I've finally succumbed to the insanity: The Hungry Bride is now on Twitter. Follow me and get the latest updates about my final tastings with caterers, battles with in-laws (kidding, kidding) and general all-around wedding mania. I'll keep posting every Friday on Slashfood, too. This week: I'll need advice on the best starter cookbooks. Next week: Follow my step-by-step adventure as I have a final tasting with my caterer!

And hey, don't forget to follow Slashfood on Twitter for all food, all the time.

Are you on Twitter? Should I be following you? Please leave your Twitter names in the comment section or follow me on the site!

The Hungry Bride

And her first interview was with me! Last week, while I was out in Los Angeles, I had the pleasure of meeting up with Average Betty at the Getty (a gorgeous museum in the hills overlooking the city). We talked about Slashfood, blogging, Fork You (the online cooking show I make with Scott) and Philadelphia food. She took my rambling answers and distilled it all down to a fun and concise 5 minute video.

If you haven't watched any of Betty's past videos, take some time to check them out. She has a particular way of combining food with quirky characters that is different from what anyone else out there is doing and it's really terrific!

Many of you have, by now, heard of Twitter, the social networking tool used to post short messages to your friends about what you're doing at the moment. Loads of people use the service, and you can even follow Slashfood. But can you share a recipe in 140 characters or less (140 being the maximum amount of characters Twitter allows)?

Well, Cookbook sure thinks so. If you're on Twitter, you can follow Cookbook for regular recipe updates. For the most part, the recipes seem fine. In order to share a recipe in that number of characters, though, you've got to use as many shortcuts as possible, and that does make some of the recipes hard to follow, in my opinion.

Overall, though, it's a pretty neat concept. It's kind of like the Cartoon Kitchen on Serious Eats, only it's delivered right to you. What a way to bring cooking into the 21st century.

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

Every once in a while, we like to get a little up and close personal with our bloggers. We've already met Bob Sassone, Ellen Slattery, Shayna Glick, Sarah J. Gim and Alanna Kaufman. Now let's meet the latest addition to our team, Julie Tilsner. -- Marisa McClellan

Do you have a personal blog?
Who doesn't these days? Mine is Badhomecooking.

What is your day job, or rather, what do you do when you're not food blogging?
I mostly write for Parenting and American Baby magazines, but I edit a variety of AOL-owned blogs, as well. I also have a few book projects going. And the obligatory screenplay (I do live in L.A. you know). Really, I'd rather write about food these days.

How long have you been blogging with Slashfood and what is your favorite post?
I've been here one week! So no favorite post yet, but I've been a huge fan of Slashfood's Sarah Gim for way longer than that. She's so sassy! I link to her Delicious Life from my blog. We need to meet for drinks or something. I promise not to disparage her dates.

Do you have any non-food-related, non-blogging hobbies?
Blogging cuts deeply into my flamenco dancing, flea marketing and kid-chasing time...

Not every foodie does, so we have to ask: Do you cook?
Sigh. Refer back to question #1.

Today featured picture is nothing more than a plate of vegetables. But sometimes (at least in my book), there is nothing more beautiful than the fresh, vibrant colors and shapes of veggies. I've actually been passing this image by for the last few days, but each time I saw it, it caught my eye and called out to me. And so here it is!

It is one in a series of images from the night that Susan from Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy first followed the recipe for Jap Chae from Jaden's Steamy Kitchen. The rest of the pictures look equally delectable.

Remember to join the Slashfood Flickr group and add your pictures to our pool, so that we can feature your gorgeous food images on Food Porn Daily.

Chances are, the vast majority of you reading this post right now are familiar with Flickr (and if you're not, the quick explanation is that it is a photo sharing website with lots of ways to engage in acts of community). What you may not know is that Slashfood actually has our own Flickr group. It's been around since late summer of 2005 and has more than 5,000 gorgeous, drool-inducing images of food in all states of preparedness.

The amazing thing is that even though we've neglected the group in the recent months, people have still been adding some amazing images to it. What we want to do is to get even more of you involved in adding gorgeous food photography (and accompanying recipes, if you want to share) to the pool so that we can bring back the Photo of the Day feature. We know that there is lots of good cooking, baking, shopping, preserving, roasting and braising going on out there and we want to see some of it. If your photo is selected to be featured, we'll get in touch to let you know, give you full credit for the image/recipe and link to your site/blog (if you have one).

And now, to whet your appetite for all the food gorgeousness that will be coming with the Photo of the Day, the image you see above was submitted to our Flickr pool yesterday by Jennifer at Bake or Break. She talks about these chocolate-filled cupcakes on her blog as well as her love of vanilla paste and her dislike of frosting. And now I want a cupcake!

A few months ago, Sarah showed us some photos taken by James Yu, a former Slashfood writer, of his visit to French Laundry. Now Kevin, a Slashfood reader, has shared his own experience at Thomas Keller's world class restaurant with us. Though a few of the items are duplicate, I thought the majority of pictures (and individual courses) were unique enough that we could afford to take another peek. His tab? Over $600 per person, which included the extensive tasting menu, drinks, tax and tip.

In case you aren't aware, Thomas Keller recently won the title of Outstanding Restaurateur at the 2007 James Beard Foundation Awards, and French Laundry was named 4th best restaurant in the world by Restaurant Magazine, scoring as "Best of the Americas."

Needless to say, this is pretty much the ultimate in food porn. I've included a few more of Kevin's photos after the jump, but you can visit his entire collection (with full descriptions of what you are looking at) at his website via the 'read' link below.

