Bread is a miraculous thing. It's delicious, it gives you energy, it softens your cookies, and it can help you de-clump your brown sugar.

Simply put your sugar in a microwavable container (read: NOT plastic) and place a slice of bread on top. Seal the container and pop in the microwave for 15 seconds.

Voila. The moisture from the bread and the resulting steam will make the sugar softer and more pliable, allowing you to work on the clumps (as seen in the highly scientific "cookie osmosis" chart above).

via [lifehacker]

OK, that title is slightly misleading I guess. This recipe from Meg over at Megnut.com is actually for a Mean Chocolate Chip Cookie. She asked for chocolate chip cookie receipes from her readers and then took the average of all the recipes and created her own recipe. The measurements are rather...exact?

After the jump, the recipe Meg came up with.

What ever is a food blogger to do when offered a free lobe of foie gras from Mirepoix USA? One option is to do nothing. Another is to call Peta and complain. The best option, however, is to gather recipe suggestions, find a second blogger who received one and challenge her to a virtual face-off over who can prepare the better torchon of foie gras. In this case, the showdown was between Adam, the Amateur Gourmet, and Meg, of Megnut. Take a look at Adam's account of his adventures with the fatty liver, as well as at Meg's account from her kitchen. Since we weren't there to taste either of the finished products, we only have photos and Adam's video of his friends' reactions to the tasting to help us decide whose cuisine, in this case, reigns supreme.

Also, if you think that foie gras comes in those nice little rounds you see above, think again. Click past the jump to see what it looks like as it is being prepared.

Just when you think you've found something a little a little quirky, a little off-beat, it turns out that Martha Stewart has done it too. Megnut also posted about the meat cake recently, and one of her readers pointed out Martha's meat cake. I agree with Meg that the peas in the mashed potato icing are a little strange. Maybe it's the candle that's too much. It should be noted that the recipe is from a Martha Stewart Kids magazine. Not that that in any way makes a meat cake any less odd or funny. I don't know if I would have gone for that as a kid. Personally, I think I would have rather stacked my meatloaf, mashed potatoes and peas tableside.

If you've already decided that foie gras isn't for you, then Michael Ruhlman's recent post on megnut probably isn't going to change your mind. If, however, you're undecided about the stuff, or (gasp) a fan, then by all means this is worth reading. Even with phrases like "pluck out any large dark veins," or "spread out the lobes," Ruhlman makes the fatted liver sound damn tasty, especially with scrambled eggs or soaked in milk and then poached. He also makes the point that, unlike most other high-end products, the foie gras available to the average consumer is likely of the same grade as the stuff available to most chefs because there are only a few suppliers in the U.S. Note that Tony Bourdain gives Ruhlman the atta-boy in the lengthy and worth-reading series of comments that follow the post.

Many of us have food blogs, but for us, blogging is a recent development in our lives. Maybe you've been blogging a year. Maybe two years. For Meg Hourihan, blogging has been her career for a long time. In fact, she's the co-founder of Pyra Labs, created in 1999, the company that created the blogging software, blogger.That's right, the software about a gajillion of us use to create our own blogs. She's kind of a techie celebrity.

Meg has her own personal blog called megnut, on which she has been blogging about her daily life and interests which include food, travel, women's rights, and obviously, technology. Lately it seems, though, that megnut could be called "nutmeg," for all of the posting she's done on food.

Has Meg decided to fully join us in the food blogosphere? Cool! She does a lot of "news" items, posts recipes of things she cooks, and her photos are hosted separately on flickr. Pretty soon, everyone will have a food blog. Oh wait, except for my Mom and your Uncle Bob in Omaha, everyone does have a food blog.