Blogs That Make Us Hungry: They Cook and Draw

Janet here: Hope you all have a marvelous long weekend and that you were among the laborers who got Labor Day off...which we obviously took off ourselves.

Anyway up today is the fabulous blog, They Cook and Draw, thanks to Wynne, who let us know about it. In my secret life, I am an artist. I have wanted to be able to draw ever since I was a kid and while I have tried at various points to do it, the reality is I'm an abstract artist because ... I can't draw my way out of a bag and that's just the reality of the world.

Anyway this blog features someone every day who draws his or her recipe and it's just wonderful on every level. Every day is a different style and of course a fabulous new recipe. I just love looking every day to see what kind of wonderful drawing I'll find. Check it out. You're going to want to bookmark it, we guarantee it.

Blogs That Make Us Hungry: Circle B Kitchen

Rachel here: Maybe it's because it's been a while since I spent some quality time cooking, but blogs are making me seriously hungry these days and Circle B Kitchen is no exception. I discovered Patrice's blog through Apartment Therapy's The Kitchn (an excellent site in case you've never visited it) and am so delighted that I did. Patrice not only is a family-oriented cook, but she also has recently started doing her own Meatless Monday feature (yes!). Her blog is humble and enthusiastic and features a mouth-watering variety of recipes. She's currently obsessed with avocados--an obsession I am in FULL support of. Also, she featured an upside-down cake this past week which seems like a combination of the Plum Upside-Down Cake we featured yesterday and the Caramelized Apple Skillet Cake I made several weeks ago. Since these two cakes of mine are two of my favorites that I make, I'm excited to try Patrice's Cherry Cornmeal Upside-Down Cake.

Anyway, I'm excited about Circle B Kitchen for all sorts of reasons and--hopefully!--this will be reason enough to get you to click on over to Patrice's site. Let us know what you think!

Blogs That Make Us Hungry: Dinner: A Love Story

Rachel here: Ok, so every Tuesday the blog or book that we feature is one that my ma and I feel fond of. This week, though, we're directing your attention towards Dinner: A Love Story. To say that I'm fond of this blog would be an understatement; I straight up have the hots for it. While I wish I could say that my mom or I were cool enough to know about this blog before the New York Times wrote their article about it, that's simply not true. However, I really don't care. Like the best of junior high crushes, now that Dinner: A Love Story has caught my eye, there will be no diverting my attention away from it.

Jenny (the mastermind behind DALS...who I officially have a friend crush on) has created a web haven for parents with her blog, a place where you are permitted--scratch that, EXPECTED--to serve frozen pizza for dinner sometimes and where her only goal is to encourage you to keep fighting to cook more dinners than not. M's diet consists only of breast milk and this already seems daunting to me...I can only imagine the difficulties presented when say, M starts informing me that she doesn't CARE for a particular meal/food group/color of food/food arrangement etc. Jenny focuses on dinners as doable and has created a website filled with delicious and accessible ideas.

My secret favorite thing, though, about Jenny is that she has written down every dinner she's eaten for well over a decade. While DALS is nothing short of a brilliant contribution to the food blogosphere, it is this idiosyncratic component to her inspiration for it that makes my heart skip a beat. I love nothing more than a good list, than a mini deconstructed documentation of a moment. I have been making them myself for as long as I can remember (my diary from first grade is filled with lists: favorite books, things my brother does that bother me, who I should invite to my wedding...yup, I'm a planner) and I can't imagine I'll ever stop. They are brain-clearing and moment-capturing, a reminder of the fleetingness of each mood and desire, an imprint of everything passing. This is where DALS originates for Jenny and it makes me really, really happy.

Anyway, check Dinner: A Love Story out. You just might swoon like I did.

Blogs That Make Us Hungry: Not Quite Nigella

Rachel here: Ok, so bear with me if this post stops (ok, possibly never quite starts) making sense. I've slept about 3 hours out of the last 36 and they haven't been consecutive. The lovely M has become quite the alert and curious little baby which is delightful and, well, exhausting. But anyway, that's really neither here nor there right now. The direction I am headed in, however, is a blog called Not Quite Nigella.

Before I go any further, I should give a nod to Ian, John's friend whose Stanton St. Farms blog we featured a few weeks back. Thanks for directing our attention towards Not Quite Nigella and, for those of you readers who haven't checked out Ian's blog, I'd highly recommend you do so.

Anyway, Not Quite Nigella is awesome. Lorraine Elliot is NQN and her blog is filled with food adventures, both in her own kitchen and in restaurants. My only lament is that she's based out of Australia (though she gets props for putting her recipes in both metric and non-metric terms), so while her restaurant reviews left my mouth watering, I don't think I'll be popping into any of her recommendations any time soon. The good news, though, is that there are plenty of recipes to try at home as well. And, to boot, Nigella herself has visited Elliot's site. Ooh la la! When I get back into the kitchen I am going to try her salt-crusted chicken recipe because John finds food shaped like animals amusing...oh, and because it sounds delicious, too. What will you try?

