Aperitifs. Photo: Darren // DA Creative Photography, Flickr

• Bypass strong cocktails and strong wines in favor of aperitifs, a tasty way to prep one's palate for dinner.
• All about composting.
• Kansas City teen James McCausland balances a construction career with a passion for baking.
• A critic loves the wine tasting and elegant cuisine at Capital Grille.
• The world of K.C. food blogging is expanding; here's a close-up of one snarky blogger.
  
• A spotlight on local farmers' markets.
• Recipe: Asian Caesar Salad with Grilled Chicken and Crisp Wontons

Tomato and Olympus camera. Photo: Emily Farris.

These days, food porn seems almost to be giving the old-fashioned kind a run for its money. Everyone with a digital camera and an appetite fancies him or herself an amateur food pornographer, which is to say there's a lot of bad food photography out there alongside the good stuff.

Camera companies are catching on to the trend and trying to make a buck, with digital point and shoot models that are manufactured with food photography settings, like this Olympus which has a "cuisine" option, and this Sony, with its "gourmet food" mode. Chances are good that if you purchased a camera recently, it has some kind of food photography option and you don't even know it. If your food photographs are less than porntastic (like the tomato shot here), it might be worth your while to consult your camera's manual or look online to find out.

If you don't have a food setting, don't rush right out to buy a new camera that does.

One pro shutterbug's opinion, after the jump.

It's a dangerous world out there, folks. Should we add food blogging to that list of things to watch out for? That's the question posed by Leslie of The Weighting Game.

Leslie got a letter from a reader who originally asked this question about food blogging being addictive and possibly some kind of eating disorder. The reader had started a food blog, but soon realized that it made her obsess about food and actually "hide what (she) was eating from the internet." She has since stopped blogging.

Although I follow plenty of food blogs myself, I've never run across the type of blog that The Weighting Game and its commenters are talking about, the kind that is more of a food journal than a food blog. I personally think there's nothing wrong with sharing photos and recipes and having serious or fun discussions on food related topics. I do think this a great question to ask ourselves, though, so what is your opinion on food blogging as an eating disorder?

This week in Food at the LA Times, Russ Parsons goes to town with Heirloom apples with a Guide to Apple Varieties and answering the age-old question, To bake or not to bake?. Recipes include Baked Apple Ice Cream, Boozie's Apple Cake, and Maple Baked Apples with Dried Fruit and Nuts.

Also in the kitchen, Rosh Hashana recipes to celebrate the Jewish New Year: Kibbeh bi'kizabrath (cilantro-tomato soup with Syrian meatballs), Rubuh' (roast veal stuffed with spiced ground meat and rice), and Ejjeh b'kerrateh (leek fritters).

In restaurants, SIV visits the newly re-opened Ca'Brea and gives it a half star, LA chefs try serving cocktails with or as the amuse bouche.

The most interesting article of the day (in my opinion, of course) is from Regina Schrambling who ponders the anonymity of restaurant reviewers from professional journalists to bloggers (and if you happen to recognize a mysterious half face on the article, yes, that is yours deliciously!)

A gastronome is someone with a refined palate, someone who appreciates good food and seeks out the best. The word has previously been applied primarily to men, but in and of itself it is not really a gender-specific term. Due to this lack of specificity, it was really only a matter of time before the word was adapted to describe some of the very specific groups of people that it encompasses.

A new one, which may just have been invented by the writers of the NYT's Style magazine, is "gastronomista." It is so new that a Google search turns up nothing and it is so specific that only a handful of people fall under its umbrella. It means, apparently, means "a savvy woman who turns blogging about what she ate last night into a mini-industry" and sounds vaguely insulting in the way it is phrased, since it doesn't even include any references to the quality of the food. And what, precisely, constitutes a mini industry? The term probably will not be catching on soon, if ever, but it is still interesting to note that food blogging is inspiring new terminology beyond the very unfortunate blend "flogger" that a few people still continue to use.

