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Hot Links
August 4, 2010
Hot Links: A pie chart of what we eat, food podcasts, Meaty Monday Madness
MMM goes national: Olympic gold-medal swimmer and Austin food blogger Garrett Weber-Gale has a post on BonAppetit.com about Meaty Monday Madness, a monthly potluck for restaurant industry folks at the house of Mulberry chef Zack Northcutt (center). (The M.O.’s Matthew Odam wrote a story last fall about this underground dinner club, but the sexy pictures by Katrina Perry on Garrett’s post really do the party justice.)
Farewell, Brad: After getting kicked off the show with just a few episodes left, it looks like Austin cook Brad Sorenson won’t be the “Next Food Network Star” after all. Slashfood has a post-show Q&A with him, in which he talks about cooking at Asti Trattoria.
Maybe he’s a robot: The funniest Q&A of the week goes to Joshua David Stein at Eater who, after suffering through the PR speak of one of the most recognizable faces on Food Network, calls out Tyler Florence for only speaking “marketingese”.
Michael Batterberry: Founder of Food Arts and Food and Wine magazines, died last week.
Have a listen: Chocolate and Zucchini shares six of her favorite food podcasts.
Does this look anything like the USDA food pyramid? Americans, on average, eat 2,000 pounds of food a year. What exactly do we eat? Let Visual Economics show you.
Geek wear: San Diego’s massive Comic Con is over, but the Kitchn’s post on geeky and sci-fi kitchen finds is still as cool to nerd foodies around the world.
Selling the family farm: A New Hampshire farm that has been in the same family since 1632 is now on the market for $3.35 million.
Cheese-O! Rachael Ray, in Cheetos.
Non-restaurant social coupons: Slashfood points us to Blackboard Eats, which is essentially the Groupon for artisan food products and gifts like coffee and a lobster of the month club.
Ice balls: Ideas in Food shows us how to make spheres of ice without fancy equipment.
| The Colbert Report | Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c | |||
| Thought For Food - Cereal, Foot-Long Cheeseburger & Ecobot III | ||||
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Food report: Stephen Colbert is as hip to the food news (foot-long cheeseburgers, Lucky Charms, etc.) as Eater. Well, almost.
Life after ‘Gourmet’: Looking for a new food magazine to read? Tasting Table tells us about four new ‘zines, and Swallow makes its grand debut with the help of Eater.
I’m a piglet: Via Austin Food Journal, gluttony pants.
Hunger no more: If you liked that Esquire profile of Roger Ebert in March, you’ll enjoy this piece on Utne about the psychological effects of losing your appetite written by a man who has also can’t eat food.
Frozen market: NPR tells us what local paleta company Good Pops already knew: Ice pops are so cool right now.
Call me Abby: Also from NPR, a fun piece about the made-up “coffee names” that people, often those with uncommon given names, use at places like Starbucks.
Do you want local fries with that? Grist chimes in on McDonald’s latest “localwashing” campaign in Washington state.
More farmers markets: The USDA reports that there are 16 percent more farmers markets in the U.S. than there were last year. That’s almost 900 new markets in 12 months.
Puttingweirdthingsincoffee.com: And you thought putting salt in coffee was strange.
Tony’s tunes: Anthony Bourdain’s guest DJ set on KCRW.
Photos from Katrina Perry, Christian Bowers, Slashfood, Grist and Ideas in Food.
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July 21, 2010
Hot Links: Wine bra, baby in a watermelon, free chips for checking in
Take that, Anne Geddes: Serious Eats points us to all kinds of fun this week: A blog that shows the insides of fruits and vegetables via MRI and a baby in a watermelon.
Feeding a Need: The Capital Area Food Bank of Texas got props from Mashable last week when its IPheedaNeed app was named one of the top 5 nonprofit iPhone apps in the country.
Is that wine in your bra or are you just happy to see me? Just in time for the Austin City Limits music festival: The wine bra!
A traveling friend: Claudia Alarcón, the soccer-obsessed food writer I wrote about a few weeks ago, has launched CuisineXplorers, a guided travel service focused on food. Alarcón is a native of Mexico City, so the first food trips will be to there, but she says she hopes to expand to other locations in Mexico soon.
Finally, an incentive for ‘checking in:’ I’ve been waiting for restaurants to start giving us a real reason to tell all our friends on Twitter and Facebook that we’ve stepped foot in their space via Gowalla or Foursquare, and Chili’s has stepped up to the challenge. The chain is offering free chips and salsa to people who check in on Foursquare.
May the peach be with you: From The Kitchn, a beautiful ode to summer. “May you be thoroughly, completely, absolutely in the middle of summer…(It) is for ripening, for allowing the sugar to come forth and the protective layers to soften.”
Got milk? Oh Joy Eats tells us about so-called magic straws that turn regular milk into vanilla-, chocolate-, strawberry- or cookies and cream-flavored milk. ($2.50 for five straws, available online or soon at Target.)
‘Cause nobody wants foam in their nuggets: Chicken Nuggets and Silly Putty share a common ingredient: dimethylpolysiloxane, an anti-foaming agent.
Don’t squish the bread: Ready, Set, Bag! is a new documentary about the world of competitive grocery bagging.
In a pickle: Can’t get enough of pickling this summer? The Atlantic tapped Hank Shaw of Hunter Angler Gardener Cook to give 10 new ideas to inspire even the most seasoned picklers.
Paella party: Has Spain’s World Cup win given you la fiebre espanola? Here are 9 classic Spanish dishes to make at home and a primer on sangria.
Soda man: CHOW was nominated for an Emmy for this short documentary on a soda shop owner in Los Angeles.
Kombucha love: Tolly Moseley, Statesman Social Media Award winner and Austin Eavesdropper blogger, is getting in on the kombucha action with this illustrated post to help you make your own. (What, you don’t know about Tolly and her bleet-ups? If you’re a blogger in Austin, check out this summer’s blogger meet-up from 6 to 8 p.m. on Thursday at TRIO.)
Mug envy: I love Esty. Mustache beer glasses.
Hate Starbucks? You are most certainly not alone.
Photos from Serious Eats, Oh Joy Eats and Etsy.
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July 13, 2010
Hot Links: Roger Ebert's cookbook, Pekar and Bourdain, California goes cage-free
Roger Ebert, cookbook author: The film critic, who lost the ability to speak and eat solid food because of cancer of the jaw, has published a book on ways to use a rice cooker.
Cage-free in California: Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has signed a bill that requires that all eggs in California come from chickens that can fully extend their wings without touching other birds or the sides of the enclosure. Not exactly a law insisting on free-range birds, but it’s a start.
Yuck: If this photo of a British kid in front of all the junk food he’ll likely eat in a year doesn’t shock you, maybe McDonald’s CEO’s defense of the use of toys to sell fast food food to your kid will.
Bears and homovores: While Eater invents the (cringe-worthy) “homovore,” the Dallas Voice reports that Tom Colicchio, who embraces his sex object status within the bear gay community, will ride will not ride on a bear float at next year’s L.A. pride parade.
Gulf Coast update: Oil from the BP spill in the Gulf has been found on blue crab larvae. Big deal, right? It is when you consider that larvae are the primary source of food for many small fish, which are then eaten by bigger fish and which you then eat. Torchy’s Taco’s Taco of the Month this month is the shrimp taco called “Damn BP.” Torchy’s is donating a dollar for each taco sold to Gulf Coast relief efforts. This weekend, the all-star Houston Chowhounders are hosting another of their famous throwdowns, and this Monday, it’s a ceviche throwdown to benefit coastal families and fishermen struggling after the oil spill.
No more drive-thrus: In Baldwin Park, Calif., where the drive-thru restaurant is said to have originated, the city council has banned any more new drive-thrus at restaurants.
Tired of stadium hot dogs? A traveling baseball producer from Seattle has figured out that all that eating he does on the road has made into something of a restaurant critic on the radio. (Too bad he’s not blogging his efforts so we could all enjoy food from the baseball trail.)
Cranky meets cranky: Comic book icon and subject of the 2003 film “American Splendor” Harvey Pekar died this week, and Eater dug around to find the Cleveland episode of “No Reservations,” where the notoriously cranky artist took Anthony Bourdain to lunch.
Austin, deep in the Heartland: Austin got wrapped into a “Heartland” episode of “No Reservations” that premiered on Monday. (Apparently, any place that isn’t on the East or West Coast is the heart of America.) Bourdain on East Side King: “Come, all ye hipsters, with your mutant mash-up food, your strange and wondrous treats, to my neighborhood. And soon.”
Chips with your salmonella? On the Statesman’s Salud blog, Mary Ann Roser reports that between 1998 and 2008, salsa, guacamole and pico de gallo were the source of contamination in one out of 25 cases of food-borne illnesses that originate in restaurants. That’s twice the rate from 1988 to 1998.
Recalls on the go: Want to track food recalls from your phone? There’s an app for that.
I’ll have mine grilled, with paprika: What will come of the Paul, the psychic octopus who predicted eight World Cup wins? Some who want revenge have sent death threats to the eight-legged clairvoyant, while others, including Spanish chef Jose Andres, want to honor him by removing octopus from the menu.
Beer Summit, 2.0: Remember the conflict between Henry Louis Gates Jr. and the cop who arrested him that President Obama settled over a beer? Obama’s back at the beer negotiations, this time with British Prime Minister David Cameron, who refused to acknowledge that beer tastes better cold. They agreed to disagree on this one.
Hot enough for you? New Yorkers, facing the kind of summer like we had last year, have been cracking fried-egg-on-the-sidewalk jokes, so the New York Times couldn’t resist trying it out. (Texans have known that it’s just a myth for years, but we’ll let the Northeasterners have their fun — and they can keep the heat, too.)
No, thanks: Footlong cheeseburgers. Anyone? Anyone?
Presidential Food Network: The White House has a cooking show. “Let’s Cook,” which is part of the newly relaunched Let’s Move site, exists only online, but it features White House chefs pairing up with other notable chefs to create inexpensive and healthy dishes.
Ebert photo by M. Spencer Green for the Associated Press, junk food photo by Murray Sanders for the Daily Mail.
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June 29, 2010
Hot Links, July 4th edition: Chili cooks compete, Nathan's famous bows out, guilt-free hot dogs, Sticky Toffee wins gold and Canadians celebrate, too
Nathan’s, minus the famous one: Hot dog-eating champ Takeru Kobayashi, who has won Nathan’s Famous Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest six times, pulled out of this year’s contest because of a contractual dispute. The Coney Island contest will be televised at 11 a.m. Sunday on ESPN.
Veggie hot dog contest: While the professionals in New York are scarfing meaty hot dogs, local vegetarian hot dog eaters will be downing meat-free versions at iLoveMikeLitt’s fourth annual Veggie Hot Dog Eating Contest. The competition to see who can eat the most veggie dogs in 12 minutes will take place at 2 p.m. Sunday at the Tiniest Bar in Texas, but those not competing in the contest can enjoy veggie dogs and NadaMoo ice cream for a $5 entry fee.
