Edible San Francisco
SF Bruce Cole announces Edible San Francisco, "a new food quarterly that celebrates the simple pleasure of eating." This first print issue will be out October 15th.
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July 29, 2005
SF sandwich week
SF It's sandwich week at Bacon Press, which means I'm now daydreaming sandwiches. I'm hooked on Out the Door's pork bahn mi, but I think my next one will be from Vietnam on Broadway.
how grilling became a national passion
The Week Magazine on how grilling became a national passion. Did you know that charcoal briquets came about because Henry Ford wanted a creative way to make use of the scraps from the sawmill that produced wooden panels for Model T's? With some help from Thomas Edison, they devised a cheap and easy way to transform these scraps into charcoal briquets, and sold them at Ford car dealerships.
July 27, 2005
Place, Taste, and Sustenance:The Social Spaces of Food and Agriculture
For the food academics: The topic of the Joint 2006 Annual Meetings of the Agriculture, Food, and Human Values Society (AFHVS) and the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS) is Place, Taste, and Sustenance:The Social Spaces of Food and Agriculture. Proposals for sessions/panels are now being accepted.
July 26, 2005
we love sandwiches
Seen on Ask Metafilter recently: Why does a sandwich made by someone else always taste better than one you make yourself?
Lots of great responses in the thread; many people feel the way I do about it, which is that when it is true, it's due to TLC and to you being surprised by combinations someone else came up with.
What's your favorite sandwich that you buy? That someone makes for you? That you make for yourself? Tell us in the comments!
(Image of Fry eating a cheese sandwich from The Futurama Point)
maple bak'nlava
Maple Bak'nlava. My friend Yimay went and made baklava with bacon in it: "It kinda sounds scary at first but just imagine crunching into buttery layers of salty bacon, sweet maple syrup and crunchy nuts. It's like a breakfast party in your mouth, Greekstyle!" Clearly she is a genius of the highest order and deserves this year's Nobel Prize for Bacon Innovation.
July 25, 2005
fun with sausages
Okay, so I don't understand Japanese at all, but if I can figure out that these are instructions on how to make cute animals out of cocktail franks (complete with clear diagrams and even video!), you should all be fine. I want to have a party so I can justify making little elephants and sharks! [via monoki.com]
how to eat spaghetti
How to Eat Spaghetti. "Many non-Italians don’t know how to eat spaghetti. This is true even for the U.S. in spite of the large Italian community." You think you know but maybe you don't! [via Growabrain]
"learning to be an aware eater"
Mei Wah: Eating in Chinese. "Like Calvin Trillin (most famously) and many others, I have never quite been able to sit down to a meal in a Chinese restaurant without wondering. Wondering if the Chinese characters on the menu said the same thing as the alleged English translations. Wondering what goodies I was missing from the Chinese-only specials board on the wall." The author learned to read enough Chinese to decipher a menu and you can too! [via The Girl Who Ate Everything]
lobster ice cream
Lobster Ice Cream. Okay, if it's between having this and Durian Ice Cream, I'm definitely going for the Durian! Eww! [via The Girl Who Ate Everything]
avocado news
The latest avocado news, courtesy of Girlhacker. I want to try the Don Gillogly STAT!
July 22, 2005
Hamburger hamburger
The 20 hamburgers you must eat before you die. Peter Luger makes an appearance at #2.
July 21, 2005
gimme pancakes!
If you love pancakes and waffles, you should probably join or at the very least subscribe to the new Flickr group Pancakes and Waffles, full of lovely photos of, what else, yummy pancakes and waffles. It's brought to you by the most adorable of food bloggers—trust me, I've met her—The Girl Who Ate Everything.
If you don't love pancakes and waffles, I don't want to know you! That's just wrong!
SPAM-ku!
SPAM-ku is an archive of thousands upon thousands of haiku inspired by that that humble lunch meat we all know and love. It's been online for ten years, which probably means that cans of SPAM produced when it first went up are still sitting on people's shelves, ready and waiting to be opened and eaten. I particularly like this spam-ku by Froggie:
I envision a
world where all mankind shares SPAM
and none go without.
Beautiful! If that moved you, you might want to considering getting the companion book put together by Spam Haiku Archive Master John Nagamichi Cho, Spam-Ku: Tranquil Reflections on Luncheon Loaf.
