Tag Archives: postaday2011

You gawkin’ at me?

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If your favorite cookbooks are the ones with great food photographs, you will love Foodgawker. It’s a photo food gallery from food bloggers in all parts of the world.

Like what you see? Simply click on it and bam, whoosh, you’ll end up on the originating blog. Once there, you’ll find the recipe and maybe, discover a site to add to your favorites. You can view the gallery by latest additions or by most popular.

If you register, you can save favorites, make notes and share stuff.

Foodgawker regularly adds new photos to keep things rolling. Submission guidelines are included in case you want to send in something you’ve seen or something from your own foodie blog.

After you’ve spent a couple of hours looking at food, you can switch over to Craftgawker and check out their photo gallery of handmade arts/crafts or go to Dwellinggawker, photos from design and architecture bloggers with ideas for your home.

By then, it’s probably time to go to bed.

Guess Who?

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Philadelphia 017The Iowa straw poll for early contenders to the White House, the place we willingly let our presidents re-do, attracted a motley crew this year. Donald Kaul, a veteran observer of the comings and goings, summed up a wannabe in an op-ed, You Can’t Milk a Butter Cow.

She’s good at saying outrageous things with the utmost sincerity, but at the end of the day she seems about a ham sandwich short of a picnic.

You can read the complete column at Other Words. While you are there, check out Jim Hightower, a Texan whose world view matches that of the late, great Molly Ivins — who was never shy about telling the emperor that he had no clothes.

Dalton M Ghetti

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Wondering what to do with all of those pencil stubs that collect in the top desk drawer and sometimes lay one on top of the other so the drawer won’t even open? I thought so. Here is a little inspiration.

Dalton Ghetti, a professional carpenter and artist who lives in Connecticut, took 2 and 1/2 years to complete this set. In an interview on Lifesyleasia he says a teacher friend had given him a bag of about 100 pencil stubs she had collected from her  students. He likes that along with dents there are bite marks on the pencils from the kids.

Ghetti has been a carver since he was child; he gravitated to pencil sculptures when he decided to carve the smallest object that could be seen with the naked eye. His tools are simple: a razor blade, sewing needle, and good light.

A consummate recycler, he keeps pieces that have broken while being made in his cemetery collection, glued to pins and stuck upright in a  foam graveyard.

Ghetti does not sell his originals. He considers his art more of a hobby — “from the heart” and believes his creativity, not to mention his steady hand, would falter if he worked for a commission. There is a limited selection of postcards and prints for sale. (A print of the alphabet series is $10.00; a signed limited edition is $160.)

Signed with a pencil, by the way.

Food fight

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So here we have it, in one corner southern-belle-I’m-every-woman, Paula Deen. In the other corner the too-cool-for-school-formerly-known-as-Tony, Anthony Bourdain. And welcome to a Titan food fight.

Bourdain lobs the first fistful, “Paula” … “is dangerous for her artery clogging cooking.” Deen fires back, lambasting him for a high falutin’ attitude and a penchant for chronic irritability.

Bourdain fancies himself a gourmand, Deen relishes being a cook.

Here come the food critics out of the bushes. In smart prose, they skewer the two and find way greater meaning in their discourse than ever was supposed. Access and finances prevent people from eating right. Convenience and ease trump healthy choices. It’s a holy war for the supper tables of America.

With all due respect to the Food Network, I really don’t believe I can put my food choices, healthy or not, at your feet. I have long ago understood that I am what I eat. Sometimes I want a creamy home-made mac and cheese and sometimes I want a sautéed sliver of tenderloin with a wine reduction.

What I need is someone to make this stuff and actually put it on my table cause I’m busy doing something else very important. When you’re ready to step up, let me know.

If I’m lying, I’m dying

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Image from Neon Bar Signs

A neighborhood bar is where men make bar friends.