Independence of another sort: Canada Day is Thursday, and Canadians in Austin, a local group of Canucks, is hosting its annual Canada Day Celebration at 6 p.m. at Paradise on Sixth. Enjoy music from Ty Hall, Fatty Monk and EZ3, as well as Canadian beer, poutine, back bacon and Tim Hortons coffee. Send them an e-mail to RSVP.
A chili holiday: Becker Vineyards, just east of Fredericksburg, is hosting its fourth annual All-American Chili Cookoff on Sunday. Seventy chili cooks will compete, and members of the crowd can help pick a winner.
Fun on the Fourth: Way Out West Austin has a great round-up of stuff to do this holiday weekend, including events at wineries and, of course, places to watch fireworks.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Fall Creek on ‘Today’: Joe Bastianich, son of the lovely Lidia, featured a wine from Fall Creek Vineyards on the “Today Show” on Monday. Bastianich called Ed’s Smooth Red one of the best regional wines in American under $15.
Meaty holiday: For the Fourth, HOPE Farmers Market newbie Ben Runkle of Salt and Time will be selling hot dogs made with locally sourced meats. Kocurek Family Charcuterie will also have pre-marinated and -smoked ribs for sale. At the Saturday downtown farmers market and through their ever-growing online butcher shop, Jesse and Tamara Griffiths of Dai Due are offering hot dogs, chili dogs, potato salad and a bunch of other picnic favorites.
Golden pudding: Austin’s own Sticky Toffee Pudding Company took top honors at New York’s Fancy Food Show, one of the world’s largest food showcases, in the best baked good category. The company won the same award in 2007 for its English lemon pudding.
‘I am just angry:’ New Orleans chef Susan Spicer is leading the way for another lawsuit against BP.
‘Bitter’ revenge: Creepy, creepy. In “Bitter Feast,” a movie premiering at the Los Angeles Film Festival featuring an appearance from Mario Batali, a chef who gets fired after a bad online review goes after the blogger who writes it. I’m too chicken to watch gory movies like this, but some of you might like it.
A watered-down ‘Gourmet’: Conde Nast announced that Gourmet will be “relaunched” digitally this fall, but former editor-in-chief Ruth Reichl reminds fans that it’s just as the brand, not the magazine.
Fishy fish: I don’t trust this new genetically modified salmon one bit, not only because the FDA does not require that it be labeled as genetically modified (the same turn-the-other-cheek rule they apply to produce and grains), but because no one knows for sure how the fish will impact schools of non-genetically altered fish.
Wash those reusable bags, folks: A study recently found that the vast majority of cloth grocery bags carried potentially harmful bacteria because their users didn’t wash them. E.coli was found in twelve percent of the bags tested.
Lion burger, anyone? An Arizona eatery found itself in the middle of an international controversy after the media picked up that they were selling burgers made with lion meat.
Photos from AquaBounty, Ed Ou for the Associated Press
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June 21, 2010
Hot Links: Spaghetti Uh-Ohs, Jesse James' Austin burger joint and the Soup Nazi returns
Uh, oh is right, Campbell’s: The soup maker is recalling 15 million pounds of Spaghetti O’s dating back to 2008.
Stay classy, PETA: Naked protesters, covered in fake blood and laying on large trays covered in plastic, demonstrated in downtown Austin last week. I’ll let the Austinist host those pictures.
The Soup Nazi is back: This brings a tear of joy to my eye. The New York Times reports that the man made famous on Seinfeld will reopen his Soup Kitchen International in the same location next month. He closed the store six years ago to “pursue franchise opportunities and frozen soup production with the Original Soupman brand.” During one of my most memorable trips to New York in the early 2000s, Al Yeganeh served me some of the best soup I’ve ever had from that store. I couldn’t be happier that he’s back.
Food and form: If you have the same fondness for pastries and Paris as I do about the Soup Nazi, check out this short film over on Gastronomista that celebrates the similarities between food, architecture and design found throughout the city.
Critics yelp on Yelpers: On the Bon Appetit Foodist blog, restaurant critics from across the country, including our own Mike Sutter, chime in on the topic of user-generated restaurant reviews. (For those of you who followed along during the discussion of this topic at SXSW and on Relish Austin earlier this year, I’m still waiting on the SXSW Interactive folks to post the podcast of our session.)
Fonts geeks, rejoice: Yummy new fonts from HandmadeFont.com.
Get your thump on: The Luling Watermelon Thump is this weekend, in case you needed a reminder.
But do we really need either? TMZ reports that Jesse James isn’t just moving to Austin, he want to open a Cisco Burger, too.
Houston news: Katharine Shilcutt, aka @she_eats, is taking Robb Walsh’s job as the Houston Press restaurant critic, and Walsh, a cookbook author and former Austin Chronicle restaurant critic, is teaming up with Reef chef Bryan Caswell (another Texas chef who loves to drink Lone Star) to open a Tex-Mex restaurant in Montrose. Oh, and Tyson Cole is looking to open a sushi restaurant in H-town.
Speaking of Tex-Mex: Yellow cheese, “cantina” and three other signs you know you’re eating Americanized Mexican food.
A different kind of revolving restaurant: For 11 days later in October, the London Eye will turn into a vertically revolving eatery. Each Ferris wheel capsule will seat 10 diners and will feature one course per revolution.
RIP, Jimmy Dean: The former country music star and sausage maker was found unresponsive in front of the television.
Taking the farm on the road: The filmmakers behind “King Corn” have a new endeavor: farming out of the back of a truck.
Peanut-free flights? I’m surprised this didn’t happen sooner. The transportation department is considering a ban on peanuts on airplanes.
Up next, kombucha keg stands: The varying level of alcohol in kombucha — and the lack of proper labeling to explain it — has caused Whole Foods to pull kombucha from its shelves.
Rethinking processed: Ezra Klein makes a good point: Not all processed foods are bad.
Recipes, rendered: One of my new favorite sites, They Draw and Cook, features beautifully illustrated recipes from artists around the world.
Americans can’t handle the gay: After McDonald’s starting airing commercials in France that featured a gay teen, a company official made it clear that the “mistake” wouldn’t be shown in the U.S.
Southern Food: The Movie: With the help of the Southern Foodways Alliance, not to mention a big write-up on The Atlantic, filmmaker Joe York is hoping to turn his series of short documentaries about Southern food into a full-length film, possibly to air on public television stations.
Photos from HandmadeFont.com, Wicked Delicate Films, Michael Schmelling for the Associated Press, They Draw and Cook and Susan Hochbaum.
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June 1, 2010
Hot Links: Cooking Channel launches, free doughnuts on Friday, Gary V in New Yorker
Food stamp report: A former restaurant critic in Washington state, who once enjoyed a $1,300-a-month expense account for food, found himself without work and relying on food stamps. He turned his experience into a very thoughtful story in the Seattle Times, a different animal than the hunger awareness project that Austin food bloggers participated in in April.
Free doughnuts: For National Doughnut Day, Krispy Kreme and Dunkin’ Donuts are offering free fried dough. No purchase necessary at KK, but you’ll have to buy a drink at DD.
What, no ‘Peaches’? On the Huffington Post, 11 songs about food from the 80s and 90s.
More Food TV: The Food Network launched The Cooking Channel over the long weekend with a gimmicky attempt to get food bloggers to take a break from blogging and promote the new channel (all for the small chance of getting a T-shirt. Whee!) I’m among the growing number of people who have dropped cable altogether over the past few years, so I’m permanently out of the food cable TV loop. Am I missing much?
Getting in the food biz: The L.A. Times reports on the increase in the number of people selling food they’ve grown, hunted, foraged or put up. “At the Orange County Swap Meet, officials said the number of people selling home-canned beans and other homemade edibles grew to 30 vendors this month, up from eight vendors in early 2007.”
Gary V is your friend. Not! Tad Friend, aka Mr. Amanda Hesser, has a pretty funny, sarcastic and spot-on snapshot of Wine Library TV’s Gary Vaynerchuk in this week’s New Yorker. “What Gary V is really all about is relationships. According to the theory of Dunbar’s number, you can’t have relationships with more than a hundred and fifty people. But you can if you redefine what a relationship is.”
Grilling through the ages: Just in time for summer, a photographic flashback of grilling through the past five decades through the eyes of Magnum photographers.
Salty dough: A Pizza Girl tells her side of our pizza-making morning on Slice, including the honest truth about how unenjoyable whole wheat dough is when you go from flour to oven in less than two hours.
‘Filthy’ reporting: A Houston blogger stands up for taco trucks everywhere when a local TV station seems to go out of its way to portray local vendors as “filthy.”
Lard love: The Pioneer Woman shares her love (and a recipe) for homemade flour tortillas.
Maybe her name was Gretel: The British magazine Healthy admitted to fattening up a model whose “bones stuck out too much” by airbrushing her image before publication.
Photos by Katie Falkenberg for the L.A. Times, Elliott Erwitt for Magnum and Ree Drummond for The Pioneer Woman Cooks.
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May 25, 2010
Hot Links: In-N-Out coming to Texas, restaurants sue BP, chefs smoke pot, Tony v. Mariani
Californication: The rumors are true: In-N-Out is come to Texas. Those lucky folks in Garland appear to be getting the state’s first outlet of California’s famous burger chain.
Spill continues, restaurants sue: With almost a fifth of the Gulf closed to fishing, restaurants in both Louisiana and Texas, including the Pappas chain, have sued BP and other companies involved with the spill.
It’s all in the pot: Did you catch the bong in last week’s New York Times food section? All in the name of good journalism. Kim Severson dived into the marijuana-fueled world of restaurant kitchens, getting several chefs to go on record to say that pot is what helps inspire their creativity. SF Weekly’s reply: What’s the big deal?
Recall of the week: Alfalfa sprouts at Walmart and Trader Joe’s stores in 15 states. (Texas is not one of them.)
Food 52/Cook’s Illustrated showdown: America’s Test Kitchen won. If you care.
5’2”, 132 pounds: A Michigan Hooters waitress is too fat, according to her overweight manager, so the chain bought her a membership to gym.
Everlasting love: We’ve seen Bourdain tattoos, but Guy Fieri ink? Just like the TV host with the frosted tips, different strokes for different folks.
Trailer madness: Just when you thought the summer heat might slow down Austin’s trailer food scene, Tasty Touring has the scoop on a new East Austin trailer park called E.A.T., opening on June 5, that will feature a handful of new outdoor eateries. It seems every week, there’s a new production crew in town shooting for a national TV series or show about Austin’s trailer scene. (The Cooking Channel was in town yesterday and Food Network Canada will be here next week.)
BPA in cans: The chemical bisphenol-A is found in 92 percent of cans.
Size complex? Subway is trying to copyright “footlong.”
But you were so classy: Wonder what the uber health-conscious Gwyneth Paltrow had to say to her mom, Blythe Danner, after Danner agreed to sip a sugar-loaded, iced coffee in this McDonald’s commercial.
