Food Blog

It always amazes me that everytime I update the list I find lots of food blogs that have been around for awhile, that I have either missed or absent-mindedly omitted. Here are a few.

Badthings Lots of things about food and farm choices piss this guy off.

Chopstick Cinema Celeste Heiter’s Daily Adventures in Asian Food & Film. She picks an Asian film, and cooks the cuisine of that film.

Chubby Hubby “Musings on Food Wine and marriage” Singapore. Excellent Photography.

Gastroville Two serious foodies “discriminating evaluation of restaurants in different categories/price points to maximize dining value for distinguishing and caring gourmets.”

The Gurgling Cod Boston

Monster Munching
Dining, cooking, and eating in and around Orange County, California.

Off the Bone

Twelve Two Two Fondue

Viva Epicurea! “Enjoying an epicurean life in Canada’s Thompson Okanagan” By the makers Independent America

Many more new blogs to come.

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More food blogs for the list.

Babe in the City – KL Kuala Lumpur

Bunnyfoot “swegan(swee-guhn): vegan in most things except sweets, and the occasional pizza too” San Francisco

Bunny Pie Chicago

Cake Fun “A collection of fun facts, projects, trivia, recipes and humor all cake and cookie related.”

A Cooking Site

The Cooks Cottage Food in India

Cornichon “Tasting notes & culinary dispatches from Belltown and beyond”

Daily Gluttony Los Angeles

eatzybitzy Singapore

Ideas in Food “Improvisation and experimentation in the kitchen by Chefs Aki Kamozawa and H. Alexander Talbot.” Colorado. This is one of those blogs sure to inspire you, not just with its beautiful photography of beautiful plating, but also from the discussion of how these two chefs explore the melding of food inspiration.

Peasprout Spouts

A Perfect Pear A gastroenterologist in St. Paul, MN

The Pragmatic Chef

Seriously Good

Something’s Cooking “The Kitchen Queens beat, eat, shake ‘n bake their way through the culinternet.”

Stephen Cooks

Writing On A Paper Napkin Sydney.

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I stopped in Whole Foods for a few things to make some some seafood pasta salad and spent $23. I didn’t realize I’d be paying 5 bucks for a package of regular mushrooms until it was too late. When I reached behind the half pints of heavy cream on the shelf to get past the old ones, the guy stocking the shelves yelled at me –

“You have to take the ones on the front”.
“No, I don’t. I’m not paying 2 dollars for a half pint of cream that expires tomorrow.”

Another customer heard me and looked at the package of Kerrygold butter she picked up. “Hey! this is expired!” She yelled.

I escaped with my slightly newer cream while the stock guy was distracted telling the lady that, in Ireland, the dates are Month-Day-Year. I think I heard her say something like “Does March come after April in Ireland too?”

Speaking of Irish butter -in dairy news a “farm business in Co. Mayo is the first in the world to produce a revolutionary probiotic butter for supermarket shelves.”

POSTSCRIPT
Stephanie asked in the comments if the probiotic benefits would be diminished if the butter is melted. I had the same thought, but I do know the melting point of butter is fairly low (body temperature basically, which is why so many buttery thing ‘melt in your mouth’) and would guess that as long as the butter isn’t melted in a hot pan it wouldn’t kill the live stuff in it.

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Another online food event has launched – The 2005 Independent Food Festival & Awards over at tasteeverything.org. Awards like the best “Food Worth the Risk Of Injury” and the “Most Sublime Use of a Potato”. Some amazing foods are given awards by a jury of top food bloggers, however the Midwest is woefully un-represented.

Taste Everything is also offering food blog and food photo hosting services.

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Testing. This thing has gone completly FUBAR.

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Comments are broken for awhile.

My hoster did an upgrade, and I’m not sure how, but the old comment script got renistalled.

