When Kate gave me the short list of potential guest bloggers, there was only one that I felt was up to the job, and I said as much. She writes a food blog called Sassy Radish, and I don't know if she's chosen a pseudonym to protect her privacy yet, so I'll just refer to her as Sassy Radish.

Without further delay, here are the five questions I posed to her (via email) in an effort to get to know her better:

Gezellig Girl: How long have you been cooking/baking?

Sassy Radish: I’ve been cooking and baking really since I was about 5. The first conscious memory I have of helping out in the kitchen, besides washing dishes, which I hated, was when my mom gave me a paring knife and asked me to snip the ends off of radishes – which were my favorite vegetable growing up. And after that, we got to make my favorite vegetable salad with them – it was sheet bliss and I remembered thinking back when I was a kid, how food can be such an amazing way to bring people together and to foster these incredible memories. When my mom and I used to bake, she’d give me scraps of her dough and I’d make this circular Russian fairy-tale character “Kolobok” and used raisins for eyes and tried to give it a nose and a mouth, except that, after sitting in a hot oven for an hour, the facial features would merge and I would have a face with only eyes – creepy, but I’d eat it anyway!

GG: What are your favorite foods to make?

SR: I think if I had to pick things I absolutely love, they’re almost embarrassingly simple and are all comfort foods – rice with yogurt and lime pickle, potatoes and herring, mashed potatoes with olive oil. I am less into pastas, unless I make the pasta. I love to make quesadillas and guacamole. And when the weather gets cold, I love making soups, stewe, and I think my all time favorite meal is the Thanksgiving one. I’m getting more into dessert because it’s so exacting and I like the challenge of things being so regimented, which probably a good glimpse into my personality. I’ve become that girl who always has room for dessert, and now, I’m a proud owner of an ice cream maker and I’m obsessed with it! David Lebovitz’s new book is going to be put to some good use this summer! Overall, I like to create foods that are made from whole, unprocessed ingredients – Heidi from 101Cookbooks.com has been an incredible inspiration in this regard – and as I was getting more familiar with her blog, I realized that this is what I’ve been trying to communicate with food all along. Cooking food with whole, natural ingredients, preferably grown locally by small farmers, getting in-season produce – cooking with conscience – that’s what I really want to communicate. So that food is not only consumed as something sensory, that is pleasure-based, but also that it’s consumed with a conscious understanding of where food comes from, how it was treated. I guess I’m a little political with food!

GG: Why do you blog and how long have you been blogging?

SR: I had this crazy notion in college that I was going to graduate, work in finance for awhile, and then quit because this ezine I was going to start would become this amazing sensation and I’d manage it full-time. I had no aspirations of becoming uber-wealthy, just wanted to be a writer and share thoughts with other writers. I wanted to have sections of this ezine devoted to arts, news, cooking, etc. and I recruited friends of mine to work on them – but then reality set in and everyone was so busy with work, that the zine, became a personal zine, and the appropriate name for that would be a “blog” so that’s how I got into it. But overall, personal blogging wasn’t for me – I found that I didn’t have anything all that relevant or witty to say – I didn’t think it was all that grand to write about failed romance and whatnot, but I loved writing and photography and cooking – so that’s how it happened. I think that SassyRadish.com is about 2 years old.

GG: What is your favorite post (on your own blog) so far?

SR: I went back to review the posts and I don’t think I have a favorite one. It’s tough for me to pick my own favorites. I could tell you what I didn’t like about certain posts, but I can’t find one that I think was amazing. I guess I’m a bad self-promoter.

GG: What do you do when you're not cooking/blogging?

SR: I am usually at work a lot – I work in finance and I love what I do, and it’s quite time-consuming. When I am not at work or cooking/blogging, I try to see friends, hang out with my boyfriend, go for jogs, walks with him. I photograph and read a lot as well. And now, I get to play around in our mini-garden on the roofdeck – we’re planting herbs and veggies – it’s like our little farm! I am so excited and I worry about the plants during the day – like is the sun too scorching for them, do I need to give them more compost? How I make compost? Will the harvest be good? I feel personally responsible for these little green guys. So that’s my boyfriend’s and mine new obsession.

And that, my friends, brings us to the end of my rein as the regularly scheduled guest blogger of Accidental Hedonist. I'll be posting now and then, sooner or later, whenever the urge strikes me, so you're not completely rid of me.

