Thanksgiving In a Pinch

You already know I love the food blog Serious Eats. They are for serious foodies, but they are so not above regular old non-gourmet grocery store food. Sometimes you do just need to go with what's easiest. And when you do, who doesn't want to buy the best-tasting of the many options available?

So I just love that they did this:

In a perfect world, all of your dishes would be homemade next Thursday. You'd toast the bread crumbs yourself, roll out the pie crusts, maybe even churn the butter (ha!). But just in case it's Wednesday night and you're having an I'm-so-screwed moment, or know that'll be you and want to stock up at the market this weekend, here are the winners of all of our taste tests for store-bought Thanksgiving foods: cranberry sauce, stuffing, frozen pumpkin and apple pie, pie crusts, gravy, chicken stock.


Click here to see all the results.

Turkey Day? There's an App For That

No but really: of course there is. I'm sure there are hundreds! But there's only one Thanksgiving helper app by the amazing foodie folks at Chow.

It just so happens I have one of those two-degrees of separation connections to the great founder of Chow, and she's really excited about this new app. So I'm helping her push it out a bit.

BUT, the truth is, I love Chow! Whenever I need restaurant advice or cooking advice, that site and its forums are where I turn to first.

So even though I don't have a smartphone, I'm downloading this app into my iTunes. Because you never know what kind of help you'll need come The Big Day!

Changing the Food System

I thought (my hero) Ruth Reichl's recent blog post on Changing the Food System offered fascinating and new (to me, anyway) perspectives and ideas on how to really enact this change that needs to happen.

And it was a beautiful hall, all carved antique wood, where Marion Nestle, David Kessler and I sat down to discuss the politics of food and health care....

We are all agreed on these basic facts. The question is, what do we do about it? And that’s where the most depressing part comes in. Because these politically connected people (David, after all, was the FDA commissioner who took on cigarettes), both believe that there are only two paths to political change. Campaign laws must be rewritten to prevent large corporate contributions. And the first amendment must no longer be interpreted as protecting advertising as free speech. Until that happens, political change is not possible.

I'd never thought of these before. But when I really think about it, it does make sense. It also kind of blows my mind...things I once thought of as totally un-related (obesity, factory farms, broken food system and large corporate contributions and advertising protected as free speech) are, clearly, very much related.

And so it goes.

Change might be longer in coming than we thought. But I still believe it will happen. Because it must.



P.S. If you are in need of something great to read over the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday, may I recommend the extraordinary Ms. Reichl's books? They are captivating, wonderfully written, all about food, and are auto-biographical. They are so good. I wish I hadn't read them so I could read them all over again. I suggest starting at the beginning and working your way to the present, though you could always do it backwards, as hubby did -- though not on purpose. Just worked out that way. And he did not enjoy them any less because of it. So really, just read them, no matter the order!

Tostones Part II: Mojo de Ajo (aka garlic dipping sauce from heaven)

Remember my recipe for Tostones! posted a few weeks back? The green plantains that fry into smashed delicious, life-altering goodness?

Well, no toston is complete without a salty garlic-limon sauce to dip it into and make you feel really alive.

Without further ado, my recipe (and I fully admit there are endless varieties and ways to make this kind of dipping sauce) for...

Mojo de Ajo

- 2 cloves of garlic for every platano you're using (in this case, I fried up two platanos, so I used 4 cloves)

- some really good quality extra virgin olive oil

- lime juice (ideally fresh-squeezed, and lemon will do in a pinch)

- plenty of salt (I use kosher salt)

Mince your garlic as finely as is humanly possible. The day I made these tostones, I was lazy. So my garlic was pretty chunky. But it so doesn't really matter -- this sauce will still turn out like crack.

In a bowl, mix your garlic with some salt and mash it all up with the back of a spoon, to make kind of a garlic-salt paste.

Cover this concoction with several tablespoons of olive oil, and then add a couple of teaspoons of lime juice -- or more to your taste, however you like it. Too salty? Add more olive oil and lime juice. Too sour and limey? Add more olive oil. Not enough punch? Add a bit more lime juice. This sauce is really made by taste; can you tell?

Mix it all up, let it sit and meld and marinate and then when your tostones are all fried up, serve them along with this sauce and die and go to heaven.

Goes great over yucca, too, as well as over black beans & rice and grilled chicken.

