Several Days ago, I linked to a story about the Hershey Corporation suing a book publisher Simon & Schuster Inc. over images using Hershey images to market the book "Hershey: Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire and Utopian Dreams".

The lawsuit has been settled. The verdict?

The images stay on the book cover.

The book will, however, have a phrase stating that the book is "neither authorized nor sponsored by The Hershey Company."

I'm giving points to the author of the book, who, upon hearing the news, stated that the decision was "a victory for people who can't tell the difference between recycled paper and chocolate". A snarky man after my own heart.

It was a specious lawsuit from the start. The images of the candy bar have far exceeded their copyright time limit.

UPDATE: I boo-boo'd. The Image is a trademark, not a copyright, and the two are far different entities. However, there are laws regarding "fair use" and trademarks.

The Lanham Act permits a non-owner of a registered trademark to make "fair use" or "nominative use" of a trademark under certain circumstances without obtaining permission from the mark's owner. The fair use and nominative use defenses are to help ensure that trademark owners do not prohibit the use of their marks when they are used for the purpose of description or identification. Fair use or nominative use may be recognized in those instances where a reader of a given work is clearly able to understand that the use of the trademark does not suggest sponsorship or association with the trademark owner's product or services and therefore is not being used in a manner to confuse the reader.

Whether the use of the trademark on the book cover falls under "fair or nominative use", I leave it to you to interpret. Personally, if I were to pick up a book with the above cover, at no point would I think "Ah, Hershey signed off on this". But hey, that's simply my perspective.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Hersheys, lawsuit

This is the first time I had been noted by the local Seattle Press. It gave me a warm fuzzy when I found out about it, because I had no idea I would be mentioned.

From their year-end round up A year of organics, blogs and cheese, glorious cheese, Accidental Hedonist is mentioned as a food blog worth reading.

6. More and more food blogs: We're running out of spare time with all the delicious writing that requires a regular read. There are new Seattle-based blogs we really enjoy (www.rootsandgrubs.com), but don't miss relative old-timer Kate Hopkins' well-written, thought-provoking, consistently appetizing words at www.accidentalhedonist.com</blockquote>

In a side bar to the aricle called More cooks say 'blog appétit!', Accidental Hedonist was mentioned as a Food Blog worth a taste test.

Accidental Hedonist: Seattle writer Kate Hopkins is a champion of the food-blogging community. She launched the first Food Blog Awards in 2004 and is hosting them again this year. Her site includes thoughtful commentary on food news and events, as well as posts about her own culinary adventures. (www.accidentalhedonist.com)

A little over a month ago, I found myself on the wrong end of a flu bug. Tara, being the ever willing participant to ensure my comfort in my time of need, demanded I eat something, as I had forgone a regular meal for a day or so. I hemmed and hawed a bit and then settled on the fact that I could stomach "Pho", or at least a chicken variant of the dish.

We came up with a list of what was needed, and Tara made a trip to the QFC to purchase the required items. Afterwards, I wrote up the Chicken Pho recipe for the rest of the world to see.

It was through this post that I was told, unequivocally, that what I had made was not Pho.

I defended my position at first, but after the third or fourth comment, I relented. What I had made was not Pho, and I would rectify this situation when time was available.

Said time is now.

Soup

• 2 Star Anise
• 1 teaspoon fennel seeds
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 cinnamon stick
• 1 wine cork sized hunk of peeled ginger
• 8 cups beef stock
• 1lb oxtail
• 1 white onion, peeled and sliced
• 3 Tablespoons Fish Sauce
• 1 Tablespoon Lime Juice
• 3/4 lb bottom round, sliced
• 1/2 lb rice noodles

Toppings

• Bean sprouts
• Basil
• green onions, chopped
• Jalapenos, sliced
• Limes, quartered

Place the star anise, bay leaf, fennel seeds, cinnamon stick and ginger in a mortar. Grind together with the pestle until well...uh...ground. Place ingredients in cheese cloth, creating a bouquet garnet. Tie it off at the top and place in the stockpot.

Add the beef stock and oxtail to the stock pot as well, and place on a stovetop over medium heat. Bring to a boil, and the lower the heat to a simmer and cook for 30 minutes. Remove the bouquet garnet.

To the broth, add the onions, fish sauce, lime juice and beef. Again, bring to a boil and then lower to a simmer. Cook for another 30 minutes.

Meanwhile, cook the rice noodles as per instructions on the package.

Afer the final 30 minutes, place a serving of the noodles in a soup bowl, and ladle the soup over top. Add your favorite toppings and serve.

Serves 4-6

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Recipes, Pho, Soup

A USA Today (in their 6/26 version of the Hip Clicks column) follow up on the Time posting, but they said that Accidental Hedonist was a keeper. Again, very cool and very nice!

Prepare to bookmark: Sure, some of the picks on Time magazine's list of the "50 coolest Web sites" are obvious (most people know about Zappos and Boing Boing by now, right?). But check out the "blogs" section to learn about a couple keepers, like foodie journal The Accidental Hedonist and Bayraider, which compiles the most ridiculous items up for auction.

In writing about food blogs, Beau Jarvis (of the Gay site Salt Lake City Metro), lists his favorites, including a nice write up of Accidental Hedonist.

Accidental Hedonist (www.accidentalhedonist.com)—Managed by Kate in Seattle. This blog is part cookbook, part culinary history textbook, and part social commentary. Aside from offering mouthwatering recipes such as Pollo Trifolata, Kate explains the history behind each recipe. The Hedonist also offers commentary and links for those interested in being socially conscious while stuffing their pie holes.

If you wish to read the original article, click here

Food bloggers chronicle their delicious obsessions

By Ethan Gilsdorf, Boston Globe Correspondent

They're known as FatMan Seoul, tastee, Splendid Spatula, and Sal Monella. And they like to hang out in places like the Accidental Hedonist, Hungry Tiger, and Food Porn Watch.

Sometimes they chime in with a comment, but mostly they just like to watch. Or read. Or pretend they're eating.

They're not sexual deviants but ''food bloggers." And the websites and weblogs they visit, create, and update on a daily basis all share a single fetish -- for food, with a capital ''oo." ''Some people eat to live," FatMan Seoul announces in a blog that's a field guide to his forays into Korean cuisine. ''Some live to eat. I belong to the latter, and it shows . . . at all the anatomically wrong places!" The link to his e-mail address doesn't say ''contact" but ''Burp Me!"

Weblogs, or blogs, are akin to online journals. But they also include links to favorite sites and resources, a way for readers to comment, and an archive for discussions and disagreements (careful what you post). Armed with digital cameras, keyboards, and easy-to-use software, gourmands can now create online shrines to beloved or dreaded aspects of the culinary realm: a memorable visit to a Parisian patisserie, a cool must-buy fondue pot, or a warning to skip an overpriced bistro. There are blogs for beer or pizza and blogs based around themes like ''18th Century Cuisine" or a single city, such as Saigon. Some are written by chefs and other food professionals.

Shaun Chavis moved to Boston in August to attend Boston University's Culinary Certificate and Master of Liberal Arts in Gastronomy programs. Soon after, she began Burning My Fingers. ''I wanted to create my own record of culinary school and also share the experience with people who knew me," Chavis says. On her blog, you might find a lesson in sausage making or a sticky encounter with strudel dough.

The vast majority of food bloggers are amateurs whose enthusiasm spills out into cyberspace for anyone who'll nibble at their words. ''I think in a way blogs are cooking shows for the Internet," writes Pim Techamuanvivit, who runs the popular blog Chez Pim. ''That's what we do really -- we talk about the stuff we cook, or the things we ate." The voracious Bay Area traveler, originally from Bangkok, says she began her blog like many addicted Internet users: as a series of e-mails to family and friends. ''I was sick of writing 30 identical e-mails to update everyone on what I was doing," she says. When her friends began asking for recipes and restaurant recommendations, Chez Pim was born.

Techamuanvivit found that the more she wrote on food, the more readers were seduced by her descriptions of pig fests in London and sublime couscous in the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. She now gets between 3,000 and 4,000 hits a day. ''I've got a lot of comments and e-mails saying how they live vicariously through me," Techamuanvivit notes. ''Frankly, I am not entirely sure if I should be flattered or freaked out by them."

Food blogging is so popular that this year the first annual ''Food Blog Awards" were launched by Kate Hopkins, who runs Accidental Hedonist from Seattle. ''Yes, a half-dozen or so food blogs have been recognized by some of the mainstream media," says Hopkins. ''But there are well over 100 food blogs out there, and plenty of good writing." So she wants her awards to draw attention to the more obscure backwaters of gastronomic cyberspace. Hopkins announced winners last week.

Chez Pim won for best restaurant reviews. But the big winner for ''Best Overall Blog" was Chocolate & Zucchini, the creation of a French woman, Clotilde Dusoulier. The site gets about 4,500 visits a day and recounts, in English, Dusoulier's daily Parisian food adventures, such as a 900-word ode to and instructions for a tarte tatin with salted butter caramel.

In 15 months, the blog has turned Dusoulier, a computer engineer, into a professional food writer, cooking instructor, restaurant consultant, and conference speaker. ''My ambition is to make a living from those food-related activities, something I had never considered before starting the blog," wrote Dusoulier, who now has a book deal with an American publisher.

Another oft-cited blog is Adam Roberts's the Amateur Gourmet, this year's ''humor" winner. It's easy to see why: Aside from the site's snappy prose, its ''Saturday Night Live"-worthy comedy sketch mpegs, such as ''Great Moments in Musical Theater Featuring Eggs" and ''Project Sourdough," are hilarious. ''Though I don't make money at all," Roberts remarks, ''I love knowing that there's an audience."

It was Roberts's Janet Jackson breast cupcake photo essay, featured on CNN, that brought his blog instant fame. He originally stumbled into blogging as a law student (he's since abandoned that for an MFA in dramatic writing at New York University). Cooking shows led him to his own kitchen experiments and eventually to Chowhound.com -- the low-tech, less snazzy grandfather of the whole online food phenomenon.

''We're iconoclasts, not followers of buzz," says Jim Leff, describing the community of Chowhounds he's helped nurture since 1997. He says his movement is seat-of-the-pants, compiling ''chowconnaissance" by eating its way through strange neighborhoods and never settling for anything ''less than supreme deliciousness, amen. (That's the chowhound prayer.)"

Chowhound is not technically a blog -- Leff claims he's never read one -- but a website akin to a community message board that covers the country and has regional subgroups. Desperate foodies type messages they're certain someone will answer. ''Pho!?," ''Best chicken salad?," ''Help! Quintessential Boston lunch," ''What's good in Dorchester?"

The camaraderie is normally kept strictly online, but on occasion the interpersonal contact boils over into the real world. Bloggers in Paris have met for potluck dinners, and in San Francisco they have congregated in Golden Gate Park for massive cook-offs and tastings.

On the Boston message board, on Jan. 4 at 17:31, a Chowhound named Burt asks, ''Anyone know of a really excellent Jewish rye bread resource on the North Shore?"

''I'm no rye bread expert but Karl's Sausage Kitchen (Rte 1 N, Saugus) has some dark rye that I enjoy," is the reply from ''Chris VR" at 19:01.

Forty-five minutes later, Karl S. interjects, ''That's Lithuanian-style dark rye, not like Jewish deli rye."

Techamuanvivit, the Chez Pim blogger, says, ''I could ask Clotilde [of Chocolate & Zucchini] or Pascale [of C'est moi qui l'ai fait] in Paris when I need to find out about something specific to French food. I could also ask Anthony in Vietnam about something there, or Jeanne from South Africa. Or they could ask me for something Thai. With the blogs, your foodie community could expand from a block party to cover pretty much the entire world."

See the orginal article here.

Cooking up a batch of food blogs to fatten up your on-line reading

By Nick Smith

Publish Date: 10-Mar-2005

There are some unalterable laws of the universe dictating that certain things be kept separate from one another: toddlers and cassette tapes; cigarette lighters and long bangs; food and computers.

So, when I noticed that the Web Log Awards, aka “the bloggies”, had created the new category of “best food blog” for this, its fifth year, I was no more perplexed than if I had overheard a group of slugs discussing their favourite brand of salt.

“Food blog”? This was an oxymoron to be investigated. Fork in hand, I set out, beginning with bloggie nominee the Food Section (www.thefoodsection .com/). The Food Section might be heavy on its NYC locale, but it is packed with lots besides; a recent post discussed a Japanese beer made with red-sake rice, then included a link to an article about baking with whole fruit: seeds, skin, and all.

Further down the list of links (50? 80? I couldn’t count), there’s one to the Accidental Hedonist (www.accidentalhedonist.com/), which includes the history of pistachios, beginning with a Babylonian king and ending with the reason that Americans dye them red (to mask blemishes). The tone of the writing is cocky, but the content demonstrates an appreciation for its subject that easily equals that of any glossy food magazine. Kate Hopkins, the titular hedonist, sponsors the Food Blog Awards within this site. The prizes, about US$20 each, make it clear that this is no corporate-backed venture. That she can set up five nominees within each of the 16 categories while maintaining the kind of control a chef has over his ingredients is truly impressive. I suppose what makes this and other food blogs such interesting reading is that the author is making little or no money, and thus has allegiances to no one but her readers. The comments that readers leave in response to her postings coalesce into a dialogue.

Hopkins also posts great links to sites such as Too Many Chefs (www.toomanychefs.com/), a retro-looking blog authored by committee that recently featured vegetarian Mexican sushi, and Eating China (www.eatingchina.com/), which discusses, among other topics, why the Chinese love pork.

Chocolate and Zucchini (www.chocolateandzuc chini.com/) likely gets the most traffic of any food blog, judging by the number of comments made in response to each posting. Clotilde Dusoulier, an English-speaking Parisian, is about as close as one can get to celebrity status in the world of food blogs. Her many readers lavish praise as they comment on topics like her discovery of spirulina gomasio and ask for the HTML code of the font she uses. (This can happen in the same posting.) Her forums are frequented by American, Dutch, Japanese, Australian, and other food enthusiasts who debate, among other subjects, the best uses for microwaves.

She also links to the Food Porn Watch (food pornwatch.arrr.net/) and the Food Whore (the foodwhore.com/), which sound interesting but are not as exciting as Chez Pim (chezpim.typepad .com/). Bangkok-raised, California-dwelling Pim frequently posts from wifi-equipped hotels and comments on places to eat in Paris, London, New York, and Bangkok in a witty and endearing style.

EGullet (egullet.org/) is not technically a blog, but it is a rich resource not to be ignored. EGullet offers virtual cooking seminars led by top chefs in areas as diverse as braising and tofu-making. Students in these classes are required to take part in the “labs” before posting themselves, but nonparticipants are encouraged to lurk. Many post photos of their culinary creations, enlisting feedback from instructors and students alike. Membership to this site is free, as is participation in all courses, with options to donate to the society.

One of my favourite areas of eGullet is the Vancouver thread of the Restaurants, Cuisine and Travel Forum, where members discuss where to get the best crusty loaf in town (Transilvanian Peasant Bread on West Broadway) and where their favourite chefs are now.

EGullet also sponsors writing contests. A recent one required entrants to begin a story with “You can tell more about a man by looking into his fridge than by looking into his eyes.” I didn’t spot any future Booker nominees, but the variations on this theme were amusing nonetheless. Even more amusing were submissions for humorous fusion dishes, such as the Chinese/German “Sweet and Sauerkraut” and the British/Vietnamese “Phi Phi Pho Phum”.

The danger of food blogging is its addictive nature: it is so easy to just keep hopping from link to link. Then there are the crumbs. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

(To see the original article, click here, and ignore the fact that they referred to me as Kate Hudson *grin*. Oh, and you may need a login)

Stirring Commentary: A Food Blog for Every Taste

By Renee Schettler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, March 9, 2005; Page F01

A few years ago, specialty food magazines, celebrity cooking shows and coffee-table cookbooks began to proliferate. But it wasn't enough.

Internet-savvy food enthusiasts sought something more quirky or writerly or lavish or esoteric or weeknight-friendly or fill-in-the-blank.

Enter the food blog, a form of online journal.

There is the Movable Feast (www.movable-feast.com), a chronicle that captures seconds in the life of an aspiring chef, from deveining shrimp at 8:20 a.m. to typing in an apartment-door code at 11:50 at night.

The Grocery List Collection (www.grocerylists.com) showcases images of 700 discarded grocery lists and related stories about . . . grocery lists. Arthur Hungry is the Web log name of a 20-year-old international relations student at Boston University who posts pictures of everything he eats (www.arthurhungry.com). Pinoy Cook (pinoycook.net) is a Filipino mom's collection of updated traditional recipes. And Dead Man Eating (deadmaneating. blogspot.com)records the last meals requested by prisoners on death row. (Fried chicken and steak predominate.)

The Food Section blog (www.thefoodsection.com) aspires to post "all the news that's fit to eat." Late February brought a riff on "Tangerine Dream," questioning the color ascribed to the fabric in the recent Central Park exhibit of "The Gates." Was saffron, selected by artists Christo and Jean Claude, more accurate than, say, clementine? Or persimmon?

A few days later, Vittles Vamp (www.vittlesvamp.com) featured "Art Lover Alert," depicting a close-up of cheddar cheese sandwich crackers balanced on end in Central Park with the "Gates" in the background.

There are even food blogs that essentially list others, such as Kiplog's FoodBlog (www.kiplog.com/food) and Food Porn Watch (foodpornwatch.arrr.net).

Blogs now cover a miscellany of culinary topics, sometimes only tangentially related to food. The only constant among the sites seems to be that they are increasing dramatically.

And people are reading. "Every single genre of blogs has increased at an almost alarming rate over the past several years," said Biz Stone, Blogger senior specialist at Google.

That includes food. Type "food" and "blog" into Google, and the hits exceed 8 million. The number of actual English-language food blogs is far lower. Paul McCann of Kiplog puts the estimate at about 600, but says it's increasing daily.

According to a Pew Internet & American Life Project published in 2004, 27 percent of American Internet users say they read blogs, an increase of 58 percent from the previous year. In the past year, several food bloggers have seen the number of daily visitors to their sites double or triple.

Along with the proliferation of food blogs comes a proliferation of food blog awards. This year the Bloggies -- an annual award given to publicly chosen Web logs -- introduced a food category. Bloggies categories are updated annually to reflect "how trends change in the blogging universe," says Nikolai Nolan, the University of Michigan senior who launched the awards in 2001.

In addition to their own category, food blogs number as nominees in several other Bloggies categories as well. The winners will be announced next week (2005.bloggies.com).

Last year, food blogger Kate Hudson of the Accidental Hedonist had initiated the aptly named first Food Blog Awards to recognize the "wealth of food reporting and writing" taking place on blogs. She created 16 categories ranging from best recipes to best photography, solicited nominations from her fellow bloggers and tallied the votes. Winners were announced in early January (www.accidentalhedonist.com/index.php?cat=250).

Because blogs often take the form of journal entries -- ranging from the inane to the relatively profound, from stream of consciousness to carefully worded prose -- the biggest draw for repeat visitors to a particular Web site is something intangible: a sense of resonance, if not a shared vision of the world -- even if that means knowing where to get the best cream puff in Paris.

Whether bloggers aspire to be the next Jeffrey Steingarten, the sharp-tongued food writer for Vogue, or M.F.K. Fisher, one of the country's early food writers, they provide readers with their own personal food section, updated weekly and, in some instances, daily. The authors of these sites cover what mainstream media overlook or ignore, but in a casual, interactive manner. And, while most newspapers and magazines require payment for online access to articles published in the not-so-distant past, blogging archives are free.

Taking home four of the Food Blog Awards was Chocolate & Zucchini (chocolateandzucchini.com), a Paris-based Web site written by Clotilde Dusoulier. Her blog gracefully conveys her food experiences, such as her introduction to kohlrabi and her daydream of the ideal brunch.

Her site, named for two of her favorite ingredients, includes more than recipes and receives some 7,000 visitors a day, Dusoulier said. "Basically, the idea at first was to find a way to share," said Dusoulier, who writes in English. "I was very much into cooking and very eager to talk about it to my friends and family. And after a little while, I sort of felt like I needed a wider audience to interact with." On most blogs, interaction comes in the form of reader responses to anything that piques their interest.

Unlike political bloggers, who often express opinions and attempt to convince, food bloggers find great things and tell others about them so they continue to exist, said Hillel Cooperman of Tasting Menu (www.tastingmenu.com). Last year, Cooperman, who works for Microsoft in Washington, became the first food blogger nominated for a prestigious James Beard Foundation journalism award.

"What people lack in experience or formal training, they make up for with the fact that they love what they're doing," said Cooperman. "There are some days I don't feel like posting, but I feel an obligation to all those people visiting my blog every day."

According to Google's Stone, the increase in popularity of blogs is partly due to "blog children" -- people, such as Dusoulier, who stumble across a blog and become inspired to start their own. Many, also like Dusoulier, are parlaying their blog experience into more lucrative ventures. Dusoulier is now being approached by newspapers and magazines to write articles.

New Yorker Julie Powell, who cooked and blogged her way through Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" one recipe at a time, landed a book deal with Little, Brown and Co. "Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, One Tiny Apartment Kitchen?" is due out this fall.

Another blogger-turned-author is Heidi Swanson, the San Francisco-based photographer and cookbook writer behind 101 Cookbooks (www.101cookbooks.com). An avid collector, Swanson had begun a private recipe journal for her Web site. After people repeatedly Googled their way into the file, she decided to start a food blog. Her site combines prose, food photos and recipes.

Last fall Swanson published her first book, "Cook 1.0: A Fresh Approach to the Vegetarian Kitchen" (Stewart, Tabori and Chang, 2004).

Total visitor traffic to her site has nearly tripled in the past six months.

Paige Hren, a regular visitor to 101 Cookbooks from Malibu, said that reading Swanson's posts is like having your own prep cook in the kitchen: "She's found the loopholes and what the pluses and minuses are for the recipes."

"My traffic really seems to spike when I post sweets -- anything chocolate or anything cute," said Swanson.

Though some food blogs have begun to seek advertising revenue, most food bloggers "don't get into this to make money," Hudson said, but to make food a little less ordinary for at least one other person.

"How many high-quality food blogs does the world need?" asked Cooperman. "It turns out, a lot."

© 2005 The Washington Post Company

Original article found here...brief mention about the site when talking about Clotilde of C&Z.

Young Parisian puts her heart into a cordon-blog

Eric Wahlgren, Special to The Chronicle

Wednesday, March 9, 2005

Contrary to popular belief, most French aren't born good cooks. Just ask Clotilde Dusoulier, creator of the popular food blog Chocolate & Zucchini.

Dusoulier, 25, freely admits to once being clueless in the kitchen. It was during a two-year stint in Silicon Valley, in a software job beginning in 2000, that the Paris native got serious about food.

"I was just out of college, so there was no cafeteria to go to and my mom was thousands of miles away," she said. "For the first time, I had to decide what I was going to cook and eat."

Dusoulier reacted with gusto. She spent entire weekends at South Bay grocery stores and farmers' markets, discovering foods she'd never seen before. Seeking inspiration, Dusoulier checked out the area's energetic ethnic restaurant scene. And for the rare splurge, she headed across the bay to Chez Panisse.

Cross-cultural cooking

Back at her apartment in Mountain View, she began to make cross-cultural dishes such as sesame zucchini soup and Mexican chocolate chile cake.

"It turns out the Bay Area was a fantastic place for someone to discover cooking and food," she says.

After returning to Paris for another software job, Dusoulier got on her computer and cooked up C&Z (chocolateandzucchini.com) in September 2003. The recipe was simple: chronicling her daily culinary adventures in Paris as an insider, without attitude and and in English. Now, C&Z is one of the Web's hottest food blogs, drawing more than 200,000 visitors a month from both sides of the Atlantic.

Many come for her easy-to-follow recipes -- for her tarte tatin with salted butter caramel, or warm Tarbais bean salad with walnut oil. But they end up sticking around to read her food musings, which carry playful titles like "Hello, Gorgeous!" for an entry on Hokkaido squash.

A recent post on corn on the cob is fluffier than what she typically serves up on her site, but lame entries and grammar mistakes are rare. Even skeptics, who usually write off blogs as self-indulgent blather, seem charmed.

"It is a real triumph," says Darra Goldstein, editor of Gastronomica, a quarterly food and culture magazine published by The University of California Press. "You are getting a glimpse of Clotilde's life, but you are also learning about food, which I think raises her blog above the level of most blogs, which are just chattering."

Goldstein first happened upon C&Z after a Google search led her to Dusoulier's entry on special chocolates -- known as mendiants or beggars -- from Provence.

"I think her blog fulfills the same function as do the best cookbooks," she says. "We don't necessarily cook everything from the cookbooks that we read, but we travel to different places and we imagine ourselves in a different life."

Dusoulier lives the life of a typical Parisian, sharing a modest Montmartre apartment with her boyfriend.

"I give a view of the city that is not the one you see in the movies or guidebooks that can be a little out of touch," she says. "I'm a real person, and I think that is something people like."

Indeed, C&Z has been racking up the awards, including Web site honors from Yahoo and Feedster. Earlier this year, C&Z won "Best Overall Blog" as well as commendations for writing, recipes and design in the 2004 Food Blog Awards, begun by Kate Hopkins of the Accidental Hedonist Web site in Seattle. The mainstream press is also taking note, with the French daily Le Monde recently dubbing Dusoulier a "cordon-blog."

All the exposure has helped Dusoulier, who has no formal culinary training, land food-related gigs as a restaurant consultant and conference speaker, among others. One Chocolate & Zucchini fan, an executive editor at a large New York publishing house, encouraged Dusoulier to get an agent. She's now slogging away on a book proposal in hopes of writing a cookbook that will mimic the spirit of her blog, with previously unpublished recipes and the stories behind them.

Bemused and bewildered

As of yet, Dusoulier has no plans to leave her day job. And she seems a little bemused by the attention C&Z has drawn.

"I buy things, cook things and eat things and if I feel really strongly about them, I'll write about them," Dusoulier says.

Dusoulier's time in the Bay Area has strongly influenced her cooking, instilling a bias for healthy ingredients and Asian dishes. On her blog, a classic French lamb stew recipe is internationalized with kumquats and pine nuts and accompanied by a polenta cake.

"I have a lot of French basics,'' she says, "but the health and pan-Asian angles are very Californian."

Erik Wahlgren is a freelance writer in Paris. You can e-mail him at food@sfchronicle.com.

To read the original article, click here - Login: loginATaccidentalhedonistDOTcom Password:1newspaper)

Time to ring in the new

Attitudes, that is -- put some adventure in your dining for 2005

HELEN SCHWAB - Charlotte Observer Restaurant Writer

Fitness, schmitness: If you're reviewing resolutions for 2005, do something good and luxuriant. Commit yourself to trying new foods, expanding your dining horizons, getting into a few neighborhoods you don't usually go. Diversify. Suspend judgment. Appreciate.

Here are a few suggestions:

1. Pull up a plate of something you tried 10 years ago, didn't like and haven't eaten since.

I haven't got many personal examples -- occupational hazard -- but in doing a sushi story a few months back, I retried octopus nigiri-zushi and -- surprise! -- liked it. It happened to be at Nikko (1300 South Blvd.), which happens to be opening a second location the third or fourth week of this month. This will be at 15105 John J. Delaney Drive at Ballantyne Commons East (formerly Saigon Cafe), seating about 110, and will offer a menu nearly the same at the Dilworth original. (704) 341-5550.

2. Have some foie gras, while you still can.

The stuff's been banned in California. OK, OK, technically, Gov. Schwarzenegger's given the industry until 2012 to come up with a more humane way to produce it, and how can you be against more humanity? But as a big fan of the nightly "chef's mood" foie gras special at Sonoma, I was wondering what to do, now that owner Pierre Bader's doing a downtown changeup: Sonoma has become Sonoma Kitchen, while a new Sonoma is slated to open at Founders Hall the last week of January or first of February. (Yes, you old-timers who remember the first one, on Providence Road, it is the fourth location for the name.) Executive chef Tim Groody puts our minds at ease: Though it's now off the menu at Sonoma Kitchen (which offers a less expensive lineup and lots more appetizers), "we'll always have it in-house for people who want it -- especially until Sonoma opens." And, he notes, it may return to the menu eventually. The new Sonoma, meanwhile, will offer food similar to the old's, geared slightly more toward theater-goers (as in things that be prepared with alacrity) and maintaining an upscale feel.

