CreativeLIVE with Penny de los Santos: Finding food photography I love, and figuring out why

This weekend I was incredibly lucky to participate in a live streaming broadcast (thanks to CreativeLIVE of food photographer Penny de los Santos, whose work is often featured in Saveur magazine. Her food photography style favors drawing out graphic elements of food with overhead shots, and setting sharp colors off with white or understated backgrounds. I found out about the workshop the day

Power Cleaning the Fridge: Attempting the 20 minute super clean

Is it possible to deep clean the fridge in under an hour? That alone sounds crazy, but then I get really nuts and attempt to deep clean the fridge in 20 minutes.

If you ask me about the last time I cleaned my fridge out entirely, I would have to ask when we moved in. I spot clean now and then when I see something dripping. I am ashamed to admit I'm such a slouch at fridge cleaning, but these

Bacon: 10 lessons learned about the fine art of hosting a bacon party

As some of my readers already know, when we lived in Chicago we would occasionally throw bacon parties. That's right. Social gatherings entirely devoted to that gluttony of all gluttonies: bacon. And because our friends were adventurous little foodies, we would always challenge friends to come up with the most delicious and creative dish they could. After a few parties, this started to take on

Will calorie counts change the way we dine? Economic sociology takes a peek at nutritional transparency

Among the many provisions in the loved and decried Health Care bill ("Obamacare to its detractors) passed by congress last year is one that requires restaurants with more than 20 stores to provide calorie information printed on their menus for all regular menu items. Although these regulations nominally took effect in March of 2010, the Food and Drug Administration is still working out guidelines

Saveur's Food Blog Awards

Saveur's first annual Food Blog Awards are here. These awards seem to be filling the vaccuum left by the Wellfed Network's Food Blog Awards which were among the first of their kind, and enjoyed a huge degree of insider status, though for perhaps the same reason (that they were run by food blogging insiders) they seemed to suffer by being held at dissimilar times each year, without a ton of

7 Common Foods The Experts Avoid

You're food savvy. You've heard of the dirty dozen. You try to buy organic. Me too. The winter time is coming to most of us, so perhaps you've just cranked open a couple of cans of tomatoes, added some beef, and you have a pot of warm chili simmering on the stove. Maybe you are baking up some potatoes to go with it. While you wait you pop up some microwave popcorn and snuggle up to watch a movie.

The ugly truth about commercial baby food

If you've been to a couple of baby showers, chances are you have encountered the horrible game of "guess the baby food." Jars without labels are lined up in front of guests. Guests dip a spoon in, taste, cringe, and then try to fathom what alleged combination of foods produced that hideous bland unappetizing flavor. Whenever I have done this I always thought there was some mystical but highly

Proposal for Food Blogger Code of Ethics

Have you, as a blogger, been guilty of plagiarism? I'm a professional academic teaching at a top American university, and I have a no-nonsense approach to plagiarism. After catching a few plagiarized papers, I took this issue to heart. In fact, I administer an academic integrity quiz as part of any course I teach so I can certify that my students know the ins and outs of how to appropriately use

What the world eats each week...

What we eat speaks volumes about who we are and how we live. If you are anything like me, you often pass the time waiting in those grocery store lines peering into the lives of those around you as the evidence chugs by in carts and on checkout conveyors. Hot dogs, beer, frozen pizza? Bachelor. Diet muffins, diet soda, chips and kool-aid? Mom is trying to lose weight but the kids aren't having any

Kung Pao: Reflections on immigration and food

My husband and I visited my parents in Wisconsin last weekend. As we often do when we visit my hometown, we got Chinese take-out for lunch one day. And so I found myself glorious slurping a bowl of Hot and Sour Soup, and reflecting on one of life's greater mysteries. I grew up in Racine, Wisconsin. It is the first county south of Milwaukee. We are a town trying to grow past its industrial roots,

Marc Jacobs for your Food: A Fashion-Forward Take on Summer 2008 Foodie Trends

Photo from AP, as hosted on Haute concept Haute concept called it "a study in symmetry." In a move that shook passive watchers our of their visual lethargy, the Spring/Summer 2008 Marc by Marc line for men paired half a blazer with half a motorcycle jacket. In other pieces in the line two different tones of the same material came together as two halves of the same blazer. Fashion classics from

Iced Mocha: Mud in the Eye of the Little Guy Coffee Shop

Normally a fairly happy person, sometimes I just feel the urge to rant. On this blog I've ranted against Starbuck's efforts to brand coffee as the new wine and against the ridiculous marketing of Wolfgang Puck's crappy wrapped sandwiches as airport gourmet. And everyone feels happy, because both those target Goliath, and give him a little spit in the eye. Well, I'm sorry to say, but today is

Souffle Confessions: How I lost my kitchen virginity to a French madame

It all started with the sort of daring that borders on hubris: I've never made souffle, I've never even (gasp) had souffle, so probably a smart thing to do is to have a friend over on a Saturday morning and just try to make it, right? So there we were, two souffle virgins, two aprons, and a world of food blogs to fuel the fire. A little poking around lead me, like a lamb to the slaughter,

Five Quirky Food Facts About Me

I wrestled with whether or not I wanted to do this for a while. I started this blog with a very "website" based mentality, in which the author isn't usually a presence. But over the last few months of experiencing the wide world of "blogging" I've come to appreciate that one of the wonderful things that separately this new media revolution from older journalistic media forms is precisely the more

Against Risotto

For a while I've been carrying a guilty secret around with me: I don't like risotto. I mean, I would eat it if it were the only thing standing between me and starvation, but I would really never order it by choice. And with foodies all around talking up risotto, risotto appearing on all sorts of fine dining menus, I couldn't help but feel a bit, well, estranged. So I brought a little wisdom from

How To Host a Wine Tasting Party

I am a big fan of tasting parties. At the wine tasting party we hosted recently, I caught myself standing at the island in our kitchen just smiling and taking in the scene of our living room filled with people we love. The sound of that many people having fun is the greatest blessing on any home.The world is too full of people telling you what you should like, giving you intimidating rating

Happy Independence Day!

Today is the 51st Independence Day celebration for Ghana, the first former colony in sub-Saharan Africa to gain independence. The newspapers are also calling this an historic celebration. It is historic not because of the number of years (that was the big Ghana @ 50 celebration from last year). It is historic because this is only the second time a democratically elected President will have served

On the importance of Roquefort: Or Seeing Accra Through New Eyes

Sometimes we all need a little perspective to appreciate how lucky we really are. After living here for some time, many expats find themselves in the trap of focusing more on the things that irritate or inconvenience, without appreciating all our blessings. For example, we see clearly how hawkers on the street go out of their way to aggressively try to sell to us because we are foreigners, but we

Ghanaian Oto: The Breakfast of Brides and Birthday-girls

If you are looking for a simple and classy way to incorporate an African tradition into your birthday or wedding day, this is a great place to start. Oto is a hearty and tasty Ghanaian dish that is quite easy to learn to prepare. I recently celebrated my birthday, and so in true Ghana style I asked one of the women on our compound to teach me how to make traditional oto.Oto is boiled mashed

What is Food Porn?

"Profiteroles” is used with permission from Rick Poon.If the casserole is missionary style, food porn takes its devotees into the foodie kama sutra.It glistens. It drips. It uses props. It is both lusty and intimate. For those who partake, it is an obsession. But just what is “food porn” anyway? Here it is, not for the faint of heart. Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about food porn but were