"food blog" news and stories

The Perfect Pantry is a great blog, filled with tips for stocking your pantry or kitchen. As webmaster Lydia herself says, there's no such thing as a perfect pantry, but there are certainly things in there you need. And it's The Perfect Pantry's one-year birthday (well, it was yesterday), and Lydia made a Chocolate Outrageous Pie to celebrate. She found the recipe in a notebook filled with old recipes. Full recipe after the jump.

Meatpaper is the self-proclaimed "journal of meat culture," and judging from what's up at their site, they're correct.

The site is filled with several articles on the "arts and ideas about meat," including pieces about the dry-aging room at New York's Master Purveyors, pig slaughter in Italy, why Filipinos eat Spam, and getting over the guilt of eating meat. There are also links to various food blogs.

The site itself says that they "like metaphors more than marinating tips," which I take as an indication that they're going to be talking about the world of food and not recipes and kitchen advice. They're taking subscriptions now, so you might want to check it out.

A hot cup of coffee and a rich, buttery, cinnamon-sugar pastry is a wonderful way to start off a Sunday morning - especially when, because of Daylight Savings Time, we had to "leap forward" a hour last night and are all a touch sleep-deprived. For once, I'm not talking about a cinnamon bun with this sweet pastry, although it is not too far off the mark. Cinnamon Butterflies, also called Cinnamon Ears, are similar to cinnamon buns in that they begin with a buttery dough that is rolled out and wrapped into a cinnamon-sugar-filled spiral. The difference is that the Butterflies are set on their side and pressed in the center so that the ends of the roll are pushed out into "wings" (or ears). The pastry is Scandinavian, and as is traditional with so many recipes from the region, each one is topped with sprinkles of a very large-grain sugar, or lightly crushed sugar cubes, for additional sweetness and crunch. Gattina, from Kitchen Unplugged, made this batch, as you can read the full post for the recipe.

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Gratins and scallops are usually made with potatoes, the difference between the two being the fact that gratins are made with cheese, while scallops tend to be made with cream, or a cream sauce, alone, although both are baked until the potatoes are tender and the top of the dish is crisp. Bored with the standard potato-only dish, you can include onions, artichokes or other root vegetables, but if you want to move further away from tradition, anything that will hold up to baking will work. Alanna, from A Veggie Venture made her most recent scallop-type dish with apples, as well as potatoes. Her Scalloped Apples and Potatoes only takes a few minutes to prepare and comes out of the oven as a creamy, crowd-pleasing side dish - especially if that crowd doesn't mind a hint of sweetness in with their savory dishes.

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I imagine that this cream filled donut - a prime example of food porn that was posted by Robyn, the Girl Who Ate Everything - has stopped a lot of people dead in their tracks, both those who came across it in person and those who are viewing it online. It is truly an impressive sight, with a cream:donut ratio of at least 3:1. It is a more impressive sight if you actually like cream-filled donuts. Judging by the offerings at the average donut shop, it appears as though filled donuts are substantially less popular than their cream, custard or jelly-filled counterparts and that, even when people enjoy the filled donuts, they seem to opt for the unfilled as more of a daily donut, saving the filled version for a special treat.

That said, if you're chowing down on a donut for breakfast on a regular basis, you're probably not all that worried about the difference between a special indulgence and a regular one. And either way, you'd definitely think twice before passing this one by!

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