In Defense of Food Blogs

city of gold











Lessons Learned in 2012 and The Zen of Zesting









Why You Should Not Become a Food Blogger









Edible Austin Cooks Wins an Eddy

Marla Camp is on of my favorite foodie people and the amazing editor of Edible Austin.  Here is the news of her latest accolades:

We’re proud to announce that Edible Austin won two Eddy Awards, and were finalists in two other categories this year, bestowed at the Edible Communities Publishers meeting in January. Judged by a panel of outside experts from the food and publishing worlds, the awards recognize outstanding writing, photography and marketing campaigns.

Best Website: (2nd year in a row)
Best Editorial—Special Issue for Edible Austin COOKS! (digital edition click here)
and finalists for….
Best Editorial Spread or Layout for Setting the Season, Edible Austin COOKS!
Best Electronic Feature for our e-newsletter

Congratulations to Marla and her talented team!  Check out the special Cooks edition for party throwing tips, essential kitchen tools, family recipes from local chefs and farmers, a Texas wine guide, and more!

Marx Foods’ Iron Foodie 2010

While this may not be news to those that know me, Dear Reader, I am a bit competitive.  The Foodie Blogroll, a great resource site for food bloggers looking to network and monetize their blogs, holds several contests every month in conjunction with various sponsors.  Their latest contest really sounds intriguing so I decided to give it a whirl.

Step 1.

Write a blog post answering these questions by November 5th, 2010:

  1. Why do you want to compete in this challenge?
  4. Sum your childhood up in one meal.
  5. The one mainstream food you can’t stand?

A desire to compete as a personal challenge to my creativity is the initial reason I want to participate but also because the first prize is a $200 gift card to Marx Foods.  They have 11 categories listed for truffles alone!  So we are going with creativity as first choice for reason to compete but Kurobuta pork and uni by mail order are a close second.

Julia Childs would absolutely be my fantasy chef for the day.  I learned to love cooking as so many others did in front of their PBS station on Saturday afternoons while watching the indomitable Childs explain the difference between a hen and a pullet, demonstrate the perfect omelette, and manage to make tripe look appetizing.  She brought European cooking to middle America, not by dumbing it down but explaining and demonstrating in clear and precise steps.  She also helped develop the food television medium as a way to share what she loved, much as bloggers are doing with the internet now.  All with pearls and a smile.

My favortie morsels to swipe would be off the dessert plate.  A bit of icing here, a dab of whipped cream there, perhaps a stray berry or two.  Who am I kidding?  I call it “quality control” but I think I may have a real problem.  My name is Christy and I am a dessertaholic.

I was raised by a mom that had a full time job, a part time job, and three kids including one with special needs.  Although her mother was a fabulous cook, it never really was my mom’s thing.  We never went hungry but meals were more likely to be frozen foods than made from scratch.  A constant comfort food came in the red and white can made even more famous in 60’s pop art, Campbell’s Soup.  It was my mother’s secret sauce in a variety of casseroles that I still crave on occasion.  But the meal I recall most vividly was a steaming bowl of tomato soup-  made with water, not milk as some misinformed chefs vainly attempt to improve on a masterpiece.  Of course tomato soup must come with grilled cheese.  Oh, I’ve had the fancy, tarted up grilled sleazus like Gruyere and Stilton on walnut bread with the thinnest smear of fig compote.  The grilled cheese-us of my childhood was simple white bread toasted on the griddle with a molten hot lava flow of processed cheese food in the middle.  You could not eat it straight out of the pan or you would likely suffer a severe burn to the roof of your mouth or a napalm dribble down your chin.  Tomato soup and grilled cheese on a gray drizzly day when I was feeling sick.  Tomato soup and grilled cheese on summer afternoons when I was starving after morning swimming lessons.  Tomato soup and grilled cheese was the first meal I learned to cook for myself.  All that I cook now started there.

The only mainstream food that I can think of that I cannot stand are green peppers.  I really like the red, orange, or yellow varieties but I despise the green ones.

Well, there you go.  Answers to questions posted.  I figured out how to post the contest badge to my blogs footer.  Now I cross my fingers that I get the golden mystery box to create something yummy with.  Fingers crossed!

Pitchfork Fondue

Why have I never heard of this before?  I love meat.  I love fried things.  I love using yard tools for cooking utensils. 

I ran across this concept researching answers for an online contest.  I am thinking this would be a great use for that big pot of peanut oil used to fry a turkey  for Thanksgiving.  Redneck holiday, anyone?

Repost: Serious Eats Guide to Tropical Fruit

I love Serious Eats.  They have great articles, topical and well written.  My favorite is foodie geek Kenji, formerly from Cook’s Illustrated.  He has written great pieces about how to use your beer cooler to cook sous vide and scientific comparisons of knives and pans.  I usually don’t repost articles because it seems kind of like cheating but this useful guide will help me next time I am at Fiesta.  Thanks, Kenji!

To Cook Well

Here is the essay I recently entered at  If you like it, please take a minute to vote for me.  Thanks!

     UPDATE!  I am hoping this link works to take you straight to my essay.       

   To Cook Well

   To cook well is to know the “blub, blub, blub” sound coming from the pot means the polenta is almost done.  It is to know by a whiff of still raw bacon that you have four minutes to go versus the slightly acrid smell that comes from pork gone one minute too long. It is the slapping sound of the bread dough coming from the stand mixer that tells you the gluten is ready.  It is the sense of karmic timing that allows you to go deeper and darker into that caramel color and then stop all cooking with a cool liquid only a split second before brown turns to burned.  It is the shake of a fry pan that tells you there is a proper sear.  It is the ability to reach into your mental rolodex of flavors and pull tarragon out as the right one to finish a sauce.  Now try doing all of that while in a  complex ballet done with three tatted up foul mouthed alcoholics, two cousins from Guatemala that have more kitchen experience than the manager but speak little English, and the green kid from culinary school who is still learning the steps in a space roughly equivalent to a walk in closet.

To cook well is a mandate that some feel in their soul.  Anyone can flip a burger.  But to flip a burger with pride, to want to serve the best damn burger not just to one customer but to everyone that comes through your establishment turns the cook into a chef, the restaurant worker into an artist.  It gives you the fortitude to soldier on through your third double shift, to work through the holidays of normals, to survive a night of too much tequila after an especially busy Tuesday left you pumped up with adrenalin making sleep all but impossible.

Cooking well demands that you supreme the orange, not just cut it into pithy slices.  Drives you to carefully sort through a pallet of lettuce for only the freshest bits.  Compels you to spend your rare days off looking for inspiration in farmers’ markets and competitors menus.  It is the animated expression that comes across your face as you talk about your latest version of sweetbread stuffed tortellini.

To cook well is a madness that takes hold of your soul.  Madness that turns scarred flesh into badges of honor.  Madness that turns transitory nourishment into memories of relatives long gone.  A madness that inspires dreams of a delicious future.

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