This #$!% Has Got to Stop: I love the This #$!% Has Got to Stop feature on Mark Bittman’s newly revamped site. Featured this week: The artificial ingredient-filled boneless chicken wings from Wendy’s, where “you know when it’s real.” Austin blog Dissertation to Dirt has a similar weekly post called Food Product of the Week, where such magical creations as green cream-filled Twinkies and Nesquick strawberry milk have appeared.
Photo illustrations from The New York Times and Food Network Humor.
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May 18, 2010
Hot Links: Pesticides and ADHD, tweeting cows, Star Wars cookie cutters and Food52 is a winner already
Pesticides and ADHD: A report released this week says that kids with higher levels of the pesticide malathion in their urine are at a greater risk for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The scariest part? 28 percent of frozen blueberries tested contain malathion, and my kid would eat a bag of them in one sitting if I let him.
Food Allergy Fallout: It looks like many of our food allergies might be in our head. Although 30 percent of adults believe they have a food allergy, the actual figure is closer to 5 percent, a new report finds.
Food 52 v. Cook’s Illustrated: In a throwdown between old school and new school, Food 52 and Cook’s Illustrated held their recipe contest over on Slate last weekend. The voting has ended and no winner has been announced yet, but the competition gave the media lots of chances to explore the differences between professional testing or public consensus. Seems like Food 52 is a clear winner already, getting a huge burst of media attention months before its first cookbook is to be published.
Uchi, the Book: Chef Tyson Cole isn’t just in the throes of finishing the space and hiring for Uchi’s sister restaurant Uchiko (look for a soft opening in June), he’s also getting closer to finishing the Uchi cookbook. Oh, and he and his wife just had their third kid. And you thought you were busy.
Take that, McDonald’s: Micky D’s served its 10 millionth customer, oh, a generation ago, but 10 million customers is an impressive feat for a single restaurant. It’s taken 142 years, but the Old Homestead Steak House in New York City has served its 10 millionth customer, or so it figures. To celebrate, the restaurant gave the 10 millionth and 10 millionth and first customers steak for life.
Tweeting Teats: We’ve heard of bakers’ ovens that tweet what’s hot and fresh, and now Canadian cows are tweeting bovine jokes and how much milk they’re giving up. The art project, called the Teat Tweet Dairy Diary, was created by students at the University of Waterloo in conjunction with a high-tech farmer who has tagged his cows with radio-frequency identification tags that transmit info.
Star Wars Cookie Cutters: Yes, your dreams of baking Yoda-shaped cookies have come true.
A Semi-Homemade Couple: Just a week before Andrew Cuomo is said to announce his bid to be the governor of New York, the New York Times profiles his five-year relationship with of the Sandra Lee. Yes, that Sandra Lee.
Cooking All Day: The nominations for the daytime Emmys were announced. Bobby Flay, Paula Deen, Giada De La… Yawn, sorry I almost fell asleep there. At least Ruth Reichl is in the running. (And if I nod off, will you please wake me when food TV programming gets interesting again?)
Bayless at the White House: Rick Bayless is slated to cook tomorrow night at a White House state dinner for Mexican president Felipe Calderon. On the menu? Mole, “Mexico’s greatest dish”.
Uchi cookbook preview from Uchiko the blog, cookie cutter photo from StarWars.com, Sandra Lee photo from the Associated Press, Food 52 v. Cook’s photo from Slate.
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May 4, 2010
Hot Links: HFCS-free Hunt's, Gulf oil spill, burger-scented candles
HFCS-Free Hunt’s: Hunt’s is going high fructose corn syrup free and the company is happy to eat the extra cost of using sugar instead of the ingredient that is causing thousands of customer complaints, The New York Times reports. “Manufacturers are tired of hearing about the e-mails, the 800-number calls and the letters,” says Phil Lempert, aka the Supermarket Guru. “People don’t want it, so why fight them?”
Oil Spill: Seafood markets and restaurants across the country aren’t feeling the hit from the massive oil spill in the Gulf, but it’s only a matter of time, according to the New York Times. Chef John Besh wrote an impassioned article for The Atlantic on the effect not only on the fishing and oyster industry, but the culture of the Louisiana coast. Earlier this week Government officials closed fishing from the Mississippi Delta to the Pensacola Bay in Florida.
School Lunch: “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” ended with a hard look at a big chunk of school lunches: The crap that parents send with their kids in brown bags. Lunchables are a big deal in Austin schools, too, but the district is taking some pretty big steps toward making the school-made lunches as healthy as possible. Fed Up With School Lunch posts two guest posts from Austin bloggers: The first about farming and youngsters from Neysa of Dissertation to Dirt and another about using food to teach math and science from Joon-Yee of Why Henry Cooks.
Hunger in the Dorms: Just after Austin food bloggers wrapped up their Hunger Awareness Project with the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas, The Atlantic runs an article about food insecurity on college campuses.
Just in Time for Mother’s Day: A burger-scented candle from White Castle.
America’s Test Kitchen, The Game: Skip it, says Wilson Rothman on the Diner’s Journal. The good news is that the America’s Test Kitchen iPhone app will be coming out in June. But now what will Christopher Kimball do with that Nintendo DS he bought just for the game?
And the Beard Goes To: New York City, California and Chicago. Houston’s Bryan Caswell was the only Texan with a chance at the restaurant and chef awards last night, but the big awards went to the big names in the predictable places.
In-N-Out in Dallas? Eater is all over the rumors that the California burger chain opening as many as nine locations in the Big D.
Bulimia, the TV Show: Both Oprah and E! are planning television shows on eating disorders. Exploitative or educational? I’ll hold off on judgment until I see an episode or two, but I certainly hope these shows are less how-to and more how-to-get-help.
Breaking News: The president likes pie.
70-Year Fast: A man in India claims he hasn’t had any food or drink in 70 years.
Kale Lemonade: I want.
Boiling in Boston: Be glad you weren’t in Boston earlier this week. A break in a main caused a boil water order, which has now been lifted, for more than 2 million people, who were getting scrappy for things like coffee.
Real Food Textbook: Austin super blogger Food Renegade has created a textbook ($19.95 for the digital version, $29.95 for the paperback) on many of the real food basics on which her blog is based.
The Problems with Slow Food: For another side of the story, an article in Foreign Policy about how the sustainable food movement is ignoring the fact that millions of people both here and abroad don’t have enough to eat.
Texas Wine: Looking for a wine-soaked weekend trip? The Texas Department of Agriculture has created a series of videos for each of the state’s wine trails, including the Hill Country, Bluebonnet, Way Out Wineries and Fredericksburg trails.
Serious Pizza: Christian of Austin Food Journal is famous for his pizza, and now he’s teaching a class to show you how to make it at home. The class costs $75, and you can sign up here. Next class is Saturday.
Photos by AFP, Christian Bowers of Austin Food Journal, Ralph Barrera for the Austin American-Statesman and elana’s pantry and hellochris via Creative Commons on Flickr.
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April 27, 2010
Hot Links: Hunger Awareness Project, Denny's famine ads, hipsters on food stamps
This post is part of a Hunger Awareness Project with Austin food bloggers and the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas. Local bloggers will be cooking and eating from a typical offering from a food pantry and blogging about their experience to shed light on a situation that 50,000 Central Texas face each week. Click here or here to find out more, including how to participate or donate.
Keep Austin Tasty: Justin and Han are sticking with their initial goal of showing what it “might be like for a young Chinese couple, possibly recent immigrants to this country, trying to reproduce the familiar flavors of home with our available ingredients” by making dishes such as garlic fried rice and skipping meals.
Savor The Earth: Beans and rice were already staples in Nicole’s diet, and she has a good stove-top method for cooking rolled oats.
Stetted: In addition to feeding her family of three from the food pantry list and food stamp money, Megan is being diligent about tracking how much each meal costs, as well as incorporating fresh produce from her garden. A dinner of potato pancakes cost less than $2.51 to make.
Girl Gone Grits: Kristina plotted out a week’s worth of meals using the list of ingredients from the food pantry. She even posted an easy recipe for lasagna soup, which calls for a box of Lasagna Hamburger Helper.
Texas, Times Two: The mother-daughter team of Lauren and Dee Kincke are blogging about their experiences on Bytes from Texas and Texas to Mexico. If you’re looking for new ways to eat oats, check out Lauren’s recipe for oatmeal pancakes. Dee has a recipe for stuffed cabbage rolls that use many ingredients already in your pantry.
Lisa is Cooking: With so many pinto beans to work with, Lisa made vegetarian collard rolls with poblano rice stuffed with protein- and fiber-rich beans.
Austin Farm To Table: Kristi, who has been volunteering with the Capital Area Food Bank of Texas for four years, is incorporating vegetables from her Farmhouse Delivery CSA with the items from the food pantry list to create meals for the week, which included a kale and egg Spanish tortilla.
South Austin Foodie Adventures: Suzanna has been getting creative with her ingredients by making a dip from cannellini white beans and granola from the oats. “I don’t know why, but granola cereals (well, cereals in general) are some of the most overpriced items, and you can make your own for pennies!” she writes.
Something To Chew On: Summer writes about what a luxury it is to spend $20 on burgers and fries with her husband when they were out and about and starving. “We had just spent — in five minutes on one meal — almost what I spent to supplement this project for a whole week.” Concern for food waste has prompted her to enroll in a free composting class hosted by the City of Austin.
Fete and Feast: Natanya created a podcast about why we’re doing this project, which includes some good information about how you can help. The Capital Area Food Bank can buy $25 worth of food with a $5 donation, which Natanya points out is like one drink at happy hour.
Austin Epicurean: Aaron is making good use of a whole chicken by eating the legs for dinner one night, cold chicken salad on garlic toast the next and turning the rest into stock.
Cheap, Cheap: Eggs are one of the cheapest and most diverse forms of protein, and two bloggers (Cameron of What To Eat and Justin and Han of Keep Austin Tasty) made similar spring onion pancakes using eggs and green onions. Tired of scrambled eggs? Former restaurant critic Leslie Kelly getting creative with her egg-a-day experiment, where she’s cooking and eating at least one egg a day and blogging about it.
Food Stamp Challenge: In 2008, Capital Area Food Bank of Texas CEO David Davenport ate for a month on the amount of money allocated from food stamps. He was allowed to spent $21 a week on food and beverages, and by the end of the four weeks, he’d lost 18 pounds, four pounds less than his doctors allowed, which meant he had to stop the challenge just a few days shy of a month.
Hipsters on Food Stamps: The bad economy and rising unemployment rate has hit twenty- and thirty-something hipsters just like everyone else, which means that some of them who qualify for food stamps are using the money to eat better than they’d be able to afford to otherwise.
Stamp Out Hunger: On Saturday, May 8, the U.S. Postal Service is hosting its annual Stamp Out Hunger Food Drive. All you have to do is place nonperishable food items such as juice, pasta, cereal, rice and canned vegetables, fruits, meats or soup in a paper bag near your mailbox, and your mail delivery person will pick it up and deliver to a local food bank.
