We're gearing up for the big Summer Grilling Kickoff also known more formally as Memorial Day Weekend, shaking off grill covers, scouring down grill grates, and of course, flipping through collections of recipes for everything from barbecue meats to side dishes like potato salad and corn on the cob. Many of us will be turning to modern grillmasters like Steven Raichlen and Bobby Flay, but I'll have you know that the real secrets of barbecue are in a gem of a cookbook that came my way a few weeks ago: Better Homes and Gardens Barbecue Cookbook, published in 1956.
Now, I don't usually rely too heavily on cookbooks to begin with, and books from the likes of Better Homes and Gardens, even less so. However, when I started flipping through the pages of this book that my Mom gave me after salvaging from her neighbor's garage sale the week before, I told myself that at some point, I would have to fry corndogs, shove the ends of their sticks into a head of cabbage, hollow out the center and fill it with sauce, and serve the alien platter of "Broncos" to my family at our next "elegant tail gate."
All of course, while wearing a red and white dress with puffed sleeves wider than a doorway, to balance the 22" waistline.
There are photos of some choice illustrations, menus, serving suggestions, and recipes (for "Instant Coffee!") in the gallery:
The feature story this week is on the "greening" of Chicago, with farmers' markets returning to new locations with sustainable produce. The Tribune shares some tips for shopping at the farmers' market, as well as recipes from cookbooks that focus on market fresh produce: Scallops with three peas and prosciutto from Blue Eggs and Yellow Tomatoes, Savory mashed potatoes with garden herbs from Rosalind Creasy's Recipes from the Garden, Butter Lettuce Salad from Fresh, and Watercress, snow pea and shiitake mushroom stir-fry from The Farm to Table Cookbook: The Art of Eating Locally.
When I first saw what were called "meatloaf cupcakes," I thought, "How cute - tiny rounds of meatloaf with a dollop of mashed potatoes on top." They were only called cupcakes, though, because they were small and topped with something.
However, Fine Furious Life has made meatloaf cupcakes that really, well, take the cake. The meatloaves really do look like cupcakes (they'd only be slightly better if they were in paper wrappers), and the most impressive part is the mashed potato frosting that really does look like frosting because 1) it's piped into swirls, and 2) there are two colors!
I am amazed.
And who knew that so many other cooks could make an everyday meatloaf look so adorably delicious?
Our post about companies giving their food away for free wasn't a joke. After you've had your morning ice coffee from Dunkin Donuts and sampled the new Southern Chicken Biscuit thing from McDonald's today, wait until next week for a free ice cream cone from Baskin Robbins. They're making May 21, Wednesday, traditionally known as "Hump Day" into "Bump Day." It's a debut of their "newest addition," soft serve, which they'll be serving from 11 am to 10 pm.
That means, of course, you have to be sporting a baby bump to get your free cone. (Don't worry, we'll likely post a reminder when the day gets closer.)
Remember all the hype surrounding Beyonce and her occasional detox diet?
It's now officially being referred to as the Def Jam Diet. For some reason, everyone associated with the record label is drastically dropping pounds. However, now that Beyonce's (supposedly) pregnant, she can't do drop the pounds with the extreme dieting. (Well, duh, Beyonce, you're gaining weight because you're pregnant.)
As one chef put it, "We're going to paint the town with foie gras."
Um, that might be taking it a little far, but okay.
After just over a year of the law that banned restaurants from serving foie gras, the city of Chicago has done an about-face, making the fatty liver of ducks and geese available to diners. Many parties are involved with the issue of serving foie gras in Chicago restaurants, from animal rights activists to restaurant owners to foie gras producers, and even to those interested in the political process in Chicago's city administration.
Wonder what foods those amazing, incredible, ever-so-unreachable celebs crave during their pregnancies?
The same things everyone else does, duh.
Apparently, Angelina Jolie, who is rumoured to be pregnant with twins, has been eating, well, like a pregnant woman. At a recent dinner outing with Baby-Daddy Brad Pitt, she ate: penne arrabiata, two starters, several rolls, profiteroles for dessert, and took an apple pie to go. Earlier during her pregnancy, she Angelina craved mustard-smothered onion rings and cinnamon chilli chocolates, and has since been eating cupcakes made by her kids.
