I had a great time at the Bermuda gourmet getaway this past weekend. Mandi and I went to “Grillin & Chillin” on Saturday night and the Viking Village on Sunday afternoon to see the finals of the Escoffier cup. If you want my opinion on both of these events, and a few pictures, click below to continue reading. If you don’t, why are you here?

We had revenge on pad thai this past weekend.  I didn’t take as many pictures this time because we had so many good ones last time.  Also because once you get going with this dish in the wok,  you need to be focused and keep the ingredients coming.  If you are serious about trying pad thai, check out chez pim and read her page on it.  It may seem long, but you need to read through it to get the idea of how to make this dish really great. 

Today the site turns 1 month old.  Today I also turn 25 years old.  In addition, today is the day that my design team has finished the layout and as you can see things have changed a bit around here.  If you see something that looks out of place or awkward, give it a day or two and it will be gone.  Other than that, the site is official!  Welcome.  Make yourself at home.  Kick off those shoes and cap.  Grab a cold one.

Last night was the Challenge episode of LRS where one team would have to go home.  The challenge was between jazz lovers Jackie and Sam, mother and son Tom and Nicola, and the team I hate Martin and Emma.  The Challenge this week was to turn a profit working a cafeteria lunch for scientists at their lab.  The couples had some members of winning teams helping out and would each have a station at the cafeteria.  There were 800 scientists working there and it was up to them which food they would choose to purchase.

Click below for the review ** SPOILERS **

Last year for my birthday Mandi made me this burger cake.  She gave me a grill and when I opened it, this crazy cake was sitting there.  I was pretty impressed.  The onions and cheese are made out of that magical friend of Duff Goldman known as fondant.  Fondant is an interesting thing because it does taste pretty good but you can’t eat much of it cause it is gummy and too sweet.  We had both wanted to try it because he uses it so much we wanted to see what it was all about.

If you want to try something like this, you can check out this site.  This is where she looked to get the ideas of people who had done it before.  I think she is one of the best of those pictures.  Some are pretty awful but some are great.  A few are bigger then the birthday girl haha.

I wonder if she has something up her sleeve for my coming birthday this Thursday…..

These pictures are really bad quality, sorry!!

My favorite nerd webcomic xkcd has a great food entry today.  I do agree to some extent and have always thought about this ratio but never had the idea to graph it.  The problem with grapefruit for me is its goodness percentage, when it is good its great, but I can never seem to pick the best ones

Last Friday, we had a few people over for a pizza party. We made 9 different pizza varieties and fun was had by all. In a month or so, I will be doing a real pizza post, detailing the cooking process, dough, and toppings. For now, I leave you with a few pictures of what the kids call “food porn” complete with the pizza upskirt.

Some friends of mine pass around quizzes to each other certain days of the week. Yesterday I sent them this quiz and I thought I would share it with you. I got this idea from an episode of Seinfeld where George makes a line up of candy bars to see if a guy can pick out the Twix. That is why there are a few different candies on here that also relate to Seinfeld episodes.

Click below to see the 18 Pictures and try to name all of the candy. Don’t scroll too far down because the answer key is at the bottom. Send this out as an email to your friends and challenge them.

The second episode of last restaurant standing was on last night. The show is pretty good for the same reasons most reality shows are; a few people that are really good at what they are doing, and a bunch of other wackos.

Click below for my review **SPOILERS**

This past Sunday afternoon I had a big plan to make stock. Unfortunately I hadn’t checked my bank account in a few days and when I was about to leave to buy the supplies I realized there was no chance. I quickly flipped through Mandi’s new Jamie Oliver cookbook thinking pasta would be delicious and knowing we had eggs and flour so the actual noodle part would be free. I found an extremely simple recipe for pasta with meatballs and tomato sauce. This intrigued me because I suddenly realized that I follow all sorts of recipes for all types of food, but when I make spaghetti and meatballs I always just do my same variation on my mother / grandmother’s recipe. Something new might be fun. Click below for recipe.

