles fear of baking with yeast, providing readers with a yummy-looking recipe for cinnamon rolls with cream cheese glaze.
If you haven't read Orangette, you should start - it's like reading a novel. A novel that's mostly about food. While her posts can sometimes get a little too folksy with the "oh goshes" and "darns," others, like the one about cooking with her father, will make you cry with their brilliant, raw emotion.
Molly's also got one of the great foodie love stories of the modern era. Her now-husband, Brandon, was introduced to her blog by a friend, tried her recipe for lemon cake and was so inspired he emailed her offering to take her out to dinner. Problem was, he lived in New York, she in Seattle. Three weeks later he flew out and they fell in love over gelato and strolls through Pike Place Market. When they got engaged a year later Molly got nearly 200 well-wishing posts on Orangette. Sweet, no?
What is it about Southerners and coconut cake? Maybe the thick drifts of ivory icing remind us of the snow we don't get. Maybe the lacy curls of coconut call to mind the frilled white gowns at the debutante balls we're (still, seriously) so fond of.
Though, in what's perhaps a sign of the changin' times in the New South, the best "classic Southern" coconut cake I've ever tasted was from a Thai restaurant near where I grew up in Durham, North Carolina.
I adore the looks of this Southern coconut cake from BigCity, Little Kitchen, adapted from Gourmet Magazine. So light and soft. I'd like to make this on a Sunday afternoon and take a fat slice out to the veranda with a good book. If I had a veranda.
You've read through every food-related book available through Amazon.com. Your daily blog surfing is starting to feel stale. And just how many times can you flip through the pages of a cookbook? Honey, it's time for some fresh food reading.
Though it isn't necessarily pretty to look at, the Devil's Food Dictionary is a blog-like site that publishes the musings of Barry Foy, who "believes that an honorable writer has nowhere to go but sideways, into the realm of lies, misleading claims, and baseless speculation." That sure makes for interesting reading. Each post consists of food-related words with their meanings that are at once informative, and fun to read.
Today? Aspic, which "was once a common technique in French cuisine; regrettably, everyone who remembered why has now passed away." See? Funny.
There's a new kid on the blogs, you might be thinking. But look a little more closely and you'll see that Baking Bites is actually an old friend who's gone through an extreme makeover. Our very own bakerina Nicole Weston's personal food blog, Bakingsheet has been transformed (of sorts - technically, Bakingsheet is still out there) into Baking Bites, with a different name, a fresh look, and all kinds of delicious new things. Take a peek!
Have you ever stashed a Coke in the freezer, hoping to chill it quickly, then forgotten all about it, only to have it explode all over your frozen peas?
My friends make fun of me because I find the internet hilarious. I can't help it. I love 
Clotilde over at 
The beet has always been my bête noire, the last food I genuinely hated in all forms. I wanted to like beets, I really did. They're so pretty. The stunning magenta of borscht, baby red and yellow beets laying like rare gemstones on a salad plate. 
The last of the March snow is still on the ground and I was wearing my down coat all day, so The Tasty Island, a Hawaiian food blog, struck me as drool-worthy in two ways - the reviews of yummy Hawaiian food and the amazing palm tree and beach backgrounds in the pictures. 
I wanted to tell Mark Bittman that I own his entire cookbook collection, and that I read his blog and columns religiously -- but I didn't. I admire Bittman, the Minimalist for the New York Times, so much precisely because he wouldn't give a hoot either way. In fact, he didn't even seem to care whether we finished our interview after two disconnects (I, however, frantically scrambled from corner to corner of my room praying for better reception). He has a straightforwardness that I think translates remarkably into recipes, and he is my go-to source for breads, soups and countless other basics. For a taste of the bluntness (and I would say, brilliance) that put Bittman on the foodie map, read on.
A former Slashfoodie herself, Nicole is the extraordinary baker behind 
Do you consider "fish sticks and liquor" a legitimate dinner? Appreciate the radioactive glow of freeze-dried gravy? Then check out 
A fraking amazing Battlestar Galactica cake
Iced Tea 101
Pierogies + cheese + onions + kraut = Parmageddon!