Blogs That Make Us Hungry: Veganville

Janet here: A friend tipped me off to the wild world of Veganville and I was immediately addicted. The author, Gigi, is unafraid to tell her world like it is, but it's so refreshing. And as a vegetarian myself, I am always so impressed by vegans; it's just so much harder to take that extra step of omission — no eggs! no dairy! — in my mind. Vegans make vegetarians kind of seem like wusses I think.

Veganville is not a blog of food porn where you're going to see high-end photography or even high level recipes. But what you will see is a regular person just throwing it all out there and making it real, and I just find that incredibly appealing.

Rachel here: The thing about veganism is that it can be super delicious (see my chocolate cake post here). As a carnivore, this is easy to forget. Gigi's blog is a great reminder, though, that eating super conscientiously can be not only delicious, but accessible, too. Plus, she's a Bay Area girl...and, you know, I generally think we rock.

Blogs That Make Us Hungry:

Janet here: What Katie Ate is a visual feast that will have you salivating as soon as you click on the page. Katie is a food photographer and blogger who writes about her life in Australia experimenting with food. And just about every post I read made me want to make what she was talking about right away. Seriously. If you are doubtful, check out the photos and recipe for individual chocolate mud cakes.

In addition to writing about recipes, Katie writes about and photographs general foodie info from the Land Down Under and just makes me more and more sure that I have to spend some time in this lovely place before I die. Check out her blog. It's an easy way to visit Australia without the long long flight.

Rachel here: Ok, so I'm a little delirious (deliriously tired and deliriously in love with John and our lovely baby M), and Katie's blog has done nothing to help this state. I think this might be my new favorite blog. It's so pretty and so yummy looking that I can't imagine my brief bouts of sleep won't be filled with delicious dreams. Anyway, check it out. It will make you smile.

Blogs That Make Us Hungry: 80 Breakfasts

Janet here: While I love to eat out, no meal makes me feel more special, more decadent, than eating breakfast outside my house. I say this despite having eaten at some fabulous dinner spots and having eaten at a restaurant where there was basically a waiter for every person at our table — yes that would be a different waiter for each person.

I think the reason breakfast is so special for me is that A) I am not making it, B) I feel liberated to eat something I would never eat normally (and normal for me is yogurt, Stonyfield fat-free or Dannon coffee yogurt, with granola and flax seed, which is what I eat every day of the week EXCEPT when I eat breakfast out of my house and C) I am not making it. (Yes, I know I repeated A and C but it's an important point for someone who cooks most of the meals and has done so for nearly 30 years.

So I was intrigued by a blog called 80 Breakfasts for the obvious reasons: it's about my fantasy, ie that the author would come and make one of these 80 breakfasts for me at my house. While it's not just about breakfast — there's a seriously awesome recipe for chicken sauteed with cheese and milk that would work for just about any meal I can imagine — it's enough about breakfast to have me a champion. I mean there's a post about peanut butter and jelly oatmeal for God's sake. (And don't diss it until you read about this. I want to make it right. now.)

Anyway we like what we see here and hope you will check it out.

Blogs That Make Us Hungry: Stanton St. Farms

Rachel here: In the name of all things spring, today we are delighted to share with you the Stanton St. Farms blog. Unlike any other blog or book that we've featured in our BTMUH posts before, the Stanton St. Farms blog is devoted to a community garden in Portland, Oregon. In the name of full disclosure, I should reveal that I discovered this blog because it is run by one of John's friends, Ian. Regardless of the John connection, though, this is definitely a blog I would be excited to be sharing with you all today.

What Ian and the folks in his community have done is cleared an abandoned lot on their block and rejuvenated it to serve their neighborhood. With a hearty combination of elbow grease, camaraderie, resourcefulness and know-how, they have transformed a lot filled with tons and tons (literally!) of debris into a flourishing plot of land to feed their bellies and their spirits.

Community gardens make me happy and Stanton St. Farms is no exception. Their garden and their blog are both pretty new, so click on over to read the rest of their story and lend them some support (or a hand if you're in the area!).

Blogs That Make Us Hungry: Lost Addicts

Rachel here: Usually on Tuesdays when we write about either a blog or a book that makes us hungry we are referring to the kind of appetite that can only be sated through consuming food. Today, though, "hungry" is being utilized in broader terms as part of our Lost themed week of posts. The hunger that Lost Addicts Blog leaves me with is one that can only be filled by quality time in front of my television.

Ok, so there are a million Lost blogs. I didn't count when I was trolling, but there were pages and pages and pages that came up. They cover a broad variety of Lost-related topics, ranging from focusing on specific characters to message boards that contain straight up fights over various plot points. While my mom and I are certainly obsessed (John is, too, along with my brothers), we really pale in comparison to some of the folks out there.