3. Order something you've never had before that you think you won't like.

(Hint: Go with an adventurous friend willing to trade you for it, in case you really don't like it.) This aligns with the fashion rule that you should periodically try on clothes you don't think of as "you" -- and the culinary rule that you need to offer kids a new food 10 times before they'll actually eat it. (Unfortunately, the only things that worked that way with my children are whole blue crabs and really good coffee.)

If you've never liked spicy food, for instance, take a deep breath and sample a Thai curry (specify "just a little spicy") -- and have a big bowl of rice nearby, and a beer. (Use the rice first, though). If you're bean-phobic, try lentils first. Find Ethiopian eerie? Start with a side of collards. Soon you'll feel at home -- somewhere pretty far from yours.

4. Spend a few moments with food bloggers (you know, folks who do a Web log -- "blog" -- an online sort of diary/journal).

I like professional stuff (like www.gastropoda.com) but I love more personal sites like http://chezpim.typepad.com/ or chocolateandzucchini.com, and www.afullbelly.com, which posts links to useful stories such as why almost everything tastes like chicken. I especially cherish ones with lots of photos, like www.amateurgourmet.com or http://fatman-seoul.blogspot.com. (I like a few industry ones, too, though they tend to the profane.) For a good jumping-off list, check out www.accidentalhedonist.com's 2004 Food Blog Awards.

5. Order something prepared tableside and really pay attention to the technique.

I'm partial to having fish filleted before me, but a good, simple, honest pan of crepes Suzette is tough to beat. Try those at Bentley's on 27 (201 S. College St., the Charlotte Plaza building), and you get a pleasant running commentary, too.

Read the original post here.

Foodies aim for a slice of the pie

With the launch this week of a new award site, Graham Holliday argues that food blogs are not a flash in the pan

Thursday February 24, 2005
The Guardian

Foodies are ditching Delia, turning off TV chefs and blogging their own shows. The food blog brigade's typical serving comes with a dash of passion, a dollop of honesty and half a pound of humour.

Is My Blog Burning? (IMBB?) is a monthly event where food bloggers from around the world cook a dish using a specified ingredient or style on a designated day. About 50 bloggers post at each event Some are food professionals, but most are amateurs.

Alberto, a trained sommelier who publishes the Il Forno baking blog from Germany, came up with the idea. "I noticed that often a post on one blog would inspire a few others to try or modify the same recipe and discuss it. I thought it might be interesting to put those people together." He posted his suggestion at Il Forno in January last year. The response was ravenous. The event is now in its 12th edition and has a full schedule for the year.

Individual bloggers act as hosts and a dedicated website coordinates each event. Past IMBB? days have included fish, rice, terrine and barbecue dishes. The idea has spawned other popular events: "Wine Blogging Wednesday", "Sugar High Fridays" and a food photo competition called "Does my blog look good in this?" The events are rounded up as a list of hyperlinks at the host's blog with added commentary.

"I find it fascinating to see how each of us culturally interprets a single ingredient or cooking technique," says Kate Hopkins, of The Accidental Hedonist blog in Seattle. However, some bloggers have trouble finding time for the plethora of events. There are tentative plans to introduce a PDF version of each event.

Food blogs don't appear to be a flash in the cyberpan. Foodpornwatch, a food blog tracking site, monitors 206 blogs and gets up to five requests a day for new blogs to be added. Blogads, the blog advertising company, has 28 food and drink blogs on its books with a combined monthly traffic of almost 1m readers. Paris-based Chocolate & Zucchini gets 100,000 site hits and 7,000 readers each day.

Jay Rayner, the Observer's food critic, is a member of several online food forums, but reads just one food blog, Chez Pim - "She's very funny, has exquisite taste and she's a friend of mine" - and he doesn't see food bloggers as a threat to professional food writers. "I am writing in a different way, specifically to attract as broad an audience as possible," he explains. "The bloggers can offer up the quirky and the individual; we have to add value, by offering authority and consistency."

Kate Hopkins was miffed that the 2005 Blog Oscars - The Bloggies - hadn't considered a best food blog category in the nominations stage, so created her own food blog awards. Nearly 8,000 votes were cast. Soon after, a food blog category appeared at the Bloggies. "I like to think they discovered the quality of writing and decided these food bloggers needed to be lauded," says Hopkins.

Others are taking matters further. Taste Everything is a collaborative food award site that launched on Tuesday. It aims to "give credit to people and organisations creating exceptional food". A blog jury made up of 30 of the most popular food bloggers each has one award to define and give. "There's so much to celebrate about the growing independent food voice on the net," says Taste Everything organiser Hillel Cooperman. "This year, we have approximately 25 awards."

Most food bloggers are in it for fun. For others, the combination of passion and free or inexpensive blog publishing tools bring unexpected benefits. "I'm starting to get offers to write for magazines and newspapers," says wannabe food writer Clotilde Dusoulier, of Chocolate & Zucchini. "All these opportunities stem from my blog." She has an agent in New York and a potential book deal. She's not alone. Heidi Swanson, who blogs at 101 Cookbooks, published a vegetarian book in October. Many others are eager for a slice of the action. Jay Rayner watch out.

(In a post about C&Z's Clotilde, we're quoted briefly about food blogs...see the original post here)

Fromage homage

Samantha Grice
National Post

Wednesday, February 23, 2005

Click here to find out more!

Clotilde Dusoulier didn't like cheese until she moved to the Silicon Valley. For someone who grew up in Paris, this is peculiar.

But Dusoulier wasn't particularly interested in food before she relocated to California with her boyfriend, Maxence, to work as a computer programmer.

Now, five years later and back home in Paris, Dusoulier's web log Chocolate & Zucchini (www.chocolateandzucchini.com) is receiving 7,000 visitors a day and she is whipping up a cookbook proposal with her newly acquired New York agent.

Dusoulier posts enthusiastic and poetic odes to beloved patisseries, instructions on how to open scallops and the occasional homage to fromage. (A recent entry sang the praises of Tomme Affinee au Marc de Raisin, a cow's-milk cheese that has been aged under a thick blanket of grape marc.) The blog's enthusiasm has gained the 25-year-old Parisienne mentions in Gourmet magazine, The New York Times Style Magazine and countless links from across the blogosphere. Today, Dusoulier says, she has a passion for all things food related.

Of course, it's not unusual for a young person's palate to develop after leaving the comforts of home. And Dusoulier's two years in San Francisco marked her first extended departure from her mother's cuisine.

"And this was my way of exploring the change of scenery," she says of her food awakening over the phone from her home in Montmartre. "California, especially the San Francisco Bay area, has a really interesting food scene. Even the mainstream grocery stores have gourmet items and ethnic aisles and all these things were new to me. I guess my interest was in making a home for myself. Trying to recreate things from back home and discovering the American and ethnic ways of cooking was a way to create warmth and tame the elements."

It helped that her tech job paid handsomely, which funded the exploration of some of the Bay area's finer restaurants. Upon her return to Paris, Dusoulier began to explore her home in a way she never had before.

For example, she tried Brussels sprouts. "I had never tasted Brussels sprouts because everyone said they were nasty and you know, the smell is off, but then I thought to myself, 'I'm going to buy Brussels sprouts and see for myself,' she recalls. "When you start to get interested in food there is no end to it." She soon moved on to foie gras.

In Paris, Dusoulier explains, people invite each other over for dinner more often than they go out to restaurants, which was her experience while in San Francisco. This gave her the opportunity to test her new cooking skills on people other than Maxence.

As the compliments for her dinners became more zealous, so did her interest. She was encouraged to attempt more difficult dishes. But at some point it occurred to her that while it was all very nice to prepare a beautiful meal and be lovingly complimented for it, it wasn't enough.

"What frustrated me, is you spend time thinking about what you're going to cook, you spend time making it and then, in a matter of minutes, there is nothing left," Dusoulier explains. "It's over."

To prolong the experience, she began logging her culinary adventures in a cooking journal -- what she served and to whom, suggestions as to what she would do differently the next time. This coincided with her discovery of the burgeoning world of food blogs; last September, a year after returning to Paris, Dusoulier launched Chocolate & Zucchini.

For the first time this year, the Annual Weblog Awards (a.k.a. the Bloggies) have a category to celebrate the best in food blogging, and last December fellow foodie Kate Hopkins of The Accidental Hedonist launched her own Food Blog Awards to acknowledge the high calibre of writing.

"The collective knowledge base of the food-blog community is equal to the editors of the major food magazines," says Hopkins. "And we certainly have a better range of being able to talk about specific items that the magazines might not be able to," she says, noting there are blogs dedicated solely to 18th-century cooking and the food scenes in such diverse locales as Seoul, Saigon and Panama.

Chocolate & Zucchini picked up four of Hopkins awards last month, including best overall food blog, best design, best writing and best recipes. Dusoulier has also been nominated in the 2005 Bloggies for Best European Weblog.

"It's different than what other people are doing," Dusoulier says of her site. "There are a lot of French people talking about food in French to the French. There are people in the U.S. talking about French food to Americans, but there aren't that many French people living in Paris and talking to foreigners, at least in a language they can understand."

Dusoulier goes to the market on Saturday mornings. She says Montmartre has much to offer and she visits specific little shops for specific items, but also picks some things up at the grocery store.

She doesn't cook every night but often "picnics" on bread, cheese and salad. And she doesn't set out to make a recipe just so she can post it on the blog. In fact, it's the other way around.

For instance, a couple of weeks ago was La Chandeleur, a holiday that welcomes the first signs of Spring and is traditionally celebrated by making crepes. To mark the occasion on the blog, Dusoulier shared a crepe recipe given to her by Maxence's mother.

She has also written about discovering a pick-your-own-plum farm while driving around the countryside, and stumbling upon a shop selling homemade jam while on vacation in the mountains.

And last week she wrote an ode to an apple, la pomme et le clochard, that has come into season. "There is this apple and I eat the apple and I think, 'Well, this apple is damn good. I think this apple deserves a little spotlight,' " she explains. "It's sort of a love declaration."

© National Post 2005

Accidental Hedonist was mentioned in an E-mail Newsletter sent out to Le Monde Subscribers

Blogs du Globe

By Chère faible - translated from French to English by Clotilde of Chocolateand and Zucchini

Chocolate and zucchini, hamburger and croissant. Clotilde and Estelle are cordon-blogs whose hearts belong to both sides of the Atlantic. The Accidental Hedonist lists the best foodblogs. All of them sing "I made it myself!". From the garden of Eden to the sediment, the pleasures of food.

(If you wish to see the original article, click here - Login: Accidental PW: Hedonist)

Finger-clickin' good

Web logs help whet the appetite of food lovers

By Mike Dunne -- Sacramento Bee Food Editor

All across the land, repositories of family recipes - kitchen drawers, tin boxes, binders - are being mined for gems worth sharing with neighbors.

This has been going on for generations, of course, but it has accelerated as the home computer has succeeded the backyard fence as a means of swapping recipes.

For Tom and Alice Bauer of Carmichael, it means that the contents of a thick manila folder not only are ending up on daughter Elise's hard drive but in the recipe collections of hundreds of strangers.

Alice Bauer has mixed feelings about seeing her recipes for such dishes as chicken and dumplings, braised turkey legs and pomegranate jelly being used by so many others.

"I come from an age when you held on to your special things, but Elise is very persuasive," Alice Bauer says in the front room of the family home. In the kitchen, an aromatic pot of oxtail stew simmers.

Bauer has come around to the view, however, that sharing is a good thing.

"We're improving the planet," she adds, confident that the family's homey recipes are helping enrich lives, whether they be friends or strangers. "We just like to make very good food. We're not trying to be real chefs," she adds.

The Bauers are a family that relishes cooking together, whether the recipe is one of their own or from another source. About one-fourth of the recipes the Bauers test end up online. Most turn out either "not good" or "good, but not worth the effort," Elise Bauer says.

Anyone who goes online can tap into the family's treasure trove. They're all under "recipes" on Elise Bauer's Web site, www.elise.com.

In the jargon of the high-tech community, the younger Bauer is a blogger - a person who keeps an online journal, or Web log. Like other Web logs, www.elise.com focuses on a few of her favorite things - books she has enjoyed, photos she has taken, quotes that inspire her. She comments randomly on personal matters and lists links to other Web sites that interest her.

For food enthusiasts, the main draw at www.elise.com is the 150 recipes.

"I write up what we cook," says Bauer, whose appetizing photos often accompany recipes she posts.

The project began about 18 months ago when she returned home after 10 years in San Francisco, where she was helping companies develop high-tech business strategies, a career she continues out of a home office here. A 1978 graduate of St. Francis High School in Sacramento, she earned a degree in environmental science and an MBA at Stanford University, but she'd never really learned to cook.

"I wanted to know how to cook the food I grew up with," Bauer says in explaining one reason for her homecoming. "In San Francisco, I was a busy, professional, single woman who ate out a lot."

Both her parents are enthusiastic and exploratory home cooks, and as she joined them in the kitchen to test recipes she jotted notes and began to post them on her Web site, primarily for her own reference. She envisioned possibly publishing a recipe book for herself and her five siblings, but the project wasn't meant to be anything more ambitious than that.

"Web logs are all about expressing yourself and sharing information," Bauer says.

Now, she finds herself in the middle of a young but active and fast-growing community of Web logs devoted to gastronomic matters. Some sites focus almost solely on cooking, while others zero in on wine, restaurants or public food policy. Their names often give clues to their content and tone: Blue Plate Bachelor, Fermentations, FatMan Seoul, Love Sicily, Eating L.A., Pastry Elf.

Some bloggers are professionals in the food trade or media, but most are enthusiastic cooks and diners who have found an outlet to share their passion in a way that's fast and reciprocal.

No two food blogs are alike, but they tend to share a few traits: Raves about newly discovered restaurants, rants about dining issues, musings about cooking, links to favored sites or resources, archives of commentaries and recipes, and a means to swap opinions with visitors. At www.elise.com, for example, visitors who download and try a recipe often return to attach their comments concerning the dish.

In the first "Food Blog Awards" sponsored recently by the Web site The Accidental Hedonist in Seattle (www.accidentalhedonist.com), www.elise.com was one of four nominees for the best blog for recipes.

Bauer, however, lost out to one of the more high-profile Web sites, Chocolate & Zucchini (www.chocolateandzucchini.com), which also won recognition for its writing and design, and was declared "best overall food blog."

No one knows how many blogs are circulating in cyberspace, but the prevailing estimate is 6 million, of which anywhere from several hundred to several thousand have gastronomy themes.

"This is a real community. We read each other's blogs and try each other's recipes," Bauer says. A year ago, her site drew 100 visits a day; today, the count is up to 3,000, she says.

The rise in the number of food blogs seems to stem largely from the urge to express oneself coupled with the means to do it inexpensively and easily.

"Everyone has a story to tell, something they feel passionate about, and this is a way to write every day about their passion," says Rebecca Blood of San Francisco, the author of "The Weblog Handbook" and proprietor of the blog Rebecca's Pocket (www.rebeccablood.net). "Virtually anyone can have a soapbox and talk about what they care about."

Pete Snyder, founder and CEO of New Media Strategies in Arlington, Va., which advises businesses about trends it tracks online, agrees."People always have been passionate about food and wine, and now the Internet is giving them a platform," Snyder says.

As a consequence, the nature and quality of the reading material on blogs is wide-ranging, from tedious and sophomoric to animated and intelligent.

At this point, most food bloggers look to be happy with expressing themselves and with getting periodic recognition from their peers, but several also are aware that commercial possibilities could arise with their site's very next visit.

Blood recalls being approached "out of the blue" by a publisher who ultimately signed her to the contract that led to "The Weblog Handbook."In the summer of 2002, Julie Powell, a New York "government drone by day, renegade "foodie" by night," began a blog (blogs.salon.com/0001399/) on her attempt to cook the 536 recipes in Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" over the ensuing year; the Julie/Julia project also landed her a book deal.Reports of other bloggers morphing into published authors are increasing, scuttling at least for the moment speculation that the rise of blogs could jeopardize traditional print media. Snyder, for one, believes that food blogs are helping generate more interest in cooking and eating generally, thereby heightening interest in other channels distributing food information.

While bloggers don't necessarily subscribe to the usual journalistic standards involving objectivity and reliability, they can develop large and enthusiastic followings among people who appreciate and share their perspective and voice, Snyder says.

One consequence of blogging, he notes, is that online dining reviews are "throwing the balance of power in the restaurant industry off kilter." Up to now, restaurateurs in any one city had to be concerned with only a few restaurant critics, whom they sometimes could recognize and provide with sharpened service. Now, however, anyone with a Web site can be a stealthy restaurant critic.

"Chefs and restaurateurs can't possibly have all their bases covered all the time, so foodies have a better chance (than a recognized critic) of seeing flaws," Snyder says.

Though several food Web logs carry advertisements, rarely are they overtly commercial and few are generating substantial revenues, say proprietors.

Alaina Browne, who started her popular blog A Full Belly (www.afullbelly.com) in New York in 2003 before moving it to San Francisco last summer, says the ads on her site generate just $50 to $75 a month. "It really doesn't pay for itself," she says.

Nonetheless, book publishers, restaurateurs and others with vested interests in culinary matters are becoming more attuned to the influence of bloggers and are directing influence at them.

"Some public relations firms are sending (review) copies of books and invitations to restaurant openings, so some freebies are to be scored, but a lot of the rewards are intangible," Browne says.

To her, the intangibles she most enjoys are feedback from readers and the connections she makes with other food enthusiasts. "Another food blogger invited me to pizza in the Tenderloin. It's a regular pizza place, but it's owned by a Tunisian woman who also prepares authentic Tunisian cuisine, but you have to know about it and make arrangements beforehand. It's the kind of thing I wouldn't have discovered otherwise," Browne says.

As with many others, Bauer started her blog as a hobby, but two months ago it became more commercial when she signed on as an associate of Amazon.com. Now she provides a link to the online retailer so visitors can order cookbooks, utensils and the like. For this, she gets a referral fee from Amazon.com, but it isn't enough to do much more than offset her costs to maintain the site.

"I make a little bit of money, enough to pay for cookbooks. As this grows, maybe there will be more," Bauer says. "As I write recipes, I recommend cookbooks, tools and magazines often. I figure that if I'm going to the trouble to recommend, I might as well be compensated."

She's about to move the recipes to a new site separate from her other musings, the not-yet-running www.simplyrecipes.net, but isn't speculating on whether the new home will become a more expansive and commercial blog.

"I once told my dad that I want to be a publishing diva, so who knows? As long as I continue to be interested in learning how to cook, this will keep up my interest and I will continue to contribute to it," Bauer says. "Right now it's a personal hobby. It's coming from the love of good, simple, whole foods, and wanting to learn how to cook them so they taste delicious. It's a passion-based thing.

"My vision for it is to make it as enjoyable for me and as useful for others as possible. I just hope I don't gain any more weight. Once you start thinking of food, you eat more."

(No link to the article, as the Spectator charges to see it's archive).

Mind-Bloggling

Awards recognize the abundance of excellant online food journals

by Lori Fazari

Food bloggers must have a hard time keeping it all straight.

First they have their own food blogs to maintain, posting messages online about what they cooked, where they ate, and how they liked it.

Then there are events drawing dozens of them together, virutally. Is My Blog Burning? (www.ismyblogburning.com) sees food bloggers post recipes based on a certain theme or ingredient on day each month.

Same thing with Sugar High Fridays, except with sweets. The Paper Chef gives food bloggers a weekend to create a dish with a randomly chosen set of ingredients.

As for the big news from the food blog front, last month the winners of the 2004 Food Blog Awards were announced, and a category for best food weblog was recently added to the 2005 Bloggies awards (www.2005.bloggies.com).

Next month the book Digital Dish will be released (to be available online at www.pressforchange.com), compiling more than a year's worth of some of the best food writing found on blogs worldwide.

It's a busy, busy time to be a food blogger.

Some people have contemplated why that is, why growing attention has recently been turned to this aspect of the blogging world. The explanation could simply be found in the numbers, with more bloggers in general signing on over the past year.

Political blogs have already carved their online perch, so perhaps it's time for new topics to explore in wildly personal, sometimes obsessive, usually fascinating, detail.

More personal than magazines, more global than newspapers, food blogs serve up a daily diet of recipes and ingredients, restaurant reviews and food news commentary, food photographs from amateur to stunning, and, at their heart, a description of what people around the world are eating day in, day out.

It's a bit like food porn in that way.

Weblogs have been around for years, although perhaps not people's knowledge of them. Anyone with a computer and internet hookup can create one, basically a personal web page on which you write about whatever interests you or gather links and news items.

When Owen Linderholm asked food bloggers to contribute to a book compilation, he tapped 40 to 50 whose sites were active.

Now he keeps tabs on many more than that for future editions of the book, while filling the world in on what he's cooking at www.tomatilla.com. He started his blog as a way to keep track of his endeavors in the kitchen. He's also the blogger behind The Paper Chef competition.

"It's a pretty vibrant community," he said over the phone from Lafayette, Calif. "Some of them are incredibly good."

That's what Kate Hopkins set out to recognize when she thought up the Food Blog Awards in December. Within days she posted a call for nominations at her site, www.accidentalhedonist.com.

Over the next few weeks, she wittled the votes down to five nominess in each of 16 categories. She tabulated the roughly 8,000 votes and announced the winners last month.

Hopkins wanted to give exposure to the "many many great writers who I felt needed to be appreciated."

"We're reading your sites and we think what your doing is pretty good."

The Seattle resident began her food blog a little over a year ago with the quest of learning about food, one ingredient at a time, and documenting the journey online.

"Next thing I knew, I had 800 people coming to my site," she said. "Those are people who are interested in what you have to say and how you say it."

The food blogging community seems a close-knit and friendly one, with new events popping up all of the time.

Just this past week, food bloggers selected their favourite food items for the newly created online Independant Food Festival Awards (see www.tasteeverything.org/festival for award winners).

The quality of postings and recipes on food blogs vary, naturally, since anyone can post without benefit of an editor. Blogs that attract the most attention and readership share three qualities- interesting topics, good writing and personality - says Jim Elve, a Waterford-based web designer who catalogues Canadian blogs on his site www.blogscanada.ca.

As much as they're writing about themselves, food bloggers also spread an irrestible enthusiasm for cooking and eating fabulous food. They make you want to rush from the monitor and mouse to the spatula and stove.

Now that the holidays are nearly over, I can return this blog back to its righteous course: writing snarky commentary on various ingedients and cuisines, whilst trying to appear educated and worldly.

That being said, it's now time to look at Avocados, the first food I've researched that has appeared to have been named after testicles.

I'll let that sink in for a second or two before continuing.

The name "avocado" comes from the Aztec word ahuacatl, which was also their name for those special male bits. The name makes a bit of sense when looking at the fruit, and also when the hardened seed inside is considered. This may all be factually correct, but it has forever changed the way I'll look at the produce section.

When the Spanish arrived upon the shores of what is now central Mexico, they couldn't correctly pronounce the Aztec word and thus it was transmogrified to " abogado" and then later "avocado".

The avocado originated in Central America, where it was cultivated as many as 7,000 years ago. It was grown some 5,000 years ago in Mexico and, but the time of Christopher Columbus, had become a food as far south as Peru. The avocado was introduced to California in the 19th century, where it flourished. In the United States 95% of the avocados grown are grown in California, with 80% in San Diego County.

There are dozens of cultivars of avocados, with Hass tending to be the most popular here in the United States. Other cultivars include Bacon, Ettinger, Fuerte, Green Gold, Gwen, Kona Sharwil, Pinkerton, Reed, and Zutano. The cultivar Florida is larger and rounder fruit, with a smooth, medium-green skin, and a less fatty, firmer and fibrous flesh, and are occasionally marketed as low-calorie avocados.

Avocados do contain a fair amount of fat but the fat they contain is highly monounsaturated, the kind that's associated with a healthy heart. Avocados are also rich in vitamin E and is a grat provider of potassium, supplying 60% more potassium than your average banana. Avocados are high in fiber, and provide substantial amounts of folate (folic acid), vitamin B6, and pantothenic acid.

So expect three Avocado recipes in the coming days, including, most assuredly, a recipe for guacamole.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Food, Avocados

I received an e-mail the other day, asking me for my commentary on this article in the Economist. The article, initially about the history of wheat but oddly mutates into how genetically modified food will save the world without wheat, hits the major points and accurately reflects the good side of what happens when you feed the people.

But it leaves out one major variable in this component - human greed and it's power to corrupt the best of intentions.

Let it be said here, on the record, that I have no problem with Genetically Modified (GM) Food that has been shown to be safe to both people and the eco-system. The problem is that several of the producers of GM food whose priority is to genetically tamper with crops for the sake of continual revenue, rather than feeding the hungry.

In my opinion, the number one priority of this planet is to ensure that no one goes hungry. This is a bit pollyannish, I know. But hey, I also hope for world peace and believe that love conquers all.

If I believe that we, as a world community, should be able to feed itself, I should also acknowledge the limitations of certain products. A group of limiting products happens to include organic foods. Norman Borlaug, who I talked about here, once said, "You couldn't feed more than 4 billion people" on an all-organic diet.

That's a limitation that's difficult to ignore.

However, what angers me is how the Monsantos and the Archer Daniel Midlands of the world hide behind the shield of good intentions when others criticize their business practices.

"We're trying to feed the world" they shout, when people bring up the fact that these companies are advocates for patenting life forms, or introducing terminator genes into crops. While they may be trying to feed the world, they're trying even harder to ensure regular profits, oftentimes at the expense of feeding the hungry.

Typically, if extensive testing was done on the above practices, with the results made available to the public, I would be willing to give these Bio-Agriculture industries the benefit of the doubt. But they don't wish to be bothered. "Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food," said Phil Angell, Monsanto's director of corporate communications once said in an interview with the New York Times Sunday Magazine. He said, without irony, that testing was the FDA's job.

Which reminds me of a story--

Once upon a time, in order for the FDA to determine if Monsanto's growth hormones were safe or not, Monsanto was required to submit a scientific report on that topic. Margaret Miller, one of Monsanto's researchers put the report together. Shortly before the report submission, Miller left Monsanto and was hired by the FDA. Her first job for the FDA was to determine whether or not to approve the report she wrote for Monsanto. Assisting Miller was another former Monsanto researcher, Susan Sechen.

The result? Monsanto approved its own report.

Doesn't that fill you with safety and joy?

It's practices like these that make me advocate for taking two steps back. Yes, we need to feed the world. As I said, I believe it's our number one priority. If it requires using genetically modified food to do so, then that's what needs to be done.

However, I have little faith in our current crop of bio-ag industries. They're playing with our eco-systems with a minimum of regulation. To say this concerns me is like saying the Titanic ran into a bit of trouble. One wrong step by these folks, and we run the risk of inhibiting our ability to feed ourselves as a country.

So I eat local when it's available, organic when it makes sense to. I give my money to companies and farms who aren't afraid of transparency, who aren't afraid of showing the good with the bad. Because if the business models from Monsanto represent a "better way" then we should redefine what constitutes "better".

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Monsanto, Organic Food, Genetically Modified Food

Tara and I spent Christmas Eve and a bit of Christmas day gallavanting throughout Vancouver. That'd be Vancouver, British Columbia, not Vancouver, Washington, for those of you keen on keeping track of things such as this.

One of the things we were keen on purchasing was a bottle of Amaretto Cream Liqueur, a tasty, overly sweet concoction easily found in the Liquor Stores in Vancouver, but not so much here in the state of Washington. While in the store, we were assisted by a harried, but helpful clerk. After procuring said Amaretto Cream, she asked if there was anything else she could help with. That's when the idea hit me.