So, when there's breaking news about bees or a story about sourdough I just have to share, you'll be hearing from me. Until then...

Before I head out the door, I wanted to thank Kristen of Gezellig-Girl, for all of her wonderful posts over the past six months. It has been a treasure having her here at Accidental Hedonist, and she has set a fairly high bar in regard to any future guest writers. Quick news tho'- although she's no longer the official "Guest Writer in Residence", she may be providing a monthly post or two from time to time.

Meanwhile, be sure to catch her post this Sunday.

As for me? There will be light (possibly no) posting from yours truly until next Tuesday. Enjoy Memorial Day!

I have a friend named Kate — not our Accidental Hedonist Kate; another Kate. This Kate works for Miette Pâtisserie & Confiserie in San Francisco, making three different kinds of caramels for them, and when she's not doing that, she's slinging coffee over at Blue Bottle Coffee Company, which is where our story starts.

Over on her personal blog, Kate recently noted a New York Times article on New Orleans-style coffee concentrate, which mentioned Blue Bottle Coffee and featured Blue Bottle's recipe for making the concentrate. I'd never heard of coffee concentrate before. The article has since slipped behind the Iron Curtain-like Times Select archive, but I was interested enough to print a copy of it — not that I mentioned this to Kate.

Over the course of a week or so, I would toy with the idea of trying the coffee concentrate (and the more I write that the more I think of coffee trying really really hard to pay attention to something), but I kept putting it off.

Then, just this past Thursday, my husband brought a package in with the mail — and it smelled good. "Blue Bottle Coffee?" he asked, reading the shipping label. "Did you order something?" I replied with an uncharacteristic "Gimme!" and ripped the package open without answering him.

And there it was:

Blue Bottle's New Orleans coffee concentrate kit, including a pound of coffee beans, a sachet of chicory, and instructions — as well as a note from Kate. How she knew I was interested in this, I'll never know.

After writing her a quick thanks, I dashed off to make the coffee; which is really quite simple.

First, grind the coffee coarsely. The directions recommended a percolator grind; I used my small grinder and just tried to make it come close. Then, add ten cups of water to the pound of coffee (plus the chicory) and let it steep 8-12 hours. It looks like... well, like this:

(I know it looks all flashed out, but I needed the camera flash to penetrate this inky coffee bean slurry.)

I went to bed. It steeped. I got up the next morning and strained the coffee; first through a sieve, and then though a fine mesh strainer, and unsurprisingly, I made a hell of a mess.

Now, when I first read the directions, I laughed when they said the coffee concentrate should resemble "used motor oil." The thing is, it really does.

At this point, I admit, I had some doubts. I tucked it into the fridge to cool off, made some simple syrup to add to it later, and then went about my day.

Like clockwork, around 3:00 in the afternoon, my ability to parent and/or fulfill my duties as a housewife begins to wane and it becomes coffee hour. Some people have a cocktail hour; I have a coffee hour, in which I set my kid up with the entertainment of her choice and then sit and drink coffee in peace, often staring blankly into space until I am fully revived by the caffeine.

So, this past Friday, despite it being a whopping 53° here in NYC, I poured myself a tall iced coffee, using about a quarter-cup of the concentrate, a cup of milk, and about a tablespoon of simple syrup.

I... don't even think I can accurately describe how good this is.

Let me start by saying this: according to the New York Times article, this concentrate "will keep in the refrigerator for up to two weeks" but after 48 hours, my husband and I have already gone through half of it.

The coffee flavor is extremely rich and much more complex than I expected, but with utterly none of the bitterness you usually get with iced coffee. And, after that first glass, after I blazed through my afternoon's tasks and then found myself cleaning the bathroom light fixtures, I soon realized it also packs a tremendous caffeine punch. Consider yourself warned.

And, so ends my next-to-last official post as Accidental Hedonist's weekly guest blogger. Next week, I'll be introducing my successor — not that it's the last you'll hear from me, I'm sure.

Until next week...

There you are, the concerned parent-consumer, looking at a box of Edy's Whole Fruit Strawberry Fruit Bars. You already read the ingredients on the box of Popsicles and it scared the bejabbers out of you, but the Edy's box looks like this:

Ingredients:
Water, Strawberries And Strawberry Puree, Sugar, Natural Flavors, Citric Acid, Color (Beet Juice Extract, Turmeric Color), Vegetable Stabilizers (Carob Bean Gum, Guar Gum), Which Inhibit Ice Crystal Growth.