A man will stand at the bar along side of a stranger and make small talk as they wait to order. The next time one of them comes in when the other is there — they nod in recognition and say, “Howyadoin?” If they start dropping in for happy hour on the same evenings, they may become bar friends.

When Sig discovers a place with a prime rib sandwich special and reasonable drinks, he finds a new bar friend. His name is Harry. For a couple of weeks, they run into each other, stand around and talk about the day’s headlines.

One night, Harry’s wife comes in.  That’s when Sig finds out that Harry thinks his name is Serge, since that’s how he introduces him.  Sig decides on the spot not to correct the mistake because he doesn’t think it matters.

Harry and Serge/Sig both like Kansas road trips and one night get excited talking about going to a rodeo, one of the oldest in the state.

Sig is in a quandary, he thinks he should let Harry know his real name but he can’t quite figure out how to do it after so much time has passed. I suggest that he just come right out with it, “Harry, I’ve got something to tell you. My name is Sig, not Serge.”

Then I imagine Harry’s reply, “Whaaat? Not Serge? What kind of name is Cig? Short for cigarette? ”

Sig does not take my advice. Shortly after, I finally go with Serge/Sig to meet his newly minted friends. We spend a good couple of hours together talking and joking like you do.  As we leave, they yell, “Let’s plan that rodeo trip, Serge. Nice meeting you, Phoebe.”

Are you serious? We barely get out of the bar before we collapse against the building laughing too hard to walk. But that’s the true story of how Serge and Phoebe spent an entire weekend in Strong City, Kansas with a couple of bar friends.

Speechless

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Have you noticed the increase in ads on the internet? AOL streams a sequence of light-hearted news headlines every morning. But before you can get to the You Tube video of the poodle-mix playing the piano and singing, you have to watch an ad.

Okay, I don’t fault a little ad revenue for AOL to offset the operating costs they amass finding the poodle piano player in the first place, but here is the thing. Lately, they have run the same ad before every little video snippet.

It’s an exchange between a mother bear and her son; they are both good-sized red animated characters. The mother has on pearls and the son, a bow tie and a jacket. The little bear is walking out the door when his mother stops him to brush off scraps of toilet paper on his backside. The little bear beams when his mother tells him how well he cleans up.

A voice-over says, “We all go, why don’t we enjoy it a little more with Charmin?”

Summer Supper

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I have a bowl of home-grown tomatoes sitting on the kitchen counter, not mine, mind you — mine are still on the vine showing no intention of ever showing up for a meal.  But ever since I had gotten the tomatoes, I planned on having BLTs and went to the store to buy what I needed.

I was behind three twenty-somethings in the check-out line. The group had a specific menu in mind featuring a sizeable bottle of Jose Cuervo Gold Tequila, limes, avocados and chips. Too bad for them, they’re probably tossing down margaritas and eating chips sans guacamole since their avocados ended up with my groceries.

Image from Closet Kitchen blog

When I got home, I mixed fresh salsa with the avocados and added a squeeze of lemon.

I decided to use guacamole instead of mayonnaise to anchor the bacon on the sandwiches. So there I had invented something really good  — a BLTG.

Sadly, I found out later that the BLTG has already been discovered — more than once. I did like the BLTG photo I found on Closet Kitchen , a blog written by Kevin who lives in Toronto, Canada.

It really looks quite like itself.

Whaaat?

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I just noticed on Facebook that my brother is on a yacht in the Bahamas with a couple of his friends. From the looks of it none of the rest of the family is there. Just Tommy and 4 or 5 guys only one of whom I recognize. Though truth be known,  I never really hung around with his friends — all at least 7 years younger than me.

The point is you can cruise along Facebook posts and see the same old 9 to 5. There’s the birthday party, the new dog, the pretty baby, weight loss, a new hat, the stand-up shot with a celebrity and so on and so on and then all of a sudden, Bam — there is something that is really unusual. Like having a brother traveling around the Bahamas on a yacht.

No, the real point is I shoulda’ paid a little more attention to his friends.