Famine Isn’t Funny: After facing criticism of being insensitive to victims of one of the worst famines in history, Denny’s pulled a promo for all-you-can-eat fries and pancakes to mark the 150th anniversary of the end of the Irish potato famine earlier this year.
Overweight and Hungry?: It’s a hard scenario to comprehend, but millions of Americans, especially children, struggle with both their weight and food insecurity. Low-income families who don’t have much money for food end up spending it on high-calorie, but nutritionally deficient meals, which is especially hard on the still developing bodies of young children.
Lasagna soup photo by Kristina Wolter, chicken salad photo by Aaron Kull, potato pancake photo by Megan Myers and collard roll photo by Lisa Lawless.
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April 21, 2010
Hot Links: Bittman's new app, Austinites on Food Network and the war on salt
‘Everything’ on the Go: Mark Bittman’s celebrated cookbook, “How to Cook Everything,” now has an iPhone app. I haven’t had a chance to try the new app, but if I like it even a tenth as much as I love the book, the app might give Epicurious a run for its money as my favorite food application. (As for the new Nigella Lawson app — $7.99 for 70 recipes — I think I’ll pass. Bittman’s app costs $1.99, for now, and has all 2,000 recipes from the book.)
Austin’s ‘Next Food Star’: Two of the 12 contestants on “Next Food Network Star” are from Austin. Dzintra Dzenis owns Plate by Dzintra, and Brad Sorenson works at Asti. Show premieres on June 6.
4/20, National Ranch Dressing Day: The anonymous Austin pizza delivery blogger A Pizza Girl reports that yesterday (4/20, something of a national holiday among marijuana smokers) should be called National Ranch Dressing Day because “you may not know this, but stoners love ranch dressing; If more than two are ordered per pizza, you can be sure they are smoking up.” This girl is hilarious, despite the fact that she usually pulls in less than $3 in tips per delivery.
‘Food, Inc.’ on PBS: If you haven’t seen “Food, Inc.,” the Robert Kenner documentary that was up for an Oscar earlier this year, tonight’s your chance. PBS’s POV is broadcasting the movie tonight at 8 p.m. People across the country are so excited for this national television premiere that they are hosting potlucks and other gatherings to get friends and family to watch.
Ramp Crazy: Elsewhere in the country, ramp fever has struck chefs, home cooks and food bloggers, who just can’t get enough of these wild leeks. Joel Ozersky wrote about the Church of the Ramp in last week’s Time. They are a sign that spring has arrived at local farmers markets, which is always a good thing, but I just don’t get it was the fuss is about. Now Brussels sprouts. That’s a church I could join.
Double Take: KFC just can’t seem to get it right. Just weeks after releasing the Double Down, they launch Buckets for the Cure, pink buckets of fried chicken to help raise money for Susan G. Komen for the Cure. (Ad Age reports that none of these promotional efforts seem to be working.) Good for them for raising money for a good cause, but they’d cause a lot more change if they reconsidered their products and what goes into them. (Mike Sutter tried the Double Down this week and didn’t think much of it either.)
Gum Banksy: If you’re familiar with the renegade artist Banksy, you’ll love Ben Wilson’s gum art. The Londoner has had plenty of run-ins with the police and, unlike Banksy, he’s not anonymous, but his work is pretty cool.
War on Salt: Sodium in Americans’ diets has long been a public health concern, but just this week, the Washington Post reported that the FDA is taking serious steps toward regulating how much salt companies are allowed to put in food. The initiative hasn’t been formally announced, but anonymous sources said the government would set limits on the amount of salt in food, gradually paring down sodium consumption. “The changes would be calibrated so that consumers barely notice the modification.” Of note: Three-quarters of our sodium intake comes from processed foods. Only 11 percent comes from either cooking or what we sprinkle on at the table.
‘Food Revolution,’ Episode 5: Speaking of processed food, Jamie Oliver is nearing the end of his stint working in West Virginia on the ABC show “Food Revolution,” which airs on Friday nights. In last week’s episode, he set out to get high school students and the big wigs with the local hospital on his side. Things were going well at the elementary school until Oliver found the chocolate and strawberry milk back in the bin. With enough pushing and prodding, he got the school to request that the milkman come back and pick up the sugar-filled milk and replace it with white. As for the lunch staff? Oliver has convinced even the stodgiest of them to be open minded about his approach. (Fed Up With School Lunch blogger has a fascinating Q&A with a real-life lunch lady: “What’s the hardest part of your job? Seeing the tired and dirty and hungry children. Trying to make a change when you know you can’t.”)
You Are What You Eat: If you like What’s in Your Fridge Friday here, then you’ll get Mark Menjivar’s You Are What You Eat photography series from a few years back. GOOD recently featured a handful of the photos, including a good number from Texas. He toured the country for three years exploring food issues, and he found that he could tell a profound story just by photographing the inside of stranger’s fridges.
Fast-Food Investment: Harvard Medical School researchers found that 11 major insurance companies owned nearly $2 billion in stock in the five biggest fast-food companies. companies that offer life, disability, or health insurance owned about $1.9 billion in stock in the five largest fast-food companies as of June 2009.
I’ll Take the Dry Red: Ever feel like an idiot ordering wine at a restaurant? Serious Eats has a good list of tips to avoid making a food of yourself.
Colorful Cake: Eat Me Daily points us to a cake fit for one of my favorite sites, ColourLovers.
Ramp photo from The Kitchn, cake photo from Eat Me Daily.
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April 13, 2010
Hot Links: KFC's new low, food blogger potluck, Fey makes out with a brownie
Now They’ve Really Done It: I can’t even bring myself to try KFC’s new Double Down sandwich. Just can’t do it, even after Slashfood said cheese and bacon sandwiched between two fried chicken breasts wasn’t all that bad. New York Times restaurant critic Sam Sifton got himself stalked by Eater when he went to try it. (The official word from Sifton: “a disgusting meal.”) Fast food companies are just going to keep developing gimmicky products when they know the foodosphere will respond with a flood of coverage even though the product is just downright ridiculous, not to mention greasy and packed with a day’s worth of sodium.
Pulitzer for Meaty Reporting: Michael Moss of the New York Times won a Pulitzer this week for his story last year, “The Burger That Shattered Her Life” about a 22-year-old woman who was left paralyzed after eating ground beef contaminated with E.coli.
Food Blogger Potluck: I was kid-wrangling during the Austin food bloggers’ potluck this weekend, so I didn’t get much of a chance to shoot photographs of the delicious dishes the bloggers brought. I’ll leave the storytelling to Aimee Wenske, Franish Nonspeaker, Girl Gone Grits, Lisa is Cooking, Thai Cooking with Jam and Foodie is the New 40. Thanks to all the local food bloggers who attended.
Hopping on the Train: Both CNN and the Huffington Post are getting into the food blogging game. HuffPoFood, which — like everything else on that site — appears to be a clusterfudge of aggregated content, started on Monday; no launch date yet for CNN.
With or Without Nuts: Tina Fey is winning back our belly laughs. There’s more funny in 22 minutes of “30 Rock” than in all of “Date Night,” but the funny is back in this Brownie Husband skit from Saturday Night Live. “Brownie Husband can satisfy all of your cravings…The perfect blend of rich fudge and emotional intimacy.” We still love you, Tina Fey.
Food Revolution, episode 4: Those sly editors at ABC set us up for a good one this week. The battle between Jamie and radio host Rod escalated to a bet that Jamie could teach 1,000 people to cook in a week. It was dramatic. There were tears. The governor showed up. Jamie won. Happy ending, at least for now. There are only a few more weeks left of the show (you can watch them all here), and he surely hasn’t conquered the city yet. The coolest part of the whole episode was when he got dozens of Marshall University students to do a flash mob stir fry dance, which Ryan Seacrest, the show’s executive producer, posted on YouTube.
(The Times has this interesting profile of Oliver based on an interview just as the show premiered, where the chef talks about the Oliver brand, not being able to get bank loans, being away from his wife who is expecting their fourth child and big wigs in Washington pulled out of their commitments to talk with him after the negative press started.)
Props, Homeslice: The New York-based pizza blog Slice has deemed Austin’s Homeslice a close approximation of true New York-style pizza, even though it is “just a tad too flat.”
Bill Maher, meet Alice: Eater has a nice recap of Alice Water’s appearance on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” including a clips with a few funny jokes about peaches, McDonald’s and France. The interview between two food-conscious Garden State natives isn’t quite the zinger you’d expect, but it’s still worth watching.
45 Across, Folded Eggs: Food52 has started a food crossword series with puzzle maker and food writer Michele Humes. I’m horrible at crosswords, no matter the theme, but for you cruciverbalists out there, you can print it out or complete it online.
Chef Besh on the Small Screen: Ahead of his appearance in Austin for the Hill Country Wine and Food Festival this weekend, reports surface that New Orleans chef and author John Besh has not one but two TV shows coming up this summer. One is on PBS and will be based on his 2009 book, “My New Orleans.” The second, starting in June, will really thrust Besh into the national spotlight: “Inedible to Incredible” on TLC, which he describes as the “What Not to Wear of the food world.” You know I’m just dying to ask him about this one at his cooking class on Saturday.
‘Insatiable’ headed to Starz? Famed restaurant critic Gael Greene confirmed this week that Starz is looking at creating an hourlong series based on Greene’s “Insatiable: Tales from a Life of Delicious Excess,” which outlines her time, ahem, on top of the New York food scene in the 70s and 80s.
Comic Book Planters: Dissertation to Dirt found a cool way to sprout seeds: Manga comic books.
Plastic-Free Lunch: Last summer, I wrote a story about tiffins and bento boxes, and now The Kitchn has this list of 10 other reusable lunch containers.
Manga planters photo by Koshi Kawachi, carrot photo by Peter Tsai.
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April 7, 2010
Hot Links: Eating up the iPad, sustainable hot shots, national champion cheesecake
iPad Mania: BlendTec put the iPad to its “Will It Blend?” test.The Kitchn was as blown away by the iPad app from Epicurious as I was. I gave it a spin on tech reporter Omar Gallaga’s iPad, and it’s even sexier than the Epicurious iPhone app I’ve been obsessed with. (I wrote about a slew of food apps for your iPhone in today’s paper.)
Food Revolution, part 3: In episode three of “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution,” he gets a crew of high school kids on his side, just as the school lunch official yells at him for not serving enough vegetables in his pasta dish. Add some French fries and you’ll have enough vegetables, she tells him with a straight face. (The Atlantic now has a school lunch expert chiming in on the episodes.) If that’s not depressing enough, maybe this survey taken after the show stopped filming will help: 8 in 10 kids were “very unhappy” about his changes.
