It's always convenient when two different holidays that are related happen in the same month. Of course, I'm not sure why these two holiday months aren't later in the summer.
Maybe it's a Memorial Day thing. May marks both National Barbecue Month and National Hamburger Month. Mahalo has a great page with various links to bbq how-tos, bbq recipes, and where to find the best bbq in the country. As for hamburgers, Food & Wine has a recipe for an All-Time Favorite Hamburger. And here's a bunch of recipes from the Southern Food section of About.com.
There's also a new book and documentary out called Hamburger America that examines some of the great burger places in the U.S.
When I first saw what were called "meatloaf cupcakes," I thought, "How cute - tiny rounds of meatloaf with a dollop of mashed potatoes on top." They were only called cupcakes, though, because they were small and topped with something.
However, Fine Furious Life has made meatloaf cupcakes that really, well, take the cake. The meatloaves really do look like cupcakes (they'd only be slightly better if they were in paper wrappers), and the most impressive part is the mashed potato frosting that really does look like frosting because 1) it's piped into swirls, and 2) there are two colors!
Before I get into this post, I want to readily admit that I am not the target audience for this particular gadget. While I do own a car (a green 16-year-old Subaru Legacy Wagon that I adore), I live a block and a half from my office and so don't need a vehicle to cover that distance (I drive once or twice a week and should really sell it, but I'm attached). Back in the days when I did drive more frequently, my car was so old that it didn't have integrated cup holders (although my dad did bolt a makeshift one to my dashboard). Add on to that the fact that I rarely eat fast food, and you result with a girl who has no working need for a French Fry holder that fits into a cup holder.
However, I can see how there are people who might just find this product appealing. To you I say, if you think you need this "accessory" you eat far too many French fries. If you choose to eat fries while driving, you should accept that your fingers are going to get greasy and that you're your going to have an oil-spotted paper bag in your lap.
Last Saturday night, somefolksin Philly got together to throw a Battlestar Galactica party. When it came to the dessert, they knew that they didn't need to look any further than local baker Zoë Lukas (she's the one who created those those really cool Robert Indiana cookies that I posted about a few months ago).
She didn't let them down, creating a work of art out of chocolate devil's food cake. It is filled with raspberry jam and ganache, iced with chocolate buttercream and ganache, decorated with chocolate ships and explosions, silver dragees and silver and gold space dust. Lukas is in the process of opening her own bakery in Philadelphia and I think I speak for the entire when I say, we can't wait.
AOL Food has brewed up an iced tea-stravaganza! Get recipes, tips & tricks with How to Brew Iced Tea, read our ongoing Bottled Iced Tea Reviews, and slurp up fun historical and cultural facts in our Iced Tea Quiz. Don't forget to c'mon back to share your quiz scores, tea brewing strategies, and suggestions about what store-bought blends we should sample next.
As a devotee of the "more is more" school of sandwich making, this picture of the "Parmageddon" sandwich makes me drool. Two potato and cheese pierogies (Slavic stuffed dumplings), a greasy tangle of grilled onions, sauerkraut, and a slab of cheddar cheese, squeezed between two thick slices of grilled bread.
The photo comes courtesy of writer-photographer David Lay, who captured this beast at Lakewood, Ohio's Melt Bar and Grilled. Melt specializes in a psychedelic variety of grilled cheese sandwiches - smoked turkey, kraut and gouda; beer battered walleye, tartar sauce, American. The Parmageddon was featured as a reader's favorite in Esquire's "Best Sandwiches in America." Now, if I can just get my Polish grandmother to teach me to make her potato pierogies, I'd be all set.
We're on the home stretch for Mother's Day, which means that times a-ticking to get the perfect card and gift before the big day. There might be only a handful of days left, but there is still time to get a gift that looks full of thought and effort. And if you've got a mom who loves meals made of beef and other tasty forms of meat, this guide is for you.
What follows is list for creating the ultimate indoor grilling gift for your carnivorous mom. It's all the pieces you need for one perfectly grilled piece of meat. But the kicker is: with just a little finagling, you can take this list and make it work for mom's preferred cooking method -- barbecuing, roasting, stewing, what-have-you.
The pages that follow are each piece of the puzzle, from prep to plate. If you're thinking big, grab them all. If you're on a budget, pick up a few. Check the list out, and please comment if you have any ideas or pieces to add to the mix.