We can either pay the farmer or we can pay the hospital

http://www.grist.org/article/food-2010-09-24-11-year-old-schools-us/

Tostones!

As promised a while ago, here is my recipe for tostones! (Always with an exclamation point because DAMN THEY ARE THAT GOOD!)

Also known sometimes as platanos verdes or patacones, tostones! are the most delicious, heavenly, savory, yum yum yummers Latin American side dish you ever will come across. They're kind of like a cross between a potato chip (a really, really good, thick one, like a Kettle chip) and home fries and something else otherworldly.

If you've ever had platanos maduros before (the kind of plantain that is sweet when cooked), you're probably thinking, what the...? Platanos are sweet, not savory, crazy lady!

But the key here is the ripeness of the platano when you cook it, which is easily discernible by its color. A ripe -- and thus sweet-tasting when cooked -- platano is yellow in color, similar to its banana cousins. An unripe -- and thus savory and very umami when cooked -- platano is green in color. Thus the alternate term "platanos verdes" (green/unripe plantains) for tostones.

 Tostones are sadly, miserably, unfortunately, tragically quite hard to find in restaurants on the west coast. When I lived in New York City, I could get them everywhere and didn't eat them every day, thinking they were (as they ought to be) commonplace. Then I moved back to the west coast (San Francisco initially and Oregon now) and realized what a rare delicious golden treasure they are in this land of Mexican and Central American food with a sad dearth of proper Latin Caribbean (Puerto Rican, Dominican, Cuban) food.

Being the daughter of a Colombian, you would think I'd be partial to the maduros. My dad can't get enough of them, and I remember him teaching me to cook them when I was young. But as soon as I tasted my first toston, I was a lost cause: it was tostones for me, forever. I like the maduros, sure, and especially in certain meals, situations, etc. But give me a choice and I'll always choose the savory tostones.

So the only way for me to satisfy my toston craving is to make them myself. And while, yes, these are not the healthiest food in the world to eat, when you make them yourself, they totally fall into Food Rule #39 of Michael Pollan's: Eat all the junk food you want as long as you cook it yourself.

These go wonderfully with rice and beans; grilled chicken; fried eggs; anything else with even a little bit of latin flavor or that needs a carby, salty side. As for me, I could eat an entire batch solo, no problem. But only as long as the requisite mojo de ajo (garlic-lemon dipping sauce) is on the side.

And so, without further ado, I present to you my recipe for these gorgeous wonderful delights of salty and garlicky and yummmm:

DENA'S TOSTONES

•  As many platanos verdes (green plantains) as you can handle -- for me, this usually falls somewhere between my desire to eat 17 and my capacity to cook anywhere between 2 to 4
• Plenty of high-heat cooking oil, such as sunflower or safflower
• Salt water
• Salt

1. Peel your platanos -- they don't peel like regular bananas due to their un-ripeness. You'll need to score the outside in two to three vertical lines to get the peel to come off.

2. Slice them into fairly thick rounds -- they're going to get smashed into flat delicious toston-ness, so they need to start out pretty substantial.

3. Meanwhile, heat enough cooking oil to cover the bottom of your skillet by about 1/4 inch til it's hot; I usually set mine on medium-high.

4. If you've got a lot of tostones, fry them in batches: place each piece in the skillet so that it can lay flat but not crowd the others. Let them get just golden, about 90 seconds to 2 minutes or so, depending on the heat of your stove. You don't want them to brown. Once they've reached that gorgeous golden state, flip them so they get golden on the other side, too.

5. Once they're all golden on both sides, remove from the skillet to a plate with paper towels to soak up excess oil. You can turn off your skillet for now.

6. While they were cooking, you've set up a little toston-smashing station: Small bowl of salt water, a clean surface on which to smash (I sometimes use a plate for this), and a smasher -- I usually use one of our flat, heavy-bottomed glasses. A heavy mug can also work.


7. Take each toston onto your surface, place the smasher over it, and smash just until properly smashed but not falling apart. It can take a few tries to figure out where that line lies; you'll get the hang of it!




8. Dip each smashed toston in salt water and set aside.

9. Once all the tostones are smashed and salt-water dipped, heat up your skillet again, to about the same heat, and fry up the tostones til they cook through and get really golden and just this side of browned.

10. Remove to a paper-towel covered plate, sprinkle with plenty of your favorite salt (I like the big crystals of kosher salt for this job), let them cool just a bit, and enjoy with a dipping sauce of mojo de ajo. HEAVEN.