In other school lunch news, the anonymous Fed Up With School Lunch blogger keeps getting more and more media attention, appearing last week on “Good Morning America,” while another passionate teacher who wasn’t anonymous nearly got fired for trying to start a food revolution in her school. The good news? A new magazine called ChopChop that aims to help young kids get into cooking healthy food.
A National Championship for Cheesecake: A surprise winner in the pie versus cake bracket on Jezebel.
‘Fast’ Food: Fast Company names the 10 most inspiring people in sustainable food, including Blue Hill chef Dan Barber and our boy Jamie Oliver. (Of note, only two women on the list.)
Tony Loves Austin: Bourdain fever swept Austin last week as the TV host hit hot spots like Perla’s ahead of his appearance at the Paramount. Girl Eats World has a recap of his talk.
Top Chef Masters: Cheer on Houston chef Monica Pope tonight in the premiere of “Top Chef Masters,” plus a guide to the other cheftestants.
‘Nobody is going to buy wine out of a cardboard box and a plastic bag’: The inventor of boxed wine dies at age 92.
Best of the Blogs: Saveur gave out its first-ever food blog awards, honoring favorites such as Homesick Texan, David Lebovitz and Smitten Kitchen.
Old Meat: From a butcher’s perspective, the fine line between aging and rotting meat and the difference between dry and wet aging.
Framed Food: Fine Cooking has a cool audio slideshow with artist Carl Warner, who creates beautiful landscapes out of food.
No More Bacon: Thirteen things that should never be made with bacon.
Foodie Backlash: Tired of this national food craze? (After all, the New York Times just wrote about how obsessed we are with taking pictures of our food.) You might like the new blog Shut Up, Foodies, whose authors are fed up with bacon.
Embarrassing Cookbooks: Seattle Weekly lists seven cookbooks you wouldn’t want your friends to find on your bookshelf. I have one from their list and a few others I’d add, all of them very sweet gifts from friends that I feel obliged to keep, just in case they come over and look closely at the shelf.
Photos from Fast Company, Fine Cooking video and morberg via Creative Commons on Flickr.
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March 30, 2010
Hot Links: Happy Meal doesn't spoil, HFCS makes rats fat
Egg dyeing: Over the next few days, many of us will be hard-boiling and dyeing eggs for a certain life-sized bunny to hide. Here’s a guide I wrote last year with tips on boiling and coloring eggs, which is one of my all-time favorite holiday activities. Besides eating them, of course.
Crispy kale: Yesterday, I blogged about how I used up all the extra collard greens and chard growing in my garden. If you find yourself with an abundance of kale, trying baking kale chips like Smitten Kitten did recently. Who knew you could grind them up and sprinkle them on popcorn?
Capsaicin to the rescue: Indian scientists are harnessing the searing capsaicin power found in bhut jolokai, the world’s hottest pepper, to create a “chili stunt grenade.”
Old school v. new school: It’s no secret that Christopher Kimball thinks kids these days are causing the world’s problems. Specifically, those darn food bloggers and the food free-for-all they create. A while back, the editor of Cook’s Illustrated, Cook’s Country and host of “America’s Test Kitchen” challenged Amanda Hesser and Merrill Stubb’s of Food52 to a throwdown to see whose method of recipe development is better. The Food52 crew relies on crowdsourcing and Kimball’s team insists on methodologically testing recipes until it’s perfect. Looks like the contest is on, and people will be able to vote on the dueling recipes in May.
Not-so-happy meal: If you saw “Super Size Me,” you already knew that fast food burgers and fries don’t decompose like burgers and fries made from fresh ingredients. A Denver blogger recreated that experiment by letting a Happy Meal sit on a shelf for a year. After 365 days, the burger and fries showed no signs of breaking down, yet McDonald’s claims that there are no preservatives in their beef.
HFCS v. sugar: Despite $243 million of dollars of subsidies, HFCS’s future might not be looking so bright. A Princeton study has found that rats fed high fructose corn syrup gained more weight than and showed signs of obesity that rats fed sugar did not.
Food Revolution: The second episode of “Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution” aired on Friday, winning the British chef a few more fans than the first episode. The most revolting part of the show? When he made “chicken nuggets” out of a processed chicken carcass — bones and all — and the kids, who’d watched him from start to finish, still wanted to eat them. Local blogger Stetted is providing nice weekly recaps of the show, which you can watch on both Hulu and ABC.
No sharing! A blogger on Slashfood doesn’t like it when restaurant patrons split entrees, which means, in effect, that she hates people like me who prefer to split dishes, especially during lunch. Restaurants almost always serve more food on a plate than one person should be eating in one sitting, so a long time ago, I figured out that when dining with someone else who shares similar tastes and an affinity for portion control (my mom is a perfect example), splitting an appetizer and an entree — and drinking water instead of soda — makes sense on many levels. It saves money, yes, but it also assures that we won’t blow our calorie intake for the whole day. It pisses servers like this blogger off because she’s not getting her full tip because our bill will be less than if we ordered two entrees, appetizers and drinks. To that I say, tough luck. Give great serve no matter what we order, and we’ll tip heavy. Roll your eyes when my mom and I split one of your gigantic sandwiches and basketful of fries? You bet you’ll be getting the bare minimum.
Photo illustration from Daily Mail, screen grab from ‘Food Revolution.’
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March 23, 2010
Hot Links: Tony goes 'Gabba,' cake brackets and Peep madness
Tony goes ‘Gabba’: Anthony Bourdain made his “Yo Gabba Gabba” debut on March 10. (Apparently the wacky kids’ show isn’t the only of his daughter’s favorites that he actually likes, too.) In recent weeks, Bourdain also caused quite the Internet chatter after he so publicly and harshly dissed food bloggers on an episode of “No Reservations.”
Barbecue wars: At 9 p.m. on the Travel Channel tonight, see who wins a barbecue contest between Smitty’s and Kreuz Market in Lockhart on a new show called “Food Wars.”
‘Pioneer Woman’ going to Hollywood: Columbia Pictures has optioned Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond’s forthcoming book “Black Heels to Tractor Wheels,” which comes out next year. No word on how close the studio might actually be to making it into a movie, but rumors are that Reese Witherspoon might play the insanely popular city girl-turned-farm wife.
Peep crazy: Easter is almost here, which heralds the return of Peeps, the colorful holiday marshmallows. Few people love the little chicks as much as these crazy guys. The Washington Post is hosting its fourth annual Peep Diorama contest. Here are last year’s top 40. This Peep diorama contest idea has taken on a life of it own: The Syracuse Post-Standard, St. Paul Pioneer-Press, Fort Worth Star-Telegram and the Globe Gazette of Mason City, Iowa, are all hosting similar contests.
Top Chef heading to D.C.: Rumors are flying that the next season of Top Chef will be in the nation’s capital.
Who needs basketball?: Cake versus pie is the real contest. Jezebel is hosting a March Madness bracket competition for desserts. The third round ends tomorrow. And yes, I filled out my own bracket, and key lime pie is going all the way, baby!
Food shaped like itself: Urlesque has this fun post about chicken-shaped chicken nuggets and other meta-foods.
And the finalists are: The James Beard Award finalists were announced this week, and Texas was mostly left out. (No surprise there.) Austin’s Paula Disbrowe was the co-author of Donald Link’s book “Real Cajun,” which is a finalist, and Houston’s Bryan Caswell is a finalist in the category of best chef southwest. Robb Walsh of the Houston Press is a finalist in the multimedia food feature category. As usual, Eat Me Daily has the best insight into who got snubbed and who should win in the books category.
A slice of pi: To celebrate National Pi Day on March 14, bakers submitted adorably mathematical pi-themed pies to Serious Eats and Science Blogs.
New spin on Rice Krispie Treats: The Kitchn has a roundup of ways to spiff up Rice Krispie Treats, but they left out my favorite: Lucky Charm Treats!
Peep photo by James M. Thresher for The Washington Post.
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February 15, 2010
Hot Links: Adrià backpeddles on El Bulli closing, Oliver wins TED prize
El Bulli to close for good? Not so fast. In January, chef Ferran Adrià of El Bulli announced he’d be closing his famed Spanish restaurant for two years, a sabbatical that now might not be so temporary. Last week, Adrià was quoted in the New York Times as saying that he was going to permanently close the restaurant — which has a years-long waiting list to get in and reportedly loses 500,000 euros a year — to open a culinary academy instead. But now Adria has done an about-face, claiming in El Universo that he was misquoted. My question: How does the best restaurant in the world lose half a million euros a year? Maybe he should use that sabbatical to take a few business courses.
Food Revolutionary: Food Network-gone-good chef Jamie Oliver stole the show at the TED conference with this impassioned speech about educating kids about food. “Your child will live a life 10 years younger than you because of the landscape of food we’ve built around them,” he tells the crowd in Long Beach, Calif. Oliver, who for the past decade has been working to improve kids’ diets in both American and the UK, won this year’s TED prize for his goals to educate families on how to improve the food our children eat.
Is the food allergy in your head? A Portsmouth University study has found that 9 out of ten Britons who believe they have a food allergy or intolerance don’t actually have one, the Daily Mail reports. The study points to millions of people self-diagnosing allergies to wheat, milk or eggs as the main culprit.
‘Let’s Move’ those TV ads: Michelle Obama announced her initiative to fight childhood obesity last week, but Marion Nestle says that she overlooked one of the biggest culprits: food advertising. UCLA researchers have found that “kids who watch commercials on TV are more likely to be obese than kids who watch non-commercial TV,” Nestle writes.
I’ll have the pork chop, minus the antibiotics, please: On CBS News last week, Katie Couric used a two-part series to explore what feeding antibiotics to animals is doing to humans. This isn’t news to anyone who has read “Fast Food Nation” or seen “Food Inc.,” but when the issue gets this much airtime on the mainstream national news, even Michael Pollan must be pleased.
Bravo for Pope: Houston chef Monica Pope of t’afla is one of 22 chefs competing in Bravo’s next season of “Top Chef Masters.” The series premieres April 7.
How about a little fecal contamination in your salad? Consumer Reports found that 39 percent of bagged salad mixes are contaminated with “an unacceptable level of total coliforms or enterococcus (bacteria).”
Speaking of eating (crap): Anthony Bourdain has a radio show called “Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert: Turn & Burn” on Sirius XM’s Martha Stewart Living Radio. “My feeling is if Martha Stewart asks you to do something, you do it,” Bourdain said in an interview. (I wonder if his response would be the same if Rachael Ray asked him to be a columnist in her magazine.) At least he gets to do it his way: The AP reports that there will be plenty of sexualized food puns.
Pretty Peas: To leave you with a something a little light-hearted, check out these adorable peas in a pod, characters in Disney’s “Toy Story 3,” which comes out in June.
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February 1, 2010
Hot Links: Bacon explosion for sale, homemade cough drops
A year ago, our collective bacon fever hit its peak with bacon explosion, a bacon-wrapped bacon and sausage wrap that had bloggers in a frenzy. The Kansas City-based creators of the original have now gotten their act together to sell pre-made bacon explosions, just in time for the Super Bowl. Explosions starts at $17.99, shipping and doctor’s visits not included.