Absinthe. Canada sells Absinthe.

Tara and I made a request, and the clerk happily took us to the main office to look at the special collection. There were two options a cheap version and a not so cheap version.

The above scenario represents the quintessential opportunity for companies to take advantage of those who are ignorant of products. Here we have a couple who are only marginally acquainted with a product, and a clerk with even less. The couple has money to spend, but little knowledge. The couple did what the majority of people would do in similar circumstances.

They purchased the more expensive bottle, working under the assumption that more money equates to a more authentic experience.

What Tara and I ended up with was a bottle of Hill's Absinth. Yes, that's Absinth, without an 'e'. With a thujone concentration of 1.5 parts per million, it's not an absinthe in the traditional sense. In fact, some argue that Hill's Absinth isn't Absinthe at all.

After heading back to the hotel, we looked up Hill's on the internet, and came upon bad review after bad review of the product. As the Wormwood Society writes, "Czech 'Absinth' (without the "e" at the end) gets a lot of bad press from absinthe enthusiasts; primarily, that's because it's not really absinthe, but a poor approximation. Most of it is fake."

Well crap. Lesson learned.

Tara and I have decided to hold on to the bottle. After we move into our new abode, we'll pick up a well-researched bottle of Absinthe and report on it here.

Meanwhile, we're determining how to not let this happen in the future, whether it be Absinth, Absinthe, or other product where ignorance is seen as a valued commodity amongst producers.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Absinth, Absinthe

The UK Observer, in an article about Food Blogs (and Pim specifically), called Accidental Hedonist one of the best Food Blogs in the World, mentioned in the same breath as Chocolate & Zucchini, Noodlepie, 101 Cookbooks, Pim and Is my Blog Burning?. I feel very honored at this.

5. Accidentalhedonist

www.accidentalhedonist.com

Nice name. Nice art deco design on the site too. I'm thinking Great Gatsby meets Anne Tyler.

Hmm. Think more along the lines of Nigella meets Michael Moore.

Urgh. I've got a fat man in a baseball cap winking seductively at me in my head.

That's all wrong. You should have a sassy woman who knows her food but also has acerbic comments to make about corporate America and the food industry.

Sounds nice.

Sharp and sweet at the same time. Like a good lemon tart, washed down with plenty of dessert wine.

Not fat and decadent like a Big Mac dissolved in weak lager?

Definitely not.

We were listed as one of the 50 Coolest websites...an honorable mention in the "blogs - food" category. This was damn cool!!

Food
Chocolate and Zucchini

The blogger here is English-speaking Parisian Clotilde Dusoulier, who professes to love every food-related act, from shopping for ingredients to garnishing a plate to consuming the results, and recounts all of it with unpretentious aplomb. Recipes are indexed. Extras include a Bloxicon page, where you can brush up on French culinary terms from cassoulet to ganache, and a helpful Conversions cheat sheet. Honorable mention: The Accidental Hedonist, written with flair by one Kate Hopkins. Newsy, political and practical all at once (she offers 14 pointers "for better enjoyment of your cheese" in a May 27 post). The quotes on each page ("My favorite animal is steak." -Fran Lebowitz ) are like the cherry on top.

In all my years on this planet, I had never eaten quail. I'm not quite sure what to make of that.

Sure, with my lower middle-class upbrining, quail would not have been what one would call typical, but I was certainly aware of the little bird.

I have now rectified this situation with this recipe. Odd, but I feel a tad classist in posting this bit.

The recipe is fairly straightforward. The trick is ensuring the wings and legs of the quails get thoroughly cooked, as they have difficulty hitting the bottom of the pan while in the skillet.

• 3 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1/2 white onion, chopped finely
• 2 links of chorizo, removed from casing and chopped well
• 1/8th teaspoon cumin
• 1/8th teaspoon oregano
• 1/2 apple (golden delicious), chopped finely
• 4 boneless quail
• 1 14oz can diced tomatoes
• 1/2 cup tomato juice
• salt and pepper to taste
• 12 slices polenta

Set a large skillet over medium heat. Place in 3 tablepsoons of olive oil and bring to temperature. Place in garlic and onions, and cook until onions start to become translucent. Add Chorizo, cumin and oregano and cook well.

Place the sausage into a small mixing bowl. Add apple and mix well.

Take a quail, and either sew with baking string, or simply toothpick the left and right breasts together. Stuff the quail with the sausage mixture, and seal the quail by placing a toothpick at the base of the left and right legs. Repeat process for each quail. Set remaining sausage aside.

Add a bit more oil to the skillet, and place each quail inside. Brown each side of the quail (top, left, right, bottom), covering the skillet with the lid at each time.

Once browned, pour 1/2 can of the tomatoes into the skillet and the all of the tomato juice. Cover with lid and allow to cook for 15 minutes, creating a small braise.

Fry up the slices of polenta and place them on a plate.

Remove quail from the skillet and place upon polenta. Add 1/2 cup sausage to the skillet and heat. Mix well, removing and fronds found on the bottom of the pan. Once cooked, spoon sauce over quail. Serve.

Serves 4

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Recipes, Quail

It's never easy to admit when one has made a mistake. But sometimes that's the only thing that has to be done.

The 2005 Food Blog Award Nomination Process was an wonderful success. So much so, that the judging process is still taking place. I completely underestimated the response to these awards, and it has affected the work load of our wonderful judges.

As such, I'm going to move the date of the polls opening from Dec 21st (a deadline that flew by so fast that it had its own discernable doppler effect) to Jan 4th.

This accomplishes two things:

1. It gives the judges more time to work through the thousands of entries.
2. It starts balloting during a time when few people are distracted by elves, trees, and various parties that inexplicable serve alcoholohic beverages mixed with eggs and milk.

I do apologize for setting up people's expectations and then fail at meeting that expecation. It's something I try to do very rarely. But it was my fault for not forecasting the response correctly.

Please...stay tuned after the turn of the new year. The results promise to be worth it.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Food Blog Awards, Blog Awards

I have in my possession one 10 lb goose, who I've named Mrs. Honkington. Mrs. Honkington is quite dead and more than a little cold to the touch. Out of all of my worldly possessions, this slab of frozen goose is my most valuable.

Once I purchase the ingredients for the chestnut stuffing, those will run a close second to the christened poultry.

From mid November until January first, I feel in my element. It's not the recognition of pilgrims, or the rituals surrounding religious festivities that comfort me in this season. Rather, it's the ideal of sharing of experiences and the communication of these communal activities through food. It is food that primarily binds this season together, regardless of culture, regardless of religious tradition. What started this all?

The birth of the sun god Mithra was observed and celebrated on December 25th. Being the "Sun God" in Persia, it makes sense that he was reborn on the shortest day of the year. The Romans, never the most creative folk when creating their gods and goddesses, took the myths surrounding the Persian god and made him their own. The Parties celebrating Mithra soon followed.

Other peoples in northern Europe also observed mid-winter harvest festivals, usually around the winter solstice. Other folks celebrated St Lucy’s Day, Saturnalia, Yule and Twelfth Night. What are some of the common factors amongst these days? Feasting and drinking. The food is the thing.

So as the holiday season is in full swing, I have no problem in following the traditions that go back thousands of years. Feasting with loved ones is a chance to remind myself what is important, and to celebrate that I've survived, enjoyed, and endured another year and I'm still standing.

Standing, but soon to be sitting, enjoying a plate full of roasted goose, and sharing that moment with loved ones.

Happy Holidays to all!

Dr. Vino, a regular participant here, has created a wine quiz for 2005. Every completed and correct entry has a chance to win one of several prizes.

Here's the perfect chance to show off to all your friends and perhaps win a case of wine in the process.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Wine, Wine Quiz

Krista/Kate weighs in with this missive:

Hello, Kate, from another Kate (I decided when I was 16 my given name, Krista, was "more grown up" - family and friends know better, and I have learned to answer to both...)

I have been directing a friend of mine who is trying to lose weight to your site for the info and references on HFCS. Another friend, who disagrees with me on HFCS, sent her this site: http://www.hfcsfacts.com/index.html
While I recognize the bias in a site published by the Corn Refiners Association, I was wondering how to intelligently debate the "facts" presented by the site. Do you have any succinct references on this subject?

Thank you, and keep up the great work on the blog...
--
Krista

Thanks so much for your e-mail Krista. You should be warned that High Fructose Corn Syrup is one of those topics that raises my ire. This is in large part done by the good folks folks at the Corn Refiners Association, who have been tasked with confusing the issues surrounding HFCS so that everyone believes the product to be A-Okay.

Case in point: Their FAQ Question which asks "Is HFCS a "natural" sweetener?". Their answer is extremely disengenuous, so much so, that it borders on lying. Their answer, for those of you disinclined to view their site, is roughly "We meet the USDA's requirement of the definition of 'natural'".

What they don't say is that HFCS is a man-made product. HFCS is not a naturally occuring product, and I don't mean that in the same way I mean that All-Purpose Flour isn't a naturally occuring product. I mean it in the sense that HFCS must be made in a controlled environment, and enzymes not natural to corn products must be purposefully introduced to cornstarch in a very specific order for HFCS to exist.

Cornstarch has to be treated with alpha-amylase enzymes to produce shorter chains of sugars called polysaccharides. Then an enzyme called glucoamylase breaks the sugar chains down even further to yield the simple sugar glucose. Finally the third enzyme, glucose-isomerase, is added to convert glucose to a mixture of about 42 percent fructose and 50-52 percent glucose with some other sugars mixed in.

So when the CRA claims that HFCS is "natural", they are, frankly and bluntly, full of shit. They undoubtedly know this, but hide behind the USDA's very lax label definition of "natural" to give consumers the wrong impression of the product. (For more on the production of HFCS, see here)

But you asked for references to back up your claims. Here's what I got for you.

1. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition: "Consumption of high-fructose corn syrup in beverages may play a role in the epidemic of obesity"
2. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition:"Effect of drinking soda sweetened with aspartame or high-fructose corn syrup on food intake and body weight" (pdf file)
3. Journal of American Medicine Association: "Sugar-Sweetened Beverages, Weight Gain, and Incidence of Type 2 Diabetes in Young and Middle-Aged Women"

There are many more, but most deal with fructose rather than high-fructose corn syrup, so I'm linking the fructose links separately. Those most addressed include A USDA study suggesting that fructose may mess up the magnesium balance in the body, spurring bone loss. Also the University of Minnesota produced a study where it was found that in men, fructose produced “significantly higher levels” of trigylcerides in the blood than glucose does and that “diets high in added fructose may be undesirable, particularly for men.” Finally, University of London researcher P.A. Mayes wrote that excessive fructose consumption causes the liver to release an enzyme called PDH that instructs the body to burn sugar instead of fat.

The Corn folks like to dismiss these findings by stating that Sucrose (table sugar) is 50 percent fructose and 50 percent glucose while HFCS is sold principally in two similar ratios - 42 percent and 55 percent fructose - with the balance made up of glucose and higher sugars.

What they don't tell you is that Sucrose is a bonded molecule while HFCS is not a bonded molecule, and thus the two are not comparable. Comparing sucrose to HFCS would be like comparing a cake to separate piles of flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder and eggs.

Testing is also an issue, as there has been no extensive testing of HFCS. Several journals I've read surrounding this issue have the same phrase in its finding: More testing is required.

The Corn growers response to testing? They say that the FDA has found that HFCS has been labeled as "Generally regarded as Safe". A quick search on that phrase brings us the University of Kentucky's College of Agriculture's definition: "This is used to describe the FDA philosophy that justifies approval of food additives that may not meet the usual test criteria for safety; however, these additives have been used extensively and have not demonstrated any harm to consumers."

Which means, no official government test of these products have occured, but since no one has been proven to have died from said product, it can't be that bad.

I hope this gives you and your friend a good start Krista. My hope, more than anything, is not that your friend does or does not consume HFCS. Let them read the evidence and come to their own conclusion.

Rather, my hope is that your friend realizes that the Corn Refiners Association cannot be fully trusted to tell the whole story.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, High Fructose Corn Syrup, HFCS

Anyone who has visited this site over the past two years will undoubtedly walk away knowing that I am a huge advocate of the blog medium. It's a medium that I've enjoyed exploring. I love the unknown of what food blogs can do and I truly believe that there's a tremendous future ahead for those people willing to put in the time and effort.

I've also learned to avoid comparing food writers of the various mediums out there. Book writers, magazine writers and blog writers all work in their respective milieux, and each requires a different, yet similar, skill set. But I've come across a fair amount of professional food writers who are militantly dismissive of food blogs.

I've never complained when other food writers called food blogger's "obsessive". I prefer to think us passionate. I don't care when we're called sloppy, as I believe the immediacy of the medium can oftentimes trump bad spelling or grammar. I don't blink an eye when we're called amateur food writers, even though many bloggers make the monthly equivalent of one small magazine article sale, if not more. This firmly places them in the position of being "professional" food writers.

My point is that I've refrained from being snippy right back to those who dismiss food blogs, because in large part, I think the medium speaks for itself. It doesn't need me to point out the failures of the food print mediums because those failures are just as redily apparent.

That said, I would like to make an exception to my standard of conduct by quoting something that Regina Schrambling of Gastropoda wrote in her Bites Section about newspapers and stock photographs:

The newest trend in food, at least in newspapers, is using stock photos with recipes. It’s more insidious than outsourcing journalism -- why should the Wall Street Journal shoot a fresh creme brulee from a New Orleans chef when there are iconic images to be had for almost nothing? All cremes brulee are alike, no? All that matters in media anymore seems to be the bottom line, not credibility.

In my experience, I have yet to come across any food blog who uses stock photography to represent the recipes that the writer has created. Period. This is most assuredly a function of the medium, as the food blog writer doesn't have to worry about budgeting for a site photographer, because the writer and photographer are often the same person, something that newspapers can rarely claim.

Consider how many people it takes to get a recipe printed in a newspaper. You have the writer, editor, people who work in the print department, people who sell the ad space on the food pages, human resources, accountants, etc. etc. All of these people are required in order for a food writer to get their article published.

How many people are required to get a post published on a food blog? After the blog is set up, all you need is one person. Granted, you may need someone to help set up your server, or create/install your software, but that cost is minimal (and also out of pocket).

Or to put it another way:

• The amount of money required to get a food article published in a newspaper = $$$$
• The amount of money required to get a food article published on a blog = $

It's no wonder why newspapers are turning to stock photography.

But Regina is absolutely correct in the cost to the credibility of food section newspapers. When you see a picture on a food blog, you know that the author made the dish. The picture is the unspoken truth to that fact. Using stock photographs removes that unspoken truth. At that point, a recipe is simply a recipe, and a reader has no point of reference, no context for what the recipe entails. I'm not saying that a photograph is always needed with a recipe, but it sure helps.

Food Blogs may be many things, including obsessive, sloppy and amateur. But nearly every food blog I've come across has something that many food sections in newspapers lack : authenticity. The use of stock photography only compounds to this problem.

(Thanks to Slashfood for the heads up)

UPDATE: I now know of one food blog that also uses stock photographs. I won't mention their name or URL here. I will say that it's not one that get's mentioned a lot.

Technorati Tags: Food Blogs, newspapers, Food Sections

I haven't had time of late to update the High Fructose Corn Syrup list. To sit down and find out which producers have added this nefarious ingredient to their product takes a fair amount of time for research. I am planning some posts in January about HFCS and sugar, but mostly in regard to the political and financial implications surrounding these ingredients.

In the meanwhile, over at the most-excellant blog Fast Food News, Ken has compiled a list of HFCS products found at various fast food restaurants. He has graciously given me permission to reproduce his list, found beneath the cut.

He's also also working on gluten-free and hydrogenated oil lists for fast food items, so if you're on the lookout for those items, return to his site often for the updates.

Thanks Ken!

Technorati Tags: High Fructose Corn Syrup, Fast Food, HFCS

Read more! »

Here's another recent find in my local Grocer's bin. Called the Pepito Melon,it is native to Colombia, Peru and Chile. The plant is not known in the wild, and the details of its origin are not known. The fruit is grown commercially in New Zealand, Chile and Western Australia. Prior to this past Sunday, I had never heard of the fruit.

Eyes: Outside, it looks like a miniature melon. It's fits nicely in the palm of your hand. This one had a squash yellow skin, with light green striping.

Cutting it opened revealed a deep hay color within the meat of the fruit.

Nose: Flowery and sweet, it reminded me a bit of American cantaloupe, but not as strong.

Taste: It has the texture of cucumbers, but a banana/melon taste to it, with a touch of honey. It was quite good.

Overall: I liked this more than I thought I would. Tasty and in single serving packages, I'm fairly sure that I'll be picking this up the next time I see it in the grocers sections.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Pepino Melon, Fruit, Tasting Notes

One of the several points I disagree with corporatists is how vehemently some companies protect their trademark. While I agree that these companies are required to do so legally, morally speaking it still doesn't make it right. Sometimes, in fact, their behavior seems downright silly.

Take for example, this story.

The company wants an injunction to prevent publisher Simon & Schuster Inc. from using Hershey-owned images to market "Hershey: Milton S. Hershey's Extraordinary Life of Wealth, Empire and Utopian Dreams,"

Here's the kicker: Hershey's does not object to the content of the book, nor to the use of the word "Hershey" in the books title. Just the pictures of the candy bars.

Can someone please let me know why? By the company's own account the content is fine, the use of the company's name is fine, but the pictures of the candy-bars, invented by the guy who runs the company, is off limits? This makes zero sense to me.

Hersheys is quickly becoming one of my least favorite companies out there.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Chocolate, Hersheys, Lawsuits

In addition to the Food Blog awards, and upkeeping this here site, I've been involved in another project: The Well Fed Network. I wanted to give you all a taste of what this new food blog network entails. Here are a few link to the first blogs that we are starting.

• Growers & Grocers
• Paper Palate
• The Spirit World
• Sugar Savvy

I've been thinking about how to introduce this network to everyone. But I think the best way is to give you readers a chance to see the sites as we work out the kinks, bugs and issues. This idea has been with me for over a year now, and it's been a wonder to watch it come to life, warts and all. What's even more amazing is the amount of work that everyone involved has been putting into this.

I'm being intentionally vague on the particulars, but after the new year, expect to hear *much* more about the Well Fed Network. However, if you have any questions about this, feel free to e-mail me at kate AT accidentalhedonist DOT com.

Technorati Tags: Blog Networks, Food Blogs, Food Blog Network, Well Fed

So I found my self looking through the aisles of my local liquor store, as I am wont to do. Lo and behold, I found a bottle calling out for me.

"Kate! Kate!", it cried.

I looked directly at the bottle of Chai liquer and gasped. They had done it. The bastards have done it! Looks like Santa Claus came a little early this year. I plopped me down some moola (around $20 I think) and headed home with my gotten booty ("gotten booty" being the opposite of "ill-gotten Booty, for those of you looking to the annotated version of Accidental Hedonist).

It's called Voyant, and it's imported from Holland. I believe it to be the first of its kind, but that's merely a guess, not a hard fact.

It's taste? It's on the sweet side, so know that going in. It's about half as sweet as Starbucks Chai, but about twice as sweet as traditional chai. It's also a bit viscous, being a thicker consistency than Kahlua, but still quite good. Their website says the liqueur contains aged Virgin Island Rum, Fresh Dutch Cream, Black Tea from India, Premium Spirits from Holland and a Distinctive Blend of Spices from Asia (let's call them the mysterious spices). There's no chemical after taste that you get from time to time with liqueurs. But as I said, it is sweet. It should be treated as a dessert drink.

Speaking of Kahlua, it's plays quite nicely with coffee liqueur, and also spices up your hot teas quite well.

Chai liqueur. I am one happy cat at the moment.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Chai Liqueur, Voyant, Liqueur

Oh the world just became a simpler place to live. No, peace has not been called, nor has the cure for Avian Flu been ditributed to the masses. Alas, it is the discovery of relishes that has opened my eyes toward the land of tasty simplicity.

Some of you may mock. Some of you may sneer. But I stand by this position. The right relish can compliment, even enhance your dinners. Sauces are not the only option.

Take this relish...Please. Ha ha ha. See, this is how happy this dish as made me, as I can paraphrase Henny Youngman without any trace of ironic detachment.

Red Onions and Balsamic Vinegar go together like Nick and Jessica Brad and Angelina. Add green olives, and it's like adding a very comforable third to the mix, without the uncomfortable silences, and petty jealousies. Add it to pork, and it's like Morman Tabernacle Choir singing Handel.

I made this with Panfried Pork Loin, but in truth, any chop or loin cut will work with this.

• 1/2 cup chopped green olives, pitted (I used Picholine)
• 1/2 red onions, peeled and sliced
• 2 Tablespoons Balsamic Vinegar (The better the vinegar, the better the relish)
• 1/4 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
• 1 teaspoon red chili flakes
• 2 garlic cloves, minced
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 4 pork loin chops, about 1 inch thick
• AP Flour

The instructions are easy. Take all of the ingredients, except the pork and flour, and place in a medium mixing bowl. Mix well. Cover with saran wrap and place in the refrigerator to chill.

Place a large skillet over medium high heat with a tablespoon or two of olive oil. Bring to temperature.

Pat the chops down with a paper towel. Coat with flour and tap off any excess. Salt and pepper generously and place in the skillet. Cook 5-7 minutes on one side, flip, and cook 5-7 minutes on the other. Using a meat thermometer, ensure the inside has cook to above 140 degrees F.

When done cooking, place on a plate and allow to set for 5 minutes. Top with the Red onion Relish. Serve!

Serves 4

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Recipes, Pork Chops, Red Onion Relish

Once upon a time, Trader Joes was placing this wine on their shelves— a Chiaro del Bastardo Italian white wine that costs $6.99. Mark Fisher, writer of the wine-blog Uncorked had read about this deal and thought it worth checking out, being a fan of reds that the were made under the same label.

When he got to the store, something was amiss...

About two-thirds of the bottles were what I’d expect to be the color for a 2003 dry white: straw/pale green. The other one-third were deep golden; they looked more like 15-year-old Sauternes. The bottles sat side by side, labeled identically.

Both the Managment of his local Joe's and the nationwide management were initially less than helpful in solving the problem. That is, until he wrote about it on his web blog. Then they decided to do something about it.

Too bad it wasn't quite enough. What Trader Joe's thought was a local issue is now a national one. Now they've removed the wines from all stores nationwide while they try to figure out what went wrong.

Kudos to Uncorked for showing the power of blogs!

Thanks to Tom at Fermentations for pointing this out as well.

Technorati Tags: Wine, Trader Joe's, Wine Blogs

In Medieval England, quite a lot it seems. More than even I suspected:

Calculations based on the amount of barley used for brewing in Conventry during the 1520s indicate that the average consumption of ale was 17 pints of strong ale a week for every man, woman, and child in the town. Statistics for English consumption of beer late in the seventeenth century indicate an annual consumption per person of 832 pints. To put this figure in context, in 1976 the amount was only 209 pints, one fourth the earlier figure.

Keep in mind that milk and water, beverages that we take for granted, were not options due to various health problems associated with not knowing about pesky things like bacteria. But still...17 pints per week for everyone in the town?

I so enjoy articles such as these.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Beer, Drink+History, Ale, Wine

Pim sent this to me and several others, with the intent of getting the word out. Most important point? The Just Giving Page is still up and running. I'll let her state the rest of the issues from here:

-------

Hi everyone!

Those of you on Typepad would have known this already, Typepad went down last night. When they came back up they used a backup copy from a few days ago, and lost all the posts from the last few days!

The problem is all the Menu for Hope pages are GONE! They might come back, I'm sure folks at Typepad are working on it, but I don't want to lose momentum on this. We've been doing so well and go up by over a thousand every day! The last I checked we were at $6,473.00 and unfortunately there had not been any donation since Typepad went down. People must be wondering what is going on when they come to Chez Pim and couldn't find any of the post on Menu for Hope.

Would those of you NOT on Typepad put a post up about this? Please inform your readers that the fundraising page is temporarily down, and we are working to get it up as soon as possible. In the meantime, the donation page at FirstGiving is still up.

Is there anyone who has a copy of the entire menu? If you do you might want to speak up so the rest of us can point to your copy while Typepad works on the problem. Thanks so much.

keep your fingers crossed!
Pim

Technorati Tags: Menu for Hope

Here's another in my series of Holiday Cookies unapologetically swiped from Gourmet magazine (December 2005). This time I used the Fig Swirl recipe on page 114.

The filling is quite tasty. Figs + orange zest = yummy goodness. Rich and sweet with a little bit of...uh...bitterness. Also, I've discovered the most simple of food laws. Let's call it Kate's Law of Baked Cookies. This law states that cookies baked in the oven taste best directly from the oven.

I know, I know. This is hardly news. But as with any scientific law, it's not codified until you put it down in writing.

Cookie Dough

• 1 3/4 cups AP Flour
• 1/4 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/4 teaspoon baking soda
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
• 4 oz. Neufchâtel Cheese (Cream cheese will also work)
• 1 large egg yolk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla

Filling

• 1 cup packed soft dried figs (8 oz.), hard tips discarded
• 3/4 cup of clover honey
• 2 tablespoons fresh orange juice
• 2 teaspoons orange zest
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Sift together the flour, baking soda, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside for a moment.

With a food processor, pulse together the butter, cheese, egg yolk and vanilla, until smooth. Add flour and pulse together until dough forms a ball.

Halve the ball of dough and shape each half into a 6"x2" brick. Wrap in Saran wrap each brick and place in refrigerator for 90 minutes.

While the dough is chilling, puree the figs, honey, juice, zest and cinnamon until smooth. You can do this in a processor or with a mixing stick. Set aside.

After the 90 minutes, place a brick of dough between two sheets of wax paper. Roll the dough into a 8"x10" rectangle. Remove the top wax paper and spread the fig mixture over the bottom half of the dough, leaving about 1/4" border. Using the bottom wax paper, roll the dough into a jelly roll style, halfway.

Flip the dough with wax paper. Remove last wax paper. Spread 1/3 of the remaining fig spread and roll in the same manner to make an 's' style roll.

Repeat the above process with the other dough brick. Wrap the rolls back in Saran wrap and chill for 2-4 hours.

Heat oven to 375 degrees F.

Cut logs into 1/3rd inch slices and place on buttered cookie sheets. Seperate each slice by 2 inches. Place in oven and bake for 12-15 minutes. Transfer to racks to cool. But eating them warm is still the best way to go. Call it chef's prerogative.

Makes 4 dozen cookies

Technorati Tags: Food and drink, Cookies, Recipes, Holiday Cookies

According to Meat & Poultry, Restaurant sales are forecasted to reach $511 billion in 2006. Not only that, but the restaurant industry’s share of the consumer food dollar will be nearly 48%.

Why is this bad for supermarkets? Because if people are spending more money at restaurants, they're spending less at markets for homecooked meals. More money for restaurants means less money for Supermarkets.

Also noted in the article: "As one of the nation’s most aggressive job creators, the industry will employ 12.5 million people in 925,000 locations".

That's almost 5% of our population, certainly more if you remove the populations which don't make up the workforce (children, retired folk, etc).

Technorati Tags: Restaurants, Restaurant Industry, Food, Supermarkets

Wow. Word on the street is that HBO is considering producing a half-hour comedy based on the books of Ruth Reichl.

HBO is teaming with Cary BrokawCary Brokaw, exec producer of "Angels in America" and "Wit," on a half-hour comedy based on the memoirs of food writer Ruth Reichl.

(snip)

Project will pick up with Reichl's second book "Comfort Me With Apples," which covers her evolution from chef to food writer in addition to the dissolution of her first marriage, a sexual awakening at the start of a second and motherhood at the age of 40.

Wow...just...wow.

Look, I'm a fan of Ms. Reichl's books. But I am also a fan of Anthony Bourdain and respect Emeril Lagasse (yes, he's a goofball but the man loves his food). However, I would like to present the following evidence to the court:

Kitchen Confidential

Emeril

Good luck to Ms. Reichl and all involved. But I'm not all that convinced that it may work. Food personalities and TV shows are a tough mix.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Television, Ruth Reichl

Here's a little peek into some backstage shenanigans:

In doing some press for the Blog Awards, a reporter asked me the following question:

"How much influence has Julie Powell had on Food Blogging?"