Coming soon.... my recipe for mojo de ajo!

Where Is My Milk From?

In the midst of the truly disgusting and scary egg contamination recall, other vulnerable foods spring to mind.

Namely, dairy! Check out this neat little tool* to help you learn as much as you can about what is often all-too-mysterious: the actual origins and processors of our milk.

Especially as someone who frequently shops at Trader Joe's (though I only ever buy organic dairy, no matter what store I'm shopping at, because of...well, all of this), where, as part of their low-price dealio, they take products from name-brand outfits and put them under their own TJ's labels, this is a huge help to me. Using this handy little tool, I discovered that a lot of their dairy is local to me and from reputably organic producers, like our beloved Nancy's Creamery -- which is a huge relief and wonderful thing to know!


* Confused as to where to enter in your code? It's right on the milk carton -- I totally missed it the first time!

A Sweet and Summery New Year

Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, begins tomorrow evening. This is the beginning of the High Holy Days and a time of introspection, retrospection, atonement, forgiveness, and hope.

The ten days between Rosh Hashanah -- a very joyous, sweet occasion -- and Yom Kippur -- a more solemn occasion, the day of atonement or 'at-one-ment,' the most important Jewish holiday -- are called the Days of Awe, and they are our opportunity to make right the wrongs of the past year, and to set hopes and dreams for a sweet year to come.

But what does all this have to do with food? It's also a time for eating and enjoying food with our loved ones, of course! It is a Jewish holiday, after all. (The typical and traditional dish of Rosh Hashanah is apple dipped in honey -- to help you taste the sweetness of life and mark the beginnings of a sweet new year.)

What's lovely about the High Holy Days in 2010 is that well, they start "early" this year. As one of my fave websites for all things Jewish, www.jewfaq.org, puts it: There is a joke about the Jewish calendar that goes something like this: "While sitting in synagogue, one man turns to his friend and says, ‘When is Hanukkah this year?’ The other man smiles slyly and replies, ‘Same as always: the 25th of Kislev.’" It’s a joke, but it makes an important point: The date of Jewish holidays does not change from year to year. Holidays are celebrated on the same day of the Jewish calendar every year, but the Jewish year is not the same length as a solar year on the civil calendar used by most of the western world, so the date shifts on the civil calendar. 

And as this wonderful post from one of my new favorite Jewish literary magazines, Tablet, puts it: This year, Rosh Hashanah, which typically falls a little later in the year, begins in early September, when summer fruits and vegetables are still overflowing.

So this Rosh Hashanah, we've got a great chance to put the 'sweet' and 'succulent' into our wishes and dishes for the new year, with bounty from our gardens and Farmer's Markets. Tablet has got some great recipe ideas, including this one (how GOOD does that look?!?):

Beet 'Carpaccio' With Wild Arugula, Goat Cheese, and Orange Vinaigrette 


1 pound large loose beets, golden, red and/or candy striped
4 cups wild arugula
¼ cup goat cheese, crumbled
1 orange, segmented and juiced, separated
1 tablespoon good quality local honey
¼ cup olive oil
¼ teaspoon sea salt
¼ teaspoon black pepper
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.

1. De-stem and scrub beets. [Dena's note: save those beet greens and saute them with some olive oil and garlic for a deeeeelicious side dish! Beet greens are hubby's very favorite.] Wrap in foil and place on a sheet tray. Bake for 50 minutes or until tender. Transfer to a bowl, cover with saran wrap, and refrigerate for at least two hours.

2. After beets have cooled, peel all beets. On a mandoline or slicer, slice beets very thinly. This may be done with a knife, but will take a little longer. Keep all different color beets separate so that the color does not bleed.

3. Arrange beets in concentric circles in any pattern you wish on a serving platter.

4. To make the dressing, combine the orange juice (1/3 cup) and honey, whisk in the olive oil, and season with salt and pepper. Reserve.

5. Right before serving, toss arugula in the reserved dressing and place in the center of arranged beets. Top with crumbled goat cheese and orange segments. Serve immediately.

Yield: 4 servings


A Greenmarket Rosh Hashanah from Tablet Magazine on Vimeo.

How To Cook a [Bleeping] Steak

Heh. Thought this was hilarious and actually quite a good recipe for the simple act of cooking a delicious steak.

Check it out (though be forewarned that its language is definitely rated R).