If that’s not enough meat for you, check out Meatloaf Creations, a newish blog that shows the craziest things you can shape out of meatloaf.
Austin’s Woman with a Whisk swears she will never buy pre-cured lox again after learning an easy way to make her own.
The downtown farmers market has moved into Republic Square Park with nary a hitch. Except all this unseasonably cold weather we’ve been having lately.
If the weather (or cedar) has you feeling under the weather, Instructables shows you how to make your own cough drops using just tea and sugar.
For those of you like me suffering from a case of the small kitchens, Epicurious offers the 10 commandments of effectively organizing your kitchen, no matter how much space you have. (Looks like momma needs to go shopping for some hooks and racks and ditch that hybrid espresso-coffee maker, which we only use to make coffee, for good.)
Sundance Film Festival just wrapped up, but you can still catch a bunch of shorts over on its YouTube channel, including this one about Mr. Okra, a man who sells produce out of his truck in New Orleans. My favorite line: “I love women like I love my food. And I love my food. See, as long as I got that wagon out there, I don’t have no trouble gettin’ no women. I keep ‘em full and fat and feed they children when they hungry.”
Austin’s A Pizza Girl, whose blog I featured a while back, made her debut as a guest blogger on Serious Eats’ pizza blog, Slice. Look for more insights on what it takes to be a pizza delivery driver in coming weeks.
Michael Pollan is killing it in Austin. BookPeople’s Top 10 lists run in the Statesman every Sunday, and this week, he has three books (“Omnivore’s Dilemma,” “In Defense of Food,” “Food Rules”) in the bestselling non-fiction list. Also in the top 10: “My Life in France” by Julia Child and “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer.
Liquid Austin blogger and beer columnist Pat Beach has succumbed. He’s attempting to make bacon-infused vodka this week, but the big question is, what will he make with his concoction and will it involve beer?
Photos by BBQ Addicts, Instructables.
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January 26, 2010
Hot Links: El Bulli to close for 2 years, Burger King pops a top, Helvetica cookies
El Bulli, chef Ferran Adria’s infamously hard-to-get-into restaurant in Northeastern Spain, will be closed for at least two years, the New York Times reports. Adria apparently needs a sabbatical to come up with new things to wow the food world with.
Former Gourmet editor Ruth Reichl’s book “Garlic and Sapphires” is headed for the big screen, reports the LA Times. Catherine Keener is the early favorite among fans to play Reichl as a NY Dining critic, er “chef [who] tries to balance her career with writing a book, motherhood and divorce.” Anyone who knows Reichl’s story or has read the book will note that there are many things wrong with that synopsis from IMDB, but hopefully Hollywood won’t screw this one up.
Not like you could walk down the aisle in it, but an Icelandic artist created this wedding dress out of cake. The gown is impressive, but I can’t believe the detail it took to create that intricate cake.
A Houston-area woman plans out her meals a year in advance, leaving just two days a month for leftovers and stocking up on bulk ingredients like meat. A noble effort, indeed, but it takes a certain person to stick to a schedule like that. That person is not me.
Design geeks fell for Helvetica, a movie about the world’s most popular font, and now a graphic designer for America’ Test Kitchen has created these cute Helvetica cookie cutters. (I have a feeling her bosses are too square to turn these products into the massive-selling kitchenware they could become.)
Mark Bittman tells us about a 17th century clock that used spices to help people tell time in the dark.
A New York restaurant now offers a baby food menu of made-to-order purees. At $8.95 a serving, I can’t believe the kitchen can afford to spend 45 minutes steaming and pureeing food for a small child who will, no doubt, eat two bites and then start crying for Cheerios. Only in New York…
A Burger King in South Beach will be the first to sell beer next month. USA Today reports that the chain plans to open a Whopper Bar that will sell Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors beers. “You can have America’s favorite beers with America’s favorite burger,” Burger King’s president says. Um, something like that.
Target has become one of the first big retailers to pledge to stop selling farmed salmon.
Photos from the CBC and Beverly Hsu.
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January 19, 2010
Hot Links: Top 10 Googled recipes, bicycle pub crawl, a year of eating local
It’s been far too long since I’ve posted a Hot Links round-up. The holidays got the best of me, but here’s food news that’s been making waves on the Interwebs in recent weeks.
A writer for the Atlantic ripped into Alice Waters’ Edible Schoolyard program, saying among other things that it isn’t fair to force children of migrant workers into manual labor. Cue massive backlash in support of Waters’ groundbreaking program.
Austin food blogger Carla Crownover (aka @gardens123 on Twitter) is about to wrap up her third week of eating local. Earlier this month, she set out to eat local for an entire year. Follow her progress on her blog, Austin Urban Gardens.
Speaking of blog projects, a school teacher in Illinois is so fed up with the quality of lunches at her school that she’s set out to eat them for a year and blog about it.
The founder of Taco Bell had died.
The FDA has reversed its earlier opinion of bisphenol A or BPA, saying now that there are “some concerns” over how the chemical found in plastics and even aluminum cans affects health.
Our 1-year-old dishwasher hasn’t been cleaning right for a few weeks now, which means I should follow these 10 tips from The Kitchn on how to make a dishwasher run better.
Beer Town Austin is hosting a bike pub crawl on Sunday, including stops at Crown & Anchor, Billy’s on Burnet and the Flying Saucer.
If you didn’t make it to the rockin’ Jo’s Chili Cook-Off a few weekends back, the Humane Society of Williamson County is hosting a chili cook-off fundraiser on Saturday.
Food Renegade, one of the best local blogs for staying on top of real and natural food issues, cracked open a can of worms last week with this post about agave nectar. Apparently, most agave nectars are so highly processed that they contain the same amount of fructose as That Other Sweetener we love to hate. But before you pitch the agave nectar you have, read this article that explains how not all agave nectars are made the same way.
Chili, meatloaf, cheesecake and banana bread were some of the top 10 recipes Googled last year.
Photo by Alberto Martínez for the Austin American-Statesman.
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October 13, 2009
Hot Links: Austinite in Bayless' kitchen, Coke teams up with doctors
Rick Bayless may have been the subject of this Chicago Tribune profile, but Austin native Shaw Lash, who is also the daughter of Farm to Table owner John Lash, gets a nod in the article as one of the chefs at Bayless’ Xoco restaurant.
To make us feel even better about the money spent lobbying the people who make decisions about health care, the American Academy of Family Physicians and Coca-Cola teamed up last week. Marion Nestle has some insight into this “embarrassing conflict of interest.”
Apartment Therapy found these cute pot holders that apparently actually work to protect your hands from heat, as well as these wooden stands to display produce.
Feeling pantry burn out? Epicurious has a great list of ingredients, including sriracha and ume plum vinegar, to keep on hand to liven up that next pasta/rice/potato/canned tuna dish.
Remember those microwave mug cake recipes that circled around on blogs a while back? Now you can buy a whole book of single-serve cakes to be “baked” in a mug in the microwave.
Cupcakes and smoothies might be coming to a Taco Bell near you.
People are already buzzing about a new PBS series based on Michael Pollan’s bestselling book, “The Botany of Desire.” (Can’t say the same about Bravo’s “Top Chef” spin-off, “Chef Academy,” which premieres Nov. 16. and is reason No. 9,409 I’m glad we don’t have cable.) “Desire” debuts on Oct. 28.
Speaking of PBS, Austin’s Ross Outon is still hanging on in “The Winemakers.” With only three episodes to go, the competition is getting fierce.
Drink Safe Texas has created customizable coasters with a test so you can see if your drink has been spiked. Reminds me of those strips from the Austin-based company Milk Screen that detect alcohol in breast milk.
On Saturday Night Live last weekend, Guy Fieri gets carried off birds.
Photos from the Chicago Tribune, Apartment Therapy, Fun Foods on a Budget and PBS.
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October 5, 2009
Hot Links: McDonald's in the Louvre, 'Top Chef' casting in Dallas
McDonald’s strikes not once, but twice. Last week, the fast food chain was one of hundreds of Texas restaurants who participated in the Go Texan Restaurant Round-Up, which touted eateries’ use of Texas products. Texas beef may have been on the menu, but Cake Austin wasn’t fooled by this very mixed message.
And what better than the golden arches to complement the Louvre’s iconic glass pyramid? This fall, McDonald’s will open a restaurant in an underground shopping complex within one of the most famous museums in the world.
Everyone from Robb Walsh to Corby Kummer is chiming in on the loss of Gourmet, the National Geographic of food magazines. A stunned and sad Ruth Reichl and staff have 48 hours to pack up and leave. “Sorry not to be posting now, but I’m packing,” she tweeted. Tyler Florence hints that he thought the magazine was “too Gourmet.”
Bravo announced its seventh season of “Top Chef,” with a Dallas casting date of Nov. 11 at Abacus.
By now, most of you have probably recovered from the three-day madness that is the Austin City Limits Festival, but have you gotten over all that bad beer you probably drank? Liquid Austin blogger Patrick Beach did his part to try to convince the organizers of the event that 65,000 people a day deserve better than Lone Star and Tecate.
Austin food photographer Penny De Los Santos’ gorgeous South Austin home, whose light-filled kitchen was designed specifically for food photography, was featured on Design Sponge last week. Don’t overlooked the recipe for spicy radish salad, an incredible dish from Austinite Rachel Lomas.
Did this Los Angeles waiter get fired after tweeting about celebrities’ orders and bad tipping habits?
To promote their new national food blog, Eater offered $25 to the first 25 food bloggers to quit their blogs. Nothing like alienating your readers, Eater.
To curb childhood obesity, New York City schools put a stop to bake sales at schools. Forty percent of elementary and middle school kids in that school district are considered overweight.
“Whip It,” Drew Barrymore’s directorial debut, was a flop, according to Statesman movie critic Chris Garcia, but WastedFood.com writer Jonathan Bloom is more upset at the amount of food wasted in this food fight scene.
McDonald’s photo illustration by Eat Me Daily. Radish photo by Penny De Los Santos.
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September 28, 2009
Hot Links: Safire on food, Reichl under heat, Outon still in
New York Times wordsmith William Safire, who died on Sunday, had plenty to say about food terminology.
Austin wine geek Ross Outon of Twin Liquors made his debut on “The Winemakers” reality show contest on PBS on Saturday, and Statesman beer columnist Patrick Beach says he made the first cut.
Food bloggers from around the world — and at least two from Austin — met up in San Francisco on Saturday for the BlogHer Food conference. Garrett from Vanilla Garlic (no, the conference isn’t just for women) had some great advice for finding your voice as a food blogger.
Another reason I wished I lived in Humboldt County: The dress-a-spud diorama contest, which this year featured pirates and mermaids.
Looks like the sad rumors about a struggling Gourmet magazine are true. Editor in chief Ruth Reichl and staff will have to cut their budget by 25 percent next year, which could lead to less frequent publication.