In recent years, my mom has become increasingly difficult to shop for. She has been working at reducing the amount of stuff in her life and so doesn't want the knick knacks and gadgets that we once plied her with. So I've had to get creative and find ways of letting her know what I appreciate all that she does for me without filling her house up with things she'll just get rid of. Here are some of the ways I've given her clutter-free food-related gifts. Bake! My mother tries to eat healthfully, but she can't resist certain homemade, chocolate-based treats. This is a great way to go if you live far away from your mom and still want to put a personal touch on her gift. A batch of freshly baked granola (packaged in an easily recyclable plastic container) is also a good way to go. Jams and jellies make good Mother's Day gifts (as long as your mom likes that sort of thing). You can either make up a batch yourself (Strawberry-Rhubarb Jam would be seasonal and delicious) or head to a local farmers' market to pick up a couple of jars.
Draw up a personalized gift certificate for a food-related service. I realize that this might sound like an idea straight out of the third grade, but the offer of a pot of soup, deliverable on demand or a monthly loaf of freshly baked bread is something that is certain to make many a mother swoon.
If your maternal figure is a gardener, a collection of herb seedlings from a local nursery would surely delight her (in my family, this particular gift is reserved for my dad on Father's Day). It is a gift that produces all spring and summer long, and when the season ends, can be uprooted and delivered to the compost pile.
Many a mother likes to entertain. Tell her that next time she wants to throw a cocktail party or backyard cookout, you'll be there to be head shopper, chef, server and cleaner. It might just be the first time in years that she'll get to enjoy her guests at her own party.
What other ideas do you have for clutter-free, Mother's Day gifts?
Mom made you eat your veggies for years, so return the love with vegetarian-friendly gifts this Mother's Day. Whether her diet is strictly vegetarian or just veggie-inclined, check out these lovely presents that will surely brighten her kitchen and her day!
Subscription to Vegetarian Times magazine -- Great recipes and fun eating ideas from a magazine that your mom will love all year long.
Mother's Day petit fours from Figis -- Who am I kidding? These are for any mom -- vegetarian, meat-loving, herbivorous, sweet-toothed... Olive and Rosemary Topiary Trees from Stonewall Kitchen -- A beautiful way to present a practical gift. These will look great anywhere, and come in handy when cooking with fresh herbs.
Bamboo steamer from WokShop -- Great for veggies, and anything else.
Mark Bittman's How to Cook Everything Vegetarian from Amazon -- My favorite cookbook. Soon to be your mom's. Bittman offers easy recipes and plenty of suggestions for a well-balanced vegetarian diet.
Soy candles from Welcome-home Candles -- These yummy candles come in great scents, and since they aren't made from beeswax, they'll please even the most conscious vegan. Vegan baking mixes from Goodbaker -- Chocolate cake, oatmeal cookies, fudge frosting, multi-grain muffins...
Anyone have more ideas for the vegetarian Mom? Feel free to share!
I love the idea of a pizza farm! It's a farm divided into pie slices with each slice featuring a different pizza topping. Sections could include tomatoes, onions, peppers, broccoli, or even pigs (for bacon). There are several pizza farms in the US that have become popular as tourist attractions and for school field trips. Visit Suite 101 for a list of these farms.
What I love even more than the idea of a large scale pizza farm is the idea of a small scale pizza garden. Why do our home gardens always have straight edges? Is it harder to make circles? I'm sure mine would end up looking like a pizza cloud, but I could live with that.
Having a pizza garden would be a great way to give kids a taste of gardening. Let me know if you try it!
It wasn't until I started cooking meals from scratch on a regular basis that I discovered just how much of a fallacy this whole pre-made foods business is. I'm not talking about one of those tasty, pre-roasted chickens or fresh meals you can buy at the supermarket, but rather canned and frozen foods. They are great in a pinch, but they are not a big time saver, and they're certainly not a decent substitute for fresh foods.
So, reading Astin Cubed's post on "Simple Food" today was like reading a rant of my own, without the obsession with snap peas. How can so many of us have forgotten the simplicity of fresh? Or heck, even balancing the two? If you have zero time to make dinner, throw the fish sticks in the oven, boil/microwave/shred and fry some potatoes, or maybe throw some Caesar dressing on some romaine. If you have enough time to go out, wait to be served, eat, wait to pay, and come home, you certainly have enough time to cook up some pasta, fry up some chicken, make a salad, steak, or even stir-fry. Or, even take a day with some free time, make up a lasagna, and eat it during the week, month, or year.
