Frank Bruni is leaving the New York Times dining section. And food bloggers are freaking out.
In a world where restaurants live or die by the awarding of Bruni's stars, blogs like Eater declare this no less than an "Apocalypse." Bruni will be turning his attention to his new memoir come August, and will be a writer at large for the New York Times Magazine.
Now the hunt (and speculation) begins to locate a food critic with the ability to carry Bruni's swagger: Ryan Sutton at Bloomberg, one of the few fairly anonymous critics left in town? Perhaps the L.A. Times' S. Irene Virbila is waiting by her phone, since the Times has pulled from our rival city to the west (a la Ruth Reichl) in the past. Grub Street wonders if (gasp) a blogger will be chosen. And does anonymity, so hard to preserve in the Internet era, matter any more to Pete Wells, the dining editor at the Times?
Perhaps the most curious quote in Bill Keller's announcement is that Bruni "will be turning in his restaurant-critic credentials." Uh, could someone get us a copy of those? Is there, like, a laminated round of foie gras passed from critic to critic? Frank, just drop us a line and let us know.
Most photos of cupcakes make us smile for the same reason photos of puppies and Joseph Gordon Levitt do: They're just so revoltingly cute.
This carrot cupcake makes us smile for an additional reason, however. It's got dulce de leche buttercream slathered on top. How often do you come across a member of the carrot cake family that isn't topped with cream cheese (or, unforgivably, vanilla) frosting? Though Joy the Baker, the mastermind behind this inspired combo, gives her blessings to those who tilt towards cream cheese classicism, we think the jar of dulce de leche called for here is a vision that struck from another, more otherworldly realm. We also can't decide what's better -- the idea of a batch of these cupcakes or the idea of sitting on a counter, jar in one hand and spoon in the other, waiting for the cupcakes to come out of the oven.
The folks over at Grist, an environmental watchdog blog, have taken Mark Bittman -- a cook and food writer for The New York Times whose work boasts a huge, passionate following including the Grist blogger himself -- to task for listing red snapper, a fish many consider endangered, in one of his recipes. A fascinating conversation follows in the comments section including a response from Bittman (aka The Minimalist) himself. Check it out -- but maybe not over a fish dinner, as you may lose your appetite.
Three in particular -- Pot Pie, Salad Sandwich and Noodle Soup -- have turned his head. A pro freelance shutterbug turned urban chicken farmer, he has devoted a blog to their adventures (and misadventures) called Three Chicks a Day that will break your heart with cuteness.
It all started when a friend introduced Elliott to home-raised eggs -- "definitely better than store-bought" -- four years ago. When he and roommate Chrissy Morgan finally adopted three dewy little critters last week, he decided to snap their portraits daily until they are old enough to move outside in about four weeks. The blog features photos with brief notes about the chicks' modeling preferences: Noodle Soup, for example, is a "strutter."
Elliott is among a growing number of city dwellers from coast to coast building coops in their yards. They are holding social events and even chat groups where forums range from incubating and hatching eggs to lively discussions about predators and pests.
In Portland, Ore., where he lives, three chickens are the legal limit without having to obtain a permit. With the blessing of his landlord, a teacher who found the idea adorable, he began building a coop and enrolled in a weekend-long seminar called Chicken Fest at a local nursery. Classes included Chicken 101, coop-building and chicken health and boy, was it popular: "I went to one class and there must have been 30 people [there]."
Fashionable tips for the perfect party (think lots of glitter) from MTV's House of Style.
Celebu-chef Jean-George Vongerichten has plans for a worldwide empire of restaurants, with plans to open 50 in the next five years. Will they be the "Applebee's of haute cuisine"?
Are we in the middle of a food revolution? Examining the claims for the recent New York Times story.
What spring vegetable are you looking forward to most -- a quiz. Choices are artichokes, asparagus, carrots, peas and fennel.
How do you feel about mandatory coat checks? Apparently, Yumsugar readers do not like them so much.
Love to eat? Love to read? Well mark April 4 on your calendar, as that's the deadline for Novel Food #7, the latest edition of an online culinary/literary event launched by bloggers Lisa of Champaign Taste and Simona of briciole.
Here are the rules, direct from Lisa and Simona:
Prepare a dish of your choosing that has a connection to a published literary work (novel, novella, short story, memoir, bio, poem).