ABC News and the citizens of Diggnation finally figure out what all the Dublin Dr Pepper fuss is about.
The winner of Michael Ruhlman’s BLT from scratch contest went so far as to harvest his own salt from the ocean (and make a photo flow-chart to document it).
Slate contemplates what Vayniacs have known for a while: The Web has democratized wine-drinking. (Incredibly, the Slate writer fails to mentions Wine Library TV video blogger Gary Vaynerchuk, who has undoubtedly done more to bring the wine world into the everybody-has-a-say 21st century than any of the other sites he included.)
And lastly, I pulled out the good old VHS machine to watch “The Land Before Time” with my kid this weekend and suffered serious Pizza Hut flashbacks when I saw this commercial at the beginning of the film. I can’t be the only one who remembers the Spike, Cera, Littlefoot, Petrie and Ducky puppets they gave away as promo items after the movie came out?
Mermaid potato photo by extremecraft on Flickr, Land Before Time puppets from Collectors Quest.
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September 22, 2009
Hot Links: Austin chef shake-up, White House farmers market
Big news on the Austin chef scene: Mark Schmidt, left, formerly of Cafe 909 in Marble Falls, has left his executive chef job at Annie’s, and Asti chef John Bates has left to focus on his new venture, a restaurant called The Noble Pig. Chef Jason Donoho of Asti’s sister restaurant, Fino, will now oversee both restaurants.
Speaking of big-name chefs, the Sustainable Food Center has snagged Rene Ortiz (La Condesa), Tyson Cole (Uchi, Uchiko), Todd Duplechan (Trio), Shawn Cirkiel (Parkside), Laura Sawicki (La Condesa) and Jesse Griffiths (Dai Due Supper Club) to create a fundraiser dinner on Nov. 8 at La Condesa. This is the first of a series of chef dinners to raise money for the SFC, which is in charge of the downtown and Triangle farmers’ markets and a handful of other fantastic programs around town. You can buy tickets ($150) here.
San Francisco Chronicle restaurant critic makes the call: the charcuterie craze has officially swept over the nation’s top restaurants.
The so-called White House Farmers’ Market, which is actually called the FreshFarm market and is located near the president’s house, opened last week. Presidential vegetables not included.
Who knew kiddie pools could be used as raised garden beds?
Have you tried Saint Arnold’s Divine Reserve No. 8 that came out a few weeks ago? Grab a few bottles now if you can, it’ll be gone soon. Good thing they are already working on Divine Reserve No. 9.
With the help of Twitter and Facebook, “media savvy chef” Rocco DiSpirito wants your help writing his next cookbook.
Norman Borlaug, considered the father the “Green Revolution” because of his work to develop drought-resistant grains, died last week. Even though he faced opposition because of his use of fertilizers and pesticides, his discoveries are estimated to have saved a billion lives.
Only now am I able to laugh at the “Freshman 15,” and you can too with this College Humor video.
Schmidt photo by Ralph Barrera for the American-Statesman, pool photo from Farm Natters.
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September 14, 2009
How to stay afloat in the food blog deluge
Food blogging has exploded like a can of Diet Coke in the freezer.
Thousands of new blog posts, exploring every aspect of food imaginable, are generated every day. It’s not like we’re new at this blog-reading thing, but how do you stay on top of your ever-growing bookmark list?
RSS feeds. If you’re not using one and you read more than a handful of blogs, you should check out this video explaining how they work and get to work subscribing to your favorite blogs.
You’ll save time and clicks of the mouse, which of course will allow you to spend more time tweeting and finding more blogs to read. (It’s a dirty cycle, one that I’m not sure exactly how to break…)
I couldn’t do what I do without Google Reader: New blog posts from the 266 blogs I subscribe to come to me rather than me going to them, saving me untold hours in a given year and feeding me some of the best content and ideas in food that exist on the Interwebs.
But I’m finding one of the coolest parts of Google Reader is the ability to share blog posts of interest to Relish Austin readers.
Most of the links in the Hot Links posts come from items I’ve been sharing all week as I go through blog posts, but — here’s where it gets meta — now you can subscribe to the RSS feed of the items I think are worth sharing.
Are you a Google Reader addict? What’s the one blog feed you can’t live without? As you can tell from my recent Hot Links posts, I’m addicted to Serious Eats, Slashfood and Eat Me Daily.
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September 8, 2009
Hot Links: Buddha-shaped pears and the end of cupcakes?
Fun bites from the food Interwebs:
If you can’t get enough sexy food photography (or maybe if you’re ready for a change), check out this freelance cartoonist’s food sketches and paintings, which you can buy on Etsy.
Are cupcakes dead? Slate says yes, The Atlantic says no.
A must-read for compost lovers: 75 things you can compost but thought you can’t.
Check out these buddha-shaped pears and heart-shaped watermelons, from our friends across the Pacific.
Chef Eric Ripert’s new show on PBS, “Avec Eric,” premiered on Sunday. I didn’t get a chance to watch (which surprises me because I’m addicted to KLRU), but after reading this Eat Me Daily report, it seems Ripert might actually have something to say in his quest for culinary inspiration.
Reports are coming in from the 300+ “eat-ins” that took place on Labor Day in support of Slow Food USA’s campaign to overhaul school lunches.
Not sure what to do with quinoa? The Kitchn gives usseven recipes to get you started.
More fun kitchen supplies to add to my Christmas wish list (are you reading, Mom?): magnetic spice jars and frame plates.
The Houston Press has the top five foods to sneak into movie theaters (I’m partial to chocolate-covered raisins and a calimocho mixed ahead of time in a Nalgene bottle.)
Photos from Boing Boing, D-Vision and Riki’s Phood Blog.
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September 2, 2009
Hot Links: Hubby Hubby ice cream, food bloggers' potluck
As of yesterday, it is legal for gays and lesbians to get married in Vermont, and to celebrate, Ben and Jerry’s is renaming its Chubby Hubby ice cream. For the month of September, you can find Hubby Hubby ice cream — in name only. The store doesn’t have plans to redesign the label. — in Vermont stores.
I was so sad to have missed the third Austin food bloggers’ potluck this past weekend. The Hatch-themed feast was at the house of Eat This Lens’ blogger Marshall Wright, who scooted back from Loncito Cartwright’s food salon on Sunday to host. I missed Hatch Chile Brownies with Grand Marnier Whipped Cream, Mutabbal (a spicy baba ganoush with Hatch chiles), Hatch Chile Arancini (fried risotto balls), Hatch-infused Chocolate Truffles and tons of other creative dishes. Next up? A beer-themed potluck in October. Look for details soon.
Speaking of Austin food blogs, a few fun changes: Tasty Touring has undergone a sweet redesign, Fete and Feast now offers a number of helpful features including Cook’s Toolkit and Foodie Bits, a nearly comprehensive list of food events going on in Central Texas. Alexandra Richmond of Austin is Delicious is contributing cheap eats in Austin to 3 Buck Bites.
Kristi Willis of Austin Farm to Table is hosting another of her first Wednesday Picnics in the Park today at 6:30 at the Austin Farmers’ Market at the Triangle.
Master mixologist Bobby Heugel of Anvil in Houston has created this list of 100 cocktails you must try before you die, from the Absinthe Drip to the Zombie.
Eat Me Daily picked up on Bud “The Pieman” Royers’ Pie For Life offer. Instead of your traditional pie-a-month deal, the Round Top cafe, located just east of Austin, is offering a pie a month for the rest of your life, at the low price of $10,000. But as you can see from this chart, the price goes up the younger you are.
The White House released this video yesterday, with the First Lady and White House chef Sam Kass explaining how the presidential garden came to be and what’s happening with its produce:
I have a feeling these Lego cake molds will be on my Christmas list this year.
Kraft, makers of neon orange macaroni and cheese, is the is the only U.S. food company to make the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index.
Vegetarians now live in Julia Child’s Cambridge home, where visitors are now leaving butter sticks on the fence.
Mutabbal photo by Diann Mayer; Hubby Hubby photo from Ben and Jerry’s.
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August 10, 2009
Forget box office, Julia No. 1 on Amazon; plus East Side gems
No one expected “Julie & Julia” to top the box office this weekend (it was only $36 million behind “G.I. Joe”), but Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” is No. 1 at Amazon.com, Eat Me Daily reveals. Not No. 1 in cookbooks, but No. 1 overall. A pretty impressive trickle-down effect of a “stunt,” wouldn’t you say?
Julie Powell is in Austin early this week for several sold-out screenings at the Alamo Drafthouse. Anyone get a ticket? I’d love to hear about (and see photos!) from her appearance.
If you didn’t pick up “The Green Kitchen,” which came out last year and is dedicated to reducing waste in your cocina, Serious Eats has a nice round-up of the top 10 ways you can save energy when you cook: fill up your oven, use a power strip instead of outlets and — my favorite — buy used.
Serious Eats wins again with a post about “The Un-Constipated Gourmet: Secrets to a Moveable Feast,” a self-explanatory cookbook that came out this summer. (You’ve got to catch Sarah Haskins’ video on codeword fiber.)
Chef author Michael Ruhlman is hosting a BLT-from-scratch challenge, where he’s asking folks not only to grow the tomatoes and lettuce, but cure their own bacon, make their own mayo and bread, etc. Too bad it’s tough to grow tomatoes and lettuce at the same time in this part of the world.
Speaking of tomato growing, in addition to Renee’s Roots column this month about drying heat-loving Juliet tomatoes, Zanthan Gardens has a wonderful post on this frustrating tomato season. (I love the burying-a-water-bottle technique.)
And lastly, I usually leave the restaurant reporting up to the Statesman restaurant critic Mike Sutter, but I’ve got to share two new restaurants that have already won the hearts of local food bloggers: East Side Show Room and Shuck Shack. (Which gives me a change to point you all to the recently updated blogroll at left, where last week I added a handful of new blogs, which puts the Central Texas food blog total to almost 110. We’ve got a Hatch-themed potluck planned at the end of the month. Join the Austin food bloggers group on Facebook for details.)
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April 2, 2009
Mother Jones, Mother Earth and a friend in our thoughts
Chug, chug, chugging along this week on stories ranging from proposed food bills to a profile next week on everyone’s favorite lamb rancher.
My brain can only process so much, so instead of a recipe, garden or otherwise majorly labor intensive post today, here are some blogs, articles and people who’ve grabbed my attention this week:
I have hardly dipped a toe into Mother Jones’ food issue last month, but I’m already fascinated with these articles: Foodie, Beware: Is Your Farmers’ Market Just a Grocery Store?, Organic and Local is so 2008, Michael Pollan fixes dinner,
As farmers’ markets and CSA (community-supported agriculture) boxes amp up for spring, writer and TexasLocavore.com blogger Beth Goulart will have lots to blog about over at Greenling’s Eating Out of the (Local) Box blog. If you’re suffering from greens overload, she’s there to help.