My favorite frozen food: Using those Thanksgiving leftovers to make REAL roasted, carved turkey meals that I can eat all year.
My favorite "fast" food: Leftover fried potatoes with a fried egg on a toasted baguette.
This week's Philadelphia Weekly, one of the city's two alt-weekly papers, features a fascinating story about a chef who decided to take a job in a juvenile day treatment facility, teaching kids to cook.
The author, a teacher who hailed from RI's Johnson and Wales Culinary Academy, isn't exactly a wuss (he had a rough childhood, barely making it out of high school, and as a line cook, once was the victim of a stabbing), but his challenges are immediate and immense.
The kids were the products of all sorts of difficult upbringings, and often brought their fears, anger, and frustration into the cooking classroom. Several admit to drug use (the author cites a study: "between 2002 and 2004, at least one in every six full-time food service workers used illicit drugs in the month prior to the survey, while 12.1 percent of restaurant industry workers had used alcohol heavily.") And upon the presentation of a hummus platter with pita and roasted red peppers, one boy yelled, "That's rich people food, and I ain't eatin' it!"
The story is definitely worth a read - it's a testament of the combined power of dedication, determination, and the joys of cooking and food.
That's the question that a reader of cakehead.com asks. Specifically, she asks what type of cake is the best to top with bacon. Yellow cake was too sweet, and carrot cake didn't quite work either. Click on the link to find out what cake tastes great with bacon, and then try it yourself.
We're big on the taco trucks here at Slashfood. We've blogged about them again and again, so it's appalling to hear that Los Angeles lawmakers made it a misdemeanor crime to stay parked in one spot for longer than one hour. Truck owners can be punished with a $1,000 fine or up to six months in jail.
The main reason the law was passed? Local business owners were complaining that vendors - like the taco trucks - were taking away the business of the their brick-and-mortar restaurants. The restaurateurs were also peeved because they are forced to pay more bills than the vendors do, so the competition is "unfair."
The part that really kills me, though, is that the president of the local Merchant's Association was quoted as saying, "I don't want to put anybody out of business, but it's the fairness of it all...It's a big victory for the merchants, and it's going to clean up the area."
Who doesn't love an Oreo? Each one comes with two chocolate cookies, happily connected with a nice dollop of vanilla cream. There is no part of that equation that is bad (I'm talking strictly about taste here, let's ignore for the moment that they aren't exactly health food items). However, it is my belief that something that is made in your own kitchen is always going to be better than something consumed out of a cellophane package and baked who-knows-how-many months ago, which is why, I decided to try making homemade Oreo-style cookies last weekend.
I spotted the recipe on Smitten Kitchen many moons ago (back in the days when Deb was simply The Smitten) and it's stayed with me ever since, a reminder that there were Oreo heights I had not yet experienced. An opportunity arrived in the form of a dinner party and so I spent Friday night making the cookies for Saturday assembly.
It's a quick, buttery dough that comes together easily. I found that the best way to make sure to get fairly uniform rounds was to form the flat cookie on the palm of my hand before place it gently on a Silpat-lined cookie sheet. Assembly was also easy as the filling (butter, vegetable shortening, powdered sugar and vanilla) whipped together like a dream. The only hitch I experienced was that the zip top bag I was using as a piping bag kept unzipping.
The cookies were delicious the day of assembly, but I discovered that they actually improve over a couple of days resting time, developing the exact soft-crunch consistency of the traditional Oreo cookie. I think my arteries are insisting that I wait some time, but I will definitely make these again.
It wasn't until I started cooking meals from scratch on a regular basis that I discovered just how much of a fallacy this whole pre-made foods business is. I'm not talking about one of those tasty, pre-roasted chickens or fresh meals you can buy at the supermarket, but rather canned and frozen foods. They are great in a pinch, but they are not a big time saver, and they're certainly not a decent substitute for fresh foods.
Hey, we've had 
May is National BBQ Month and National Hamburger Month
Cupcakes, not for dessert (unless beef is your idea of a treat)
Because eating French Fries in the car is so tough