Publish a post about it on your blog by Saturday April 4, 2009 (midnight, Pacific Time), referencing the Novel Food event. Include a link to Lisa's or Simona's announcement. If you wish, you can use the Novel Food logo.
Send an e-mail to Lisa (champaigntaste AT gmail DOT com) or to me (simosite AT mac DOT com) and include your name, blog name and blog address, and a permanent link to your post. Please, include the words Novel Food in the email subject, so we can more easily retrieve the message in our inbox.
Non-English submissions are fine. If possible, include an introduction in English.
If you don't have a blog, send us an email telling us about the recipe, the literary work that inspired it, and, if you have it, a picture what you made: we will add it to the roundup as well.
One literary food scene that made an early impression on me is from Laura Ingalls Wilder's Farmer Boy, the story of her husband's rural childhood. Almonzo Wilder seemed to be eating on every page, and what food! Huge helpings of salt pork and chicken and hunks of lavishly buttered homemade bread and mashed turnips and fresh greens and entire apple pies with cream, all washed down with droughts of fresh whole milk straight from the cows.
Back in 2007, Low, the blogger behind the popular Rasa Malaysia food blog, posted a photo she'd taken of an elegantly plated sliver of miso-marinated black cod (pictured), which she'd made with a recipe from her Nobu cookbook.
Almost two years later, she spied the very same photo on the email advertisements of Florida-based Rosas Farms, advertising their sustainably farmed black cod. Low might have been surprised, but this was not the first time this had happened - she had discovered Rasa Malaysia photos and stories being passed off as other people's work everywhere from food blogs to eBay seller sites to the awning of a Malaysian cafe.
Neither Rosas Farms nor any of the other sites had credited Low as the creator of the photos, breaking the terms of her Creative Commons license. The photos, like the rest of Rasa Malaysia's content, are also protected with Copyscape, a service which helps prevent plagiarism by searching the web for sites that have been using your content.
So Low finally decided to fight back. Under a post titled "An Open Letter to My Thieves," she posted screenshots of the offenders. The topic clearly hit a nerve, with more than 60 commenters wring in to express sympathy and share their own plagiarism stories. One commenter even suggested starting a food bloggers union with a lawyer on retainer!
Yesterday I wrote about Foodimentary, an award-winning Twitter which offers interesting food factoids every few hours. As a new Twitter user myself, I'm trying to find other good food-related Twitters to follow. Here are a few I've added so far. Please tell me your own favorites!
What food-related Twitters would you like to add to the list?
I have to admit, even after devouring all of Ruth Reichl's memoirs, it's pretty odd to read what's going on in her head moment-to-moment as she's walking around Paris with her husband. But odd in a good way, I think. Definitely feels like spying.
Check out this delightfully disgusting new blog, This is Why You're Fat (subhead: "Where Dreams Become Heart Attacks"). Readers are encouraged to send in pictures of their most grotesque fat-on-fat food creations: Corn dog pizzas, seven-pound breakfast burritos, Krispy Kreme bacon cheeseburgers. Some actually look rather tasty - candied bacon ice cream, Frito pie, nacho burgers.
Others border on post-modern art - the Tower of Babel-like "Mega Double Stuff Oreo" with the creme fillings of three dozen or so regular Oreos stuffed precariously between two cookie halves, the "Turboconucken" - a chicken stuffed in a duck stuffed in a turkey. Wrapped in bacon. A commentary on the gluttony and greed of contemporary American society. Or just delicious?
Thats right! As fellow blog The Consumerist states,"no, not that kind. Coca-Cola." Earlier this week, a local newspaper of Sweden reported that a woman (who wishes to remain anonymous) living in Malmö will be seeking inpatient treatment for her addiction to the Coca-Cola beverage. Her addiction has caused a variety of health problems, such as diabetes and high blood pressure.
Momlogic, another blog, states that originally local health authorities recognized her health problem but did not think it was appropriate for her to receive inpatient treatment. Recently, the Administrative Court of Appeals ruled that the woman's addiction to the beverage should be treated at an inpatient facility.
I'm still wondering whether or not this is bogus. It seems to me that there could have been many other causes of this woman's poor health besides her Coca-Cola intake. For example, what else is she consuming and what is her medical history? Check out the poll below to let us know what you think.