My answer:

"Very Little. Clotilde over at Chocolate and Zucchini has had far more influence on Food Blogging than Julie".

I calls them likes I sees them.

It may be petty and unprofessional for me to post this tidbit here, but as much as I respect the choices Ms. Powell has made in her life (whether I agree with them or not is inconsequential), at no point will I state on the record that her "influence" upon Food Blogging is anything more than marginal. There's simply way too much that has happened in the community since Julie/Julia closed up shop in 2003.

Candy Canes are one of the few holiday traditions I never really bought into. As a child, I migrated away from the peppermint sticks and towards the LifeSavers Christmas books. In my youth, cherry and butter rum trumped peppermint every time.

But the Candy Canes still represent Christmas to me, even if I don't eat them. The question I have is how did this happen? When did candy canes come to mean Christmas?

The answer lies in the past of course. Sugar, and items containing sugar, were expensive commodities. As such, they were thought of as luxury items, rather than the cheap treats that we view them as today.

Not only was sugar a luxury item, but it was also viewed as medicinal. If someone had a sore throat, or a bit of a cough, to the doctor's they went, where they were giving a sugar crystals or sticks to suck upon.

It probably didn't take long for people to note that theses sticks faired poorly at curing flus and colds, but still tasted rather dandy. They became a treat, more than cure. So much so, that it is said that a choirmaster at the Cologne Cathedral in Germany handed out sugar sticks among his young singers to keep them quiet during the long Living Creche ceremony. Legend has it that to honor the occasion, he had the candies bent into shepherds' crooks, although this is speculation. The first candy canes were almost entirely sugar, no peppermint, and most assuredly had no red striping.

The Christmas aspect comes into play when you realize that treats, especially expensive, hard to come by treats, could not be afforded by the masses with any great regularity. But during those special times when one would spend a little more, candy canes were purchased. As Christmas has been one of the primary "special times" in Europe, the sugar canes became primarily associated with the Holiday.

Confectioners and apothecaries took note of the popularity and started adding flavorings. Cinnamon, anise, and peppermint oil were all probably added for medicinal purposes at first, but as before, people found that these tasted pretty darn good, regardless if you were sick or not. So new flavors were discovered and introduced. The result? The jars of stick candy found at the Cracker Barrel, or other "homey" shops can be traced almost directly back to these creations.

It's reported that it was August Imgard of Ohio who popularized putting the canes on Christmas trees. In 1847, Christmas was coming back into vogue in the United States and the Christmas tree was also gaining popularity. It was only a matter of time before someone put two and two together.

No one knows for sure who put the red stripes on candy cane, or when. But we can look to Christmas Cards to provide some clues. In the late 19th century and prior, cards showed trees decorated with plain white canes. Sometime after 1900 striped ones started appearing on many of the printed cards.

There are some folks who believe the following about Candy Canes -- a faithful Indiana candy maker developed the treat as a witnessing tool. The candy is hard because God's church is founded on the rock. It's white because of Jesus's purity, and the red stands for Christ's blood. Cane's are Peppermint flavored as a reference to cleansing hyssop, and curved to represent a shepherd's staff and/or the letter "J" for Jesus.

Most of claims are likely false, as there's no proof to any of these assertions. Sorry. It'd be easier to prove these claims if one person had invented the candy, but that simply did not happen.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Candy Canes, Food History, Christmas History

Atfer several years and a fair amount of recent bickering, Japan and the good ol' USA have reached an agreement regarding beef imports and exports.

From the Washington Post article:

For the first time since mad cow disease was found in an animal in Washington state two years ago, American beef producers will be able to sell to the once-lucrative Japanese market, Agriculture Department officials said yesterday.

Under an agreement announced in Hong Kong, the United States and Japan will resume purchasing beef from each other.

Or to put it another way, wealthy Americans can now buy authentic Kobe beef again, and the Japanese can now receive beef that has been raised under questionable Mad Cow Testing practices.

Hmmm... I wonder who got the better of the deal here?

To be fair, Japan has also had a recent bout of bad luck with BSE, which undoubtedly put them in an odd position at the negotiation table. But they worked things out, and ironed out a deal that is designed to lower the risk of importing BSE from the United States. The key component in the contract is that Japan will only buy beef from the US that is less that 21 months old when slaughtered.

I'm guessing that the Japanese didn't have the latest information discovered by the Consumer's Union which discovers that the USDA allows the use of the brains of younger cattle, as well as the rest of the carcass, to be fed to pigs and chickens, and then the pigs and chickens can be fed to cows. Oh, and cow blood could still also be fed to calves as milk replacer.

(It should be noted that the Consumer's Union article states that it's the FDA which allows this action to take place. However, it's the USDA that sets these practices. The article has this bit wrong. Draw your own conclusion on the rest of it.)

I'm sure Japan was aware of these facts before signing on the dotted line.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, BSE, Mad Cow, Japan, United States

The server company hosting Accidental Hedonist, will perform a bit of maintenance during next week between December 19th and 20th. They've a fairly heavy upgrade planned that will require recompiling and a lot of other geeky stuff that makes me a happy chica. If you really want the details then you're welcome to leave a comment.

Otherwise, suffice to say that there may be some disruption here at AH next week. Expect one five to fifteen minute interval during the next week where AH is not accessible at all. Additionally, page loading time may be increased during the time it takes technicians to recompile Apache, which may take anywhere from fifteen minutes to two hours depending on the server load and resources available.

If you begin to leave a comment or use a form on AH, press submit, and are greeted with some sort of error, then please remember to use your browser's Back button. It's your friend, especially since most modern browsers keep the contents of forms cached for such occasions.

  -Tara (AH Webmistress)

From the inbox:

Hi Kate,

I love your blog. Thanks for your cheese suggestions. I'm hoping you can help me with a cheese question.

I've been searching the web for the last hour on brie. I'm disappointed. It seems that lots of folks want to cut the rind off before serving, or dress it up with honey and puff pastry. I haven't found any info on how to ripen your brie so it is ready in time for a party. I was at a very nice wine tasting today where they served very nice cheeses. I loved the Le Delice and Saint Andre cheeses, and they were served ripe- soft and delicious. The Presidente Brie on the other hand, was warm but not ripe- tough throughout, and cut almost like it was cold. Also, folks were eating the center out of the brie which was kind of weird, but made sense as it was so hard. Are we Americans simply baking our Brie and eating the center out rather than learning how to ripen it? The whole situation seems very odd.

I wish I knew how to time the ripening of my Brie. Right now I just leave it in the fridge forever until I remember I forgot about it, then warm it, and dig in to fabulousness. Although it is possible that my love of old stinky cheeses is making me turn Brie into a new animal- a limburger alternative.

Thanks for any insight,

Elisa

Ah Elisa, you've discovered something that shocked me when I finally understood what was going on. In short, we Americans are woefully uneducated in the way of cheese. For proof of this fact, one needs only to peruse the dairy aisle and see the huge chunks of orange monstrosities that can only be called cheese in the loosest definition of the term.

But we are getting smarter, even if it's only through small steps. That people are now eating brie* on a regular basis is a good thing, as I think brie can be best called a "gateway cheese". If served well, brie can help people move on to more complex and interesting cheeses.

But there's the question, isn't it? How does one serve cheese well? The answer is simple, but may require you to take a leap of faith.

For years we've been told "don't leave food out!", for fear of disease and expanding bacteria that causes it. What's been lost is that bacteria and cheese are best of buds and their friendship should be encouraged. The most efficient way to do this is to let the entire cheese get to room temperature. The side benefit from this is that some cheeses will get to that beautiful runny consistency, including some of the better bries that are out there.

My own rule of thumb when it comes to cheeses is the following: Once I purchase a cheese, if I intend to eat all of it within 2 days, it will never see my refrigerator. This may abhor some of you out there. Some of you may abhor my choice. I won't deny that there may be risks involved, but the rewards far outweigh them. For the record, an eater of room temperature cheese has about a 1 in 100,000 chance of getting the disease that comes from eating at risk foods (listeria). However, if you're pregnant or if your immune system is compromised, you may want to consider your options, as you're more at risk.

Lest you think that I am alone in this recommendation, let me point you to a tool that Jack had pointed out to me, the Cheese Safe. The goal of the safe? To provide a space on your countertop that allows your cheese to ripen over a day or two.

In getting back to your question Elise, here's what I recommend. Let your brie sit out at least 24 hours prior to when you wish to serve it. When you serve it, dig in to the soupy, runny part that the rest of your friends are ignoring. The taste will be worth it.

* It should be noted that most bries found in the States are in fact, not brie at all. True brie is made with raw milk, and not pasteurized milk. It makes all the difference in the world.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, cheese, cheese ripening

This is a small shout out to the folks at Feedster. They and their judges were kind enough to nominate me and this site as a finalist in their "Feed of the year" award.

How cool is that! Thanks guys! Thanks to Tara as well, who's responsible for a majority of the tech features found on this here site which several of the judges noted.

Technorati Tags: Feedster, Feed of the Year

Cheese Biscuits are one of those items that simply must be tasted directly from the oven, the threat of third degree burns be damned. I rank a good cheese biscuit taste up there in the top ten tastes of all time.

This recipe is what one would call a "processor recipe", in that you make it primarily in your food processor. It's not complicated, nor is it overly aesthetic, but the taste is definitely worth it.

• 6 oz Cheddar cheese, cubed (although other semi-hard cheeses would do)
• 1 1/2 cup AP flour, sifted
• 5 oz salted butter, chilled and diced
• sesame seeds and cayenne pepper to garnish

Pulse your cheese in a food processor until it's a crumb like consistency. Add the flour to the food processor and blend well.

While blending, add bits of the butter, a little at a time. Allow the dough to form. When the butter is gone, spoon the dough from the processor into a medium sized mixing bowl. Place in the refrigerator for at least one hour, but preferably over night.

To bake, pre-heat your oven to 400 degrees F. Roll out the dough about 1/2" thick. Cut into squares and then cut the squares along the diagonal.

Place onto a baking sheet covered with parchment paper. Top with sesame seeds, cayenne pepper, or both. Place in the oven and cook 6 minutes. Do not over cook or the biscuits will quite literally melt.

Remove from oven and serve hot.

Makes 2 dozen +

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, recipes, biscuits, cheese biscuits

It feels very odd announcing this, because I think and hope it may be indicative of other things to come at this site. Things have been pretty good around

I have recently signed a content agreement with the fine, fine people at Newstex. They will distribute the RSS feed of this site to people who use their various products and newsfeeds. In return, I get paid. How much I get paid will be determined by the amount of people who subscribe to my feed multiplied by the amount of days in any given month when Seattle has clear skies.

Or something like that. I didn't read the contract in great detail.

I'm very excited about this deal, regardless of the financial opportunities it may or may not provide.

On a side note - expect an even larger announcement sometime in the next week. I can't speak about it of yet, but I believe it may create a bit of a hullabaloo in the Food Blog Community.

Technorati Tags: Newstex, Accidental Hedonist

Speaking of glühwein...

Have you ever wondered what to do with your less than wonderful wines that are sitting on your rack? Stuck in the middle of the Holiday Season with nothing to do?

Friends, do I have a solution for you!

During the Middle Age, wine was popular and was even cultivated in what is now Southern Germany. It became so popular that wineries grew forth in areas as far north as Hamburg. The wines in the area were not what one would call -- well, good, I suppose. Some of them could only be made drinkable by adding some spices and heating them.

If you wish to make the below recipe, it is quite okay to use a lower than average wine. I'd still stay away from the Ripple, but those that fall on the lower end of the scoring scales that are out there will do nicely. Add honey or sugar to taste, and you're on your way. It's a decent brew, but I have to admit to not finishing my cup.

• 2 1/2 cups water
• 3 teaspoons Loose leaf Darjeeling Tea
• 2 bottles red wine
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 10 cloves
• Juice of 1/2 orange
• zest of 1/2 orange
• Juice of 1/2 lemon
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
• 3/4 cup clover honey

Heat the water, as you will be making some tea. Bring it to a boil. Pour into a small bowl along with the three teaspoons of tea leaves. Allow to steep for 5 minutes. Then pour into a large sauce pan.

Pour in the red wine and all of the other ingredients into the ted, except the honey. Place over low heat and bring to a simmer (185 degrees F). Allow to simmer for 1-2 hours. Add the honey at the end.

Ladle in a mug and serve with a slice of orange.

Serves 8

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, glühwein, Christmas Drinks, Christmas

It is the season of giving,the season of love and of joy for our fellow man.

Pim, continuing the tradition started last year, has organized Menu for Hope II. Food Bloggers world wide are participating to raise money for charity. We are raising money for Unicef. The funds will be earmarked for the earthquake victims in Northern India and Pakistan.

How are we going to accomplish this? Through an online raffle drawing. Several food bloggers (myself included) have provided various gifts and prizes packages. Me? I have donated two Italian cookbooks by Marcella Hazan.

Each $5 donated will give you one chance (or one virtual raffle ticket) to wine a prize of your choosing. All you need to do to bid on item is state in the 'comment' section of your donation form which prize you would like to be drawn for.

You can also donate more than $5 of course, each $5 will give you one chance at one prize. (Yes, you are allowed to specify more than one gifts if you donate more than $5.)

No money will go through our hands. Just Giving will do the collection and forward all the money raised directly to Unicef.

Over there in the right colum is a graphic that will take you directly to the Just Giving site. Then give what you can.

Technorati Tags: Menu for Hope II, Unicef, Charity

I am completely overwhelmed by the response to the awards so far. We have easily over 700 nominations and it has been a labor of passion to review each site nominated by you readers out there.

So this is a reminder...Nominations will be accepted until Midnight this Friday. Comments for the below posts will close at that time and we will then start the judging process.

Feel free to nominate your favorite food blog sites for the categories below the jump.

Read more! »

I found myself pawing through the cookbook section of the downtown Barnes and Noble. I had been looking for recipes for the Holiday season and what better way to become inspired than to see what Martha, Craig and others have done previously.

As I perused through a fourth book of Holiday recipes, a small voice started speaking to me.

"There's something wrong here. Look closer at the recipes."

I shook my head and blinked. I refocused my eyes and started reading the recipes with more intensity.

Wassail, Egg Nog, Plum Pudding, Fruitcake; all of these recipes flew by my eyes. Something was indeed wrong. But what?

I looked at the ingredient lists, and the reality became clear -- All of the recipes that had traditionally contained some measure of brandy, rum or ale now sat before me, neutered. Even a recipe for glühwein, which has the German word for wine in its name, told us to recreate the recipe with mulled tea sans wine.

How did this happen? Have some of us become so frightened of alcohol that we've removed it as an option in cooking? Or is it simple ignorance of how these recipes originated?

I can respect the fact that some people don't like the taste of alcohol. But for me, the idea of egg nog without rum is as silly as tofurkey -- A cheap recreation of a dish for someone who doesn't like what the traditional recipe represents.

Me? I like spirits. I believe them to be some of the most complicated tastes in the world. They add a uniqueness to many recipes that are impossible to recreate. To remove them from a recipe is akin to removing garlic or curry from a recipe.

I don't think there's a concerted effort here, but I do find the lack of Christmas recipes without spirits disheartening. Trust me when I say that those of you drinking wassail made only from apple juice, or having a fruitcake that hasn't been drowned in brandy are missing out on something exquisite.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Christmas recipes, spirits

Remember the Starbucks Challenge that I posted about here on a couple of occasions?

Seems like a fella' with a wee bit of smarts collected comments with del.icio.us tags, and created an interactive map for all of us to review each incident individually.

The map, as he writes, "summarizes the results of the Starbucks Challenge - initiated by green LA girl and CityHippy to check Starbucks' promises regarding Fair Trade Coffee."

Technorati Tags: Starbucks Challenge, Google Maps

This one here comes from the comments section

I hope you can help with a question I have....a friend told me that there is a small amount of caffeine that occurs naturally in lettuce and many other fruits and vegetables! Is there any validity behind this statement? Anxiously awaiting answer.

Thank-you

Lana

Hi Lana! Thanks for your question.

Your friend has laid a new one on me, as I have never heard that. I did a quick search for nutrional data on Lettuce and have come up with a conclusive answer. There is no caffeine in lettuce. All three major cultivars of lettuce (romaine, iceberg and butter) come up with the big goose egg in the caffeine department.

Ironically, you can find a bit of tryptophan in lettuce. You remember tryptophan, right? It's the Amino acid that urban legend says is responsible for us feeling so sleepy after eating Turkey. Yes, it is an urban legend.

As far as other fruits? According to Nutrition Data, there doesn't seem to be any. This makes sense when you understand that for the plant, caffeine may act as a natural pesticide. It paralyzes and kills some of the insects that attempt to feed on the plant. As fruits carry seeds, it would be innefficient for a plant to kill the primary vehicle used to distribute said seeds.

Thanks for the question Lana, I enjoyed researching this one, as I found it things I hadn't known before.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Lettuce, Caffeine

Gakked from here.

thanks to Jessica!

Jack once again points me to a great essay in the NYTimes, entitled "Real Food Doesn't Hold Still" (LI/PW - accidental/hedonist), which brings to light an issue I briefly touched upon during my recent review or Mark Bittman's new cookbook: that many of the cookbooks out there are not cookbooks in the traditional sense, but rather a publicity tool used to heighten a food personality's caché and credibility.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

As the writer of the piece, Andrew Scrivani points out:

...I own cookbooks that will never make their way into my kitchen. One is Thomas Keller's "Bouchon" (Artisan, 2004), so heavy and cumbersome that as Kramer did on "Seinfeld," I could put legs on it and turn it into a coffee table.

I also exclude "Bouchon" and the recent "Nobu Now" by Nobuyuki Matsuhisa (Clarkson Potter) from my kitchen for philosophical reasons. To me, they are not cookbooks but extraordinarily beautiful advertisements for very successful restaurants.

My standard for cookbooks is simple. They have to make me want to cook. I'm not looking for the perfect recipe, because how does one qualify "perfection"? Instead, when I look in a cookbook, I'm moved to recipes that teach and inspire me to get into the kitchen. When I look at Bouchon, I get inspired as well, but I get inspired to head out to a top tier restaurant.

Again, not that this is a bad thing.

But it is crucial as a consumer of cookbooks to know what the intent of a cookbook is. If you're buying a 40 dollar cookbook, and you're afraid to get flour on it, my guess is that you purchased a cookbook that's meant as promotional material.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drinks, Cookbooks

The Institute of Medicine released a report on Tuesday that takes the food marketing peeps to task for their less than productive way in encouraging kids to eat well. In fact, the report says that Food and beverage marketers do the exact opposite, by stating that "there is strong evidence that exposure to television advertising is associated
with adiposity in children ages 2–-11 years and teens ages 12–-18 years." An Ad Age report (BS login required) on the study likens it to the watershed 1964 Surgeon General’s report on tobacco.

Alas, no one else seems to think so, as I couldn't find another news organization who picked this up.UPDATE The AP Wire service has picked up the story, so this story is now making its way across the internet.

Lucky for y'all that I happened to upload the report to my server here, so you don't have to go looking for it. If this kind of thing is your bag, read the report and draw your conclusions.

I will tell you my favorite parts:

• Along with many other intersecting factors, food and beverage marketing influences the
  diets and health prospects of children and youth.
• Food and beverage marketing practices geared to children and youth are out of balance
  with healthful diets and contribute to an environment that puts their health at risk.
• Food and beverage companies, restaurants, and marketers have underutilized potential
  to devote creativity and resources to develop and promote food, beverages, and meals
  that support healthful diets for children and youth.
• Achieving healthful diets for children and youth will require sustained, multisectoral,
  and integrated efforts that include industry leadership and initiative.
• Public policy programs and incentives do not currently have the support or authority to
  address many of the current and emerging marketing practices that influence the diets of
  children and youth.

I'm still, um, digesting the contents of this report, and will follow up in a bit.

Technorati Tags: Food+and+Drink, Diet, Marketing, Obesity

Another cookie recipe, another week of me shamelessly harvesting content from a food Magazine. This time, the magazine is the December 2005 issue of 'Gourmet'. The recipe? Rustic Nut bars (found on page 110, for those of you playing at home).

These bars turned out great. However, it should be stated that you should enjoy nuts if you wish to make these cookies. If you're sorta kinda indifferent to nuts, then you should probably avoid this recipe. Why? Because each bar is about 80% nuts, which may allow you to quickly OD on them.

Thankfully for me I love cashews, hazelnuts, almonds and pistachios. The results here reminded me of a cookie version of the PayDay bar, sans nougat. It's quite good.

Cookie

• 2 1/3 cups AP Flour
• 1/2 cup bakers sugar
• 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/2 stick (3/4 cup) chilled unsalted butter, diced
• 1 large egg

Topping

• 3 oz. whole almonds, with skin
• 4 oz chopped hazelnuts
• 2/3 cup clover honey
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 6 Tablespoons unsalted butter, chilled and in slices
• 2 Tablespoons heavy cream
• 6 oz cashews, salted and roasted
• 5 oz pistachios, shelled and salted

Place oven rack in the middle position and pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees F.

In a large mixing bowl, sift together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt. With a fork, start adding the pieces of butter, bit by bit. Use the tines of the fork to mash the butter. Continue this process with the butter and fork smashing until all the butter is gone and the flour-mixture looks like a coarse meal in pea-sized butter lumps.

Add the egg to the flour. Here I used my (clean) hands to mix the dough thoroughly, squeezing the dough to incorporate the butter efficiently.

Place the dough in a 13"x9" buttered glass baking dish.Press the dough evenly on bottom. Do not press up the sides of the dish.

Place the dish in the oven and bake for 20 minutes. Remove, and allow to cool for 40 minutes. Set aside.

Meanwhile, reduce the oven temperature to 350 degrees F. Place the almonds and hazelnuts in a shallow baking dish and roast in the oven from 8-10 minutes. Remove, and increase the oven temperature back to 375 degrees F.

In a medium sized sauce pan, bring the honey, brown sugar and salt to a small boil over a medium heat. Stir until the sugar has dissolved. Then boil, without stirring for 2 minutes. Add butter and cream and continue to boil for one minute, allowing the butter to melt. Remove from heat and add all of the nuts to the syrup, coating thoroughly.

Spread nut mixture over the cookie crust. Place baking dish back in the oven and bake for 20 minutes or until the top has carmelized and bubbled. Remove from oven and allow to cool in refrigerator for an hour.

Cut and serve.

Makes 64 bars, depending on the size of your cut

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Holiday Cookies, Recipes, Cookies

...hopefully.

For those of you who participated in last years award can attest, I'm doing things a little different this year. This year I've added judges.

Why, you ask? In order to give the smaller sites a chance. Popularity was a factor in several categories during the nomination process last year. Although I had no problem with that in the introductory year, I thought it best to allow quality to play a larger factor during the nomination period this year.

Which is why I had asked several people to give up the chance of their site winning an award this year, and volunteer to review every site nominated in every category. The hope is that amongst the five judges, we can acheive a level of consensus about the best of the best. I'll explain the process in a moment. But first, let me introduce the judges.

We have:

• Paul:Kiplog. He's the "Keeper of the Food Blog list"®.
• Owen:Tomatilla. He Published a book of the best food blog writing of 2004 called Digital Dish.
• Derrick:An Obsession with Food. Derrick has written in The Art of Eating and is one of the several food blog pioneers.
• Megan:I Heart Bacon. She's a Web Designer, a voracious food blog reader, and runs possibly the best named blog out there.
• li'l ol' me: Accidental Hedonist. I run the site you're currently reading.

These are the judges, and please vist their sites when you have a moment. All of them are working hard to make this a great and fair event for everyone participating.

To see what the judges are tasked with, click below the jump.

Read more! »

Last week I had linked to an article entitled "10 things your butcher won't tell you". Regular reader and professional butcher Jace read the article and wrote me, saying that (and I'm paraphrasing here) she was full of it. I asked him to provide his perspective, and he agreed.

So I'm handing the keys of this blog over to him for one post.

Oh, and feel free to stop by Jace's blog. The man knows his meat.

Many misconceptions seem to be rampant amongst American food aficionados regarding their meat supply. Some seem misguided, some misdirected. Some are just flat-out wrong. When Ms Black wrote her article, it seems she brought up some issues regarding the meat industry that the consumer should be aware of, but took it to far and accused your local butcher of being inept.

She writes: “'I've [a butcher] never touched a bandsaw or even handled a side of beef.' Their main job now is to cut up smaller pieces, known as primals, into individual portions, as well as to shape and tie roasts, and to grind meat for sale.”

She's only telling half of the story, and inflating the issue that she is actually right about. It is only partially true that your neighborhood butcher hasn't handled a side of beef or a bandsaw. Many meat cutters haven't ever handled a side of beef because it is largely unnecessary. It doesn't take much skill at all to break down a side of beef, hence Tyson/IBP, Excell, et. al's ability to pay unskilled, immigrant labor to do this for them. If you showed an experienced retail meat cutter where the primals come from (not that they wouldn't have a general idea anyway), I'm sure they could do it with minimal instruction. At that point, it's just a giant jigsaw puzzle. Lastly, only a few subprimals can just be sliced and packaged. And, those that can, such as the shortloin and rib, still have to be cut on a bandsaw, even in a retail environment.

Nearly every chain grocery store still employs actual meat cutters with knowledge and skill. It's the chains such as Wal-Mart and SuperTarget (who used to, and who still employ people with the skill but who rarely use it) who do not wish to appease their customers by taking on a slightly higher payroll.

When she says of your butcher, "No special orders," Ms. Black is just being absurd.
I've never worked in nor shopped in a single grocery store that refused to place or fill special orders for customers. At a store with small volume, I have insisted that a customer buy a certain percentage of my minimum order. It might be impossible to move an entire case of tongue or oxtail or side of lamb unless the person requesting it buy at least half. Many times customers aren't happy about it, but can a consumer really expect a manager to order in several hundred dollars worth of product that won't sell?

Furthermore, I've always encouraged special ordering, especially around the holidays. It prevents rushes and empty cases. Most any store will gladly fulfill the request of any customer, assuming that it is legal, financially feasible for both client and store (and sometimes for an exceptionally good client, they overlook the profitability), and won't destroy the productivity.

The precut, pre-packaged beef sold at stores such as Wal-Mart are the products the consumer should actually scorn. Theses places don't even hire butchers anymore, and cannot fulfill your requests because they're limited in their ordering and don't have the facilities to do so. This is not the type of service that consumers should put up with. If you shop in a grocery store that doesn't offer a full service meat case, you should find another store. If you're so remote as to only have places like Wal-Mart to shop, you likely live rurally enough for there to be plenty of meat processors who will sell sides and quarters of beef and hog to order—your specific order.

That Ms. Black thinks that it would be a surprise that convenience products are the most profitable for the meat counter is a surprise in and of itself. “Value-Added” product is the bread and butter of the entire food industry, from three-star restaurants to the local Sizzler salad bar. I sell assembled sirloin kabobs at four dollars a pound and am not only making my usual 100% markup on the sirloin, but I'm also making 400% markup on the veggies. The money savvy consumer should already realize this. When I shop for chicken, I don't buy anything other than whole fryers because I know how marked up the parts are. I assemble my own kabobs at home and pay retail for the veggies instead of the marked up price from the case. I make my own marinades at home. People pay more for convince foods all throughout the store, so why should the meat case be any different?

Aside from the previously mentioned convenience foods, and poultry in general, her assertion regarding added salinity is completely untrue . Chickens, turkeys and ducks are all brined before hand, often in the case of IQF (individually quick frozen) chicken breasts, much higher than necessary. This is mainly done for flavor. Can you imagine how dry your thanksgiving turkey would be if there wasn't at least a 6% brine added to the turkey? The average or below average cook's nightly chicken dinner? They would taste like rubber. Saline is like hedging your bet that the consumer will ruin your product. Brining has become more and more en vogue, but often it's completely redundant. As far as beef and pork, the USDA does NOT allow this. It does not occur. Beef and pork are nearly always sold natural and minimally processed. In the case of the meat case, it is never done.