Terrific! you think, and happily buy them. Your kid loves them, you love them, your family eats them all, and you congratulate yourself for having appeased everyone's need for frozen summertime treats without questionable ingredients and without needing to visit another store. You are so great.

You return to the store the next week, just wanting to get your groceries and get the hell out of there before you end up with a bunch of stuff you don't really need, and then you pass the frozen foods.

Gee, you think, those strawberry ones were good. Let's get tangerine this time. You buy them, bring them home, and as you're ripping open the box in your kitchen, you see the ingredients:

Ingredients:
Water, Sugar, Tangerine Juice From Concentrate, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Citrus Pulp, Citric Acid, Tangerine Oil, Natural Flavor, Vegetable Stabilizers (Guar Gum, Carob Bean Gum), Which Inhibit Ice Crystal Growth, Ascorbic Acid (Vitamin C), Yellow #6, Red #40.

Whoa! What the frig? How did these go from sugar and beet juice color to high fructose corn syrup and a food dye banned in at least eight countries — within the same line of products?

With a heavy heart, you resign yourself to making your own natural frozen fruit treats, but thinking back to your youth, you remember when that Time for Timer blob convinced you frozen orange juice on a toothpick would be just as good as a popsicle.

"Sunshine on a stick," my ass, you think, because you are now an adult and are allowed to use the word "ass" whenever you like. It separated into a hard, icy stratum of orange pulp and water, it was sour, and, your mother informed you, a waste of perfectly good orange juice.

And now, you stand there in front of the open freezer, wondering if you can make the trip to the all-natural, slightly-more-than-you-really-wanted-to-pay grocery store and back in the August heat without having the popsicles melt en route. Your heart sinks. Maybe if I bring a cooler...

My comrades-in-parenting-arms! Fear not the all-natural frozen treat! In honor of Mothers' Day, I'm here to help.

First, let's revisit the Time for Timer guy's "popsicles" — specifically, why they suck. The reason: no sugar. Sugar acts like antifreeze, lowering the freezing point of your popsicle, keeping it softer and slushier, as opposed to the hard, icy, so-called Sunshine on a Stick. Additionally, cold mutes our ability to taste sweetness, so something that tastes fine as a liquid will often taste sour or bitter when frozen.

That being said, making your own popsicles is shockingly easy. Here it is:

Fruit. Sugar. Water.

The fruit: you could use fresh summer fruits for this, but that just seems like a waste. Fresh summer fruits should be enjoyed, well, fresh. I used a 10 oz. bag of frozen peaches for this.

The sugar: did you not hear what I just said? You need sugar — or sucanat or agave nectar or something — for this.

The water: nothing special about this. You need to make a simple syrup, which is a 1:1 ratio of granulated sugar and water. (Agave nectar folks, you're on your own on this one.)

And now, I put it all together in this recipe, which you can clip out and paste on your freezer for easy access:

Frozen Fruit Pops

• One 10-12 oz. bag of frozen fruit, thawed
• 0.5 cup sugar
• 0.5 cup water

Combine the sugar and water in a saucepan and stir. Heat until the water is no longer cloudy and no sugar crystals remain. Place fruit in blender, add half the simple syrup, and blend until smooth. Taste. If it tastes sweet enough, it's not. Add more syrup until it's just a little too sweet, then pour into molds and freeze 24-48 hours to ensure the pops are solidly frozen.

[Addendum: In Popsicle's defense, they have introduced a line of popsicles with "Natural Colors and Flavors." They all still have HFCS, but y'know, baby steps. I guess.]

Okay! Still waiting for suggestions for next week's post! Get 'em in by tomorrow or suffer in silence while I write up someone else's idea.

With just two posts left before I fade away into AH obscurity...

My time as guest blogger is almost at an end here on Accidental Hedonist. So, much like a senior who can see graduation coming (and also like a woman who has her non-metaphorical mother-in-law visiting), this week's post is a little bit of a blow off.

In short, I'm taking suggestions for the topic of my second-to-last post, to be posted 20 May 2007. Post your idea within the comments below (no later than 12 May, giving me at least a week to prepare and/or buy any unusual ingredients), I'll pick the one I like best, and enshrine it forever here in the AH archives.