Ah, the good old days when cereal boxes were blatantly wacky! I'm curious what cereal advertisers in the '70s were thinking? Now, you can check out campy, ridiculous, slightly freakish cereal boxes from the '50s, '60s, and '70s on The Imaginary World's archive of cereal boxes. Fellow blog, lemondrop, comments on several of the boxes of cereals that no longer exist, such as Fruity Freakies, Crazy Cow, and King Vitaman (to the right).
The names of these cereals alone leave plenty to the imagination. Or do they? The box of King Vitaman cereal is mildly creepy. An old man dressed as a king looks as though he's going to feed you cereal. The juxtaposition between this odd-looking "king" and the ad for the toy give-away appears slightly perverse. As lemondrop says, "this is not the guy we want feeding us breakfast."
Then, there's the absurd Kellogg's Puffa Puffa Rice cereal box that seems to shout "absurdity!" There's a volcano exploding with cereal. To think that this past year Kellogg's reduced the size of its cereal boxes...Where has its creativity gone? The cereal box archive is extremely amusing and I am now trying to figure out different ways in which one can use the images. I foresee trendy retro tee-shirts and posters.
I'm loving Chocolate & Zucchini's series on French food idioms. So far blogstress Clotilde has covered "not knowing whether it's lard or pork" (not knowing what to believe), "having bread on the board" (having a lot of tedious work to do), "falling like a hair on soup" (something or someone appearing at a completely incongruous moment), "rolling someone in flour," (duping or tricking someone naive), "pedaling in semolina" (being entangled in a thorny situation - my favorite!), "drinking whey" (basking in flattery), "breaking sugar on someones back" (engaging in backbiting gossip), "cutting the pear in two" (compromising).
What good English-language food idioms call you think of?
Traveling to China? Peripatetic couple Audrey Scott and Daniel Noll of the Uncornered Market blog have a five-part series demystifying Chinese food and eating habits. The series includes a lesson on fiery Sichuan cuisine and the Xinjiang cuisine of Western China, tips on how to identify and enjoy various types of dumplings, a discourse on hot pots, and a "grab bag" of other must-eats. The pictures are luscious as well.
Obviously there's way more to Chinese food and cooking, but the series is a good start for those who don't know that there's anything beyond General Chao's Chicken.
Do you identify as a pescatarian, or maybe a flexitarian (or is it flexatarian)? Do you say rocket or arugula? Sunchoke or Jerusalem artichoke? How do you pronounce pecan? Are you more likely to give a man a fish, or teach him to fish--and who came up with that saying, anyway? All these may qualify as future topics of a fabulous new bi-weekly blog column on cookthink.com called "Minced Words," penned by Merriam-Webster lexicographer and bar proprietress Emily Brewster.
The subject? The language of food, something right up my alley (in fact, i wish I'd thought of it first). So far, Ms. Brewster has investigated the roots of political pork expressions like "pork barrel spending" and "high on the hog," questioned her own bar-restaurant's use of "carpaccio" for a dish without meat or fish (a pear dish, in this case), and waxed poetic on the subject of celestial-themed food terms like "ambrosia" and "angel food cake."
Ms. Brewster, a sort of William Safire of the food realm, has plenty of material to work with. The carpaccio bit interested me most so far--restaurant menus are notoriously loose in their terminology. Terrine, torte, deconstructed this, essence of that. What's your food terminology pet peeve?
Australian food history blogger The Old Foodie has an interesting series on the history and meaning of food coloring, both naturally-occurring and man-made. A few choice tidbits:
- The crushed body of the cochineal insect, native to Mexico and South America, was the the original red food coloring. It's still possible to get cochineal dye, but it's expensive: It takes about 70,000 cochineal insects to make one pound of dye.
- Food coloring was sometimes used as paint for formal occasions. In 1846, renowned French chef Alexis Soyer painted a portrait of the Pasha of Egypt in pineapple cream for a state diner.
- Alfred Hitchcock once held a 'blue dinner party,' with blue-dyed soup, trout, chicken, venison, peaches, ice cream, bread and more. The guests were said to have been repelled.
Love to eat? Love to read? Well mark April 4 on your calendar, as that's the deadline for Novel Food #7, the latest edition of an online culinary/literary event launched by bloggers Lisa of 
Bee Yinn Low has something to say to 
I'm loving 
Australian food history blogger 
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