It's an honor just to be nominated. Really, truly, an honor.

But we still want to win!

Slashfood has been nominated for Best Food Blog in the Blogger's Choice Awards. The winner is chosen by votes, so if it have it in you, head over to Slashfood's page on the Awards site and vote for us! We're counting on you, Slashfoodies.

Thanks, Dr. Electro, for the heads up!

If you're a webgeek like I'm a webgeek, then you might already know about Twitter, a new web application/community/site/tool that's become a bit of a voyeuristic OCD addiction for a lot of people. Twitter allows people to "micro-blog," sending messages of what you are doing right now via the site, IM, or SMS (that's "text message" for the uninitiated).

Because we at Slashfood are all about keeping up with what's happening in the word, we've set up our very own Twitter account as an experiment. Take a peek! Anyone who is interested can see what we're eating, snacking, chewing, drinking at all times (as if you didn't already know that by the posts here on the blog).

The Well Fed Network, which was started by the Accidental Hedonist, took over the hosting duties of the Food Blog Awards last year and has just announced a call for nominations for the 2006 awards. The awards were started as a way to recognize excellence in what was once a very tiny niche of the blogging world. In the past few years, the category has expanded immensely and the awards are a bigger deal than ever before. Nominating your favorite blogs/bloggers is a great way to let them know you appreciate their hard work and checking out the lists of nominees will introduce you to some great new sites. Nominations will close on Friday, December 15th by Midnight EST. The categories include Best Writing, Most humorous, Best Photography, Best Restaurant Reviews, Best New Food Blog, Best Original Recipes, Best Recipes, Best Blog by a Chef and Best Overall, among others.

By the way, we would love to send a big "thank you" out to the person who nominated Slashfood in the Best Group Blog category!

Maybe it's the wonky weather. Maybe it's the coming of the hectic Holidays, but it looks like the food blogosphere has gone completely...nuts! You already knew we here at Slashfood were bonkers, but here's a little proof that everyone else is too:

• Bea feeds her walnut obsession over at La Tartine Gourmand with Flourless Walnut Minicakes.
• Spicy Port Pecan Shoofly Tart is another amazing adventure in Kirsten's Home Cooking Adventures.
• Call it a Culinary Concoction, but Peabody calls it a nut job. It's a Bunch of Nuts in a Tart.
• No press required for Garlic Press's Chocolate-Pecan Pie Bars, but you do need some garlic for the Nut Burgers.
• Inspired by the Cote de Ivoire, blog From Field to Feast does an Avocado and Peanut Salad.
• Part of Eating Leeds' three course meal, Carrot Almond Soup comes out a beautiful golden hue.
• Even though they're mini doesn't mean you want want to eat more than your fair share of Bake or Break's Mini Pecan Pies.
• Coconut & Lime takes a nutty twist on chcolate chip cookies with Chocolate Chip Peanut Cookies.
• The RD makes a batch of Spiced Nut Mix to bag and give away as gifts, but make sure to keep a stach for yourself.

So there you have it -- proof that we're all a little bit nutty. If we missed you, leave a comment here and we'll update our summary!

Since we were talking about the best apples to use in making pies last week, it put me in the mood to make one myself. I love making pies because, even though there is some prep work involved, the procedure is very straightforward. Also, I really enjoy making homemade pie crust. It's fun to get your fingers dirty and a flaky, homemade crust is better than one you can buy at the store - especially because you can taste the work that went into making it.

If you've never made a homemade pie before, winter is the perfect time to start and apple is the best kind to start with. Not only are the apples easy to work with, but the fact that the weather is colder makes it easier to handle the dough for the crust. In summer, you need to work faster to keep the butter from melting as you work it in to the flour. After the jump, you'll find a photo-heavy, step-by-step guide to making both the crust and the whole pie. I make my crusts with a combination of shortening (non-hydrogenated, for those who are concerned) and butter. The combination of butter, which adds flavor and some leavening, and shortening, which adds tenderness and flakiness will produce the best crusts. I use a 3-1 ratio, so not much shortening is needed.

Here at Slashfood, we're crazy about food - and we're definitely crazy about writing about it. But this month we're going nuts for... nuts!

When we think of fall foods, nuts play a prominent role in our menus. There are pecan pies for dessert and spiced and candied nuts that are set out when friends come over for an afternoon of hanging out in front of the fire on a cold day, not to mention the fact that many stuffing recipes include nuts in them. Nuts add richness and flavor to most dishes and since there are so many kinds, they are very versatile. On Monday, November 20th, we'll be covering some of our favorite nut recipes and other nutty ideas all day long. We'll probably even have a couple of suggestions that you can incorporate into your Thanksgiving dinner!

If you have a blog of your own and want to join us, write up a post (and don't forget the food porn!) with your favorite recipe that involves nuts in any form and send us a note with the link. We'll round up all the posts at the end of the day on the 20th.

We really like candy here, whether it is a sugary caramel or a decadent box of chocolates, and there is nothing like Halloween to get into the candy spirit. After all, the entire purpose of the holiday is to eat candy! To get into the swing of things before the holiday hit, we decided to host our own day of Candy Creations on Tuesday, October 24th. We'll talk about some of our favorite candies, homemade and store-bought, and offer up some tips on where to find the best candies and what to give out for Halloween. We have lots of treats to give out, but you'll have to be patient!

If you want to join us in our celebration of candy, write a post about your favorite candy, candy recipe or use for candies (sundae toppings, deep fried candy bars, etc) and post about it between now and the 24th. Send us a link to your post and we'll do include it in our roundup that day.