So farwe've made it halfway though Ms. Black's article and not one of her points have been true of the industry as a whole, or even as a majority. But the second half, she beings to make some decent points, although poorly researched and not coming to a complete thought on them.

"You are what the animal eats."

"This beef's 'all natural' — whatever that means."

Ruminants are no longer fed bone meal made from ruminants. It's that simple. The recent crackdown on BSE has made that illegal, and the Cattlemen's Association has been discouraging it for even longer than that. Our beef supply isn't the safest, especially without mandatory testing for BSE, but our beef supply is not at grave risk. Sure, free range, grass fed cattle is best, especially for the discriminating taste, but is it affordable? Consumers are outraged when I show them the wholesale price of organic, free range cattle. It's as if they can't seem to realize that it is much, much more expensive to produce. It requires vast stretches of land, three years of dormancy of the land (what rancher can afford to let acres lay unused for years?) and many more ranch hands to drive the cattle than are used within feed lots.

What she neglects to point out is this: fifty years ago, the crème de la crème of beef was grainfed. Feeding grain to cattle produces fatter, tastier beef, but people didn't do it often because it was expensive and wasteful. Most people today haven't ever had grass fed beef, and many who have don't care for the taste. It has a strong, distinct, grassy taste. People should be concerned with the health of the animal and use of hormones, antibiotics and pesticides, but they should also be willing to pay the costs. It's simple supply and demand at this point.

Another point that she addresses that the consumer needs to know for their own health and safety is the issue of ground beef and I absolutely stand by this. Most places get pre-ground tubes of beef and then run it through a grinder a second time. These pre-ground beef products, along with pre-made beef patties are the main source of E. Coli. I almost always by whole-muscle meats and grind them (through a freshly sanitized grinder) for my own personal consumption, especially because I like my burgers rare. Whole muscles are nearly impossible to be a carrier for E.Coli. I gladly tell my clientèle this too, if they ask me what the best is, and I have no problem doing for them what I do for myself. I find that most people just don't care, and most people who regularly consume ground beef cook it thoroughly, anyway.

But as she makes some good points, she starts to lose it again:

"It's not all that clean back here."

Every place I've ever worked at or shopped at is probably cleaner than your home kitchen. Really. Do you scrub down every work surface every day, and use a sanitizer solution on every submersible part? Are your floors and walls washable? And I don't mean just a damp sponging? The only problem that I have ever run into was starting at a chain grocery store where in between species of animals they would simply wipe the boards with a rag soaked in sanitizer. This is a somewhat serious cross contamination issue, and I called the health department. The chance of actual transmission of food-borne illness is slim to none if you're cooking your food to the recommended temperature, but that's the worst I can come up with. Most stores have extensive ServeSafe training, and have major measures in place to prevent food-borne illness transmission. The last thing a store wants to be is culpable for the illness of a customer due to their product. In all my training this has been constantly drilled into the heads of the meat cutters

Our best option as consumers is to just look around. Watch the workers for a few minutes. Look at the floors. Look for dust. If there's dust, then things aren't being cleaned on a regular basis. Most markets are perfectly clean.

"These pork chops could come from anywhere."

After Canada confirmed cases of mad cow in 2003, consumers suddenly became interested in the origin of their meat. But it's not often easy to tell. Meat from Argentina, Australia and Canada, among other places, is available in supermarkets, bearing a USDA stamp.
I'd love to see her source on this. The borders are now completely closed for beef, fowl and pork imports. There are multiple injunctions in place, the majority still there despite stricter laws in places like Canada regarding the testing of meat. “Exotic meats” such as goat and lamb are allowed in, but are required to display the country of origin, and are inspected by the USDA. Even if not prominently displayed at the point of sale, your butcher can tell you the source in a heartbeat because all of the incoming meat is clearly marked.

At last she attempts to address the issue that all consumers should be most aware of when buying meat--their own health and the risk of food-borne illness. However, it is much simpler to control than she makes it out to be. There are two main threats to your health when buying meat in America: E.Coli through pre-ground meats and patties, and Salmonella, which affects 1 in 2 chickens sold in the US. Both of these are easily prevented with the right handling and cooking. In fact, all meat in the US is sold with a safe handling label. Follow this and you're fine.

“Freeze or refrigerate meat as soon as possible after buying it, and thaw in the refrigerator, not on the counter. Cook meat thoroughly; juices should be brown, not pink or red. Place cooked meat on clean plates, and never reuse dishes that have been in contact with raw meat. Finally, serve immediately, or keep meat hot,”are the words she leaves us with. The best part of her article, and information that any butcher will gladly share with you.

Here are my tips to you, dear reader. Choose a reliable butcher that is bright, clean, friendly and is willing to get to know you by name. Always be friendly, never argumentative, and express your interest and knowledge. Ask questions. Ask for recommendations. Become a regular. You will receive the best service if the meat man knows that he has to retain you as a customer for the good of the business.

Oh, and a nice tip at Christmastime will always ensure you get the very choicest cuts.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Meats, Butchers, Beef, Poultry

It's back! You've spent precious time working on your blog. You've traveled 175 miles in order to find that one special ingredient for a recipe. You've eaten food at less than reputable institutions. You've been hammered by requests from Hefty-Trash bags to pimp their plastic plates.

We think you need to get some kudos for all of your hard work.

It's time for the 2nd annual Food Blog Awards! Here's the chance to say "Hey, my food blog is worthy of attention!" Conversely, it's also the chance to say "Hey! My favorite food blog is also worthy of attention!"

Over the month of December, we're going to ensure that people recognize the quality writing and photography that go on in our community.

Here's how it's going to work - Between now and Friday, December 16th, we're accepting nominations in several categories, that are listed below. After the 16th, a group of judges will review the nominations, and submit five sites for your approval. From Dec 21st through December 31st, the polls will be open for people to vote.

We're excited about these awards. Last year, the awards and some of the winners were featured in dozens of newspapers and magazines world-wide.

We will announce the judges in a post later this week, as well as explain their duties, in order to maintain a fair amount of transparency.

So, here are catgories . Start nominating as the 2005 Food Blog Awards begin...now!

• Best Food Blog - Wine, Beer and other Spirits
• Best Food Blog - Chef
• Best Food Blog - City
• Best Food Blog - Theme
• Best Food Blog - Food Industry
• Best Food Blog - Humor
• Best Food Blog - Recipes
• Best Food Blog - Restaurant Reviews
• Best Non-Blogging Food Site
• Best Group Blog
• Best Food Blog - Writing
• Best New Blog
• Best Food Blog - Photography
• Best Post - People's Choice
• Best Overall Food Blog - People's Choice

Technorati Tags: Blog Awards, Food Blog Awards

This Food Blog Award is fairly straight forward. I am looking for nominations for Food Blogs that do restaurant reviews, at least one a month, for seven consecutive months. Yes you can nominate yourself. Please put your nominations for this category in the comment section of this post only!

The winner of this category will receive a Digital Scale provided by the good folks at CalorieLab.

The Call for Nominations will close at Midnight, December 16, 2005 Pacific Standard Time.

Technorati Tags: Blog Awards, Food Blog Awards

I am looking for nominations for any food blog which covers the food industry. You can define food industry in any way, be it the restaurant industry, agra-business, wine industry, whatever. The site must have 4 posts per month covering this industry, for seven consecutive months. Yes you can nominate yourself. Please put your nominations for this category in the comment section of this post only!

The winner of this category will receive a digital scale provided by CalorieLab.

The Call for Nominations will close at Midnight on Friday, December 16 2005 Pacific Standard Time.

Technorati Tags: Blog Awards, Food Blog Awards

This award will go to the one blog that focuses on one specific theme. This could be a food blog that's dedicated specifically to hamburgers, grilling, chili peppers or any other singular topic. Please exclude wine from this category, as they will have their own category. Yes you can nominate yourself. Please put your nominations for this category in the comment section of this post only!

The winner of this category will receive a prize from Barret and Meg over at Too Many Chefs.

The Call for Nominations will close at Midnight on Friday, December 16 2005 Pacific Standard Time.

Technorati Tags: Blog Awards, Food Blog Awards

This category is for any Food Blog that covers the food scene surrounding a specific city. The site must have 4 posts per month covering this city, for seven consecutive months. Yes you can nominate yourself. Please put your nominations for this category in the comment section of this post only!

Winners of this category will receive Two cookbooks, Alan Wong's "New Wave Luau" and Roy's "Feasts from Hawaii" plus a mystery prize from 'ono kine grindz.

The Call for Nominations will close at Midnight on Friday, December 16 2005 Pacific Standard Time.

Technorati Tags: Blog Awards, Food Blog Awards

This category is fairly straightforward. It's for any food blog written by a chef. The chef should be able to prove that they worked, as a chef, or cook at some point during this year, and have posts on their site to prove it. The level of the chef is unimportant. It could be a Food Network star, or the person making hot dogs from a cart. Yes you can nominate yourself. Please put your nominations for this category in the comment section of this post only!

The winner of this category will receive a Digital Scale provided by the good folks at CalorieLab.

The Call for Nominations will close at Midnight on Friday, December 16 2005 Pacific Standard Time.

Technorati Tags: Blog Awards, Food Blog Awards

This category is for any blog that deals with wine, beer or spirits. The site must have 4 posts per month covering wine, beer or other spirits for seven consecutive months. Yes you can nominate yourself. Please put your nominations for this category in the comment section of this post only!

The winner of this category will receive a prize sponsored by Jack and Joanne at Fork & Bottle.

The Call for Nominations will close at Midnight on Friday, December 16 2005 Pacific Standard Time.

A person may nominate more than one web site.

Technorati Tags: Blog Awards, Food Blog Awards

This category is for the Food Blog Site which consistenly makes you laugh. The site must have at least 4 posts per month, for seven consecutive months. Yes you can nominate yourself. Please put your nominations for this category in the comment section of this post only!

The Winner of this blog will receive a prize from Fork & Bottle, Tea Gift Pack from Adagio Teas, and a "Pull My Finger Gift Set" from hotsauceblog.com.

The Call for Nominations will close at Midnight on Friday, December 16 2005 Pacific Standard Time.

Technorati Tags: Blog Awards, Food Blog Awards

This is for the site that consitently posts the best recipes that inspire you to cook. The recipes should be either their own, or should acknowledge the source of the recipe in the posts. The site must have at least 4 posts per month that are recipes, for seven consecutive months. Yes you can nominate yourself. Please put your nominations for this category in the comment section of this post only!

The winner of this category will receive a Digital Scale provided by the good folks at CalorieLab.

The Call for Nominations will close at Midnight on Friday, December 16 2005 Pacific Standard Time.

Technorati Tags: Blog Awards, Food Blog Awards

This is the category for the Food Blog Site which consistently writes high quality posts. Quality can be defined in any way. The site must have at least 4 posts per month, for seven consecutive months. Yes you can nominate yourself. Please put your nominations for this category in the comment section of this post only!

The winner of this category will receive a Digital Scale provided by the good folks at CalorieLab.

The Call for Nominations will close at Midnight on Friday, December 16 2005 Pacific Standard Time.

Technorati Tags: Blog Awards, Food Blog Awards

This category is for the one site we all go to that deals with food. It can be corporate if you wish, or it could be run by one guy out of a garage in southwest Peru. It just has to be food related, and not be a blog.Please put your nominations for this category in the comment section of this post only!

The winner of this category will receive a Digital Scale provided by the good folks at CalorieLab.

The Call for Nominations will close at Midnight on Friday, December 16 2005 Pacific Standard Time.

Technorati Tags: Blog Awards, Food Blog Awards

This category is for the food blogs out there who regularly have more than one contributor. Regularly is defined as postings at least once every two weeks. Yes you can nominate yourself. Please put your nominations for this category in the comment section of this post only!

Winners of this category will receive 4 1/2 pound bags Blue Bottle Coffee provided by Jen at Life Begins at 30.

The Call for Nominations will close at Midnight on Friday, December 16 2005 Pacific Standard Time.

Technorati Tags: Blog Awards, Food Blog Awards

This category is for any food site that has been introduced this year (2005). You must have at least 4 posts in a month, for more than four consecutive months. It would be nice if the site has recently posted, but it's not a requirement. Yes you can nominate yourself. Please put your nominations for this category in the comment section of this post only.

Winners of this category will receive a prize from Too Many Chefs.

The Call for Nominations will close at Midnight on Friday, December 16 2005 Pacific Standard Time.

Technorati Tags: Blog Awards, Food Blog Awards

This award will be for the Food Blog which consistantly provides the best food photography for their entries. The photographs should be their own. The site must have 4 photos per month, for seven consecutive months. Yes you can nominate yourself. Please put your nominations for this category in the comment section of this post only!

The winner of this category will receive a Tea Gift Pack from Adagio Teas.

The Call for Nominations will close at Midnight on Friday, December 16 2005 Pacific Standard Time.

Technorati Tags: Blog Awards, Food Blog Awards

This category is for that one post that you remember over the course of the past year. It may have educated you.. it may have made you think, it matters not. It just has to have been posted on a food blog. Yes you can nominate yourself. Please put your nominations for this category in the comment section of this post only!

Winner of this category will receive the "Ring of Fire Hot Sauce Set" provided by Nick over at hotsauceblog.com.

Technorati Tags: Blog Awards, Food Blog Awards

This is an open category. Food, wine, recipes, restaurant reviews? It matters not. Nominate your favorite. Yes you can nominate yourself. Please put your nominations for this category in the comment section of this post only!

This winner of this category wil receive a provided by the good folks at CalorieLab, as well as a prize provided by Jack and Joanne at Fork & Bottle.

The Call for Nominations will close at Midnight on Friday, December 16 2005 Pacific Standard Time.

Technorati Tags: Blog Awards, Food Blog Awards

Being an American, I was aware of wassail, but had never tasted the brew. Had I been British, I probably would have been more aware what the heck wassail actually was.

For the record, wassail is a greeting that rich folks gave other rich folks around the holidays.It comes from the Anglo-Saxon phrase waes hael, a term often used as a toast meaning, be hale or good health.

People would walk around their community, knocking on other people's doors, and sing "Waes Hael!". The people answering the door, feeling a tad lonely, and a little concerned at the mental health of these door to door hailers. So they offered them heated alcohol.

The drink could really consist of nearly anything, as long as it had ale or sherry has a base, apples or cider and mulled spices. Some people recommend mixing the wassail with eggs, but these folks should be patted on the head, sent to the store to pick up some fresh eggs, and then mocked while absent.

Incidentally, after you pour yourself a mug, remove the wassail from heat, or else you'll end up forgetting about it and then having a nice sauce pan full of wassail syrup.

Not that I'm speaking from first hand experience *cough, cough*.

The taste of this drink is quite good. Deep, rich and spicy. It's no wonder why this drink was handed out to those who went out caroling.

• 2 pints and 1/4 cup brown ale (winter ale and scottish ale will also suffice)
• 3-4 cinnamon sticks
• 4 cloves
• Zest from 1/2 lemon
• 4 apples
• 1 1/2 cups brown sugar
• 1 cup port
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/4 teaspoon ground all spice
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cardomon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F.

In a large sauce pan, pour in 2 pints of ale. Add the cinnamon sticks, lemon zest and cloves and bring to a simmer over low heat.

Take an apple, and score it with a knife around the circumfrance of the apple. Place in a baking dish. Repeat this step for all of the apples. Cover with one cup of brown sugar, 1/4 cup of ale, and all of the port. Cover baking dish and place in oven, cooking for 30 minutes.

While apples are baking, place remaining sugar and spices into the sauce pan, ensuring it's well mixed.

When apples are done baking, place entire contents of baking dish into sauce pan. Allow to cook over a low heat for anothe 30-40 minutes.

Serve hot, one-two ladles into your favorite mug.

Serves 6-8

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, wassail, beverages, holiday drinks, ale

A true story:

A woman named Sam Buck opens a coffee shop. Calls it SamBucks Coffee. Opens it in a city where there were no Starbucks (such places existed back in the year 2000)

In 2002, Starbucks gets whiff of this and sues woman, citing the need to protect their brand.

In Court, Judge rules on the side of Starbucks.

Dear Starbucks,

This is the primary reason why people don't like you.

More from the sambuck's coffee house here.

(Thanks to BoingBoing)

I don't often mean to be churlish. But as I am now firmly ensconced in middle age, I no longer have to sit back and accept life's little annoyances at face value. I have the intellect and the resources to do something about things that make me upset.

The fact that I choose to apply said resources and intellect to finding a better food experience rather than, say, finding a solution to global warming, probably says more about me than I currently care to admit.

However, I do solve the problems that I can, one at a time, and hopefully change my corner of the world for the better.

Today, I want to talk about movie theaters.

I am a huge movie fan. I can talk obsessively about movies the way that some people can talk about wines (I'm looking at you Lenn). I have seen over a thousand movies on the big screen, and have been to hundreds of theaters. In 99% of the theaters I've been, the food that they offer is over-priced and under whelming.

I know, I know. This is hardly a news flash. In fact, this is so accepted that many of us take the above for granted. We walk into a theater, and unthinkingly pay 9 dollars for a coke, popcorn and candy bar. Outside the theater, we'd refuse to pay 5 dollars for the same products.

"But Kate", I can hear you saying, "High food prices is the only way that the theaters can make a profit! They don't make any money off of ticket sales!"

Tough. Surely the Theater knew that buying the rights to "Doom" was a losing proposition. I could see that train wreck coming from miles away. The same can be said for the upcoming "Yours, Mine and Ours" which is a remake of a copy of "Just the 12 of us". Or is it the other way around? I can't remember.

And don't even mention the commercials and product placements I have to sit through simply waiting for a movie to start. Someone is making a fair amount of money here.

When I feel like eating at a movie (which is rare these days), I respond to the food atrocities of pasty nacho "cheese" upon stale chips, and 3.50 Hershey bars by buying my food elsewhere, then sneaking it into the theater. Yes, I am one of those people.

I don't do this at the smaller theaters, for a variety of reasons, including the fact that they often have snacks that are reasonably priced and taste good. But at the Loews and AMC theaters of the world? Damn straight.

True story: Tara and I were going to see "The Incredibles". We were both snacky, but were repulsed by the idea of eating Five dollar hot dogs or dried out pretzels priced at $4.25.

Luckily for us, there is a decent snack shop at one of the anchor stores tied to the mall in which the theater was located. I stood in line, paid $4.00 per carrot cake, through in a bottle of San Pelligrino for $1.25, and placed the booty into a bag with the department stores name. In we walked with said booty, and walked past the line at the snack counter and had a decent food experience at the movie theater.

If I'm in a candy mood, I head to the local Pharmacy and head to their candy aisle, paying one dollar for candy that would have a 200% mark up at the theater.

I realize that several of you may balk at my subterfuge, and may even think less of me for it. I can live with that. What I do is against corporate rules, and this tact is not for everyone.

But I'm having a good time. I'll put my carrot cake up against your theater food any time.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Theaters, Theater Food, Movies, Breaking rules

If the latest product that was sent to me for review is any indication, the word is out on how to get your company name mentioned on Accidental Hedonist: Use quality ingredients, respect your customers, taste good.

Not that it was all that difficult to figure this out.

This became clear to me when Brandi Daniels of Embrace Sweets e-mailed me, stating she wanted to send me some cookies. Having a bad experience with reviewing cookies previously, I was suspicious, but open. So imagine my surprise when the package arrived only a few days after we had exchanged e-mails.

Inside the box were several cookies and brownies. I looked at each one with apprehension. On each cookie there was an ingredient list that was contained items as peculiar and exotic as "Organic unbleached flour", "Eggs" and "cane sugar". What are these strange ingredients? Typically on cookies packages I see "tetrahydrobenzolatedconcubininate-80" and "yellow 7".

The next step was to compare the products against those to be considered "competition". Who were my choices of competitors to compete against Embrace Sweet's cookies? Chips Ahoy (an internationally known brand), and Cougar Mountain (a regional brand). Choosing Chips Ahoy was strictly an arbitrary decision, and not used to create cheap jokes at Kraft's expense.

So, first, let's do an ingredient count for the chocolate-chip cookies. The result?

Embrace Sweets - 9
Cougar Mountain - 11
Chips Ahoy - 7,987,121

I may have embellished one of the numbers above. I forget which one.

As for taste?

vs. Cougar Mountain: I preferred the taste of Embrace Sweets cookie to Cougar Mountain's. Although I do enjoy Cougar Mountain's cookie, I can taste the canola oil, which gives it an odd aftertaste. Such aftertaste is not present in Embrace Sweet's cookie.

vs. Chips Ahoy: Oh please. If Chips Ahoy were a person, I'd smack them in the back of their head.

Embrace Sweets makes killer cookies and Brownies. That's really all you need to know. If you don't have the time to make your own, I would recommend them. They are a tad pricey, running about a buck a cookie. But this is comparable with cookies found in your local coffeeshop. They do not ship their products Friday - through Sunday, in order to ensure you receive the products in their freshest state. Call them at 888.905.2345 to place an order.

So other companies take note. In order for me to talk about your product in a good light on this site, use quality ingredients, respect your customers, and taste good.

Also throwing in a Toffee Almond Crunch Brownie wouldn't hurt either.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Product Reviews, Cookies, brownies, Embrace Sweets

Here are two seperate articles talking about the restaurant scene in New Orleans, and how difficult reconstruction has been.

From the first article:

Of the 3,400 restaurants in the greater New Orleans area before Katrina, only 26 percent have reopened, said Tom Weatherly of the Louisiana Restaurant Association. Only about 300 of those are in the city.

The second article gives a more focused account of reconstuction, and how it affects several people personally.

The Brennans' tenure as Commander's proprietors, during which the restaurant served as a launching pad for Paul Prudhomme and Emeril Lagasse, has left an indelible mark on New Orleans' recent history. But its long past did not serve it well during hurricanes Katrina and Rita.

"Water came in through the ceiling and I guess the wall," Martin said. "There was some kind of weird sideways rain. And then along came Rita. We pretty much have to rip everything out and put it back in."

Martin calls a March re-opening a "best-case scenario."

It's still difficult to tell how much Katrina has affected, not just the restaurant scene, but the overall culture of New Orleans. But if these articles are any indication, the hill they have to climb is pretty steep.

Technorati Tags:Food and Drink, Restaurants, Hurricane Katrina

Maxime sent me a link to this article and wanted me to comment on it. From the article:

According to an investigation by the newspaper France Soir, the days when a Gallic chef could boast of 86 different ways to make an omelette are fast disappearing.

Instead they are turning to frozen vegetables, ready-made dishes and sauces delivered in cartons - some of them supplied discreetly by an arm of a British "pub grub" caterer.

Being both an American, an Anglophile as well as preferring Italian food over French, it'd be easy (and understandable) for me to point a finger and go "Ha-ha". But really, if this article is true, then the only emotion I feel is sadness.

The one thing that you can say about the French is that they are very protective of their culture. What the above article shows is how futile their actions have been on some level.

France is a country where the suicide of a four-star chef made NATIONAL news. The tradition of cuisine is an immense source of pride. You can imagine the outrage that these restaurant techniques are causing.

To add to this insult, the article states "more than a dozen traditional techniques - including how to truss a chicken, open oysters and prepare artichoke hearts have been dropped from the national cookery qualification, the Certificat d'Aptitude Professionnel. Instead trainees are tested on their use and handling of processed, frozen, powdered or pre-prepared foods."

Let's be clear here. What these actions are showing is that the restaurant culture in France is moving from primarily focusing on craft to focusing on business. Because what the boil in the bags, and the focus on dealing with processed, frozen, powdered or pre-prepared foods bring to the table is cheaper product. It's a tacit acknowledgement that money is more important than perfect food.

I hardly think that this sounds the death knell for Haute Cuisine. Any place that uses the mentioned techniques simply won't be able to compete against those restaurants who use fresh products and better trained chefs, at least when it comes to taste and quality.

But it is a bit of a wake-up call to the culture of cuisine. Where these "boiled bag" places will be able to compete is in profits. To paraphrase a Hollywood cliche, there's a reason why they call it the restaurant business.

Still, it's sad when traditions fade away, as we sometimes lose more than we gain. Being an advocate of taste, it's dissapointing to see less focus on true skill and more focus on providing a cheaper product.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Haute Cuisine, Restaurant Industry, French Traditions

For you Washington State Residents out there looking for raw milk, a reference guide:

Rainhaven Goat Dairy - Duvall (goat) Debbie Higgins (425) 788-7735

Garden Home Farm - Mt. Vernon (goat)

Conway Family Farms - Camas (goat) Shaun, Lorrie, Ashley & Amber Conway (360) 834-0315

Grace Harbor Farms - Custer (goat and cow) Tim & Grace Lukens (360) 366-4151

Our Lady of the Rock Monastery - Shaw Island (cow)

Estrella Family Dairy - Montesano (360-249-6541)

Firgrove Jersey Farm, Stan Holy 253-677-9106, 11719 242nd ave ct e, Buckley Wa

Sonshine Farmers, Lori Thornburg PO Box 645, Carson, WA 98610. Phone: (509) 427-5085. Website: www.sonshinefarmers.com. Goatshares available. 5B Farm, Gar & Luba Blackledge, Phone: (509) 235-8671. Raw milk from Milking Shorthorn and Jersey cows.

Rainhaven Grade A Goat Dairy is now licensed by WSDA to sell certified raw milk for human consumption. Farmer/cheesemaker: Debbie Higgins (425) 788-7735

Pine Springs Resort & Dairy Farm, 2471 Hwy 97 Satus Pass, Goldendale, WA 98620, Michael W. Vieira (509) 773-4434. goat milk

Sage Lake Farms, Snohomish County.

GardenHome Farm, Mt. Vernon -goat milk www.gardenhomefarm.com.

Preston: Greenbanks Farms Cheese, (425)222-5500.

Grace Acres Farm at 34714 50th Ave Roy, WA (360) 400-2793, www.graceacresfarm.com. dairy goats

Puget Sound Natural Markets Cooperative in Seattle area. http://www.pccnaturalmarkets.com/
. Raw Milk and Raw Goat milk.

Dungeness Valley Creamery, Sequim, WA . Jeff, Debbie, and daughter Sarah Brown family operate the farm. 1915 Towne Rd, Sequim WA 98382.(360) 683-0716.

The Lord's Blessing, 38 Middle Valley, Skamokawa, Washington 98647, (360) 795-0823, Raw milk from grass-fed Milking Shorthorns.

Calverts Castle. Featuring a UdderWhey Farm Store.cow share dairy Judy Calvert, phone: (509) 244-3884

Goatberry Farm, Nick and Dana Dixon, Phone (509) 893-0671, Goat shares available

The Paladin Family Farm, 4398C, Deer Creek Rd, 99181; phone (509) 258-9178 or (509) 937-4048 . cow share dairy

Schleh of GardenHome Farm, a certified raw goat
dairy in Mount Vernon, WA. Phone number is 360-424-4112.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Milk, Raw Milk, dairies

As we get ready for the holidays, I'm going to alter my typical plans a bit, and offer up some Holiday Cookie recipes for you to use, or simply read about -- if that happens to be your thing. Once a week, every week before Christmas, I'll offer up one cookie recipe. 'Cause I loves me the holiday cookies.

Some of you may recognize these cookies from the December 2005 issue of Bon Appetit. Two things become relatively clear from this fact:

1. My taste is holiday cookies border on the non-traditional
2. My picture taking skills are still far below those who photograph for the Conde Nast corporation.

I can live with both of these facts.

The cookies were...okay.I'd probably ensure the candy canes were crsuhed a little finer next time. Other than that, they were not bad. Not great, but not bad.

Cookies

• 1 3/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
• 1 large egg

Buttercream Filling

• 1 cup powder sugar
• 3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter
• 3/4 teaspoon peppermint extract
• 2 drops (or more) red food coloring
• 4 oz crushed peppermint or candy canes

In a medium mixing bowl, combine the flour, cocoa powder and salt. Set aside.

