I was a proud glutton on Saturday. Not that co-hosting a Great Hot Dog Cook-Off isn’t reason enough to celebrate (or pack on five extra pounds), but through it all, we made over $1500 for the Food Bank for NYC from ticket sales and cash donations at the event. Fourteen chef-contestants made trays full of [...]

Except for 10 more tickets, which can be purchased by super beneficiaries of the Food Bank for NYC for $30 (instead of $15)! Yep, we just sold the last of our 100 regular tickets today, and are offering these 10 extra spots to anyone who just NEEDS to come, despite forking over the extra allowance [...]

Oh yes, you heard it correctly. The Baked Brie Dog, which was born, baked, and eaten at a Memorial Day barbecue this weekend, will not be seen at the Great Hot Dog Cook-Off this July. But it only marks the beginning of the hot dog greatness that the event will doubtless inspire. Who said hot [...]

Challah! The Risotto Challenge has been fought, and by “fought” I mean “feasted”! I hate to say, ‘You kind of had to be there’ about this event, but I seriously can’t even remember enough of it. All I know is that I had to replenish the plates and forks and one point, and we’d put [...]

Behold: the work of two stir-crazy minds joined in the common goal of furthering research in the home-cooked field of arboriology–

Spicy Honey Aubergines! And that’s our official theme song for the finale of the Ugliest Gourmet blogging contest. Huzzah to The Blog That Ate Manhattan for creating what this blog’s readers have deemed the ugliest delicious food of the bunch. All told, the results were nail-bitingly close to a four-way tie, with three votes [...]

Judgment is upon us for The Ugliest Gourmet! Let’s have a big round of imaginary applause for everyone who bravely cooked, photographed and blogged about all the treats below. This home-cooking event was devised to prove that, despite the visual ostentation that professional cooks strive for, great food doesn’t always look so great. So for [...]

Restaurant food is pretty. Home-cooked food, not so much. Oh yes, we try. We, of the conscientious, borderline obsessive home cooking set, have every intention of making a meal beautiful on both the inside and out. But unless you have plating and presentation skills of the likes of Matt Armendiraz, it ain’t nothin’ compared to [...]

Oh, to the joys of toys. And to learning something new every day.
Let me back up a moment. When I purchased an antique Chinese cookie mold in a curiosity store a month or so back, I thought that the thing itself was so beautiful and ornate that it would engender the most incredible spawn in [...]

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 [...]