Reviving 12 limp vegetables

September 19, 2013 by
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The Washington Post had a very useful item yesterday, How to Bring 12 Kinds of Vegetables Back to Life. Since we're sure that everyone has experienced limp asparagus spears, flaccid green beans, and anemic salad greens, this is a handy guide. Essentially, each procedure buys you 24 hours of extra vegetable life. They specifically deal with: asparagus broccoli carrots celery chives… read more

Lessons learned from a home kitchen health inspection

September 18, 2013 by
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Our friend, Faith Durand, recently volunteered for an interesting experiment - inviting a health inspector to come and check on her home kitchen. In the Kitchn's  A Health Inspector Visited My Kitchen, and Here's What Happened, she reported on the trial:  "It all started with an email from Mary, a reporter at The Columbus Dispatch, the local newspaper in my… read more

Quick tip:The two-step process to keep brown sugar from hardening

September 17, 2013 by
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No matter how long you've been cooking, it seems that brown sugar remains one of the kitchen's most aggravating ingredients. Poorly packaged - in a box that never seals tightly - it hardens and clumps easily. The key is to never let it dry out - a condition that requires two steps. The first step is to immediately transfer the… read more

Cookbook giveaway – Beating the Lunch Box Blues

September 16, 2013 by
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Here at EYB we're all for encouraging our members to indulge their passion for cookbooks. To that end, we've created a program to give our members a chance to win a copy of new, exciting cookbooks that have just been published. To see all the contests, just look in the right-hand category column on any blog page and click on… read more

Lunchtime with J.M. Hirsch

September 16, 2013 by
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  On his blog, Lunch Box Blues, J.M. Hirsch describes himself as "By day, I'm J.M. Hirsch, food editor for The Associated Press and author of   Beating the Lunch Box Blues and High Flavor, Low Labor: Reinventing Weeknight Cooking. By night, I'm just a dorky dad trying to feed my son a great dinner and pack him a lunch he'll… read more

The Neanderthal approach to spiced food

September 15, 2013 by
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A recent visit to Penzey's recently was quite enlightening in showing how adding spices to foods has been kicked up to the next level - about half the store was dedicated to specialty spice blends named after geographic territories (Northwoods, Bangkok), purposes (BBQ 3000, Apple Pie), audience (Salad lovers, Forward!) and others.  Apparently, a sprinkling of plain paprika no longer… read more

Cooking Light’s taste tests produce 41 winners

September 13, 2013 by
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Every year Cooking Light gives out its Taste Test Awards, an annual guide to the best supermarket and artisanal products in a variety of categories. After eliminating foods that didn't meet nutritional standards, they chose their top 41 supermarket foods in 20 categories. The categories are quite diverse, including some obvious ones such as popcorn, ice cream sandwiches, chicken broth, canned soup,… read more

The most popular recipe on the Internet

September 12, 2013 by
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Unlike television shows or books, it's hard to gauge the popularity of things on the internet because of the sheer volume - how do you compare? But there are indications - Twitter has Followers, Facebook has Likes, and recipes have views and ratings.  And by those indications, The Washington Post has dubbed this lasagna recipe on AllRecipes.com - with over 7,000 reviews, 10,000 ratings,… read more

Test to see if you’re just a little obsessed with food

September 11, 2013 by
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Here at EYB, we happen to intensely dislike the word "foodie" and try to avoid using it, but in this case it may be appropriate. At least BuzzFeed, in their list of 22 Problems Only Foodies Will Understand, thinks so. So, take this test and find out how many of these strike a chord - and may mark a tiny… read more

Rules to use before buying a cookbook

September 10, 2013 by
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Over at the blog, The Cookbook Man, there's a very interesting entry called The Cookbook MANifesto.  Basically, it a series of rules about cookbooks - buying, using, and writing them. It's presented as a cloud series, and you can print  a PDF of the entire collection, but here are some rules in the buying category that hit home: Don't buy… read more

Are we no longer beer drinkers?

September 9, 2013 by
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In August, The Atlantic ran two indepth articles exploring beer-drinking - and the (sad?) possibility that, at least in the U.S., we're no longer choosing beer as our preferred beverage. In the first article, Why Are American Drinkers Turning Against Beer?  they produce some sobering statistics: " "Just 20 years ago, it was America's most popular alcoholic beverage by far.… read more

Why we may see a lot more fake food

September 8, 2013 by
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Most of us have probably spotted, at least in some Asian restaurants, plastic food. Rather than posting photos of dishes, they create a plastic models of the food being offered. This has become especially popular in Japan as foreign foods - those without Japanese names and impossible to translate like enchilada or lasagne - are offered more widely. The Republic… read more

Is chia really worth the cost?