Meal Plan for the Week

This is a bit late, but well, this late summer/fall is just shaping up to be that kind of busybusybusy time. All the more reason for meal planning, in my experience!

Here's what we're eating at Casa Dena this week:

• Monday: Black Beans & Rice (made with peppers from our garden, which were divine and unlike any store-bought pepper. So delicious and cool. I ate it without rice, of course.)
• Tuesday: Roasted Chicken Breasts with Roasted Sweet Potatoes, Carrots, and Onions and Corn on the Cob (sweet potatoes are for hubby only. End-of-summer corn is exciting!)
• Wednesday: Mediterranean Melts (made with tomatoes from our garden! No toast for me; I eat it on top of garbanzo beans.)
• Thursday: Dinner at a friend's house
• Friday: Pasta Pomodoro (just pasta with quickly sauteed sweet, luscious garden tomatoes and plenty of garlic, topped with freshly grated parmesan...ah, summer. No pasta for me of course -- garbanzo beans to the rescue again.)

What about you? What are you cooking up this week? Any garden or Farmer's Market bounty that you're making use of this week?

Avoiding the Dirty Dozen

The Environmental Working Group just released their new Shopper's Guide to Pesticides. Have you seen this? Do you use it? If not, I highly recommend.

I try to be as conscious of the environmental and health impacts of the food that I eat, cook, and serve as possible. But the truth is, it's simply impossible to eat all-organic, all-local, all-sustainable, all-ethical ALL of the time. Well, perhaps it might be possible if I had a million dollars in the bank and didn't work and had the land space to raise chickens and have a huge garden. Then I might have the time and the resources to be able to make that happen. But I would still have to limit at what restaurants I ate, and I am okay (for now, at least) with not imposing such strict limitations on myself and my family.

So what I'm saying is: knowing what I know about the brokenness, filth, toxicity, and inhumanity of our food systems, and as someone who wants to eat as healthily and as safely for our planet as possible, I still need to compromise and make choices.

And nowhere is that more important than in the grocery store.

When I make my weekly meal plan, I also make up a grocery list and head to the store to stock up for the week. Sometimes a recipe will call for, say, red bell peppers. And sometimes I will buy them, if they're not grown and flown in from Chile or New Zealand (because for me personally, I've drawn the line there -- I won't support that much fossil fuel being used to bring me a bell pepper. Plus they never taste the way they should -- and why would they? They've traveled a looooong way to make it to my store).

But if I do buy them, I will only buy them organic. If the organic ones are too pricey (because OMG red or orange bell peppers are freaking expensive!), I'll either choose to buy the smallest one I can find, or pass and find some kind of a substitute, like a (usually cheaper) organic green bell pepper.

Why? Because bell peppers are on the Dirty Dozen list!

Check it out -- EWG has put together two lists:

THE DIRTY DOZEN
The top 12 vegetables and fruits that are the most susceptible to and carry the most pesticides on and in them when they are grown conventionally. So these are the 12 that you will want to go out of your way to be sure to buy organic. These are listed in order of "dirtiness," with 1 being the worst (ie, most full of pesticides).

1.  Celery (Who knew?! This is news to me -- and glad I know! I love me some celery sticks with peanut butter.)
2. Peaches
3. Strawberries
4. Apples
5. Blueberries
6. Nectarines
7. Bell Peppers
8. Spinach
9. Cherries
10. Kale and Collard Greens
11. Potatoes
12. Grapes (Imported)

THE CLEAN 15
These are the 15 fruits and vegetables that retain or carry the lowest amount of pesticides. This is where you can make your compromises if you need to buy non-organic. These are listed in order of "cleanliness," with 1 being the best (ie, least full of pesticides).

1. Onions (Yay, because for some reason, organic red onions are wayyy expensive here at some times of the year. I'm switching to conventional next time I shop until their price goes down.)
2. Avocado (Also yay because a) I loooove avocado and b) sometimes organic avocados are not even available in the store.)
3. Sweet Corn
4. Pineapple
5. Mangos
6. Sweet Peas
7. Asparagus
8. Kiwi
9. Cabbage
10. Eggplant
11. Cantaloupe
12. Watermelon
13. Grapefruit
14. Sweet Potato
15. Honeydew Melon

I was surprised to not see bananas on the Clean 15 -- I was under some mistaken assumption that they were on that list. I am now switching my banana-buying habit to organic-only.