In another medium mixing bowl, blend the butter and sugar. Use of a hand electric mixer is highly recommended for this task. Once the sugar is thoroughly incorporated, add the egg and mix well. Add the dry ingredients and beat until well blended. Refrigerate for one hour.

Pre heat oven to 350 degrees F.

Line 2 cookie sheets with parchment paper. Scoop out the dough by level tablespoons. Roll into a ball and place upon the paper, spacing about 2 inches apart. Using the bottom of a glass, flatten each ball into a small disk.

Place in the oven and bake for 10-11 minutes, to where the cookies no longer look "wet". Remove from oven and all to cook on cookie sheet for 5 minutes. After five minutes, place on cooling rack to finish cooling.

Filling

Beat together powdered sugar and butter in a medium bowl until well blended. Add peppermint extract and two drops of food coloring. Beat until until pink and well blended.

Spread 2 teaspoons of filling on one side of a cookie. Place another cookie ontop and smoosh together, getting an "oreo cookie" type of look. Repeat with remaining cookies until filling is kaput.

Place crushed candy canes on a plate. Roll edges of cookies through the candy crumbs.

Makes roughly 18 cookies

Technorati Tags: Food and drink, Holiday Cookies, Cookies, Recipes

Shorter Slashfood:

Slashfood: Why don't you sell our favorite Root Beer?

Whole Foods: Because your root beer sucks.

Slashfood: Hmmph. You're pretentious!

Whole Foods: (counting their $85 Million profit) Yeah, we get that a lot.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Whole Foods, Supermarkets

There's much truth to this article found on Smart Money, with one very notable exception...most of the people being referred to in the article are no longer being called "butchers", because the title "butcher" comes with very specific skill set, and in some cases, a right to unionize.

From item #1:

Being a butcher is a lot different than it was 25 years ago. Back then skilled meat cutters used their muscle to break down whole carcasses and their know-how to ensure no scrap was wasted. Today butchers are more often found behind the meat department counter at one of the large grocery chains, where their skill set — and salary — has been reduced to accommodate the demands of big business. Their main job now is to cut up smaller pieces, known as primals, into individual portions, as well as to shape and tie roasts, and to grind meat for sale.

The upshot: Many butchers don't know a whole lot about the meat they're hawking — where it comes from or basic information about varying cuts, preparation or cooking time.

How very true. Most "butchers" found at the supermarkets are actually clerks; a far different type of worker.

Also notable is item #6, which covers a subject we've talked about here previously:

Surely "all natural" meat is a good option? Nope. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the terms "natural" and "all natural" on a meat label in no way reflect how the animal was raised or what it was fed; "natural" means only that producers have introduced no colors or additives to the meat after processing

As others have noted, when buying meat, look for grass fed over grain fed. Ignore the "natural" label, as it can mean almost anything.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Meat, Butchers

One of the many odd things that are occurring in this repudiation of corporate food products is that many people are questioning previously held beliefs and discovering that some foods *gasp* used to taste better.

The best example of the above comes from the raw milk crowd. As reported in this Arizona Republic article:

consumer demand is brisk. Nationally and in Arizona, people are breaking the law to get their hands on raw organic milk, claiming it is superior in health and taste to the pasteurized, homogenized milk found on the supermarket shelf. They swear it tastes like melted vanilla ice cream.

There's also a perceived health benefit from drinking raw milk, as some claim that "the beverage as the cure for everything from allergies and asthma to eczema and cancer".

Most of these claims are most likely bogus, as there's been no definitive test of raw milk against the above. Any claim of the health benefits of raw milk should be looked upon with great suspicion.

But there is the question of taste. Having tasted raw milk recently, both goat and cow, I can say that there is an obvious difference of taste between pasteurized and unpasteurized, my preference being for the latter.

So if we can rule out health benefits, the issue of raw milk comes down to the following two questions:

1. How dangerous is it?
2. Is the taste of raw milk worth the risk?

The issue with the first question is that no one can offer an unbiased, scientific report on raw milk. Without a clear answer to the first question, it makes it impossible to answer the second.

Of course there's the government's point of view. Here in Washington State, they require all raw milk sold commercially to have the farm where the milk is produced licensed through the state, and require monthly testing of the milk and inspection of the farm and milk bottling room.

Also, each bottle must contain a warning label stating "WARNING: This product has not been pasteurized and may contain harmful bacteria. Pregnant women, children, the elderly, and persons with lowered resistance to disease have the highest risk of harm from use of this product."

About that warning label: It should be noted that pregnant women, children, the elderly, and persons with lowered resistance to disease also have a risk of disease from eggs, sushi, sage, and rare meat, and yet these products do not need to such warnings...yet.

Of course, people will say that raw milk has an increased risk of carrying salmonella and E. Coli. Yet so do bean sprouts and bags of lettuce. But is the risk more or less when compared against these products? All we get are shrugs and "I dunno's".

And the federal government? It's difficult to take anything they say with great seriousness when they're so compromised by their ties to Dean Dairy and the Dairy Lobby -- who have a great stake in ensuring small farmers do not take away their customers.

What I would like to see is an honest debate where the following questions are answered:

• How safe is Raw Milk?
• Can the risks of raw milk be mitigated by the sanitary operations of the respective dairy?
• If the risks can be mitigated by sanitary operations, how safe will raw milk be in comparison to pasteurized milk?
• Is raw milk more or less dangerous than eggs, sushi, sage, rare meat, bean sprouts or bags of lettuce?

My suspicion is that a lot of the above will never be answered. That being said, I do plan on drinking raw milk in the future. But then, I thrive on taking risks. Even if it means that I'll have to deal with Johnny Law on occasion

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Milk, Raw Milk

Hmmm... It seems as if the CEO of Whole Foods, one John Mackey, is blogging.

'tis a bit lacking in content tho'

Technorati Tags: Whole Foods, Supermarkets, Blogging, John Mackey

Here's a little love goin' out to a Seattle based company.

In the picture, you'll see this year's version of Jones Soda Holiday Pack. This is a continuation of their annual holiday promotion that has been so successful that they've created two seperate production releases:

• A national release containing sodas flavored like Brussels Sprout with Prosciutto, Cranberry Sauce, Turkey & Gravy, Wild Herb Stuffing, or Pumpkin Pie.
• A regional release with sodas flavored like Broccoli Casserole, Smoked Salmon Paté , Turkey & Gravy, Corn on the Cob, and Pecan Pie.

I had purchased the Regional release and had set my sights on creating a witty, whimsical post for Thanksgiving day. Tara and I took a drink from each flavor (and yes, broccoli casserole soda is as nasty as you might expect it to be), and I took notes like a good reviewer should.

Then the blazing hammer of common sense smacked me on the head. Jones Soda doesn't give one rat's tuckus on what I have to say about these flavors. What I found myself participating in, even now, is possibly the best marketing campaign in the past two decades, if not longer.

Here we have Jones Soda, selling several horrible, horrible products -- So horrific that people can't help but notice, and in many cases, willingly taste these drinks. All the while, the phrase "Jones Soda" is repeated on the lips of people throughout the land.

There's also something to be said about those of us who drink these concoctions. How does one rationalize drinking a bottle of Salmon Pate Soda? Probably the same way the one rationalizes eating Rocky Mountain Oysters or Silkworm Pupas.

Kudos to Jones Soda -- the only company that intentionally sells crappy sodas which consumers willingly drink, and then gets everyone to talk about them. It takes a bit of genius to accomplish that.

Conversely, Coca-Cola unintentionally sells crappy sodas which consumers willingly drink.

It's a funny world, I tell ya'.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Jones Soda, Soda, Marketing

Question: How could I have gone through 30+ Years of my life without having a quince? This is the question I am asking myself after tasting this fruit.

Part of it is availability, to be sure. It's not often that one can find quinces in the produce aisle. Had they been on my food radar, I would have had to gone out of my way to find these treats.

Quinces are worth such an effort. If you've never had them, think of them as apples on steriods. There's a fair amount of bitterness in a raw quince, not to mention the fact that the seeds are poisonous in large amounts, according to Wikipedia.

But one can easily simmer these drawbacks away. Which is exactly how the below recipe works. If you've never had quince before, this is a great way to introduce them to your diet.

• 2 lbs quinces
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 Tablespoon orange peel zest
• 1/3 cup orange juice
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon
• 6 cloves
• 2/3 cup reisling (or other sweet white wine)

Peel and core your quinces. Slice them into thick chunks.

Place the quince slices as well as the peels and cores into a large sauce pan. Add the rest of the ingredients. Add enough water to cover the fruit.

Bring to a simmer (185 degrees F). Once there, cook for 1 hour. Remove the slices of quince to a large glass bowl, lelaving the peel and cores. Reduce the remaining syrup by 1/3 to 1/2. Strain, and pour over quince slices. Place in the refrigerator and chill for at least 2 hours.

Serve alone or with vanilla ice cream.

Serves 6

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Recipes, Quinces

Jack forwarded me another NYTimes op-ed piece (LI: accidental PW: hedonist)about food, and it's definitely one that should be read to get a good idea on the nuances of the "organic vs. local" debates that have been going on of late.

Written by Nina Planck, author of "The Farmers' Market Cookbook", she touches upon a thought that I've been pondering myself over the past few months:

The organic standards - which ban synthetic fertilizer, antibiotics, hormones, pesticides, genetically engineered ingredients and irradiation - are good for farming, the environment and health. The organic seal is vitally important in shops, where the consumer is several steps removed from the farmer. "Organic" is a legal guarantee that food meets certain standards.

That's why it is a shame that the Organic Trade Association - a food-industry group whose members include such giants as Kraft, Dean Foods and General Mills, which own national organic brands - is seeking to dilute the organic standards.

The Organic movement has taken off in large part as a response to the tasteless products and horrible environmental practices that a fair amount of the corporate farms have delivered to consumers. As there is finite space within the food market, when organic foods sales grow 20 percent a year, the big boys are going to take notice. More importantly, they're going to want a piece of the action and use whatever political capital they have to insert themselves into a market that was designed to keep them out.

In response to this, we've noticed over the past few years a change from the "organic versus corporate" argument to a discusiion that includes the "local versus organic" one as well.

This is not a small accomplishment.

Because the core essence of the "local" debate, is not organic standards, but rather a rejection of agri-business as a national enterprise. The central tenet of "Local farms" is that you know who grew your corn, tomatoes or wheat. This is a philosophy that the Monsanto's and ConAgra's of the world simply cannot compete against, as their business model, by definition, removes any interaction between consumer and grower.

It will be interesting to see how this discussion plays out over the next few years. It took 25 years for the phrase "organic foods" to become part of the everyday lexicon. I expect it will be a much shorter period of time before the "local food" movement gets the same momentum.

Check out the op-ed. It's a good one.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Organic Food, Buy Local

Hello, and welcome once again to America's Favorite Daytime Fun Show - Kate's Supermarket Finds.

It's here where I bring home a product that I find odd or peculiar, often due to some labeling malfeasance. These products often wish to take advantage of a consumers ignorance and lack of label reading, and promise tastes and flavors that they can't possible deliver. In the past, I have discovered Macaroni and Cheese made without cheese, Pistachio Puddings made primarily with almonds, and a guacamole dip made without avocados.

Today the product is Krusteaz Key Lime Bars. According to the front of the box, it's "Naturally Flavored", giving the impression that key limes are in the ingredient list.

However, upon examining the label, we discover:

Key Lime Filling Ingredients: Sugar, food starch-modified, canola or soybean oil, natural flavor, citric acid, salt, malic acid, yellow 5, yellow 5 lake, yellow 6, yellow 6 lake, blue 1

Not only are there no key limes any where within the "key lime" filling, but no mention of any sort of limes! As for the "natural flavor"? We'll just have to presume that this is some sort of mystery ingredient for now.

And is it just me, or does the name of the company sound as if it's owned by this man?

I so love the supermarket, where nothing is ever as it seems.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, supermarket finds, key lime bars

I wanted to pass this along, as Tara mentioned it last night and it seemed a valid perspective.

I understand the desire to not participate in the consumer rituals that take place the day after Thanksgiving. But let me throw another idea out there.

Instead of going to the mall and buying products from mega-merchants, or standing by the sideline and holding your dollars out of the marketplace, how about not feeling any guilt when you shop by heading to locally owned and operated businesses who sell locally made products?

Just a thought.

Or you can stay home, and avoid all the traffic...also a valid option.

Me? I'm off to Pike Place Market, to visit a few of my favorite businesses down there.

Technorati Tags: Buy Nothing Day, Pike Place Market

Tara and I had a very good Thanksgiving. First, we had our Turkey Day meal at Cascadia, where we indulged in all the goodness that comes from a menu that reads "dessert buffet".

Afterwards, we headed to the cinema, where we watched the long-ago released Documentary "The Future of Food".

For those of you who haven't seen this film, I cannot recommend it highly enough, as it covers in depth what I have only briefly touched upon. From their synopsis:

There is a revolution happening in the farm fields and on the dinner tables of America -- a revolution that is transforming the very nature of the food we eat.

THE FUTURE OF FOOD offers an in-depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind the unlabeled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly filled U.S. grocery store shelves for the past decade.

From the prairies of Saskatchewan, Canada to the fields of Oaxaca, Mexico, this film gives a voice to farmers whose lives and livelihoods have been negatively impacted by this new technology. The health implications, government policies and push towards globalization are all part of the reason why many people are alarmed by the introduction of genetically altered crops into our food supply.

I came away from the film very irrate at Monsanto, a company I've never held in high esteem. Seeing their dangerous corporate practices fully on display not only cemented my view, but added a bit more information I was lacking previously. I promise to have more on this soon, as I walked away with several ideas that I wish to bring to the table...so to speak.

The film does not advocate as much as expose, contrary to what several critics have said. The time in the film spent on the organic and local food movements is minimal, probably because there was so much to cover in regard to Genetically Engineered and Modified food, and the corporations who are pushing these programs.

For those of you not near a major city that shows non-Hollywood movies, the documentary is available on DVD, to be shipped on December 6th. I've ordered my own copy, as there is a plethora of information that I am going to reference at a later date.

I highly recommend this film.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, The Future of Food, Monsanto, Gentically Engineered Food

O' delicious bird
with your cranberries and pie
Jump in my belly!

Why do I now sleep?
Tryptophan is thy culprit
I shall dream of feasts

Pumpkin pie is swell
but please make your own whipped cream
Less Money for Kraft

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Feel Free to add your own haikus in the comments.

Nancy Leson, food critic for the Seattle Times, has published her list of Ten Commandmants for when you visit restaurants.

Hmmm. Although I agree with many of Nancy's point, these are more "points of ettiquette" than actual commandments. Commandments should be immutable, and many of the items listed have exceptions. But this is me simply arguing semantics.

For the record, her commandments are:

1. Honor your reservation
2. Don't hog your table
3. If you don't like where you're seated, speak up!
4. Bring your kids, but keep them in line
5. Put your cellphone on vibrate
6. If the food isn't to your liking, say so, politely and immediately
7. Life's too short to drink bad wine
8. Communicate dietary restrictions carefully and early
9. Don't even think about leaving a penny tip to show your scorn for a disappointing experience
10. Spread the good cheer

Numbers 1, 2 and 10 of these commandments are based in the idea that restaurants are businesses that need to make money to survive. 3,6,7,8 and 9 are service oriented. Commandments 4 and 5 revolve around creating a decent dining environment.

Like I previously stated, I agree with most with them, to a point. But if you're going to dictate customer behavior, then there should be commandments for restaurants to follow.

1. Honor the reservation - If a reservation time is stated for 8pm, then it should be as close to 8pm as logistics can allow. Waiting for a table 30 minutes beyond the reservation time defeats the purpose of reservations.
2. Respect the Table - If the customers don't wish to interact with the wait staff, they shouldn't be forced to do so. Forced small talk can serve to make patrons uncomfortable.
3. Make no presumptions about your customers. Some will know more about food and wine than you, others less. Use good people skills to determine who falls where.
4. Thou shall not upsell. Recommendations are a good thing, but they should at least sound authentic. When they sound like your trying to force more money out of my pocketbook, you come across as desperate. Save this behavior to Applebee's
5. Play your piped music at a point where it doesn't dominate a conversation.
6. Don't play off of your customer's supposed ignorance of wine. When I see a bottle of wine that has a 100-150% markup on the menu, it makes you look greedy.
7. Ensure that your staff keeps personal conversations in the back of the house, away from the customers. I assure you, very few customers care that Nina didn't come in today or that table 7A only gave you a 5% tip.
8. Thou shalt have clean restrooms.
9. The patron has a right to respectfully question any aspect of service. Specifically, when someone asks "Where's our food?", it is not asked to intentionally inconvenience the server.
10. Hot food should be served hot.

I could write these all day.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Restaurants, ettiquette

This comes from kindred spirit Andrea.

(intro paragraph snipped, for sake of length)

Basically, here is my deal: I just graduated from law school (I went to Pitt) and I am as poor as a church mouse, as I have yet to find a "real" job, and I am trying to pay some horrid student loans. I live here in Pittsburgh, and so I feel that we might just be kindred in a way, but maybe not.

In any case, here is my request to you: would you give me some wonderful and inexpensive suggestions so as I may throw a wine and cheese soiree for a bunch of friends? I am in a wedding, and I would like to throw this party for the bride and my fellow bridesmaids, since they have expressed their desire to have me do so. Now, I know just what I would do for this party if I were in possession of unlimited (or even substantial) resources, but this
is not the case. And while I could research and find some handy tips, I don't think they'd be half as interesting as what I imagine you might propose. (And I promise that I will research in any case, because I wouldn't want you to do all the work for me...but your advice will reign supreme. Please?)

Thanks so much, Kate. I just adore you. And my boyfriend is getting so sick of me talking about you, but since I just found out about you and have been reading so much in the last couple of nights, I just can't help it. You're fantastic. Enough sucking up. I am finished.

In closing, let's go Steelers! Even though Tommy Maddox is starting for us
this week, and that might be the absolute worst news I have had all week. But we'll still be okay.

Cheers,
Andrea

Andrea, one of the things I am finding out about the "We Get Letters" section, is how unabashedly unrepentant I am in publishing other people's kind words about myself. Thanks for helping me keep that streak alive.

To the rest of you, Andrea and I exchanged further e-mails to determine how much she has to spend. The final total? $120 for 10 people. This is a good number, because this will allow her to serve something better than Mad Dog and Velveeta. Not that there's anything wrong with Mad Dog and Velvee...

...well, actually there is.

Now, if we were to follow the rules of thumb, a serving of wine fills only 1/3rd of a wine glass. This will give us roughly 5 glasses of wine per bottle, give or take. This also means that 4-5 bottles of wine should easily cover your guests. I'd stick to four, but it is a celebration, so bump it up one to be safe.

Now there would be some who may dispute this, but you can get good to very good wine between 10-15 bucks. But what to buy?

Well, it depends on the cheese. Here are some pairings to get you one your way. Note that these aren't hard and fast rules, but more of a starting point. The more you get into cheese and/or wine, the more chances and choices you will make.

Brie - Riesling
Camembert - Chardonnay
Cheddar - Pinot Noir
Danish Blue - Cabernet Sauvignon
Gorgonzola - Zinfandel (Red)
Muenster - Pinot Gris
Neufchatel - Beaujolais
Roquefort - Port

So, knowing all of the above, here's what I'd do with $120 for 10 people. I'd buy three boxes of crackers. They don't have to be gourmet crackers, but you should probably splurge a bit above the Saltines/Ritz line. If you're spending more than 15 dollars on crackers, you should re-examine your shopping cart.

Now, onto cheeses: spend between 30-40 bucks on cheese, choosing between 4-6 different varieties. Again, you don't need to choose the best cheese, but you can get good cheese for that price.

Then, buy your wines. If you have any money left over, get your fruits, some apples, dates or pears would go well. Nuts are also a good pick. If you run out of money before you get your fruits, ask a friend or two who will be at the party to pick up some. After all, they could stand to help out a bit.

This should be a good start. I hope this helps out. I would really love to hear how this worked out. I also would love for our regular readers to add their opinions, as many of them have far more experience in this than I do.

Oh, and as far as Tommy Maddox goes, let's just say that I wish him well in his new environment next year, as he won't be in Pittsburgh.

Thank goodness!

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Wine and Cheese, Cheese, howto

This may surprise a fair amount of you, but the traditional animal served on most Thanksgiving table can trace its roots to what is now Central and South Mexico. The fact that it can now be said that we eat "Mexican" food on Thanksgiving day delights me to no end. I have no idea why this amuses me so.

Way back in the day, finding protein was more difficult in the Western Hemisphere than it was in the Eastern. Certainly there was fish found on the coast lines, but going inland, finding a regular protein source wasn't as easy as it was in the Middle East, Europe or Asia. Eventually the following sources had been found and used on a regular or semi-regular basis: beans, peanuts, avocados, guinea pigs, turkeys, geese, ducks, frogs, deer and...uh...other humans (although as their civilizations progressed, cannibalism became more of a ritual in regard to religion than a source of meat. And before you all get all 'hoidy-toidy' about men eating other men, cannibalism has a long, storied history in many, many cultures, including European. So there.)

Turkey was called uexolotl back in the day. Europeans, who were either too arrogant, too lazy, or a combination of both, changed the name to something more recognizable. The English then called it the "turkie cock". Some confusion ensued as "turkie cock" was the same name that they used to refer to the guinea-fowl. In fact, the turkey, as we here in the States know of it, has been entitled with names that often confuse it with another country. Turkey, when referring to the bird, is easily the most geographically confused animal on the planet.

• In Turkish the bird is called hindi which means "coming from India"
• In the Hebrew language the turkey is called tarnegol hodu, which literally means "Indian chicken"
• The Dutch word is kalkoen derived from the city Calicut in India.
• In Portuguese the word for turkey is peru which also refers to the country Peru.
• In Arabic it is called "Ethiopian bird."
• In Greek it is gallopoula which means "French girl" or "French bird"
• In Scottish Gaelic it is called cearc frangais, meaning "French chicken"

Areas in India, just for the record, also referred to it as a peru. Peru, also for the record, is no closer to Mexico as either Turkey or France.

Why do some folks refer to the bird as "Indian"? The bird wasn't all that well known, so when explorers and traders found the bird in Indian trading posts in the early 17th century, they thought they had discovered a new, exotic source of meat. They never considered that the bird had arrived from the Spanish, who had now circumnavigated the entire globe, and undoubtedly brought the bird to India from the East.

And what was the nationality of some of those European traders who came from the West and "discovered" the bird in India? Turkish.

All of this geographic trivia surrounding the Turkey is enough to make your head spin. It's a good thing I've purchased my own Wild Turkey for the Holidays.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Food History, Thanksgiving, Turkeys

Liqueur is liquid candy for adults.

There. I've said it. I feel better that this is now out in the open. And I, for one, have no problem in reveling in the joy and bliss that these little drinks can bring.

Whidbey's Liqueur is a Pacific Northwest Spirit made not 25 miles from where I am currently typing. What makes this liqueur stand on its own is that it's made from local Loganberries. Trying to explain Loganberries to those who have never had them is a bit difficult. Think grapes mixed with black cherries and a bit of rasberry. So how does it taste as a liqueur?

Eyes: A deep violet/burgandy color. It's a bit syrupy, but
not overly so.

Nose: It smells like grape jam that's a bit off. The alcohol is barely noticable.

Taste: It's an odd taste, like fermented rasberry jelly.This means it's very sweet. It's also a bit viscous.

Overall: It's not horrible, but it also might be an aquired taste. I'm not exactly sure what it'd mix with, but it will be fun finding out. I think it will also work well in desserts and other recipes. I'd give this a 2 out of three. I may pick it up if I see it again on the shelf.

Maybe.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Liqueur, loganberry liqueur

*sigh*

Sometimes I get tired of reading the misleading headlines of "Food & Health" stories. For example:

Study shows Kimchi can prevent food poisoning

or

Kim chee may prevent food poisoning

Not only are these headlines misleading, they're dangerous.

The only thing these studies show is that certain food-based pathogens cannot survive within fermented kimchi. What it does not say is that "Kim Chi can inoculate you against these same pathogens". What this means is the following:

Point 1:

If you eat Kim Chi, it will most likely not have the salmonella, staphylococcus, vibrio germs and E.coli bacteria.

Point 2:

However, if you eat Kim Chi, and then consume another dish that does have the salmonella, staphylococcus, vibrio germs or E.coli, you still have the chance of getting violently, if not deathly ill.

Until someone runs an acceptable study that disproves Point 2, then the Press should really be more careful in what they say and how they say it. Then again, I'd like world peace and to end world hunger.

To illustrate my point, let me state the following for you to ponder:

Guess what other products are likely not have the salmonella, staphylococcus, vibrio germs and E.coli bacteria?

Gin, Vodka, Whiskey, etc, etc. This leads to the question, why doesn't the Food & Health press extol these as cures?

And yes, I've read this article which alludes to the health benefits of the Lactobacillus bacteria. Note the sentence "The researchers said the results were far from scientifically proven".

While we're in the middle of this "beans/no beans in Chili" debate, I figured that I would make a Texas Chili, and then compare and contrast with a bean-type chili. Then I realized that I've already done a bean chili. Ah well. The important thing to note is that the two chilis are completely different beasts. Not because of the beans, but rather because of the use (or non-use) of either tomatoes or chiles. I'm now firmly in the corner of "no tomatoes".

This recipe worked out quite well. Note that not one tomato was harmed in the creation of this dish. Alas, one cannot say the same for the cow and the pig. After all, chili, at its core, is a meat dish.

The stew ended up being not spicy in the least, which was surprising to me. But it was flavorful with the tastes of the chili peppers coming through quite nicely. Tara, who is not a meat fan, enjoyed this well enough.

Dinner consisted of beer, cornbread, a bit of cheese and tortilla chips. We also had beans on the side...

...which both of us poured into the chili. Tara added the beans at the beginning of the meal, I held out until all the meat was gone and I had only chili broth left. I suppose old habits die hard.

• 2 lbs. beef shoulder, cut into 1 1/2" cubes
• 1 lb. pork shoulder, cut into 1 1/2" cubes
• Flour
• 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 2 medium yellow onions, sliced
• 6 cloves garlic, minced
• 32 oz. Beef Broth
• 1 12 oz bottle Negra Modela, or other darker Mexican Beer
• 2 ancho chiles, stems and seeds removed
• 4 dried New Mexico chiles, stems and seeds removed
• 1 Tablespoon ground cumin
• 2 Tablespoons oregeno
• 1 Tablespoons Thyme

Lightly flour the beef and pork, ensuring a thin but thorough coating.

Heat the oil in a large dutch oven or stock pot placed over medium-high heat. Place in meat and cook until lightly browned. Add the onions and garlic and saute until soft. Add the broth and beer. Lower the heat to low and simmer for 1 hour.

While the meat is simmer in the broth, fill a small sauce pan with 1" of water. Bring up to 185 degrees F. Add the anchos and New Mexican Chiles to the heated water and allow to cook for 15 minutes. Remove the chiles from the water and then puree in a blender or with a hand blender. Add this chile sauce to the meat broth and simmer for an additional two hours.

Serves 6-8

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Food, Recipes, Chili, TexasChili

Although one could probably figure out my political leanings through continual reading of this site, I've pretty much avoided being overtly partisan. But I did want to point out the following found in the Washington Post today:

As he barnstormed through Japan, South Korea and China, with a final stop in Mongolia still to come, (George) Bush visited no museums, tried no restaurants, bought no souvenirs and made no effort to meet ordinary local people.

"I live in a bubble," Bush once said, explaining his anti-tourist tendencies by citing the enormous security and logistical considerations involved in arranging any sightseeing. "That's just life."

The Bush spirit trickles down to many of his top advisers, who hardly go out of their way to sample the local offerings either. A number of the most senior White House officials on the trip, perhaps seeking the comforts of their Texas homes, chose to skip the kimchi in South Korea to go to dinner at Outback Steakhouse -- twice.