Joe Gracey, a local author, musician, cancer survivor, food blogger, music producer and general bon vivant, is in Houston this week undergoing treatment for cancer in his mouth. I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting him in person, but I’ve gotten to know him through the food adventures he’s written about in his blog. Joe, you’re in my thoughts.
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March 5, 2009
Cakes, compost and a SXSW party you don't want to miss
It looks like I’m not the only one already caught up in the SXSW whirlwind.
Tasty Touring offers cheap food tours by location (ie S. First, S. Congress) that will be helpful to out-of-towners. This is Life in Austin has an ongoing Google spreadsheet with her picks for the best parties.
My Relish Austin column next week is dedicated to food-related SXSW panels, films, bands and, of course, parties. Check back here all next week for details, including how to get in to …
That’s right, folks. Austin360 and I are hosting a party during SXSW for food and wine bloggers and the people who love them. It’s invite-only, but soon you’ll have a chance to enter to win tickets if you’re not a blogger yourself.
Other fun things on Central Texas blogs:
Texas Locavore tells us about a special $2 gelato deal at TEO. “Ask for the TEO Plan - that’s Teo Economic Opportunity,” she writes.
The French Fork is back home with her family in France over the next few weeks, eating and traveling, traveling and eating. She’s blogging as she goes.
Craft Austin has details on the Austin screenings of Beer Wars, a movie that will play at 430 theaters around the country and features a “riveting” live discussion, led by Ben Stein, with America’s leading independent brewers and experts.
Farm Natters out in the Hill Country points out that Starbucks will give you used coffee grounds for your compost as part of their “Grounds to Gardens” program. All you have to do it ask.
Paloma Efron, the blogging cake baker of Coco Paloma desserts I wrote about last year, won first place in the professional wedding cake category at the “That Takes the Cake” cake show. Her cakes are really fantastic. Congrats, Paloma!
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February 3, 2009
I heart Austin food bloggers
As I was telling Kristin of The Schell Cafe over tea today, I am absolutely humbled by all of you wonderful food bloggers in Austin. I get paid to do this. You don’t, yet you do it anyway, telling tales of tacos and tenderloins, what inspiration you found at the farmers’ markets, where to find the best burger in town.
I added a few blogs to the blogroll at left, which to my knowledge contains just about every food blog in Central Texas. If I’m missing any, let me know.
Here are the additions: Stuffed Taco Lisa is Cooking Letters from Graceyland The Alcoholian Coffee and Queso Bakin’ Love — You Look Hungry Tasty Type
Happy blogging!
P.S. If you write a food blog — or like to read them — consider joining the Austin Food Bloggers group on Facebook. A book club and several food blogger events have stemmed from this group, so it’s worth joining!
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January 28, 2009
Top 10 food Twitter accounts you should follow
Some reputable chefs, bloggers, magazines/newspapers and food companies haven’t figured out that not following other people on Twitter or only sending out a feed of your content isn’t what Twitter is all about. Others — and not to point fingers, but especially food bloggers — treat it like a chat room, creating so much noise that I don’t find them worth following.
So here are my top 10 food follows on Twitter, followed by other accounts to check out if you’re into food.
@homesicktexan — Texas ex-pat living and blogging in New York
@thesmitten — Deb, the blogger behind Smitten Kitchen
@mattarmendariz — Food photographer, MattBites.com blogger
@davidlebovitz — American pastry chef blogging in Paris
@seriouseats — All-around great food blog
@foodimentary — Food trivia
@saintarnold — Houston-based brewer
@alisoncook — Houston Chronicle restaurant critic
@mary_siceloff — Food safety
@amandahesser — NYTimes food columnist, cookbook author
That’s my top 10. Agree? Disagree? Tell me about it in the comments. Here are the best of the rest…
More Texas tweeps to check out: @she_eats, @houston_foodie
Other food bloggers/writers, national: @steamykitchen, @gracepiper, @LDGourmet, @whiteonrice, @glutenfreegirl, @simplyrecipes, @garyvee, @PinchMySalt, @dianakuan, @amandahesser, @freezerburns, @freegan, @wastedfood, @offbeat_eating, @thestew, @slashfood, @ericburkett, @debpuchalla, @warojas, @amateurgourmet, @cookingwithamy, @gourmet,
Food insecurity, safety and politics: @foodsafetynews, @bmarler, @fanaticfood, @obamafoodorama, @mlfnow, @kerri_qunell, @lisa_goddard, @ddavenport
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November 13, 2008
Calling pizza freaks and beer oddities
It’s not even the week before Thanksgiving, yet one could not want for more fun food activities:
The Black Star beer co-op is hosting a beer social from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. this Saturday. Bring a chair, your ID and snacks. (Curious how these socials work? Check out this explainer.)
More beer news: Craft Austin has the first glimpse of what the 100th anniversary Shiner beer will look like next year.
If you don’t feel like getting out, the newest season of Top Chef just started, so you’ll have plenty of knife-wielding and cat fights to watch from the comfort of your living room. Serious Eats has a wrap-up of last night’s premiere.
For more at-home entertainment, how about a contest? Alexandra Bruskoff, the delightful baker behind Alexandra’s Cookie Dreams, has collaborated with the Insatiable Critic, Gael Greene, for a virtual contest called the Insatiable Cookie Chase. Follow clues, find the answer, win cookies. The contest ends on Saturday, December 10, and you can learn about the details here.
One more fun thing to check out: Chow shows off the best food tattoos, because, as you can see above, you never want to forget where pork loin comes from.
Permalink | Comments (0) | Post your comment Categories: Hot Links, Playing with your food
October 27, 2008
Pumpkin hamburgers and zucchini fries
Some tasty tidbits from around the good old World Wide Web:
That pumpkin hamburger over there? It’s all real except the “bun” and “sesame seeds.”
If finding deals at restaurants dictates where you eat out, Frugal Feaster will likely become your new homepage. Want to know where you can get buy one get one meals? Curious where your kid can eat free? Desperate to find a better happy hour than the one you currently frequent? This Austin-centric site, which easily navigable and even gives a calendar of upcoming food events, is sure to have an answer for you.
The Texas Locavore has tips on finding a local turkey to sacrifice on the big T-day dinner.
In case you need a recipe for those pumpkin seeds you or your kids squeamishly pull out of a jack-o-lantern this week, here are several ideas for roasted seeds. Lemon pumpkin seeds anyone?
My favorite recipe I’ve found online in recent weeks? Blake Killian, from over at the New Orleans-based Blake Makes, created this recipe for baked zucchini fries.
Mental Floss settles some bets and intensifies others with its list of birthplaces of iconic American foods. The Pig Stand in Dallas gets credit for inventing the onion ring.
The James Beard Foundation will honor food bloggers for the first time next year.
American Ale, the oh-so-patriotic beer released recently by Budweiser in an attempt to tap into the success of the U.S. craft beer industry, is getting begrudging praise from Texas beer drinkers.
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August 5, 2008
Do you dig Dishola?
The concept is simple: Rather than review a restaurant, you review specific dishes instead. I think this is particularly helpful if you are craving something, say pad thai, and can’t decide between Madam Mams and Thai Kitchen.
It’s an Austin-based company, but it long ago went global. Now, there are more than 950 dishes reviewed in Austin alone, and dedicated community reviewers are adding to that every day.
It’s free to use and works like many social networking sites. You can read the reviews even if you’re not registered, but if you register, you can start reviewing and connect with other reviewers with similar tastes.
My favorite feature has to be the Dish Roulette, which guides indecisive eaters such as myself to random local dishes.
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August 4, 2008
Best local food blogs
There are tons of local food blogs out there that have gone dead in the past year. Besides making me sad to lose the stream of brilliant content, it also means I can’t include them on this list.
So, here are Austin area food blogs on my radar.
Texas Locavore — Freelance writer Beth Goulart writes about “eating local in the Lone Star state.”
Taco Town — “A product of a couple of gringos who eat Mexican food every day, every meal.”
Tipsy Texan — In-depth cocktail/mixology blog that features recipes and information on seasonal cocktails.
Tomorrow Friendly Food — Vegan recipes, tips and restaurants. (They do weekly vegan potlucks.)
The Retta Show — The adventures of a six-year-old chef.
Thai Cooking with Jam — Asian, local foods, plus tons of recipes and beautiful photos.
Taco Journalism — “In search of tacos y mas in Austin, Texas. “
I Love Beer — A must for beer connoisseurs.
Eat My Words — Texas Monthly food editor Pat Sharpe keeps it short and sweet.
Dining in Austin — Two women review local restaurants.
Red White and Grew — Information on Victory Gardens, as well as recipes and details on local produce.
Austin Farm to Table — “A celebration and exploration of Austin farmers markets, fresh produce and locally-made products.”
Please leave a comment, @broylesa me on Twitter or send me an e-mail with your food blog or your favorite local food blogs! I’ll continue to update this list as I find new ones.
Note: I use Google Reader as an RSS feed to track these blogs. Several local blogs, including Dining Out with Rob Balon and BrewHound, which is written by a producer at Fox 7, don’t allow RSS feeds, which severely limits (hint, hint, Internet folks in charge of those blogs) how often I read them.
Another note: I regularly share items from the 200+ food blogs I subscribe to. You can see these shared items at http://tinyurl.com/6n4lhj.
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June 30, 2008
Food is for doofs
Are your kids foodies or do you just wish they ate more than pizza and chicken tenders? The people behind Doof, an up-and-coming Internet/TV food show, just want them to know that what they put in their mouths matters. Doof’s name comes from their back-basics teaching philosophy: food backwards. Here’s how they describe it on their glob (blog):
Three years ago, an incredible group of filmmakers, foodies, and health educators joined together to create media that changes the ways kids think about food. We began with children in local schools, bringing food-based video content featuring farmers, market-sellers, restaurateurs, and kids like themselves exploring the wonders of food at its source. Next we created a website, and the prototypes for an exciting new television series.
Slow Food pioneer Alice Waters is on the series’ advisory board, and the Web site says the show is PBS bound. Who knows when or even if it will make it to KLRU, but the videos and podcasts already available online are sure to tickle your kids’ food fancy. Here’s my favorite:
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June 11, 2008
Have a byte
There are so many good food blogs out there, it would be a shame not to share my favorite posts from time to time. Here are a few recent highlights:
Homesick Texas ponders Dr. Pepper and peanuts.
The Tipsy Texan reports in the most recent issue of Edible Austin about summer drinks.
Ever made homemade ricotta? The Wednesday Weekly chef has.
Of course, there’s lots of buzz about the “Top Chef” finale tonight. (I wrote a related story for today’s paper about local folks who do their own Top Chef at home.) My money was on Antonia, but since she was kicked out last week, I guess I’m pulling for Stephanie, only by default. I’m tired of the men always winning and Lisa’s attitude is getting old. Who are you all rooting for?
I’ll definitely try this: How to take your bagel sandwich to-go using a CD case.
And probably my favorite food post of the week: A puppet to show toddlers with refined palates where sushi comes from.
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