“You go, girl. Yeah, have that extra scoop of ice cream. Damn straight. You made it, after all.”
That’s my chorus of you-go-girl girls in the back of my mind. They like to cheer, so I try to give them every opportunity to. They can be so feisty if I don’t:
“I hope you enjoyed every minute [...]

Announcing the first one-off food blogging event on Not Eating Out in New York: That Crazy Kitchen Gadget. Rules are simple:
1. Identify your crazy, obscure, mysterious, ineffective, obsolete or completely awesome kitchen gadget and remember to photograph it or at least describe it well in your post.
2. Cook a dish using the same crazy kitchen [...]

Hear me out: I acknowledge global warming. I am sitting in my apartment with two fans on glued to this chair and have ice cubes in my cheeks like a squirrel hoarding nuts. Did they say global humidifying is upon us as well, or is it just these couple of days we’re having in the [...]

Remember how I told you that at the end of June, the berries in Prospect Park were due to be ripe for the picking? Apparently not, since you’ve left me bushes full of them. Or — perhaps — I suppose I could have tried to describe where in the park these bushes were. Ah well. [...]

I’m taking Arthur’s advice this month and eating plenty of asparagus while they’re in season. In fact, I owe so much to the erudite and challenging wisdom he’s extended me that I had even considered blending this vegetable with strawberries (the other food he mentioned is best in June) in a salad, and took this [...]

photo courtesy of Amelia at Marination

In continuation of my partially slanted, incomplete task of describing the NYC Food Film Festival a couple of weeks ago on this blog, last weekend I did my homework and got the scoop on the first-ever fest for The Reeler.

It’s such an easy feat sometimes to find a combination that’s just miraculous — it hit your tastebuds perfectly, it quelled your bad mood dutifully, and it spaced you out for an hour after eating it as you thought about it again and again. By this point, we’ve all had it drilled in our heads [...]

Look at what I found the other day:

It isn’t a paddle to play any sport.

Fresh-mint infused ice cream flavors have grown up quickly from the esoteric awe they might have once induced. Now that Ciao Bella even makes a fresh mint chip ice cream, it’s no longer the domain of chefs and home cooks, either. Fresh mint leaves are a world of difference from the minty mint chip flavor [...]

If pork belly is the cut craze of the moment, then I nominate Vietnamese banh mi
sandwiches as its most appetizing summer application. I’ve been hearing about pork belly all over the food world lately: 23% of the chefs polled in this month’s Food & Wine magazine thought of it as the ingredient more home cooks [...]

the closest I’ve gotten to Napa
The excitement I had yesterday afternoon. I had just taken some napa cabbage slaw leftovers from Sunday’s picnic out of tupperware from the fridge to snack on, gone back for some tangy sriracha sauce just to kick it up because leftovers, as good as its predecessor may have been, [...]

the cheese blintzes recipe test-drive: practicing and making perfect so that you (hopefully) won’t have to

I’m ecstatic to pick the brain of veteran food critic, cookbook author and food history maven, Arthur Schwartz in this installment of Here’s Lookin’ at You Cook. The Brooklyn-born, bred and based author is not short on answers to all [...]

me (not Steve) grating zest into a not-so-authentic crust
Don’t get me wrong: I’ve nothing against the venerable institution that is Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pies. There is no contest — key lime pie greatness has been said for, and I couldn’t tell you of a better way to spend an afternoon than to go down [...]

the tasting frenzy at Mo Pitkin’s left no chili standing
For those of you who weren’t sweating over styrofoam cups of chili at the Manhattan Chili Takedown 2007 yesterday, I was there; and I survive to tell you of the glory that went down.

Okay, so you won’t get any points from the 100-mile diet club with this recipe, since okra is grown in the South and the shrimp I got in Chinatown was caught or farmed probably in… the South. But you will have enjoyed a classic southern combination while satisfying your craving for spicy Thai basil stir-fry. [...]