The Wikipedia SPAM entry is short but makes for great reading: A Hormel official once stated that the original meaning of the name SPAM was "Shoulder of Pork And haM" —the SPAM Lite variety contains both pork and chicken. Other explanations of the origin of the term include the acronym "Specially Processed Assorted Meat","Spiced Pork And haM", "Specially Processed Army Meat", and "SPAre hAM"; there are also some less-than-serious explanations, such as "Synthetically Produced Artificial Meat" or "Stuff Posing As Meat". The current official expansion is the SP and AM were taken from "SPiced hAM" to win a $100 prize.
christie's jamaican patties
NYC After reading yesterday's New York Times paean to the thing of wonder that is the Jamaican beef patty, Island Flavors in a Yellow Envelope, I decided to have one for lunch. Lucky for me I recently moved to Brooklyn and live within walking distance of one of the best Jamaican patty places in all of the city, Christie's.
My $3 dollars bought me a beef patty engulfed in sweet fluffy coco bread and an ice cold can of Coke, a deal so wonderful it made sitting in a rickety plastic chair on dirty old Flatbush Avenue watching the cars speed by as I ate feel like a blast. If you don't like beef, they have chicken, pork (jerk options available for both), goat and of course, veggie patties; their fridge is stocked with Jamaican sodas like Kola and ginger beer besides the usual sodas and Snapples.
Christie's
334 Flatbush Ave
Brooklyn, NY 11238-4302
(718) 636-9746
Q train to Seventh Avenue, 2/3/4 to Grand Army Plaza.
NYC Eater
NYC Our friends at Curbed and She Loves NY bring us Eater, a new weblog covering the food and drink scene in NYC. Hot!
July 20, 2005
American sous-vide
Why American Chefs have taken up sous-vide cooking. Sous vide is the practice of cooking food at low temperatures in vacuum-packed plastic bags.Food cooked via this super slow method is full of flavor and exceptionally tender.
NYC Shake Shack goes beyond the call of duty
NYC Not only does Danny Meyer's Shake Shack serve some of the tastiest burgers in the city, the level of service is the same as any of his restaurants--outstanding. Need proof? Read this.
The Egg and Muffin Toaster
The Egg and Muffin Toaster can simultaneously 1) toast the bread, 2) cook an egg (poached or steam-scrambled), and 3) warm a pre-cooked slice of ham or sausage…or any combination of these three functions, in addition to boiling up to four eggs. I can't decide if this a terrible or brillant idea, but I think I want one.
100 Great Ideas for Summer
Today's SF Chronicle includes 100 great ideas for making the most of the season's bounty. I know I'll be trying the some of these ideas at home.
July 19, 2005
SF Pizzeria Delfina
SF A first bite at just opened Pizzeria Delfina. Could this be the best pizza in SF?
Vegan restaurant guides
Friends of Animals has compiled vegan restaurant guides for major cities including New York and San Francisco.
dilbertio
I figured the dilbertio was a joke when I first read the wikipedia entry, but apparently I was wrong. According to the official website, the dilbertio is "a delicious hand-held meal that's fun to eat and filled with yummy tasting veggies, rice and stuff you like." Based on the ingredients, it seems like a decent option if you too busy to cook, but who knows how it tastes.
July 18, 2005
Help me find a caterer
Dear Readers,
I need your help! We are planning our wedding for late October in New York City. We've secured a venue for the ceremony and a reception site, but we are still in search of a caterer. We are planning a cocktails and hors d'oeuvres reception for 40-50 guests, and have a budget of $75 per person for all catering related expenses.
Do you know of a caterer you'd recommend who can work within that budget? If so, please leave a comment! Have cost-cutting suggestions? Leave a comment! Think we're totally out of our minds? Leave a comment! Any and all advice and recommendations gladly accepted, and I'll collect all suggestions into a new post. Thanks for your help!
NYC Cocoa Bar
NYC The Perfect Combination: Cocoa Bar serves coffee, chocolate and wine. In Park Slope on 7th Avenue between 3rd and 4th.
tomato confit
A recipe for tomato confit, or how to make ordinary grocery store tomatoes taste as sweet as heirloom tomatoes.