If you're wondering how much pesticides really get into your system and how bad they really are for you (in other words, how much should you pay attention to the Dirty Dozen or the Clean 15), you can read the many, many reasons why or here's a brief summary of what EWG has to say about it:

Some of the most toxic food pesticides have come off the market in the past 15 years. But some pesticides considered safe now will invariably be restricted in future years. Chemical agribusiness interests might assert that pesticides in food are perfectly safe, but the reality is that many pesticide uses that are on the books as safe today will be found unsafe by EPA in the future, based on new science, new understandings about the mechanisms by which pesticides can harm the human body, or strengthened policies for health protection within the agency itself. 

EWG research has found that people who eat five fruits and vegetables a day from the Dirty Dozen list consume an average of 10 pesticides a day. Those who eat from the 15 least contaminated conventionally-grown fruits and vegetables ingest fewer than 2 pesticides daily. Concentrations of organophosphate pesticides, including chlorpyrifos and malathion, in elementary school-age children’s bodies peaked during seasons that they ate the most produce. Conversely, exposures fell to non-detectable levels in just 5 days, when they switched from a conventional diet to eating exclusively organic foods.

So how about you? If you find these useful, you can download a PDF to print out and then cut out your own little card with the two lists. I've got mine in my purse for when I go to shop. And if you're an iPhone user, you can download their app to take it with you!

No More KENNY??? WTF, Top Chef!

Okay you know I love me some Top Chef. But there's always one point, in every season, where I get really disappointed in them because they send one of the most -- if not THE most -- talented chefs home and let crappy, mediocre, sloppy chefs stay because they managed to not frick up entirely but didn't shine at all either.

Ugh.

That's what happened last week -- Kenny (aka The Beast) was sent home. Remember how I had predicted he would win it all? Well, he certainly had the chops to do so. And I think he was completely DONE WRONG last week when they sent him home, leaving the equally shabby and embarassing Amanda and Alex to continue.

So I haven't watched this week's yet, because I'm still mad at them. I'll get over it and I still want to see who wins, but I'll always hold Kenny in my heart as the true deserving hero.

Okay, ranting done. What about you? Are you enjoying this season? Now I'm rooting for Kevin to win. God I hope Angelo doesn't win.

New Season of Top Chef!

Has anyone else been watching? I am, of course, watching religiously.

We're only 5 episodes in but already I have my favorites and decidedly un-favorites. And my prediction for the winner: Kenny.

He can cook his ass off, that's for sure. He knows what he's doing in the kitchen, he's got crazy skills, AND he's personable, mature, a natural leader, and a good manager.

And if he won, he'd be the first person of color to win Top Chef. That would be huge! I would love to see that happen already. And it's about time, frankly.

I think Angelo is his main competition (these two chefs clearly think so, too, what with their constant trying to out-maneuver one another), and happily for me (because it makes for funner watching), Angelo is my #1 Un-Favorite. Ugh. He is gross. And not just because of the weird, awkward way he keeps coming onto Tamesha. Plus homeboy needs to bring his ego down several notches; he's just not all that.

Also, will we see our first Top Chef hook-up with Tiffany and Ed? I love it.

What are your predictions? How are you liking this season?

Amen

Michael Ruhlman is spot on. Amen!

We can’t expect big business to have our best interests in mind, nor expect the media to stop ringing the all-in-one Salt-Is-Bad! Fat-Is-Bad! alarm bells. Big companies want to sell us their goods any way they can. If they can take advantage of our confusion about how to eat, they will, rubbing their hands and chuckling with delight.... I blame us for being stupid.  It’s our own damned fault. We need to stop paying for lies and start paying more attention to what we’re eating.

Ultimately, our eating habits -- good, bad, or ugly -- are our own responsibility. Yes, manufacturers need to change their ways. But the only way they will is when it becomes profitable to do so. In other words, when we as the consumers change our habits, both in regards to eating and purchasing.

Here's to reading the fine print....

Menu Plan for the Week

It's been a long while since I posted! This menu's posting is a bit late, but the menu itself isn't. Like usual, I planned and shopped for it on the weekend.

Monday: Potsticker Stirfry (aka I sauteed a bag of frozen potstickers from Trader Joe's along with broccolini, red cabbage, peppers, and shiitakes. And, of course, garlic and onion. Add soy sauce, white wine vinegar, hot sauce, and a drop of sesame oil, and you're good to go!)