Croissants are one of the scarier things that a home baker can consider making. The dough is essentially that of puff pastry, loaded with butter and folded multiple times to create flaky layers, but also has yeast added to it, which for all practical purposes just adds one more element that could go wrong. Fortunately for anyone brave enough to give them a try, homemade croissants are not actually as difficult as they look as long as you are willing to be patient and make sure that you don't skip any steps in the process to save time. Bea, from La Tartine Gourmande, made up this batch and accompanied her tempting photos of the delicate pastries with an excellent guide on how to make them. Her croissants are light and tender, with a crisp flakiness to them and, of course, a very buttery flavor. This particular batch is slightly sweet and has a touch of sugar and a lot of vanilla added to it, so they're not going to be the best choice for a turkey sandwich at lunch time, but they will be perfect for breakfast.

According to Yorkshire Post, baking at home is on the rise in the UK, and according to the UK Guardian, it's no coincidence that baking blogs are are on the rise as well. Baking bloggers run the gamut, from amateur bakers to professional pastry chefs, posting about their latest and greatest (and sometimes not-so-greatest) creations out of the oven. The Guardian highlighted a few, like The Pastry Department, written and baked by a former Phat Duck pastry chef, but the one that's important to us is Bakingsheet (now Baking Bites), the personal baking blog of our very own Nicole Weston!

Newspapers and magazines are slowly jumping onto the blogging bandwagon, and food is definitely a hot topic. We've seen food blogs now on major food websites like Epi-Log, the editor's blog on epicurious, critics' blogs like Michael Bauer's Between Meals at the San Francisco Chronicle and Frank Bruni's Diner's Journal at the New York Times. Now New York Magazine has a blog called Grub Street, which launched today. They have several writers, and wouldn't you know it, one of our own feature writers, Josh Ozersky, is the editor!

Looking forward to their coverage of LA's Pinkberry in New York!

After the first day of the BlogHer conference, everyone was having a great time and enjoying meeting other bloggers. The food bloggers were having the most fun (according to those of us who met up, of course), despite the fact that the food hardly improved at all the second day. The biggest change was that fresh fruit was offered at each snack/meal, which everyone seemed to appreciate. But even though were talked about the food, everyone was more interested in learning about other blogs and what things inspired people to start blogging in the first place.

Along with the established bloggers, like those from Simply Recipes, Kalyn's Kitchen, Chez Pim, Cupcake Bakeshop, Gastronomie-SF and so many others, there were lots of people who simply read blogs and wanted ideas and advice on how to start their own. Here is a quick rundown of our tips for starting a food blog:

Hawaii's favorite food blog, 'Ono Kine Grindz, is hosting both Is My Blog Burning and Sugar High Friday for the month of June. It's a special event for blogger Reid, since it was IMBB no. 3 that was the motivation for his starting the blog back in April 2004!

The theme for both events is "soy," which includes everything from soy milk to tofu. I'm not quite sure if that means a single dish works for both (which means that it has to be something sweet), or if you can make one sweet dish for SHF and another separate dish for IMBB.

Either way, soy is definitely going to take a little bit of creativity. The deadline to email or post an entry is Sunday, June 25, 2006.

Last week we explored the San Diego food blogosphere, and tonight we head west and south to Hawaii!

• James brings us the Big Island Grinds from Hilo, Hawaii
• The Free Range Gourmet is Larry, with free range thoughts on the finest ingredients, cuisine, and fine dining in Hawaii, with recent posts on some good reading.
• It's KauKau Time for Reggie, writing from Honolulu-Kalihi, Kahaluu, Salt Lake, Hawaii. Pulled pork, anyone?
• Maona is Hawaiian for "satisifed after eating," and with a gorgeous photo of a red mango, I'm full.
• Jupiter of Nattokun {heart}s food in Mililani, Hawaii.
• The big daddy of Hawaii food blogs is 'Ono Kine Grindz, with 'onolicious eats from Hawaii and around the world (and I'm looking forward to  some posts about an LA trip!)

Did we leave anyone off? Let us know!

Last fall, the UK Observer christened her Queen of the Bloggers in their monthly food section, and today, food blogger Pim Techamuanvivit, who blogs at Chez Pim, was featured in the Style section of the New York Times. There is a short and sweet blurb about her blog and love of Thai cooking, followed by four of her recipes: Khao Soi, Shrimp Tiles With Cucumber Ajaad, Lychee and Orange Loy Gaew, Kanom Jeen Nam-Prik.

Recipes? Food blogging? You might ask yourself why this is in the Style section. The answer is that Pim loves fashion nearly as much as she loves food and is prominently featured in a slide show in which she (and people who are presumably her friends) are noshing Thai food in designer clothes.

[Photo NYT]