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This being a food blog, I should mention that I’m in the process of getting a new kitchen. Unlike some unfortunate people, it’s being done in stages, so I can still cook, it’s just that some of my stuff is packed away in a bedroom closet, and my food processor and all my knives are in living room, in the kitchen cart I bought at World Market (the one I have is not on that site anymore, but it’s still a good place for stuff like that).

I now have a full countertop and a stainless steel double sink, we just have to finish the walls and floor. And I’m looking for some restaurant-type steel shelves. I don’t need all-around cabinets, since I have a pantry room with plenty of storage space.

I see a lot of articles on designing a kitchen for functionality, like this recent Trib one – True cook wants a kitchen that gets down to business but they all seem to miss an important point. Walk into any commercial kitchen you will see an important item that is centrally located in every single work area – from the prep area, to the sous chef station, to the dishwasher station – the garbage can. In every area in a real kitchen, it will be placed within arms length of the work area. Many times there’s a convenient hole opening right into one. Also notice there’s no cute little covered-pails that can’t hold a square foot of garbage before overflowing. They’re giant 55 gallon-drum type things. Handy to be able to prep a case of lettuce without having to stop to take out the garbage.

I certainly don’t need anything huge, but I do want it to be within arms length. The diagram shown is my old set-up, with the garbage in the perfect place, between the sink and prep area, where most garbage is generated. My new kitchen now has a countertop that runs only the length of those two walls from that corner, creating lots of work space even with the double sink.

Since I rent, I didn’t have much say in the new design. Also the countertop was built and put in while I was away for the holiday. I’m glad to have as much input as I do have, but I would have made some sort of design allowance for the garbage. Sure I could use some sort of bowl while prepping, or drag the can over close to where I’m working, but it doesn’t feel very hygenic to be dragging a sloppy garbage pail around to get it in and out of my way. And if your pail is under the sink, behind a cabinet door, your kitchen make look pretty, but you’re not being very efficient. It killed me every time I worked in an ex-girlfriend’s kitchen to have to wait with a hand full of raw chicken trimmings to move her out of the way of the sink, open a cabinet door and hopefully get the stuff into an always over-stuffed pail.

I’ll figure something out, I’m sure. I do have to say, the job on the countertop is beautiful, considering they built it with around a $100’s worth of wood. One of the builders has done a fair amount of cabinetry-type work (he built custom caskets for a living). Some pictures to come after the next phase.

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As many bloggers know, there’s a full frontal assault of comment spam going on Web-wide. I’m away from my broadband connection for the holidays so I have to wait a few days before I do some repairs. So I’ve turned off comments for a short time.

UPDATE: I did a quick fix that will stop the majority of spammers -the automatic ones- and it seems to be working, so I turned them back on.

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Food Blog awards!!
A few years ago I might have begged for nominations, but there’s so many more worthy food blogs done by people who spend much more effort then I do these days. So go nominate your favorite.

The seven month requirement for most of these categories is a real factor in cutting off many excellent blogs. I’ve watched many blogs of all types come and go over the years, and 7 months is about when most blogs reach the threshold. The writers have either exhausted their time, content or enthusiasm, or they’ve perfected their style and have built an audience and will go on to improve for many years to come.

Many blogs have a life-expectancy, and food-themed ones can be short, since you can’t be expected to spend every meal for the rest of your life taking notes and pictures before you sit down to eat. Your enthusiasm will go cold as fast as your dinner will.

But 7 months is a good cut-off for an award since it signifies a certain achievement in dedication. I’ll post my own little award list by the end of the year.

On another note, I’ll be sure to talk to Nikolai next time I see him about adding a food category to the Bloggies. I know he has to have some food appreciation since last time I saw him he was at Mitsuwa.

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I’m not sure what happened, but after my normal comment spam clean up around here, I noticed posts themselves were replaced with spam.

So I’ve done just about everything I can think of to fix that, including a Movable Type upgrade. So bear with me until the repairs are done.

I apologize to the internet for creating hundreds of dead links. When I rebuilt everything I changed the format of my archives. Maybe I’ll go back and do it again, maybe not.

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