You know how as a kid you used to stand peering out the door wondering whether or not to wear a coat, and then your mom would shout that yes, you definitely need to wear a coat, because it's brisk out there. But then you'd get outside and it was too hot, so you wrapped the coat around your waist where it was this hateful bulky thing and you wished you could have had some correct source of information that was not your mother.
Well, now we have the Internet, which is always right. Case in point: Is It Iced Coffee Weather? Demanding and capricious at once, it's an ether-mom for coffee-addicted adults. Yesterday we typed in our ZIP code and were relieved to see that yes, yes it is iced coffee weather! No more standing in the Dunkin' Donuts line like a fool, trying to figure it out! Today, however, the Web Site of Power says "no." But we want iced coffee! Who is in charge of this thing? There is no "about" button, and no contact info. Who are you, iced coffee diva?!
Is it iced coffee weather in Alaska? Chicago? Florida? Why not in 90210, whose Starbucks-slurping residents are surely enraged by that fact? We want an authoritative chart, but it's not like we're, uh, bloggers -- we can't sit around all day typing numbers into a Web site. So report back: Visit the site and for the love of all that is holy please take our poll and hit the comments to tell us the answer to this burning question.
Sister site Green Daily has a great new feature: the Sustainability Series is composed of several videos about production and consumption of organic food in America. GD contributor Alexia Prichard interviews several people in the environmental and sustainable food sectors in order to uncover some oft-unknown details about organic and "natural" foods. They're full of depressing facts, like that most food travels, on average, 2500 miles before we get to eat it.
Prichard acknowledges that the USDA organic regulation system is a confusing one, and that most consumers - even otherwise environmentally-conscious ones - are frustrated and baffled by the labels emblazoned on their food. "Organic," "free range," and "natural" are terms that we once thought we understood, but that now take on entirely different meanings within the confines of the USDA's rules.
Learn about "re-localizing" your diet and how to overcome challenges that keep you from getting the healthiest, most local food you can.
A couple of days ago, a friend sent me a direct message on Twitter that said, "My God. You should blog about this recipe. I'm drooling down to my socks." He included a link that took me to the picture you see above. It turned out to be a post on the King Arthur Flour blog from March with a pictorial recipe for Hot Cheese Bread that is so wonderful and gooey with cheese that it just begs to be ripped into.
I'm not much of a yeast baker, quick breads are more my style. I'm thinking though that I might need dip my toe into the bread baking world again in order to try out this bread (I'm already dreaming of the cheese I'd use in the middle).
Has anyone tried this recipe? Was it as delicious as it looks?
The LA Timesran a piece yesterday on blogs becoming a new tool in many chefs' arsenals, and how they're entering a blogosphere that used to be reserved for us commonfolk. The difference, according to the author? Primarily, style and choice of content: commonfolk tend to "natter about what they fed their boyfriends last night, and fuzzily photograph their latest batch of heart-shaped cookies" while REAL chefs tell the stories behind the food, taking more time to detail the food's inspiration and its history.
I beg to differ. I'm biased, yes, but I think our Slashfood Flickr group is a perfect example of primarily amateur photographers and chefs taking outstanding photos of food, ones just as good as any in a cookbook. And I think people read food blogs to take in the "nattering" about day-to-day life and how it fits in with what fix and eat. And chef's blogs can be personal, too - they don't all fit neatly into one (bread) box, as this author seems to imply.
The article details several chef blogs that have been making waves, and how the chefs are using their platforms to make a statement. For some chefs, like Alison Barshak, a blog is a way to show off and advertise your new restaurant under the guise of giving viewers a tutorial on opening up an eatery. For others, like Michael Laiskonis, blogs are a chance to describe eloquently, albeit verbosely, how they got the inspiration and found the ingredients for their extravagant meals.
Check out GD for tons of food-related info...it's amazing how often the topics of environment and food overlap, especially as farmers explore greener methods and more food goes organic.
When I was in college, I had this party trick that I would trot out ever so often. I would ask people to show me their favorite pen, and then I would intuit facts about their personality based on their pen choice. It worked best when people were slightly intoxicated, as a few well placed guesses could really wow them when they were slightly incapacitated.