I am currently reading Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey By Chuck Palahniuk. Yesterday morning there was a chapter all about food.  I couldn’t help but post some of it up for everyone to read.

I actually think this is particularly funny because I make 800 tortellini’s ever year for my family’s Christmas Eve dinner.  Every year I want to hide something in one of them, maybe a chile pepper, or peanut butter and jelly.  Then if someone gets it, they win a prize.   Maybe this has inspired me to actually do it this year……

Three reasons why Chuck Palahniuk and / or Doubleday publishing should NOT sue me or ask me to take this down:

1. I am only putting 4 pages up here.  It isn’t even a whole chapter!  There are no give aways or plot spoilers. 

2. I don’t have ad’s up on the site (yet) so I am not making money off of this, nor am I impeding on you making money.  No one will read this and be like “whelp, I don’t need to read THAT book anymore.”  If anything they will want to read it more, which leads me into:

3. BUY THIS BOOK!!    It is really good so far.  I was really into Chuck for awhile but was not a huge fan of Diary or Haunted so I didn’t have high hopes for rant.  Luckily someone on my design team gave it to me for Christmas.  Now I can’t put it down.

Anyways, click below to read the excerpt

Everyone watch the premiere of Last Restaurant Standing tonight on BBC America.  If its any good, I will review it weekly.  I have high hopes for it mainly because I like most food related things on that channel.  Also because I want a new show to watch.


Check out this video for a new web series "cooking with coolio" (Really???)   yes. really.  this might be nsfw depending on where you work and if you use headphones so continue with caution. In this episode, he makes a caprese salad.  "betta use your own spoon girl, I don’t know where your mouth's been."


Tonight I will be making a large batch of pizza dough while watching Last Restaurant Standing because we are having a pizza party Friday night so expect some good pic's from that early next week.

On Sunday afternoon I was making some Chile-Chocolate Ice Cream. Rich emailed me saying that he and Kim were making Chili with vanilla in it. I really thought it was weird that we were making exact opposite foods. Click below for the story...

This past New Years, about 30 of my friends got together and rented a ski house in Maine. A great time was had by all and there was only one trip to the emergency room! We were there for almost a week but the real party was on New Years Eve. That morning, Mandi, Kim, Amy, and me got up early (11) and took the half hour trek to the nearest grocery store. We began planning the hors d’oeuvres for the party that night. We collectively made over 9 different things throughout the night including teriyaki chicken pineapple skewers and jalapeno cheese bacon awesomeness but only 4 are shown here. Click below to see the food.

This is part of a dinner party post from March 22, 2008. For the full post, click here

I am going to be lazier on this recipe because none of the parts were our own and I am not really a baker.

You can find the Soufflé recipe here

You can find the ice cream recipe here

The Raspberry sauce was just fresh raspberries, sugar, and balsamic cooked until it was delicious and then blended.

This is part of a dinner party post from March 22, 2008.  For the full post, click here

Pizza Dough – can be bought frozen
Tenderloin steak
Provolone cheese shredded
3 large white onions
Flour
Butter
Milk

This is part of a dinner party post from March 22, 2008.  For the full post, click here

2.5 Lbs Pork Belly
Water
Carrots
Onions
Salt pepper
Flour
Eggs
Olive oil
Beet

This is part of a dinner party post from March 22, 2008.  For the full post, click here

1lb Ground beef – browned / salted
1lb carrots - shredded
1lb potatoes – mashed / salted
5 green onions - diced
½ onion - diced
16 oz frozen corn
16 oz frozen peas
Butter
Curry powder – pinch or two – to taste
Beef stock
Breadcrumbs
Flour
2 eggs
Oil for frying
Salt and pepper

This is part of a dinner party post from March 22, 2008.  For the full post, click here

Asparagus
6 Large Scallops
12 Small Scaallops
Tempura Mix
Water
AP Flour
3 oz Polenta or Cornmeal
12 oz Chicken stock
1 Chipotle in adobo
1 beet
Salt and pepper