I adore these adorably macabre gingerbread man cookie cutters from ThinkGeek, which imprint a gingerbread skeleton into your rolled cookie dough.
Most Recent Posts About Food
You may think I’m a weirdo for setting a Thanksgiving budget this far in advance of the glorious meal, but I assure you, if I don’t, I won’t have enough money by the time turkey purchasing day is upon me. I'm loving this time of year. Here I was, thinking the city went crazy for El Dieciséis, but Day of the Dead is so much more colorful, and soulful. Brightly colored sheets of papel picado hang in store windows. Velvety, crimson terciopelo flowers sit in vases at restaurants. Orange marigolds, the traditional Day of the Dead flower (called cempasúchil in Spanish) have suddenly bloomed in the street medians. A craft where I have free rein to make just about anything I can imagine, but a basic smiley face is perfectly suitable? It's just about perfect for my artistic talents, and I love carving pumpkins. Except it's always bothered me I am buying a huge vegetable, setting it outside for a few days, then throwing it away. Inspiration hit when a friend explained "refrigerator soup," made from whatever veg was discovered stuck down the back of the fridge and a little past its prime. If this soup works for slightly saggy veg, couldn't it work for my old pumpkins too? Is this scenario familiar to you? You go out to a restaurant with a bunch of friends and one of them spends half an hour with the waiter trying to work out what they can eat. I'm one of those people! My diet is like a finely tuned orchestra and when I get it wrong I'm hooked up to a morphine drip hallucinating rainbows. It's not pretty. Lets face it, most people you meet will have foods they do and don't eat. For some of us it is really important. Whether it's a deathly intolerance to nuts or a commitment to not eating dead things, if you're going to feed friends and family who are offbeat eaters, you need to pay attention or you run the risk of offending their beliefs — or landing them in hospital. This is my survival guide for feeding offbeat eaters. While we have several quality grocery stores that sell all kinds of delicious, organic, 100% good-for-you kind of food, we tend to opt to shop at our local supermarket instead. And by local, I don't mean locally-grown, I mean… right down the street. We don't do this because it's close per se — the location is part of the appeal, but that's because John, the man who owns the store, employs people who live in and around our immediate area. His store services people who live near us, and we routinely see the same people working and the same people shopping. Sariann and Chelsea are two big fans of George R.R. Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire series. They are also fans of food. They combine their interests in their unusual cooking blog, Inn at the Crossroads. Here's their post about a tasty-sounding spiced locust! You ever notice how, from one state to another, there can be drastic vocabulary differences? I'm originally from the awesome state of Minnesota, where, for whatever reason, there are a few things that are just said differently. For example, growing up, I played Duck, Duck, Gray Duck instead of Duck, Duck, Goose. It wasn't until I was in college that I learned about the goose business. And it's the same way with corn dogs: In Minnesota, and especially at the Minnesota State Fair, these babies are Pronto Pups. Not that you can't find a corn dog in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, but you're more likely to encounter a pronto pup. It's just the way it is. But no matter what you call them, the hot-dog-wrapped-in-corn-batter-and-dipped-in-hot-oil is a quintessential fair food. It's fried, it's on a stick and it's delicious. After the dual appetizers of fried pickles and mac and cheese on a stick, a pronto pup (a.k.a. corn dog) dinner is just about perfect. So, here we go! |