Yesterday, Julia Langbein wrote a post on Gourmet's Choptalk that made me think about this old trick of mine. She claims that the best way to learn about a person or family is to take a peek at their coffee mug cabinet. Apparently, you can tell a lot about the people who live in a particular space by the type of mugs they have. Thinking about my own cabinet, I realize that my mismatched hand thrown mugs (mostly thrift store purchases), the freebie blue NPR mug and the one with my sister's face printed on it do say certain things about me.
About a year and a half ago, I posted about the work of photographer Michael Harlan Turkell, particularly his Back of the House Project, a great series of 25 very candid black and white photos of restaurants and their staff. Turkell recently dropped Slashfood a line, pointing out his photo blog, as well as what appears to be a new photo series called "mise en place". It had been a while since I checked Turkell's site, so the blog was news to me. It appears he's also been commissioned by New York City restaurant blog Eater to photograph the subjects of their "Gatekeepers" series, which profiles "the very folks that stand between you and some of your favorite impossible-to-get-tables." If you've ever worked in the restaurant industry, or if you're just a lover of food, dining and photography, do yourself a favor and check out Turkell's website as well as his blog.
No matter how irritating it is to have your favorite TV show interrupted with commercial breaks, the fact of the matter is that companies usually put a lot of effort into their advertisements and that some of them turn out quite well. Unlike ads with the King, or any of the other creepy fast food mascots, there will always be a handful that are actually enjoyable. Neatorama has a list of their top ten picks for the best cereal commercials of all time that list a couple of these types of commercials. Most of them seem to be from the early 1990s or before (which could be taken as a sign that breakfast cereal commercials are going downhill) and two of the top ten use the word "indubitably" somewhere in their descriptions of the food.
Number one is the Star Wars-themed C3PO cereal shown in the video above. Two more of the top ten (including the "indubitably delicious" Crispy Critters cereal clip) are after the jump.
Google is known for providing their employees with lots of perks, including good food for lunch. The Google cafeteria is quite well known at this point, offering everything from childhood favorites to top quality gourmet entrees. It is safe to say that prepacked sandwiches on either stale or slightly mushy bread will never make their way into the mouths of Google employees during lunch time.
You might not want to check it out before your own lunch break, though, just in case you decide that suddenly your own lunch looks a lot less impressive.
Some seem to think that restaurateur Jeffrey Chodorow's grudge against NY Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni runs deeper than just one bad review. Chodorow has, after all, said that he feels his restaurants have always gotten the short stick from the reviewer. A recent piece on Page Six of the NY Post seems to confirm this, as Chodorow has just announce that Bruni is banned from all of his 29 restaurants.
For those of you wondering how the Chodorow plans to ban someone whose looks are supposed to be a secret, just know that restaurant staffs make it their business to unmask restaurant critics whenever possible, many kitchens will have a wall of critics and other notable people to keep an eye out for. Chodorow's employees have an extra reason to look for Bruni because Jeffrey has offered a free trip for two to the Caribbean to the first person to recognize him. As insurance to make sure he is seen, Chodorow plans to post a photo of Bruni on his personal blog sometime soon.
For the past couple of years, there has been a growing interest in getting local foods whenever possible, largely because it is perceived as helping the local economy, being better for the environment and better for your health (assuming the local food is organic, etc., not factory-farmed). There is one food - a drink, actually, that has strongly resisted this trend, where "'distance and exoticism are marketed as advantages": bottled water. Fiji, one of the more expensive store brands, is now the number 2 selling premium bottled water in the US.
At $1.50 and up per bottle, Fuji is not cheap. Some will say that a thing is only worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it, but others wonder how much the water is really worth. A reader asked Triple Pundit what the true cost of a bottle of Fuji water was. Sustainability Engineer Pablo Päster responded, calculating the (approximate) production and materials costs of a 1L bottle, travel/shipping expenses for shipping both full and empty bottles and, of course, the water itself. In the end, it comes down to a cost of approximately $.22 per bottle, leaving a $1.28 (or more) profit for the manufacturer and retailer.