Tuesday: Homemade Hideaway Bakery Chicken Sandwiches with Roasted Cauliflower and Roasted Yukon Gold Potatoes (Since I don't eat grains or starches of any kind, my sandwich is breadless and the potatoes were just for hubby. And the Hideaway sandwich is one of our favorites, so I decided to try it at home -- delicious! I grilled some rosemary-marinated chicken breasts, sliced them, and put the chicken on a fresh, toasted-and-rubbed-with-garlic ciabatta roll topped with caramelized onions and pickled cabbage. Divine.)

Wednesday: Cena Latina (Black beans and rice, tostones, sliced avocado, and red cabbage salad)

Thursday: Dining out at the uniquely Eugene and absolutely delicious Poppi's Anatolia for Bites for Rights!

Friday: Mediterranean Melts (No toast for me on this one, obviously; I put the delicious stuff over a bowl of garbanzo beans and it's equally yummy.)

Saturday: Date Night! We're going to see the fabulous Pink Martini and we're having dinner with friends beforehand.

Sunday: Not sure yet... depends on the weather! I'd love to grill something on our back patio.

Meatless Mondays

Have you heard about the Meatless Mondays campaign?

I love the idea: their goal is to "help reduce meat consumption [by] 15% in order to improve personal health and the health of our planet."

Why meatless? "Going meatless once a week may reduce your risk of chronic preventable conditions like cancer, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and obesity. It can also help reduce your carbon footprint and save precious resources like fresh water and fossil fuel." Hell yes!

Why Monday? "For most Americans the week begins on Monday. On Monday we move from the freedom of the weekend back to the structure of work or school. We set our intentions for the next six days. We plan ahead and evaluate progress. From an early age we internalize this rhythm. And studies suggest we are more likely to maintain behaviors begun on Monday throughout the week. That makes Monday the perfect day to make a change for your health and the health of our planet." Awesome! I love that. Hadn't ever thought about it, but makes lots of sense. And I really love that they are of the it's-all-a-spectrum ilk; ie, if you don't go meatless this Monday, there's always next Monday to give it a whirl.

As any longtime readers of this here blog know, around here at Casa Dena we usually do the inverse: Meatful One-Day-a-Week! But I know that it's hard for lots of folks to give up meat for dinner, especially if you grew up with the framework that dinner simply isn't dinner without meat on the plate. So I totally applaud the attempt to get people to forgo meat one day a week; it's very do-able. And I love that they're getting restaurants in on it. What a way to normalize it, make it seem do-able, and make it easy for folks to take part.

And the newest signer-on? Mario Batali! Yes, he of orange-croc-wearing fame, of Food Network fame, of mouth-wateringly delicious food at restaurants like Babbo fame.

How cool!

And another bonus to a meatless anyday: it's much cheaper! Going without meat is a real recession special, if you ask me. My recent recession special new trick: using dried, bulk beans. It is difficult to remember to soak those bad boys the night before, but when you do, it feels like you've turned $0.37 into a meal for four people!

And if you're interested in good recipes for your next Meatless Monday, I've got lots of vegetarian recipes in my archives. Or you can check out my favorite simple and yummy vegetarian food blog, 101 Cookbooks.

So what about you? How often do you eat or cook meat? If you don't eat it every day of the week, do you do that consciously? How hard would it be for you to not eat meat every Monday?


(Also, can we talk about that little fact that the entire city of San Francisco signed on? That RULES! I'm not exactly clear what that means for dear old SF, but I can imagine it really working out there.)

(And a big hat tip to my dear friend -- and truly delicious home chef -- James for alerting me to Chef Batali's joining the campaign!)

Hilarious Food Blogs

So if food doesn't ordinarily make you laugh, these blogs will (I guarantee) have you in stitches. The first, CakeWrecks, is one of my very favorites. I have to check in with it every day for my giggle -- and sometimes outright guffaw -- of the day. The second I just discovered thanks to my friend James, and it appears quite promising.

Cake Wrecks - http://cakewrecks.blogspot.com/
(I can't pick just one favorite, but here are 3 really good ones...)

My Food Looks Funny - http://myfoodlooksfunny.com/
(Since I just started reading, I don't have a favorite yet, but this one cracked me up.)

Food Poem of the Month: Ode to Chocolate

My work has gotten CRAZY what with a 1,700-person event in one week, so for now I'll keep my posting simple and leave you with this ode to chocolate -- the darker the better.