I bet I could eat all of that - onions rings included - and I'm not even pregnant!
Whether the motive is to get word out to consumers about how a new product tastes or to lure customers into a restaurant with free food in the hopes that they'll buy other stuff, too, the practice of "sampling" is becoming more and more popular. Sampling used to be restricted to smaller companies that couldn't afford million-dollar advertising campaigns, but now even huge corporations like Starbucks and McDonald's are doing it.
How this affects social psychology, business, and marketing, we'll leave to other blogs, but here, we're just concerned about the free food! The last few months, especially in April when consumers' wallets were hit with taxes, companies gave out everything from free burritos to frozen yogurt.
Coming up, both McDonald's and Dunkin Donuts will be giving away free samples on May 15.
And we're not talking about your mental health because you haven't looked at anything but spreadsheets for four days. We're talking about your physical health.
As you wind down your day in front of your computer sitting at your desk, take a moment and look down at your keyboard. You could be looking at something that is dirtier than the toilet seat in the bathroom down the hall. This means eating lunch in front of your computer might be a health hazard!
According to British microbiologist James Francis four of 33 keyboards he tested were potential health hazards and one had germs at a level five times higher than that found on the toilet seat.
Makes me want to dip my laptop in a bleach solution and never eat at my desk again.
Of course, that's not possible when your boss's demands are forcing you to wolf down a sandwich at your desk through lunch. Just make sure to wash your hands, don't let other co-workers touch your keyboard, and my best advice is to eat lunch with utensils, not your hands.
Gourmet Boutique has issued a recall of 286,000 lbs of deli luncheon meat for possible contamination by listeria. The meats were used in sandwich wraps and other ready-to-eat products. The USDA has classified this recall as Class I, "reasonable probability that the use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death," or what I would call "pretty damn serious."
The list of potentially affected wraps and other ready-to-eat products from the company are listed here.
We love food on sticks, and in the summer months, there's nothing better than a popsicle. However, when it's still a little too chill outside for frozen treats, make cake-sicles! Heck, even during the summer months, cake-sicles won't melt into a runny mess.
The Norpro Non-stick Cake-sicle Pan makes eight big popsicle shaped cookies in which you can stick popsicle sticks once the cookies come out of the pan. I'm thinking that a nice dip in melted chocolate after the cookies are cooled would be a fantastic idea.
It sounds to good to be true -- a berry that makes sour things taste sweet!
The berry is very real. It's called "miracle fruit -- that's actually what it's called -- though the scientific name is Synsepalum dulcificum for those of you who want to get technical. And more for the technical folks, a protein in the fruit binds to taste buds and alters the tongue's so-called sweet receptors to activate when sour foods are eaten. Sour things taste sweet for about an hour after the berry is eaten.
It may seem just a novelty or a fun foodie trick to do at parties, but there could be some health and medical uses for the berry once the science people figure it out. I can think of a few now: lose weight by tricking your taste buds into thinking that extremely low calorie foods are actually as sweet as dessert, and any other use in which people need a sugar substitute.
The feature story this week is on the "
Remember all the hype surrounding Beyonce and her occasional detox diet? 
The feature story this week is on the 
Wonder what foods those amazing, incredible, ever-so-unreachable celebs crave during their pregnancies?
Whether the motive is to get word out to consumers about how a new product tastes or to lure customers into a restaurant with free food in the hopes that they'll buy other stuff, too, the 
And we're not talking about your mental health because you haven't looked at anything but spreadsheets for four days. We're talking about your physical health.
We love food on sticks, and in the summer months, there's nothing better than a popsicle. However, when it's still a little too chill outside for frozen treats, make cake-sicles! Heck, even during the summer months, cake-sicles won't melt into a runny mess.
Chocolate-stuffed bananas on the grill
Tyler Florence welcomes new daughter
Beware kids' menus!