Start thinking and get those ideas in soon!

It's amazing!

No, it's overrated!

They should call it Crackberry!

No, they should call it Stinkberry!

Never heard of Pinkberry? Join the club.

Read more! »

You may have already heard: bees are disappearing by the millions — and no one really knows why.

If you haven't heard, let me bring you up to date. It's being called Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), and it's like nothing else scientists have ever seen before.

Adult worker bees are literally disappearing. A hive that was healthy just weeks before will be opened by the beekeeper to find only a handful of adult bees, or sometimes, none at all. The queen is still there, the larvae are still there, but no worker bees.

The weirdest part? There's also no dead bees. Ordinarily, when bees are struck by mites or poisoned by pesticides, there are dead bees in or around the hive, but this? It's like the bee rapture: they're just gone. And no bee corpses means no wee autopsies can be done to figure out what's going on.

Why should you care? So what, I'll just live without honey, you say? What does this mean for you and me? A lot.

At least one-third of all US agriculture rests on bees — that's anywhere from 12 to 15 billion dollars of crops every year pollinated by bees. Almonds, apples, avocados, blueberries, cranberries, cherries, kiwi fruit, macadamia nuts, asparagus, broccoli, carrots, cauliflower, celery, cucumbers, onions, legume seeds, pumpkins, squash, and sunflowers: 90% to 100% of their pollination comes from honey bees.

I emailed Dr. Dewey Caron, of the University of Delaware's Department of Entomology and Applied Ecology, asking what we can expect if CCD becomes more widespread. "Short term," he writes, "might see a small increase in about three or four dozen commodities that rely on pollination... longer term, we will just end up importing more of the foods we eat."

That is, assuming the foods are imported from countries where CCD has yet to appear. Spain, Croatia, Greece, Switzerland, Italy, Portugal, and the UK are all experiencing large, mysterious losses of honey bees.

I also asked Dr. Caron what the average person could do. "We do need better funding for this basic critical connection in agriculture. [The] farm bill is up for change/renewal. Start local and work to federal level as interest permits."

Other than that... I don't know. I guess we just wait.

For more from me, just click the totally-inappropriate-for-such-an-apocalyptic-post photo.

It's Easter and I have returned to guest bloggerdom! (I kinda think there's a Jesus-based joke to made in there, but I'm not Sarah Silverman, so I'll refrain.)

Over the past year, since we discovered my daughter is allergic to red food dye, every holiday that's come along has been a new challenge. Christmas meant finding dye-free candy canes. Making her birthday cake this past January meant a foray into making pink frosting. And Valentine's Day... well, we just kinda skipped Valentine's Day this year.

This Easter has been another new frontier with its own set of challenges. By now, I'm pretty good at finding dye-free candy (or candy substitutes) but egg dyeing was something else entirely.

Read more! »

According to New York City's Department of City Planning, between 80% to 90% of my neighbors are of "Hispanic Origin (of any race)" — but anyone who's been to this part of Washington Heights knows almost everyone here is from the Dominican Republic. As a result, I often run into fruits and vegetables that I've never eaten or even seen before.

Recently, when I saw naranja agria, I remembered enough high school Spanish to know it meant "bitter orange" but I had no idea what anyone would want to do with them. Eat them? Juice them? Pity them for looking like they do?

My husband theorized, "I'd be bitter, too, if I were that ugly."

Read more! »

There are only two times during the year when I make a specific meal that I don't make otherwise. Around Christmas, I make a lasagna, and sometime around St. Patrick's Day, I make a New England boiled dinner.

I didn't really think about it before I sat down to write this post, but I think I do this, in part, because between those two holidays — from just after the first of the year, right up until the beginning of spring — I suffer from what is possibly the worst acronymed disorder ever: seasonal affective disorder, or SAD. (I almost can't even take it seriously with an acronym like that. Sometimes I like to call it the SAD, the way old people sometimes do, like your grandma saying, "Did you hear? Margaret's got the cancer." Only, with SAD, it's more like, "Gee whiz, Timmy, I can't go ice skating today; I've got the SAD.")

I wish having the SAD were as funny as cracking jokes about it, but the truth is, it sucks. It sucks, sucks, sucks.

Read more! »