This has to be the worst week for not eating out in New York so far. After giving thanks to all the home-cooked food and leftovers of the weekend, I returned to Brooklyn to begin the task of moving into my new apartment. This time, I decided to do it using only borrowed vehicles and [...]

I tried balancing cold semi-sweet chocolate morsels on a salty cracker and was rewarded with the perfect quench for my salty/sweet craving.  Cost calculator?  Both items were free thanks to my roommate and the gratuitous back of the freezer.  (Health factor = bad.)
Conversation with self:
-Which do you prefer, salty or sweet? For instance, if you [...]

Hopefully many people reading this blog who don’t know me personally will have sensed that my culinary tastes are quite various and international in scope. But what I haven’t disclosed for this long and would feel irresponsible about withholding at this moment, is the fact that every Thanksgiving dinner I’ve attended has served the same [...]

NYC foodies! What have you got to do this Friday after sleeping off your turkey stupor and shopping ’til you drop? Spicy garlic dill pickles, picklemartinis, kick ass music, and good ol’ bar drinking might be just the weekend wake-up call.
What’s more, the McClure’s Pickles cukes are all primed and prepped for the holiday season, [...]

Maybe “cook” isn’t the right word in this case. This is a truly special installment of Here’s Lookin’ at You Cook (albeit my second), one of a New York exile. As long as I’ve known him (since his jew-fro-sporting high school days), Michael Manning has been a connoisseur of all things delicious. After living in [...]

For any of you foodies living in or around Williamsburg, Brooklyn, there’s finally a place where you can go and everybody knows your name. No, it’s not a bar, it’s a kitchenware and specialty foods shop called The Brooklyn Kitchen. I had the pleasure of watching the shop’s first gathering this evening on “A Different [...]

This was a leftover dish. It might not sound like one, but every ingredient used down to the parsley was already in my fridge for various reasons and past uses. It was so perfect, that because I didn’t have pasta, I decided to make pasta myself. I had flour, eggs, and salt…I even had fresh [...]

This probably sounds like a no-brainer trick to use on a basic biscuit recipe: fold in a few of your favorite things. The other day I tasted a sample wedge of cheese, and it was an Italian cheese (parmesan or romano?) that had whole black peppercorns encrusted throughout. It piqued my tastebuds so much that [...]

Blogs Adam on The Amateur Gourmet after trekking up to Sarabeth’s on Central Park South for a brunch of a single waffle that cost $14:
“That’s an outrageous amount of money to pay for a can of pumpkin mixed with flour and egg and sugar and plopped into a waffle iron, flipped on to a [...]

My friend Karol always wins at stuff. Whether it’s the Ms. Pac-Man playoff, or the guy at the other end of the bar, Karol just wins. So it was no surprise when her chili took home first prize in the annual “Bruce Chili” cook-off at Barcade. Coming back from a 7th place finish in the [...]

There’s nothing that spells cute to me more than a bunch of baby bok choy. The tenderest and most mild of cabbages, the contrast between leafy green parts and white stems has never been more appealing. When boiled, the fibrous whites turn translucent and practically melt in your mouth. The greens hold true to their [...]

Last winter, I thought I had perfected my meatloaf recipe. Although we’ve been having unusually warm weather in New York this week, I was more than ready to pull it out, this time in a more delicate fashion. It’s an easy dish to make since almost everything in it is essentials from your kitchen that [...]

I’d like to pause briefly for a political moment. As we all know, this week has been immensely significant for the Democratic Party and for Bush opposers, rippling throughout the world. Never have I gotten so many mass emails from Moveon.org since the weeks leading up to Election 2004. There’s a local Moveon.org organized party [...]

I recently stumbled upon a site called FoodCandy.com, “where foodies meet.” We can all look back a mere few years ago and recall the humble beginnings of a site called Myspace, which targeted a younger crowd than existing networking sites. Before it took over the world of music, film, and young(ish) people in general. FoodCandy [...]

Why doesn’t New York come up with nice food store mascots like South Carolina? This logo is so cute, I can’t stand it. Here, I’m stuck with “Associated” or “Key Food” or “C-Town.” Even the fancy grocery stores and organic ones don’t have cartoon characters ripped off of Disney like South Carolina does.

I’m trying out the Retro Recipe Challenge Fall Favorites competition, just as I was in the mood to make something savory, spicy, and prepared in that ever-so-homey style, a casserole.

Sam and Richard had me over on Thursday for some hot toddys and sweets in honor of Day of the Dead. Or night of the dead? It was about 10:30 p.m. when I got there. The drink of choice was toasty hot chocolate made with Mexican dark chocolate and Kalhua.

The other day I had a not-too-satisfying experiment with eggplant, making a curry with whatever spices I possessed on my shelf that might combine in a pungent taste. It made me want to try another underused vegetable, but this time get the flavor right.