Wait, wait, wait...they chose Outback Steakhouse to local Korean cuisine??
Are they insane??? Especially for what they charge for the onion blossom!

Of course, it may be simply because Outback gave 96% of their campaign contributions to the Republicans, but this is me being cynical.

In their defence, eating new and unfamiliar food while on a 7 day tour of any foreign country can be stressfull to a system. That, and they are probably also trying to give confidence to the safety of beef in wake of the ongoing Mad Cow concerns that Japan has shown.

But still...you guys couldn't eat local even once? Sheesh.

Thanks to Atrios for the Heads up

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Outback Steakhouse, Republicans, Campaign Contributions

Tana, a frequent visitor to this blog, has her own very fabulous site full of information about local and small farms. It's one of many sites I try to visit on a regular basis.

Last week, she had one of the better food posts I've recently read. Patricia Rain, the Vanilla Queen, passed along some information for Tana to post that I feel that most foodies should read. Especially those of you into desserts and sweets.

The post entitled Saving Pure Vanilla is much worth the time.

And many thanks to Tana and Patricia, for making this issue better known.

One of the several reasons why I don't get along with corporations is that they tend to stifle a great amount of innovation. Once a "new" idea is presented to the corporation, it has to be run by the manufacturing department (to see if they can make it), and then the marketing department (to see if they can sell it). Afterwards, focus groups and test markets become involved to see how much interest and profits can be had. By the time a "new" product is introduced, the uniqueness is long gone, battered by the development process.

Not all corporations and companies do this, but enough of them.

I bring up this generalization, as I want to introduce you all to two new products, to illustrate the above point.

Somewhere in Hershey, Pennsylvania, it was decided that the corporation needed to make more money, and that a new product should be introduced. After running through the above process, and after an extended period of time, a product was released to the general public. Called Kissables, They are "miniature candy-coated versions of one of the world's most recognizable brands. These colorful, fun-able candies, blue, red, yellow, green, and orange, come in convenient, single-serve packaging."

What you have is a corporation that has spent thousands, if not millions, of dollars on a product which sounds eerily like M&M's.

Now people may run to the defence of Hershey's, saying that there's precious little one can do in the field of chocolate. Once you've dealt with caramel, nuts, shredded coconut, marshallows, maybe a little peanut butter in your products, you've covered about 80% of all chocolate products already out there.

But then you look at Jelly Bellys. They take up a far smaller segment of the candy market. As a company, they wish to increase how much money they make. So what do they come up with? A product called JBz. As their product page states, JBz's are "chocolate centers with candy shells with twelve delectable flavors such as Chocolate Cappuccino JBz and Chocolate Caramel JBz, as well as classically delightful pairings of chocolate in Chocolate Coconut, Chocolate Vanilla, and Chocolate Fudge Brownie."

Sounds like M&M's, but with a new twist, doesn't it? Granted, it probably wasn't a stretch for the Folks at Jelly Belly's to go "Hey, let's add flavors to an M&M style candy!", as they have already done this with their Jelly Bean line. But they have added to the diversity of the candy marketplace, something Hershey's didn't do with their Kissable line.

James weighs in with a thought provoking question:

Hello Kate,

I regularly read your site and have always found your thoughts very insightful. Anyways, I'm a college student and I'm currently taking a public speaking class. For the class, we pick a theme and then deliver an informative speech, a persuasive speach, and then an action speach on
that theme. Well I picked GMO food. I am currently researching for the action speech. I just talked with the manager of my school's main cafeteria, Goudy. I found out that about 60% of the food is from local sources, which is about the same price as other food, while only about 10% of the food is organic, which is more expensive. They usually label all the food as local, organic, vegeterian, vegan, etc. with stickers (Bon Appetite is my school's catering service). I was planning on the theme of the speach being that you should eat more local organic food to
avoid gmo's and then tell the audience about the options at goudy. Well, what I was wondering do you think it's worth it to just focus on local food, given the limited and more expensive options for organic? Is organic not that important compared to local? Is it more important to
set an action that would be easier to follow (especially considering that these are college students I'm talking to) by exluding organic and just focusing on local? Or would organic be as important part of the equation as local? Thanks a lot.

Sincerely,
Jamie

Jamie, this is a great question, and I appreciate you asking it. Please note that what I'm about to say is my opinion, and so not to take it as gospel. When it comes to food philosophies, many people have differing opinions and agendas, and it's difficult to claim that one is more valid than another.

When it comes to the organic vs. Local debate, I fall more onto the local side of the equation. But to explain this position, I have to take a step back and move beyond what we here in America deal with in regard to our food choices.

We're lucky to be living in America. I don't say that as a flag-waving Toby-Keith-Listening type of patriot, but as a matter of practical fact. We can, for the most part, feed ourselves. In fact, our local food delivery infrastructure is so efficient and so plentiful that it allows us to ask questions about food that other countries cannot afford to.

Such as "How do Organic Foods fit into the equation?" When you have a country that can only deliver 1500 calories, on average, to your citizens, you're not overly concerned about which chemicals are used, nor how animals are treated, nor which foods are genetically modified. These are the problems faced every day in several countries in Africa, as well as most assuredly North Korea. Granted, I'm simplifying the geo-political landscape here, but the point is still valid.

So from a global aspect, local far outweighs organic. If you can't grow food at home, it has to be imported (at additional cost) or given freely (often in times of famine). Not being able to produce food locally carries with it tremendous problems. Encouraging folks to grow locally helps alleviate those problems.

Let's focus on America now, where we do have the luxury of asking more of our food - Which is more important: Organic versus Local? My answer? It depends.

Some foods have been so destroyed by corporate farming that organics are really the only option when it comes to taste. Apples come directly to mind, as well as tomatoes.

However, when it comes to meats, such as beef or poultry, I choose local farms as I want to ensure that I know where my food has come from, for reasons far too scary and too numerous to bring up in this post. That a great majority of these farms can be considered "organic" os not coincidental, as most farms who are transparent enough to advertise where they originate also are usually transparent enough to let you know how they treat their animals.

I could go down, item by item, on how I make my food choices in a store, but that'd be boring. What it comes down to are the following questions:

• Which product has the superior tastes?
• What process was used in order to develop this product? Does a company use lesser or untested ingredients? How does a company treat their animals?
• Is the company local or not?

I ask these questions in differing order depending upon my basic knowledge of product. Eggs and Milk? I ask about processes. Broccoli or meats? I ask about proximity. Apples and Oranges? Organic or not.

I realize an answer of "It depends" doesn't lend itself to a great paper or speech, but there is a larger meta-aspect to this. I can ask these questions because of where we live and how much money I make. In many places of the world, people don't have this luxury.

Good luck in your class.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Organic Food, Buy Local

If one is going to talk about Chile peppers, it's probably within the realm of good taste to talk about Chili.

Now I spent a great deal of my life believing that Chili was a stew of ground beef, tomato broth and beans. This is most assuredly due to the fact that I grew up in Western Pennsylvania, home of things most certainly not chili or chile related. Rolling Rock Beer? Yes! Primanti Brothers? Absolutely. Chile peppers? Eh, not so much.

But it could have been worse I suppose, where I could have grown up thinking that chili consists of beans, tomato sauce, and cinnamon over pasta.

That'd be Cincinnati chili by the way.

Chili con carne is almost assuredly a Texas creation, which I'll give them full credit for. It's not a Mexican dish as far as I've been able to discover. The basis of red chili comes down to meat, salt and dried chiles combined into a stew. It was a way to stretch meat for several days.

The question for me is whether pinto beans are part of the mix. Beans are a staple of Tex-Mex cuisine, but there are folks who state unequivocally that beans are not part of the chili experience. From the International Chili Society's Judging Criteria:

1. Traditional Red Chili is defined by the International Chili Society as any kind of meat or combination of meats,cooked with red chili peppers, various spices and other ingredients, with the exception of BEANS and PASTA which are strictly forbidden.

2. Chili Verde is defined by the International Chili Society as any kind of meat or combination of meats, cooked with green chili peppers, various spices and other ingredients, with the exception of BEANS and PASTA which are strictly forbidden.

I don't know which is more amazing; the fact that the International Chili Society has such an aversion to beans, or the fact that there's an International Chili Society.

When you search for recipes on the web, it's apparent that beans are an integral part of the Chili experience for many, many people.

I still am the belief that one can put beans into their chili, but I have come to understand that chile peppers should also be part of the mix. I'm a quick learner that way.

Technorati Tags: Food and Drink, Chili, Chile Peppers, beans

This post is probably several months late, but when it comes to the below, better late than never --at least I hope.

For those of you who have regularly visited Accidental Hedonist over the past year or so, have come to know that I have regularly struggled with the appearance of bias in regard to the plethora of free items being sent to me, as well as the idea of advertising on this site.

Such a internal debate is affordable when only a dozen or so people were reading my site. Now that readership has exploded into the thousands (roughly 3,000 readers a day when you take in RSS subscribers along with those who access this site directly) and I'm getting several products in the mail on a weekly basis, this debate is no longer an affordable luxury. I feel I need to let you readers know where I stand when it comes to certain behaviors and what they can expect from me in regard to certain situations.

This list will be set up in the upper Navigate corner for easy reference for all who wish to read. It will also be updated when situations call for it. I also would love any input on the guidelines listed below. I hope to create a dialogue surrounding this post and further define the ethical Guidelines for this site.

Advertising

• This site will take advertising. Money from advertising allows me to pay for technical costs, pursue related interests on the site and also affords me the possible opportunity to be an independent voice.
• I will strive to ensure that the advertising does not adversely affect readers experiences. What this means is that there will be no pop-up or pop-under ads. Nor will advertising take up the majority of screen space on the site.
• I will strive to ensure that the advertising does not adversely affect the load time of this site.
• Advertisers have no say on the editorial policies of this site.
• The posting of ads does not, nor should not constitute an endorsement of the advertised product.
• I reserve the right to control which ads appear on this site.
• You, as the reader, have the right to question me on any ad that appears on this site.
• I will endeavor to not review a product that is currently being advertised upon my site.
• I reserve the right to accept advertising from companies whose products I've previously reviewed.
• I will never give a positive review of a product with the expressed purpose of drawing advertisers.

Reviewable Products and Activities

• I reserve the right to accept products sent to me with the expressed intent of getting a mention on the Accidental Hedonist.
• All products sent to me will first meet my Review Policy and Guidelines.
• All opinions given in relation to a product shall be the result of my own critical analysis of the product, rather than a solicited response from a PR firm or Advertiser.
• I will endeavor to alert the readership of how the reviewed product was acquired, whether through my own purchase, or a product provided at no cost.
• I will endeavor to alert you, the reader, of any conflict of interest, presumed or actual, when reviewing a product.
• Readers have the right to question whether I have a conflict of interest in regard to any review.
• Readers have the right to their own opinion, and the right to respectfully vocalize that opinion in the comments.

Misc.

• I reserve the right to ask the readers of this site for advice in relation to future ethical dilemmas.
• I reserve the right to be human and make mistakes, as long as I accept responsibility for my decisions.

John Mariani tells his side of the story in regard to the Critics vs. Comps issue I talked about a while back.

The a variety of interesting things he writes about, but the one I focused on is the following:

The reason comps exist is simply BECAUSE media cannot afford the money required to make food and travel sections possible. It is on record that the NY Times spends well over $100,000 on its restaurant critic's expenses each year. I doubt very many newspapers, excepting the very biggest, have paid $20,000 and more for their restaurant critics to spend in one year. I've had such jobs, and believe me, if I went over $1,000 a month, I heard about it from my editor. How many other papers or magazines, now with chronically reduced bugets and staff, can afford to spend anything close to that amount? Which is why they pick up so much freelance and syndicated material and never asked who paid for what.

This is something that Steven Shaw had mentioned as well. For all this talk of ethical standards that the New York Times and other similar institutions put on their payed staff, these standards not only do not apply to freelancers, but cannot. For if the freelancers were forced to pay their own way, they'd never be able to work as food or travel writers.

He also touches upon the Moto comments as well as the Cleveland comments. For those who are interested in this story, his posts (and the subsequent ones) are a must read.

Kudos to eGullet and to Mr. Mariani for helping clarify this episode.

Which reminds me. From here on out, I will endeavor to let you guys know of any influences that may bias my own opinions. I'll codify into a post the same way that I documented the PR Agreement post.

Technorati Tags: Food & Drink, John Mariani, Journalistic Ethics,Food Writing

In looking over the Fresh Pumpkin Pie recipe, Russ sent me some more information that would add flavor, not just pumpkin pie, but to any winter squash recipe.

If you saute the pumpkin seeds and stringy insides in butter in a dutch oven or large pan, until saffron colored; then add 6 cups water, increase heat and steam the cut up pumpkin over that in a vegetable steamer, you will get a much richer and fuller pumpkin flavor. You can reserve some of the water to help puree the cooked pumpkin.

Thanks Russ! Keep those tips comin'!

Technorati Tags: Food & Drink, Winter Squash, Food Tips, Pumpkin

When I lived in Columbus, Ohio during the early 90's, I fell in love with a now-massively- franchised restaurant called BW3's. I loved the place because they had Satellite Bar Trivia (as I said previously, I'm a geek), but it in playing in a trivia tournement league (think: bowling leauge for eggheads), I developed a penchant for buffalo wings.

And yes, they're called Buffalo Wings. Not Hot Wings, not Devil Wings, but Buffalo Wings. Why? Because they were invented in Buffalo, New York (at the Anchor Bar, to be more specific). If you've been to Buffalo, you know that they need all the good publicity they can muster. Although the word on the street is that they are simply called "chicken wings" or "wings" in the Buffalo area, so take my word with a grain of salt.

The recipe is easy. Fry the wings, coat them with hot sauce and butter. Bing, Bang, Zoom, you're on your way.

The trick (and the fun, according to the hot sauce cultists), is figuring out which hot sauces to use. For the recipe below, I used 2/3rd Cholula, 1/6 Scorned Woman and 1/6 Pain is Good Louisiana Style Hot Sauce. Oh, and a few splashes of Tobasco.

The technique of this recipe was found on the Hot Sauce Blog. If you're into Hot Sauces, head their way.

• 6 oz of hot sauce
• 6 oz melted butter
• 1/8 cup sugar
• 2 lbs chicken drummettes, cut
• oil

In a medium mixing bowl, combine the hot sauce, melted butter and sugar. Set aside.

Place the oil in a stock pot, so that it comes to about 1" up from the bottom. Heat the oil to 340-350 degrees F.

Place 4-6 pieces if chicken into the oil and cook until the chicken is a golden brown,about 7-10 minutes. Remove from oil and place briefly on paper towel.

Then places cooked wings in hot sauce. Coat thoroughly and then plate to serve along with Celery and Blue Cheese Dressing.

Serves 3-4

Technorati Tags: Food & Drink, Recipes, Buffalo Wings, Hot Wings

World reknown Television food chef Jamie Oliver has found himself in a bit of hot water after slaughtering a lamb on a recent show of his.

Advocates for Animals, said Oliver should be "thoroughly ashamed" because the lamb was fully concious when it was slaughtered. But People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals have come down on Mr. Oliver's side...sorta. They said "In slaughterhouses, the stun gun often misses the mark and animals remain concious. Showing this scene can hit home the message of cruelty."

The press in Britain has been having a less restrained response, with editorials peppering the papers, mostly against The Naked Chef's choice, adding that the slaughter should not have been on the television at a time when children could watch it.

Personally, I think it's important for everyone, not just adults, to understand where their food comes from. Killing animals happens to be part of the process. The further away a person gets away from that fact, the less they understand food. Should a child watch it? That's up for the parents to decide.

As for the humane treatment of the lamb? Do they think that the slaughter of animals is in any way a wonder to behold? Regardless of the method of the slaughter, it's still a violent act, not one pleasant to behold.

Technorati Tags: Food & Drink, Food,Jamie Oliver,

Let it be said, on the record, that when it comes to economics I am a free-market advocate with several caveats, some of those being:

1) Producers must be paid a wage that allows them to feed and house their family well, and provide them further economic opportunities.
2) Regulation of the product if said product has a low to moderate probability of harming consumers if it were to go unregulated.

I mention the above, as I'm about to discuss globalization and the wine industry, and it's best to understand my perspective so you know where my biases are.

There is a wonderful article from the German Magazin Der Speigel, entitled In Vino Vilitas with the by line "European Wine Fighting for Survival". The article shows the state of the European Wine making community from several perspectives, many of which make it difficult to choose whom one should cheer for or against.

I say the above words with difficulty, because part of me likes the tradition of wine, often more than the wine itself. But when you have the French wineries upset because there are non-French wineries that deliver a consistent product using non-traditional methods(read American methods), it's difficult to feel sorry for them. It's even more difficult to feel sorry for them when their own population is turning away from their wine tradition.

And yet, I can't cheer for the new companies either, who have no problem with developing a postmodern French wine mythology in order to take advantage of the non-European consumer's ignorance of what French Wine has meant in the past. In reading the following paragraph from Der Spiegel, I couldn't help but feel as if these companies love to patronize to their audience.

The company is designing his new labels, one for his top-selling cuvee, "La Favorite," one for his "Château Richelieu," and one for his third wine, dubbed "Trois Musketeers." Pen came up with the bilingual name for his US customers -- it sounds a little French and yet not completely foreign. On the back label, he'll write that this wine harbors the kind of tension that existed between the Musketeers and the Cardinal.

Not only do I find the above patronizing, but also offensive to those who know a fair amount of French history, or at least a bit of the book by Dumas.

From my own perspective there are several points which every company needs to understand, specifically in the global economy.

First and foremost, the market can and does dictate what is successful. Yes, manufacturers can influence the consumer (through marketing and advertising and the like), but the end choice falls on the shoulders of the consumer. If you're selling something that the market doesn't want, you're going to have problems.

Second, tastes change. The wine market may be calling out for sugars and oaks now, but in thirty to fifty years, this will most assuredly not be the case.

Also, consistency is a favorable asset. For the longest time, wines have been able to sell themselves as having good years and bad years. With new technologies and the introductions of new enzymes to play with, this aspect is going to change within the industry. Yes, there will still be variation from year to year, but unless a winery can control that variance, they'll put themselves at risk each and every year.

There will always be a market for high end wines, regardless of the technologies used to get to the results. Or to put it another way, good Bordeaux won't go away. But several of the wineries who produce good Bordeaux probably will. When people start talking about tradition, that's probably a good sign that they're worried about their job.

If I had to guess at what the future holds for the wine industry, I'd take a look to the beer industry for guidance. You'll have several, if not dozens of big names delivering a very controlled product that tries to deliver the public what that public wants. Then you'll have smaller wineries that deliver to the public new (or in this case, old) tastes. My only concern is that some wines need massive aging to get those complex tastes, and that the financial risks might be too great for smaller wineries to be able to take them.

Meanwhile, the world wine market is opening up for places in South Africa, Chile, New Zealand and Australia. Europe has to understand that this box is already open and they have to deal with this influx sooner rather than later.

Because later will probably be too late.

Technorati Tags: Food & Drink, Wines, globalization

About a month ago, I first posted upon Green LA Girl's Starbuck's challenge. One of the goals of the challenge was to show the distance between what the Starbuck's Corporation said in regard to Free Fair-Trade coffee, and what was really happening at their locations. The realities between what was said and what was done were a tad different on some occaissions, vastly different in many others.

For the record, this is what Starbucks promises:

Starbucks company-operated stores in North America feature Café Estima Blend™, a Fair Trade Certified™ coffee as Coffee of the Week on a quarterly or more frequent basis. Café Estima Blend™ is always available by the cup upon request in Starbucks North America retail stores.

Emphasis mine.

At any rate, LA Girl recently posted her own update of what this movement has acheived.

1. Starbucks admitted that there IS a problem: a break down in customer service.

2. Starbucks sent out a bunch of emails to take care of the problem -- which totally worked for the Starbucks in Singapore, but not for most of the US Starbucks -- especially many in LA.

3. Starbucks admitted the emails, sadly, were not doing the job, and said they'll set up, before the end of the month, a meeting between me (and hopefully some other bloggers), Starbucks CSR reps, and district managers in the LA area.

4. [*NEW*] By May 2006, Starbucks will include a lil video in its "new partner learning program" that'll reiterate Starbucks' policy to provide customers with a French press -- including Cafe Estima, Starbucks' lone fair trade certified blend sold in stores. This means new baristas will be officially taught about Starbucks French-press-on-demand policy through a video during their first few weeks of work!

Kudos to LA Green Girl and everyone who has taken the Starbucks Challenge. It's heartening to see things like this succeed get the attention of the larger corporations.

UPDATED: Fixed a crucial typo and changed the wording to better reflect LA Green Girl's POV that she left in the comments.

This'll teach me to post after downing a bottle of cough syrup.

Technorati Tags: Food & Drink, Coffee, Starbucks Challenge, Starbucks, Free Trade Coffee

I don't pretend to understand everything surrounding the food world. People who have to have every happy meal toy? I don't have any idea what their motivations happen to be. Those who folks who save beer cans? I have no clue what's on their mind. People who let food magazines sit around for months on end?

Okay, I understand that.

But there is a group of folks out there who I can appreciate, but I certainly cannot understand their level of passion. I speak of those who love hot sauces.

You may think you love hot sauces. But trust me, the fire that motivates these folks is a step beyond. They have their own blogs, their own secret society, and they hold special festivals.

I want to fully understand, I truly do. But the names of these products make it difficult for me to take them too serious. Take a gander at some of the names I found for some sauces:

• Colon Blow "A Red Habanero Enema"
• Show Your Tits Hot Sauce
• Ass Blaster Hot Sauce
• Rectum Ripper XXX1/2 Hot Sauce

I don't think myself a prude, but I am going to think twice before I pick up a bottle that says "Rectum Ripper" anywhere upon the bottle, hot sauce or no.

But hey, that's just me.

I understand that a great many of these similarly named hot sauces are novelty items, and not really produced with...ahem... good taste in mind. Some folks out there are keen to simply mix up some seeds with a vinegar sauce and call it "Oh-my-god-your-intestines-are-going-to-fall-into-the-septic-tank brand Hot Sauce"?? and send it off to Spencer's gifts. The question for me is: How do you find a good hot sauce without dealing with the fakes and hacks of the hot sauce world?

The trick, as with any produced product out there, is to look at the label and see what tastes intrigue you and go from there. A recent trip to a Kitchen store produced these two products:

D.L Jardine's Blazin' Saddle: Made with Habenero Peppers, Carrots, onions, Lime juice, vinegar, Garlic and Salt.

Scorned Woman Hot Sauce: Vinegar, water, peppers, lemon juice concentrate, salt, black peppers and Xanthan Gum, Potassium Sorbate, and Sodium Benzoate.

The winner of the two? From where I was sitting it was The Blazin Saddle by a long shot. But that's strictly my own opinion.

There are at least two things that are at play within the Cult of the Hot Sauce, taste being one. The other is how hot the sauces can get. This all comes back to the capsacin we talked about previously, When that capsacin hits your tongue, it sends pain signals your brain. Your body, in order to deal with said pain, releases endorphins which then causes a mild euphoria. Mix good flavor with a bit of eurphoria and you have a decent Friday night going for you.

My point here is that there's a bunch of silliness out there in the hot sauce world, but there's a fair amount of great stuff out there, if you look for it. The cult can be your friend. In fact, one can say that theyve already blazed the trail.

Technorati Tags: Food & Drink, Hot Sauce, Chiles

Do you want to know what I dislike? Being ill on the weekend.I spend all week preparing myself for a peaceful couple of days without worrying about Software Quality practices, and then I find myself coughing and with a gravel-like voice that would make Bea Arthur go "Damn, girl".

Not wanting to waste an opportunity, I figured this weekend would now be best to make a soup. Not chicken noodle, which, although tasty, is kinda passe. For me I wanted to do Chicken Pho. Or rather , Chicken phở.

Chicken phở is, most likely, an American variation of the traditional Vietnamese soup. There's no standard, so as long you have a broth with a bit of citrus and a touch of fish sauce. Then there should be rice noodles, onions and bean sprouts. Everything else you can probably use your best estimation, personal taste or both.

UPDATE: I think now it's fairly clear that what I've made here is not Pho. So all of the above? Disregard. This is Asian style chicken soup. You guys have convinced me.

As penance, I intend to make an actual pho sometime in the upcoming months. Any thoughts on where I should start?

Broth

• bones from 1 whole rotisserie chicken
• 12 cups of water
• 1 yellow onion
• 2 Tablespoons of olive oil
• 1/2 head of broccoli
• 1 cup white wine,dry
• 1/8 cup lime juice
• 2 Tablespoons fish sauce
• 1 bay leaf
• 1 Tablespoon peppercorns
• 2 teaspoons kosher salt

Soup Ingredients

• 1 yellow onions, sliced
• 1 head of broccoli florets
• 1 oz of dried morel mushrooms
• Meat from one whole rotisserie chicken
• 1 lb rice noodles
• 2 cups of chopped green onions
• Basil, to taste
• Sliced jalepenos, as desired
• Bean sprouts, as desired
• Cilantro,to taste
• Slices of lime

Remove the meat from your whole rotisserie chicken. Set the meat aside, and place the bones in a large stock pot. Add twelve cups of water and set over low heat.

Place your onions in a medium skillet. Add a touch of oil and fry the onions until carmelized. Add the onions to the stockpot.

Raise the heat under the stockpot to medium high. Add the broccoli, white wine, lime juice, fish sauce, bay leaf, peppercorns and salt. Bring the broth to a boil, and the lower the heat to low, allowing the broth to get to a simmer. Simmer the broth, partially covered, for at least one hour, but 4-5 would be better, as the longer time will help draw out as much of the flavors into the broth.

When you're ready to use the broth for the soup, strain out as much of the solids as you can.

To the broth, add the sliced onions, the broccoli florets, dried mushrooms and the chicken meat. Maintain soup at a simmer.

Meanwhile, cook the rice noodles as per instructions. When complete, add to the broth as well. Bring the broth up to medium heat and cook for 10 minutes. Add the two cups of chopped green onions.Ladle into your serving bowl.

Add basil, cilantro, jalepenos and bean sprouts as you see fit. Top with a slice of lime and chile sause or hoison sauce.

Serves 8 - 10

Technorati Tags: Food & Drink, Recipes, Soup, pho

We've updated and implemented a few features to Accidental Hedonist that affect those of you who comment and/or trackback to our articles here.

1. Trackbacks: We turned them off. Our apologies for those who've been gracious enough to trackback to us in the past, but spam was getting a bit too much. There were days when I'd have to delete 200 trackback spams in a single sitting, and that's simply too much. So they're gone.

2. Comment Links: They're back! Feel free to use the < a href> tags. We'll work to ensure the system isn't abused by spammers.

Of course, when I say the collective "we" up above, what I mean to say is "Tara", as she's the resident Tech Diva here. I'm the one who asks "Can you make it look pretty?" and she's the person who does all of the heavy lifting. Thank her when you get the chance.

What the hell is up with these folks lately?? This time an incident occurs in Cleveland (survey question may be needed for viewing of article):

When Free Times Associate Editor Larry Durstin was told lunch wasn't dinner, he threatened to slam, in print, the questionable practices of the marketing department.

Free grub or bad pub?

Editor Frank Lewis canned Durstin when he found out.

Sheeesh. I know that in the several stories I've mentioned recently, it hasn't been always the critics fault. From a meta-viewing, it is odd that there have been as many "compromised food-critic" stories in a such a short period of time.

Weird.

There are times when I simply amaze myself. No, no, it's not those times when I'm particularly humble. I mean those times when I "get" a recipe and can recreate it without looking at a recipe. It's akin to trying to play guitar and singing at the same time. One moment you can't do it, then something clicks. Your mind goes "a-HA!" and suddenly you realize that your skill set for a particular task has increased +1.

Yes, that was a Dungeons and Dragons reference. I may be amazing, but I'm also a geek with a long history of geek activities.