September 6, 2013 by
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We're not sure how many people remember the rather infamous Chia Pets of the 1980's - little terracotta animals that miraculously spouted fur after a few weeks of watering. But for those of us who do remember, the explosive popularity of chia seeds as a healthy food item will always have a touch of whimsy. But there's another factor about… read more

Visual proof that most fad diets are just plain nuts

September 5, 2013 by
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In an excellent demonstration of why seeing is believing, NPR's the Salt took a visual look at fashionable diets - photographing their ingredients. And it's obvious that most of then are just plain nuts or, as they title their article, Fad Diets Will Seem Even Crazier After You've Seen This. We've reprinted two of the diet photos below along with… read more

Following raisins down the history trail

September 4, 2013 by
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We recently came across a PDF online of a 1932 SunMaid raisin cookbook - and couldn't help but be intrigued - this was even before our time! Raisins were apparently pretty exotic back then - in fact, while we think of them as merely dried grapes, in the book they're described as "Thermo-Jell'd, "  which makes each raisin into a… read more

The most common cooking mistakes

September 3, 2013 by
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We admit it - we love lists. But we do try to stick to lists that make us think.  So we couldn't resist this one from Cooking Light: The Most Common Cooking Mistakes. They list 57 common mistakes; here are the 10 we think are the most common (some are slightly reworded to make them more understandable), and cause the… read more

Choosing one cookbook to define each of the last 6 decades

September 2, 2013 by
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The Kitchn recently took a stab at naming the defining cookbook for each of the last 5 decades, plus the current one. Their  criteria was to choose those  cookbooks - and their signature dishes - that defined a decade and became the go-to source for dinner party menus. Here's their list with our comments and alternate suggestions - feel free to contribute… read more

Follow-up answers about chicken rinsing

September 1, 2013 by
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Last week we posted a blog on the controversy over whether or not to rinse a chicken before cooking it. We cited an NPR article discussing the question, which received a lot of interest with some additional concerns. NPR has issued a follow-up to their article and we thought it would be useful to our readers who shared those concerns… read more

24 kitchen tips that are really worth knowing

August 30, 2013 by
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Over at Serious Eats, Kenji Alt - their Chief Creative Officer who writes The Food Lab column - has posted 24 Essential Kitchen Tricks and Tips. We were once colleagues at Cook's Illustrated, and, having watched Kenji in action, it's not surprising that all of these are well-worth knowing and merit a look. Here are two that were new to… read more

The great chicken debate – to rinse or not to rinse

August 29, 2013 by
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Recently, NPR reported on a controversy regarding why rinsing a chicken ahead of cooking is inadvisable.  In Julia Child Was Wrong: Don't Wash Your Raw Chicken, Folks, they point out that not only does rinsing raw chicken not make it safer, but it's actually more dangerous: "because washing increases the chances that you'll spread the foodborne pathogens that are almost… read more

Interview with Joe Yonan

August 26, 2013 by
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Joe Yonan - a transplanted Texan -  is the Food and Travel editor of The Washington Post, where he's been since 2006 after moving from Boston.  At the Post he authors the "Cooking for One" column, which formed the basis for his first cookbook, Serve Yourself: Nightly Adventures in Cooking for One. Since then, he's found himself becoming almost entirely vegetarian.… read more

Cookbook giveaway – Eat Your Vegetables: Bold Recipes for the Single Cook

August 26, 2013 by
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   Here at EYB we're all for encouraging our members to indulge their passion for cookbooks. To that end, we've created a program to give our members a chance to win a copy of new, exciting cookbooks that have just been published. To see all the contests, just look in the right-hand category column on any blog page and click… read more

Cookbook giveaway – Kitchen Pantry Cookbook: How to Make Your Own Condiments and Essentials

August 25, 2013 by
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Here at EYB we're all for encouraging our members to indulge their passion for cookbooks. To that end, we've created a program to give our members a chance to win a copy of new, exciting cookbooks that have just been published. To see all the contests, just look in the right-hand category column on any blog page and click on… read more

Author Interview: Michael Ruhlman

August 23, 2013 by
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This may be one of the few occasions where an author's book subject matter needs more introduction than the author. Michael Ruhlman's first book was the ground-breaking "The Making of a Chef" about his experience as a reporter at the Culinary Institute of America, which was followed by a similar journalistic endeavor, The Soul of a Chef. Since then, besides… read more

Cookbook giveaway – The Book of Schmaltz

August 23, 2013 by
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Here at EYB we're all for encouraging our members to indulge their passion for cookbooks. To that end, we've created a program to give our members a chance to win a copy of new, exciting cookbooks that have just been published. To see all the contests, just look in the right-hand category column on any blog page and click on… read more
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