Foodie's Eye View
A Foodie's Eye View of San Diego's Best Restaurants: San Diego's best restaurants (unclear as to what critieria is used), organized by categories and mapped to a google map.
Open source beer
Aliment on the first open source beer: Creating a free beer sounds fun but frivolous - one may ask what meaning this
really has concerning food, or other physical products. I believe it is quite
the opposite; that is, that Vores Øl has given us the freedom to protect our
ideas and promote innovation...
I'll drink to that!
July 15, 2005
Veggie Roommate
Veggie Roommate is a roommate matching service for vegetarians. How long until the Bacon Lover roommate matching service?
SF Cheap Eats
SF cheap eats: Sawaii Sushi's bento box makes your wallet and tummy happy. 209 Kearney Street @ Sutter.
eating out of the toilet
Taiwan restaurant serves up eats in minature toilet bowls [video]. "Soups, curry and ice cream are heaped onto dishes shaped in western-style toilet bowls and Japanese-style squat toilets. Customers sit on ornate toilet seats, some studded with flowers and covered with floral designs to eat their meals."
sh*tty tipper database
The Sh*tty Tipper Database is exactly that -- a database of sh*tty tippers including name, total check, and tip. A sh*tty tip is defined as "any gratuity under 17% for service which one's peers would judge as adequate or better (eg. orders are correct, on time, special requests are honored, etc.)." If you happen to find yourself in the database, you can submit an apology.
July 14, 2005
You never know who's reading
....What happened next was a seminal moment for me, because two minutes later, none other than Tom Colicchio himself appeared at our table (I'd met him a few times at Gramercy Tavern), and he was loaded for bear. “I have four pages of your comments that I downloaded from the Internet. I am going to go up to my office to get them and I want to go over them with you.” Not only was it an amazing scene to watch, but it was an amazing display of the power of the Internet. Here I was, Joe Shmoe, never had a piece about food published anywhere, and Colicchio wanted to ask me about my comments. Okay, so I’m not giving myself enough credit for making comments that obviously hit close to home for Tom, but who was I to have my criticisms taken seriously? That interaction has a lot to do with why I am here writing on this platform today. After all, if I could say things that got under Colicchio’s skin, and which he didn’t dismiss as the writings of some nutjob, maybe this Plotnicki guy actually knows something about food and dining out.
July 13, 2005
Aliment
Add to your favorites: Aliment is a smart new food blog written by Aaron Foster.
Burritophile
Burritophile is user-driven burrito review site. Not surprisingly, the top-rated burritos are all in California, with El Castillito topping the list.
Congrats, Eddie!
Belated congratulations to fellow adventurous eater, food blogger, and writer Eddie Lin over at the Deep End Dining who's writing will be included in the upcoming Best Food Writing 2005.
Cookie sushi
Koo-ki Sushi designs beautiful cookies that look like sushi.
MSG
The Observer on the history and debate of MSG, discovered by Kidunae Ikeda in his quest to isolate the fifth taste, umami.
Back!
Pardon my absence! I've been distracted by all things non-belly the last couple of weeks, but now I'm back. Let the blogging begin!
July 01, 2005
Bride calls off wedding, throws party for the homeless
Bride calls off wedding, throws party for the homeless. Her parents knew they'd be stuck with the bill, so they decided to have a party anyway and invited the homeless.
NYC: Plump Dumpling Man war over?
NYC The Dumpling Man weblog claims that the "dumpling war" is over now that the Plump Dumpling will be a Chinese food takeout joint rather than a dumpling specialty eatery. Am I the only one saddened by this news? Speaking of sad, a video clip inspired by "the war."
Wine in a box
For July 4th, wine in a box could be a winner. "The standout by far was Three Thieves 2003 Bandit Bianco trebbiano Rubicone ($6/1 litre), packaged from grapes in Italy’s Emilia-Romagna region. Trebbiano is a workhorse of a grape, perhaps Europe’s most-planted variety and often added to punch up other wines. Whatever the Thieves did here, it works. Theirs is refreshing and tangy, with a smooth core of citrus flavors and a hint of almond. Drink it, cook with it, serve it to friends; a wine this pleasant, and this versatile, is nearly impossible to find at the price."