Where was I? Oh, yes, Chile Rellenos. I love Mexican food, but it's not my forte in the kitchen. Not because the food is any more difficult to prepare, but rather because it's a different set of ingredients and different set of preparation skills that I don't use all that often.

In researching this recipe, I found hundreds of different variations. In my mind, it clicked that I had a great deal of leeway in preparing this recipe, as long as I stuck to a few basic ground rules: I had to stuff a chile with a filling of some sort. I had to use roughly Southwest American or Mexican Ingredients. I had to cook the chile. The following is my result.

Warning: This recipe calls for you using hot oil on your stove top. For goodness sake, be careful!

Chiles and Filling

• 12 Anaheim Chiles, or other similarly large chiles
• 1 lb Chorizo Sausage, ground
• 1/4 cup dried apricots, chopped
• 1/4 cup golden raisins
• 1/2 cup Jack cheese, shredded
• 1 teaspoon cumin

Batter

• 6 eggs, separated
• 1 1/2 cups AP Flour
• 1/2 cup corn meal
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper

Turn on the broiler of your oven. Place the chile peppers evenly on a cookie tray and place under the broiler heating element. Cook for 5 minutes, turn over, and cook for another 5 minutes. You should have a blackened skin on your pepper that looks as if it's about to fall off. Remove the skin or not, as there's benefits for either choice. I chose to remove the falling skin which made it holding the filling in more difficult. Set aside and allow to cool.

In a medium skillet, cook your sausage until browned, but not overly so. There should be no pink meat remaining, but you don't want to cook the sausage like it's breakfast time either. Drain any fat and put the sausage in a mixing bowl. Allow to cool for 10-15 minutes. Combine the sausage with apricots, raisins, cheese and cumin.

Set up your frying process. In one bowl, whisk together the egg whites from six eggs until you get firm peaks. In another bowl, mix together the six egg yolks. Combine the egg yolks and whites and fold them carefully together. It doesn't have to be perfect, but one should try not to remove the fluffiness of the egg whites either.

In another bowl, mix your flour, cornmeal, baking powder and cayenne pepper.

In a large skillet (preferably cast iron), fill with corn or canola oil up 3/4 the side of the skillet. Bring up to medium high heat.

Now, back to the chiles. Place a 1/2" to 3/4" slice at the thickest part of the pepper. You can choose to remove the seeds if you wish, but you may be inviting disaster if you do so. Add the filling to the pepper. Repeat the process until you've filled all your chile peppers. If the chile has difficulty staying together, toothpicks can be used to hold them.

By this time, your oil should be up to temperature. Roll your pepper in the egg mixture and then coat with the flour mixture. Place carefully into the oil. Cook for 2-3 minutes, flipping them over with tongs if necessary. Fry until a nice golden crust has developed. Remove from oil with tongs and allow to drain on a paper towel. Repeat as needed, cooking between 2-3 peppers at a time.

Plate and top with Salsa, or other tomato-type sauce, and a bit of cheese.

Serves 6

Technorati Tags: Food & Drink, Recipes, Mexican Food, Chile

Here's another one from the mailbag.

Hi Kate,

I was at Bristol Farms today, and I asked the butcher if they had any organic beef. He said, that all the beef they carry is USDA Natural, which means grain fed, but no hormones or antibiotics. I asked if they had any free-range beef, and he told me that all beef is free-range because meat cows have room to wander, and that the only difference between most "organic" beef and this "USDA Natural" is that the grains that are fed to the USDA Natural cows aren't organic. Can you shed some light on this? My nearest Whole Foods is quite a jaunt. Is this USDA Natural worth anything?

thanks,

- brian

Hi Brian! I'm not sure if what I'm about to say is confusing or not, so let me know if my explanation is lacking.

There is no such label as "USDA Natural". Period. The confusing aspect is that when you see "Natural" on a product, the USDA is responsible for defining what "Natural" entails. In fact, the entirity of the definition can be found on the USDA website. Their definition for "natural" is:

A product containing no artificial ingredient or added color and is only minimally processed (a process which does not fundamentally alter the raw product) may be labeled natural. The label must explain the use of the term natural (such as - no added colorings or artificial ingredients; minimally processed.)

That's all there is to it. But organic standards are much longer and better defined. They take up several pages.

So when you asked the butcher those questions, he was wrong on some fronts, correct on others. Hormones and antibiotics can be natural. Organic can be grain fed. It's the particulars in which count. "Organics" have well defined particulars, "Natural" does not.

As for "Free-Range"? Well, "Free-Range" is generally applied to chickens. Even in the USDA regulations, they refer to poultry explicitly. The fact that they don't mention beef is telling. My belief is that there's no USDA sanctioned "Free-Range" Beef. If you see "Free Range Beef" it's probably a marketing term.

The butcher is correct when he says that "meat cattle" has access to pasture. Note that he said "meat cows" when it comes to access to pastures (aka "free range"). Dairy cattle does not have such a luxury in some instances. Something to keep in mind.

When you look at the standards linked above, there is a big difference between "Natural" beef and "Organic" beef. When it comes to feed alone, there are several items listed that organic standards require. There are no such requirements for the "natural" label. As long as the feed has natural ingredients then it's acceptable. Are there grain fillers out there that claim themselves as "natural"? I'm not sure, as I'm not a farmer and my elite google skills are failing me at the moment.

But I will ask you this -- There's the act of using cow remnants as grain filler. My question to you is: Aren't ground up bones and tendons still "natural" products?

Now I'm not saying that Bristol Farms is one of those kind of places that feed their cows natural filler that contains cow remnants. But it does show that companies can and do push the limits on the definition of "natural". To say that there's no difference between "Natural" and "Organic" standards is the same as saying that there's no difference between a Hershey Bar and chocolate made from a Chocolatier in Paris. While both are chocolate, one has more explicit standards than the other.

UPDATED: Removed bit about some cattle companies using cow remnants in their feed, as I had no hard proof for that statement.

Technorati Tags: Food, Food Politics, USDA, USDA Labels

As I never miss a chance to take a cheap shot at corporate companies who deliver mediocre to poor products, let me give a hearty, yet sarcastic, salute to the folks at Anheuser-Busch and Miller Brewing Company.

It seems as if these companies are in a bit of a rut of late. There are several reasons for their decline, including a marketplace continually shifting to wine and spirits as well as losing ground to higher-end imports and artisinal brewers.

But this market share loss is simply the result of a much larger issue. As Tom Long, Miller's chief marketing officer, mentioned in this article, "the beer industry itself is to blame for its recent troubles. The recent trend to more lowbrow humor has brought down the industry's image in the eyes of the public, and that a lack of brand differentiation constitutes an "ocean of sameness" in consumers' minds".

Or to put it another way, Budweiser = Miller = Coors. All of which taste like watered down barley water with a bit of an alcoholic kick. As the Canadian joke goes (if you'll pardon the vulgarity) -- "How is American Beer like making love in a canoe? It's fucking close to water."

The other issue is that these beers are marketed primarily to the "Drunk Sports Fan" crowd, a crowd that a growing number of consumers don't wish to be associated.

So if you're having a tall cool one with dinner tonight, tip your glass to these beer dinosaurs. They're losing sales to local micro-brewers, and I for one, couldn't be happier.

Technorati Tags: Food & Drink, Beer, Budweiser, Coors, Miller Brewing, Beer sales

As Thanksgiving day is a mere two weeks away, it's probably a good idea to go over some basic tips and hints revolving around the big bird. It's a fair guess to say that Heritage Turkeys are now becoming less and less available for pre-order, but that doesn't mean that you will have to suffer a bad bird, at least taste-wise.

Purchasing

• The younger the turkey, the more tender and mild flavored it will be. Turkeys labeled "young turkey" are usually 4 to 6 months of age. There are also young turkeys labeled "fryer-roaster turkey" which are usually under 16 weeks of age.
• The sex designation of "hen" or "tom" is optional on the label, and means little when it comes to the tenderness of the meat. Toms will have more breast meat than hens and will generally be larger birds.
• The larger birds give more meat per pound.
• Buy two small turkeys in place of one large one means more drumsticks, wings, thighs and giblets, and takes less time to cook
• Turkey Label Terms -
  Basted/Self Basting: injected with a liquid that can add up to 12% of the Turkeys net weight.
  Fresh: chilled to 40° F, but not below 26° F.
  Frozen: Flash frozen to below 32°, then stored 0° F or lower.
  Natural: Minimally processed and contains nothing artificial or preservative.
  Refrigerated: Stored between 1° F and 26° F.
• A USDA grade mark of "A" typically means that the Turkeys are meaty, have a well developed layer of fat in the skin, and are practically free from pinfeathers, bruises, cuts, tears on the breast and legs, and broken bones.

Storing

• Store raw turkeys for 2 days in the refrigerator in its original wrapping. If you're not going to use the turkey within 2 days, store it in the freezer, giving it an additional wrapping of Saran Wrap. There it will keep for up to a year.

Thawing

• It's best to thaw the turkey in an environment that does not allow bacteria to grow. The Safe zone? 40° F or under.
• Thawing in the refrigerator is the safest means of getting the turkey ready. But it does take a while. Allow 25 hours for every 5 lbs of turkey. So a 15 lb bird will take you 3 days to thaw in the refrigerator.
• Some say the most efficient way to thaw in the Refrigerator is to place the turkey breast-side up in its unopened wrapper on a tray in the refrigerator. YMMV.
• A cooler can be used if shelf space is an issue. Use Freezer packs to keep chilled. You will need to rotate as the freezer packs warm up over time. A refrigerator thermometer is probably not a bad idea in the cooler either. Remember: 40° is the danger line. Replaces the packs when the temperature hits about 38 degrees F.
• If you forget to thaw your bird, you can thaw it in cold water. Place the turkey in a sealed, leakproof packaging (i.e. additional Saran Wrap). Completely submerge in cold water. Change the water every 30 minutes until turkey is thawed. Rule of thumb? The Turkey should be submerged in cool water for 30 minutes for every lb of the turkey. So a 12-16 lb turkey would thaw in 6-8 hours. The bird should then be cooked as soon as possible when thawed to prevent bacteria growth.

Preparing

• A Brine is a good way to ensure a moist bird, unless you have a Heritage turkey. The Heritage Turkey can easily stand on its own.
• Do not let raw turkey juice touch ready to eat foods.
• For God's sake, remove the bag of giblets from the neck area of the bird. This is a mistake you'll make only once in your life (and yes, I've done that).
• Here are some prepping ideas. I've not tried them all, but some people swear by them:
  Bacon: Attach Bacon strips to the bird with Toothpicks.
  Butter: Pat the turkey dry, then brush completely with melted butter. Coat with salt and pepper.
  Cheesecloth: Soak Cheesecloth in olive or canola oil. Then wrap the turkey with said cheesecloth. Remove the cloth 30 minutes before the end of its roasting time.
• A turkey will cook faster in a darker pan.
• The Larger the roasting pan, the better the heat circulation surrounding the bird.

Stuffing?

• Stuffing adds to cooking time.
• Stuffing adds another variable to the risk of the bacteria land mines.
• Stuffing is your choice. It makes roasting the turkey more difficult, but not impossible.
• Buuutt...you can add a quartered onion to the huge turkey cavity to give your bird that extra somethin'. Alton Brown also adds a cinnamon stick and a bit of apple.. If you do this, toss out these items when the turkey is done roasting.

Roasting

• A V-rack is a good idea, as it prevents the bird from rolling and allows more heat to circulate.
• Basting? Not worth the effort. It toughens the skin and won't be as crispy. I won't even mention the fact that every time you'd open the door to baste, you would lower the temperature of your oven, increasing your cooking time.
• That little plastic "turkey popper"? Ignore it. But don't remove it.
• Thermometers are your friends. Have a good one on hand.
• Perfect temperatures for turkey Meat? Dark meat is 180° F. White is roughly 161° F.
• For an unstuffed and thawed turkey? Roast at 325° F for 2¾ to 3 hours for an 8-12 lb bird. 3 to 3¾ hours for a 12-14 pounder. 3¾ to 4¼ hours for a 14-18 pound bird. 4¼ - 4½ hours for a 18 to 20 lb turkey. And 4½ - 5 hours for a 20lb to 24 lb monster.
• For a stuffed and thawed turkey? Roast at 325° F for 3 to 3½ hours for an 8-12 lb bird. 3½ to 4 hours for a 12-14 pounder. 4 to 4¼ hours for a 14-18 pound bird. 4¼ - 4¾ hours for a 18 to 20 lb turkey. And 4¾ - 5¼ hours for a 20lb to 24 lb monster.
• Alton Brown Method of Roasting? The first 30 minutes at 500° F. Add a folded-over, breast-sized and oiled sheet of Aluminum Foil to the Turkey's breast at the 30 minute mark and lower the heat to 350° F. Cook until the internal temperature of the bird reaches 161° F.
• Never partially cook a turkey to be finished later. You're asking for bacterial growth.
• Check for doneness of your turkey at about 30 minutes prior to it's completion time. Insert a your meat thermometer at the thickest part of the thigh. It should read roughly 175 ° F. The breast should read somewhere between 160° F and 165° F.
• If you've used stuffing, the center of the stuffing should read 165° F.
• After removing the turkey from the oven, cover completely (yet loosely) with foil. Allow to set between 20 -30 minutes before carving.
• Free range turkeys will typically have a pink coloration in about 1/3 of the breast meat, particularly that meat closest to the ribs. That’s because they develop a stronger and healthier circulatory system than do caged birds, and there is a resulting greater supply of blood to the muscles - which can tint the meat like a blush.

There are more words of wisdom out there, so don't consider this the end-all be-all of Turkey Wisdom.

Hope this helps!

Technorati Tags: Food & Drink, Turkey Hints, Turkey, Thanksgiving

Ye Gods do I love the Internet!! Where else can you find a DVD on how to make Pierogies.

Pierogies have a special little place in my life. I was born and (presumably) bred in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. What this means in regards to culinary pleasures is that I enjoy Jumbo, chipped-chopped ham, cole slaw on my sandwiches, and pierogies.

One of the many pleasant memories of my youth was "Pierogie Day". We lived in a city, and the School District allowed the students of the elementary school to leave the premises at lunch time to either go home, or purchase lunch at a local establishment.

Now it just so happens that the School was a few blocks away from a Ukrainian Orthodox Church at what is now called the Holy Virgin Church. (Personally? I remember it as St. Vladimir's). The Church would hold Pierogie Day every Friday, and students from the school could come and get a carton of six homemade pierogies, swimming in onions and butter. These little dumplings stuffed with potatoes introduced me to the joys of Eastern European foods. How many of you out there can compete with that? Okay, probably a fair amount of you, but this aspect of my childhood makes me feel a tad special.

What this means is that every time I think of Pierogies, I think of Pittsburgh. That's why I am so pleased to find this site -- Pierogies Plus. A company in Pittsburgh making homemade pierogies and allows you to order them online.

It also means that I am now old enough to wistfully recall moments of my youth that make sound like an old biddy upon retelling.

And so it goes.

Technorati Tags: food, Pittsburgh, pierogies

Or as it's known here in the States, rice and spinach cake. Well, maybe the phrase "known here" is a bit optimistic.

This is another dish that requires a little prep work, but not a lot. This can be easily be made on a weeknight, and will most likely be wonderful tomorrow when it's cold. Plan on having this dish for left overs.

One should not be stingy with the parmesan cheese in this dish. I topped the cake with about a 1/4 cup the cheese and it created a very nice crust. If you are one who likes to takes risks, frying up two slices of pancetta, chopping them up and stirring them into the "batter" would also work very well.

Alas, I didn't realize this until afterwards. Ah well. Next time. Next time.

• 1 lb fresh spinach
• 1 cup Arborio rice
• Salt, to taste
• 1 white onion, chopped
• 1 Tablespoon olive oil
• 2 Tablespoons butter
• 3 eggs
• 4 tablespoons grated parmesan
• Pepper, to taste
• Pinch of nutmeg
• 1/4 cup grated parmesan, to top

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees F.

Cook the de-stemmed spinach until soft. I used a steamer, but hey, I'm a rebel. Drain the water from the spinach and chop coarsely.

In a medium soup pan, boil 2 cups of salted water. Once the water has reached its boil, add the rice and cook for 10 minutes. Add the spinach, mix well and drain immediately. Place in a large mixing bowl and set aside.

In a skillet, fry an onion in oil only golden. When ready, add to spinach and rice. Mix well, and add butter, eggss, 4 Tablespoons of cheese, pepper and nutmeg. Mix well until butter has melted and eggs and cheese have been thoroughly incorporated. Press into a buttered 9 inch cake pan. Top with 1/4 cup of parmesan cheese. Place in oven and bake for 25 minutes.

Remove from oven and allow to set for 5-10 minutes. Serve hot or store it overnight in the refrigerator to eat cold.

Serves 8

Technorati Tags: Food & Drink, Recipes, Italian Food, Spinach, Rice

We talk a lot about food at this here site. We talk about recipes, politics, corporatism, good taste and not always in the same conversation. But rarely do I touch upon people who've actually made a difference in the food world. Emphasis on the word 'world'.

Let me briefly mention Norman Borlaug. "Who is he?", you may be asking yourself at the moment. As Penn Jillete (of Penn and Teller) once noted,"When (Norman) won the Nobel Prize in 1970, they said he had saved a billion people. That's BILLION. 'BUH!' That's Carl Sagan's billion with a 'B'. And most of them were of different race from him. Norman is the greatest human being."

What did he do? He developed a type of genetically engineered scientifically crossbred wheat. Borlaug then introduced this grain, as well as modern agricultural production techniques, to Pakistan, India and Mexico,. The end result of this? He increased their food production from 500-1000 kilograms per Hectacre to 2000, 2500 and 5000 kilograms to each respective country. The Nobel committee was correct -- the man has saved billions of lives.

I bring his name up for two reasons -

1. The dude should be a household name. Along the lines of Einstein and Newton.
2. His work is the best example of what science and food can do. When people dismiss Genetically Modified and other scientifically developed food outright, he's the man I point to in order to refute their charges.

That's not to say that there are not issues surrounding Genetically Modified food , as there are many. But like anything else, with moderation and proper diligence, these foods add the the benefit of our society. They should not be dismissed for what they can accomplish.

I wanted to put this out into the ether this morning. Thanks!

UPDATE: Touched up a line to better make a point.

Technorati Tags: Food, Genetically Modified food, Norman Borlaug

Here I am, always late for the party.

Things in the food criticism game have been a tad bit discomforting of late. Not only have we had a bit of issue with the John Mariani affair, but now there's a real scandal involving fellow Pac Nor'westerner Jim Dixon. He recently gave a marginal re-review of Portland's Castagna restaurant. The review was a bit odd, in that it didn't cover desserts or ambiance, but focused on appetizers and entrees, and had a particular gripe about salt.

Below are a few quotes from a 468 word review:

When Kevin Gibson and Monique Siu-a husband-and-wife team who'd both been present at the creation of some of the best meals in town (Gibson at Genoa, Siu at Zefiro)-opened Castagna on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard in 1999, everybody was happy. Before its first birthday, a reviewer in WW's own Restaurant Guide proclaimed it "the best new restaurant to open in Portland." In 2000, The Oregonian dubbed Castagna its Restaurant of the Year.

So what's my problem? In a word: salt.

(snip)

I also know that we fickle, inconsistent humans come equipped with varying abilities to perceive flavors.

So take this with a grain of salt. Or better yet, shake a little on the food at Castagna, because it's still bland.

(snip)
I had to ask for salt for the cafe's signature burger ($11), ditto for the steak ($19), two items that should've been pretty heavily salted before they were cooked.

On first perusal, this may seem like a relevant piece of criticism. But then the owners of Castagna, Kevin Gibson and Monique Siu posted a letter to the editor in which they drop this bombshell.

...in the best interests of full disclosure, please let your readers know that your reviewer imports and sells sea salt.

Whoops.

To add insult to injury, the Castagna dropped off a 50 lb Salt lick to Mr. Dixon.

Weekly Editor Kelly Clarke responded that this little fact of Dixon's business should have been noted somewhere around Jim's review. But, she noted "In order to avoid any conflicts of interest, Dixon does not sell salt or olive oil to restaurants he reviews for WW."

That little bit of news sure lit a fire under some people's bottoms in Portland, as they responded with several further letters to the editors, wondering where the line is drawn in this "Conflict of Interest" debate. One writes "If a restaurant chooses not to do business with Mr. Dixon, then he is free to review them?" Another reader follows up with "I know that you all are proud of your Pulitzer Prize this year, but Jim Dixon and Kelly Clarke just took a little shine off your publication's well-deserved reputation."

Ye-ouch!

Jim Dixon then responded to his critics in the same column, essentially saying "I have never tried to sell salt to Castagna."

Which may be true, but he has sold salt to restaurant Clarklewis. But as Portland Tribune's Phil Standford points out, Clarklewis is owned by Michael Hebberoy, who also owns a company who caters for a place called Family Supper.

This is what Dixon said of a dish at Family Supper:

We joined the party, and we all ate sliced fresh tomatoes drizzled with good olive oil and sprinkled with chunky sea salt

As I said before -- Whoops. Although to be fair, Dixon took on Clarklewis as a client after this review. But without that key bit of information, it does make Dixon look compromised, even if he isn't.

I could write a treatise about ethics and restaurant criticisms. I could sit here on my perch on high and waggle my finger at the various parties.

But really, it is far more entertaining just to sit back and watch. I'll save the ethical discussion for another day. There will also be more mature posts soon -- as soon as I am done being entertained by all of this.

Meanwhile, read the following forums to follow up on this melodrama.

And bring some popcorn.

Technorati Tags: Food & Drink, Restaurant Reviews, Restaurant Criticism

These are the internet finds that I love. Here's an article that demonstrates how scientists are tracing the availability of species through the use of menus found in history.

It also gives a fairly interesting history of Lobster in America.

From the article:

A study of the cost of seafood on more than 200,000 American restaurant menus has revealed fluctuating prices that reflect the changing abundance of dozens of species over the past 150 years. The records show how the price, adjusted for inflation, of fish and shellfish, including lobster, swordfish, oysters, halibut, haddock and sole, has climbed as stocks have collapsed.

Lobster, for example, fetched little more than a couple of dollars a lb in the 1850s. “Prior to the 1880s, it was unusual to see lobster on menus at all except in bargain-priced lobster salad,” said Glenn Jones, of Texas A&M University, who led the research.

“It was considered a trash fish — it was not something you’d want to be seen eating. In colonial America servants negotiated agreements that they would not be forced to eat lobster more than twice a week.”

I find information such as this fascinating. If you're big into Food History, this article is a good read.

Technorati Tags: Food & Drink, Food History,

Hey.. Feedster made me their site of the day! Thanks you guys. And I didn't get you anything.

This dish is one of the ones that has dozens, if not hundreds of interpretations. The only real definition for Veal Scaloppine is that veal scallops be sauteed in a decent butter sauce of some sort, hopefully chock full o' Italian ingredients. Vermouth and Lemon meet these requirements nicely, although oranges, capers, marsala also would have done in a pinch. This recipe is not the end all be all. It is simply the one I choose to make today.

With the veal, you can pound the scallops flat or not, I chose not, for no other reason than I think that the veal medallions were tender enough without me going to town on them with a mallet.

I'm not sure if this dish is Ligurian in its ancestry, so I'm not going to count it among the three. Consider this one a freebie.

• 1 1/2 lb veal scallops
• salt
• 1 teaspoon ground pepper
• 1/2 cup AP Flour
• 5 Tablespoons Butter
• 1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
• 1/3 cup dry vermouth
• 2 Tablespoons Lemon Juice
• 2 teaspoons grated Lemon Zest

Coat the scallops with salt and pepper to your preference. Dip them into flour, coating them lightly but thoroughly. Tap them to remove any excess flour.

Heat 3 Tablespoons of butter and the Tablespoon of oil in a large skillet over high heat. For you high heat fanatics, this here is your time to shine. Once the butter has been thoroughly melted, add as many pieces of the veal that fit. Brown for 2 minutes on one side. Flip with tongs and cook for another 2 minutes. They should be brown but not burnt. Place them in a serving dish or on a plate.

Add the vermouth to the still hot and heated skillet. Add the remaining butter and combine well, ensuring you get all of the tasty brown bits stuck to the bottom that had been left behind by the veal. Reduce by 1/2. Pour over the scallops and top with the lemon juice and the lemon zest.

Plate and serve!

Serves 4
Technorati Tags: Food & Drink, Recipes, veal

Anyone who has visted this blog for a while now, will know that I'm a fan of Whole Foods. While they have their problems, I think that their new take on Supermarkets, especially in how they deal with slotting fees, is innovative and good for the consumer.

Meanwhile, others have argued that they're too expensive and that their pricing strategy doesn't do the poor any favors. My previous stance was that if one stuck to the non-impulse items at Whole Foods (The wines, the cheese, the upscale meats), then the prices would be comparible to any other supermarket, specifically Safeway and Krogers. I made this judgement with no hard evidence, and decided to see for myself how accurate of a statement this was.

I created a list of 18 items, which I believed to have been a good list of common items found in several different stores. The list contained the following:

• 1 lb. Granny Smith Apples
• 1 lb. Bananas
• 1 lb. Yukon Gold Potatoes
• 1 lb. Yellow Onions
• 1 loaf of sliced bread
• 1 18 oz jar of peanut butter
• 1 18 oz jar of Strawberry Preserves
• Oreo's
• 1 lb Ground Beef
• 2 lb long grain white rice
• 1 lb Spaghetti
• 28 oz of diced canned tomatoes
• 24 oz catsup
• 15 oz box of Cheerios
• 1/2 gallon Whole Milk
• 1 lb. unsalted butter
• 1 dozen eggs
• 1 gallon Vanilla Ice Cream

There were some ground rules. I looked for the cheapest product available, but I didn't scour the store to find them. I didn't count the consumer card prices, as they fluctuate from week to week. Finally, if a product didn't have a price listed on the shelf, I didn't use that as test case. This comparison should be considered anecdotal and not scientific, as there are many market variables not taken into account.

After doing the math, the totals for the above list are as follows:

Safeway: $34.07

QFC (Krogers): $39.21

Whole Foods: $39.82

Conclusion? It seems as if Whole Foods was the Most expensive, but not excessively so. In fact, they were only 61 cents more than Krogers for the same bag of groceries. Of course Both QFC and Whole Foods are both roughly 15-17% higher in cost than Safeway, so keep that in mind.

Does this validate my initial point? I'm not sure. If anything it would muddy my point. Krogers and QFC were both helped by less-than-a-dollar loaves of bread, while the cheapest sliced bread avaiable at Whole Foods was $2.69. But Whole Foods had 79 cents per lb spaghetti, something that QFC would have had at a larger location.

In my own opinion, I think that Whole Foods gets the name Whole Paycheck due in large part to the customers lack of financial discipline when walking through the aisle. Clearly Whole Foods is, at the very least, competitive with pricing at Krogers for day to day items. Where they get you is in the upscale items that pepper each aisle. From gourmet cheeses to hard to find spices, each of these items are up there in cost.

Thoughts?

Technorati Tags: Food, Grocery Stores, Whole Foods

Seth sends me the following missive:

Kate:

First of all, let me tell you how much I have enjoyed perusing your site since I found it on Tuesday. I'm doing research for a Marketing class project and am therefore searching out articles/reviews primarily on Macaroni Grill and Olive Garden, but also on Buca di Beppo and The Old Spaghetti Factory. I found your comments on Buca di Beppo very helpful in getting my head wrapped around the different styles of Italian food.

Secondly, I am in need of help as far as finding out what Macaroni Grill and Olive Garden do wrong. This is one of the most important parts of my project, and I am discovering that nobody can give me any substantial complaints about either restaurant beyond, "there were water spots on my knife." Do you have any tips as to where I should look for those slight inadequacies in either restaurant?

Warmest Regards,
Seth

Thanks for the kind word, Seth. I'll see if I can help you out.

The issue in your e-mails surrounds the phrase "What do Macaroni Grill and Olive Ga