It's also kind of an ode to my hubby, who is a chocolate aficionado, but only if no milk or cream has come into contact with it. He likes it, like his coffee and beer, dark, complex, and bitter. Before meeting him, I didn't think I liked chocolate. But now I know better: I've learned to love the fruity, complex over and undertones of a piece of good dark chocolate. Scharffenberger's 62% is my very favorite.

Ode to Chocolate

I hate milk chocolate, don't want clouds
of cream diluting the dark night sky,
don't want pralines or raisins, rubble
in this smooth plateau. I like my coffee
black, my beer from Germany, wine
from Burgundy, the darker, the better.
I like my heroes complicated and brooding,
James Dean in oiled leather, leaning
on a motorcycle. You know the color.

Oh, chocolate! From the spice bazaars
of Africa, hulled in mills, beaten,
pressed in bars. The cold slab of a cave's
interior, when all the stars
have gone to sleep.

Chocolate strolls up to the microphone
and plays jazz at midnight, the low slow
notes of a bass clarinet. Chocolate saunters
down the runway, slouches in quaint
boutiques; its style is je ne sais quoi.
Chocolate stays up late and gambles,
likes roulette. Always bets
on the noir.

"Ode to Chocolate" by Barbara Crooker, from More.

Let the Free Market Decide

Remember that little graphic I posted a few days ago about why salads cost more than Big Macs?

"...My pie in the sky dream is to end subsidies for agribusiness and end subsidies for animal production and basically let the free market decide the cost of a pound of beef and a pound of chicken. If there were no subsidies for beef, a pound of beef would cost around $25, and if every aspect of animal production wasn't subsidized, a family of four going to McDonald's for a quick meal would spend $75. So really it's like the silver bullet that fixes the problem. And I would almost think it would make for interesting bedfellows, where you might even get some libertarian Tea Party people to talk about ending giving subsidies to animal production. But then again, not to be too inflammatory, but thus far every single person in the Tea Party is a raving lunatic, so I don't expect them to join our cause any time soon."

-- Moby, author of Gristle: From Factory Farms to Food Safety (emphasis mine)

Amen, Moby. It thrills me to just imagine it.

My Favorite Things

If you're a new reader or have been a loyal and steadfast Recipe Exchanger since the days of yore, you may have noticed a new little list I've got on the right-hand side (below "Where I Shop"): My Favorite Things.

It's a collection of things I use and love in the kitchen -- and wholeheartedly recommend. As well as some non-kitchen, but food-related, items.

If you've got any can't-live-without Favorite Things of your own, I hope you'll share; I'm always looking for the best kitchen tools to round out my collection.

Dena's Favorite Things

• Microplane Grater/Zester (The Classic: I love this microplane for zesting citrus and grating spices like nutmeg.)
• Microplane Grater (Medium Ribbon: If you're not grating hard cheeses and chocolate with a microplane, you haven't lived!)
• Lodge Pre-Seasoned Cast-Iron Skillet (The King of all pans. Deserted island + cast-iron skillet = just fine with me.)
• All-Clad Stainless Fry Pan (The King of the stainless pan. Seriously. All-Clad is worth the $$$.)
• Wusthof Chef's Knife (The ultimate chef's knife. Indispensable.)
• Chicago Metallic Jelly Roll Pan (The only baking sheet I ever want to use.)
• San Marzano Organic Canned Tomatoes (San Marzano tomatoes make the best sauce. They're far from local, but at least they're organic!)
• The New Best Recipe (This is my food bible. If you want the best recipe with exact instructions that has been taste-tested to perfection, the Cook's Illustrated folks are who you turn to.)
  
• How To Cook Everything (My secondary food bible. I love how Mark Bittman makes everything easy and simple, and shows you how to take 1 recipe and give it endless variations.)
• The Omnivore's Dilemma (The seminal work from Rebbe Pollan on how our current food systems do not work, and how we need to change.)
  
• Food Rules (The follow-up to The Omnivore's Dilemma that answers the questions you're left with after reading that book, "What should I eat? And how?")
  
• Like Water for Chocolate (The book: My very favorite novel about food and eating. It is as lush and delicious as your favorite meal.)
• Like Water for Chocolate (The movie: Amazingly, the movie version of the book is, in my opinion, actually better! I adore this movie. I laughed, I cried, I got really, really hungry.)

What am I missing/forgetting?