One of the side effects of blogging about food is that you start to want to play around with platings and presentation a lot more than you would if you were not photographing your meals. Joe, from Culinary in the Country, for example, augmented his already attractive Chocolate Crème Caramel with some extra caramel rounds along the outside of the plate and a little freeform sugar sculpture on top. The overall effect is great and really brings the look of the dessert up to restaurant-quality - and probably an expensive restaurant, at that.
The crème caramel itself is actually quite easy to make. The most difficult part for someone attempting their first one is to not burn the caramel before you pour it into the empty ramekins, as it can be sensitive. The "crème" part of this dessert is made with soy milk and bittersweet chocolate, held together with eggs, just like the traditional versions are. The chocolate will cover the soy taste, for anyone sensitive to it, but using soy milk will make the dessert a lot lighter than if it were made with cream.
And if you have somehow managed to overdose on chocolate from Valentine's Day, you might want to check out Elise's recipe for Rose Petal Flan instead!
Erielle, who blogs at Fancy Toast, wanted to know if there was a mandoline support group somewhere that she could join because she just couldn't get the hang of using hers. A mandoline is a kitchen tool designed to make slicing up vegetables into thin, even strips, almost effortless. Potatoes, apples, cabbage and other firm fruits and vegetables can be placed into a (usually) metal holder and are quickly run across a very sharp blade that neatly cuts them into pieces. It is more precise than a grater, but the concept is similar.
Most find the process of using a mandoline to be very clear cut, but judging from the comments on the post, there are many people who have experienced the same type of frustration as Erielle in attempting to use their mandolines. Coming to the rescue, in the comments section of the original post, was none other than OXO - the maker of the mandoline in question! They are offering mandoline lessons to anyone who needs a little assistance in New York City at OXO in the Chelsea Market and at the upcoming housewares show in Chicago in mid-March. Even if you're already experienced with your mandoline, it might be worth taking up their offer to pick up some extra tips. Check Erielle's comments for the contact info if you have any other OXO tech questions.
A good popover should be slightly crisp on the outside, tender and slightly custardy on the inside, and must be attractively puffy. There are specialty pans available for making them, but as with most specialty pans, it's hard to know whether buying them is worth the price. I don't make popovers very often, so I almost always use a regular muffin pan, as I did when I made eggnog popovers over the holidays. But the argument for using the specialty pans, neatly summed up in the above photo of the Fanatic Cook 's mile-high popovers, is compelling. The muffin-made popovers met the textural characteristics that are desirable in a popover, but they simply cannot compete when it comes to the towering heights that the specialty pan popovers do.
With this in mind, I would certainly consider investing in a popover pan if I made popovers more than once or twice a year. The results, clearly, are impressive and the pans don't take up that much room. I'll just keep them with my wide array of specialty and shaped cake pans....
I'm embarrassed to admit that it never occurred to me to put a chocolate drizzle on oatmeal raisin cookies. I always kept my chocolate and raisins separated (though I have mixed chocolate and dried cranberries with near-reckless abandon) when it comes to oatmeal cookies. If a picture is anything to go on - and a mouthwatering photo often is - then I have been missing out.
The Fanatic Cook posted the recipe for these Oatmeal Raisin Cookies just the other day. The cookies themselves are a healthier makeover of the classic cookie recipe found on boxes of Quaker oatmeal, with significantly less sugar than the original recipe called for and whole wheat pastry flour instead of all purpose. The reduction in sugar sounds like it would be worth a shot for anyone watching his or her intake, although the chocolate-drizzle strategy could certainly be applied to just about anyrecipe you choose.
Some seem to think that restaurateur 
For the past couple of years, there has been a growing interest in getting local foods whenever possible, largely because it is perceived as helping the local economy, being better for the environment and better for your health (assuming the local food is organic, etc., not factory-farmed). There is one food - a drink, actually, that has strongly resisted this trend, where "'distance and exoticism are marketed as advantages": bottled water. Fiji, one of the more expensive store brands, is now the number 2 selling premium bottled water in the US.
Erielle, who blogs at 
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