Mike Vitullo's Lost Addicts Blog, though, emerged as one of my favorites. Quite informal, it is also very thorough (**it contains spoilers if you aren't up-to-date in your viewing**) and clearly written with love for the show. Filled with postulation on the significance of various events and people, I found myself blissfully lost (ha ha) while reading it this morning. It's my first day of summer vacation and I really can't think of a better blog assignment to take on over breakfast (strawberries, flax seeds and yogurt...you know, to throw some food into the mix since this is a food blog). Anyway, if you're all caught up in your viewing and looking for a site that draws lots of connections between episodes from seasons back and now, then definitely click on over to Mike's blog.

Janet here: The only reason I handed over the assignment of finding a Lost blog to feature on BTMUH Tuesdays is that I actually have a job to do and I knew myself well enough to know that I would would get sucked into this Lost vortex the way Juliette got sucked down that well during the hydrogen bomb explosion and that would mean nothing productive got done. So I can't even allow myself to check out this blog until, well, until it's the weekend because I can't trust myself. So there it is.

Blogs That Make Us Hungry: Cake Wrecks

Janet here: It's Cake Week here at LTIR so this blog devoted to, as the name so wonderfully states, Cake Wrecks seemed the perfect blog to give a shout out to. Not that Rachel or I has ever made a cake wreck of course. But the sensibility of someone who focuses on life's imperfections — the blog's tagline is "when professional cakes go horribly, hilariously wrong" — rather than its wonderfulness seemed, well, like something we would have done if we'd thought of it first. Sadly, we didn't.

The post yesterday on Mother's Day cakes gone bad was especially brilliant. As a former high school English teacher and an editor now, I get more than a little irritated by grammatical mistakes and their clear indication that society as we know it is on the downward slid. And then I read blogger Jen's one-liners about these professionally-made cakes and I just felt so much better. Someone else is as bothered by apostrophe misuse and poor spelling as I am!

Jen is an equal-opportunity cake basher; anyone can submit a professionally-made cake gone awry and she'll consider it. In this world where the PC police are making humor in general something that's not allowed, it's just so refreshing to see someone willing to lighten up. I have bookmarked this baby and will absolutely use it to make my day a better one, one bad cake at a time.

Rachel here: Ok, so I'm obsessed with this website. Nothing is better in the middle of trudging through two painfully long and tedious weeks of final exams than the discovery of a website on which you can spend hours procrastinating. Ok, maybe hours is a bit of an exaggeration, but you get my drift. Stuck with a boring desk job? Bookmark this site for when you've run out of people you went to kindergarten with to look up on Facebook. It is seriously, seriously funny and, plus, promises to alleviate any pressure you might feel to attain culinary perfection in the kitchen.

Blogs That Make Us Hungry: Table for Five

Janet here: I first met Caroline, the author behind Table for Five, when I wrote about her family business, Our Daily Nuts, in my other job as a magazine editor. In a word, these nuts are fabulous and completely addictive with lots of creative flavors and always very very fresh. If you like nuts, you will want to check out these for sure.

Caroline's blog, Table for Five, which I discovered while trolling on the Times Union website for local food ideas for my magazine, is as lovely as the nuts she helps to produce. A working mom, Caroline is interested in fresh, local food and feeding her family of three young children and husband Paul as well as she can. In other words, she's just folks, which makes her recipes simple too. You read them and immediately think "I could make that." In a world that's increasingly complicated and where so many are trying to impress, I like that simplicity.

Rachel here: Ok, so I love Caroline. She and I grocery shop the same way. I, too, find myself reading every ingredient on a label, wary of purchasing anything that I don't 100% understand the make-up of. The byproduct of this, of course, is a kitchen that often has random bits to cook with in it. When I read Caroline's recipe for and rationale behind making lemon bars, it was like I was reading my own blog post. Why did she make them? Because she loves them and she always has too many lemons at her house because she can never remember if she has any when she goes to the store. For those of you who have read a lot of my recipes, my base ingredients are often in my house for similar reasons. Plus, Caroline makes cooking with what you have around seem so doable and, these days, we could all benefit from this lesson and inspiration.

Blogs That Make Us Hungry: the Passion Fruits

Rachel here: Ok, so assuming that you can judge people by their blogs, Luke and Joe of The Passion Fruits are nothing short of fabulous. When I read their blog I am so busy salivating that I forget to feel completely and utterly inferior in the kitchen. I mean, these two can cook. And by cook I don't mean they occasionally go all out in the kitchen, but rather that these two seem to give thought and energy to every meal, be it scrambled eggs (which, to my taste, they seem to make to perfection) or a cake. Like my mom and I, Luke and Joe often embark on little challenges/duels to incorporate the same ingredient into a meal and there is certainly plenty of banter and commentary on their fellow cooking buddy along the way. They can write as well and the end result of perusing their blog for me is usually both a sudden increase in appetite along with a desire to figure out a way to get invited over for one of their fantastic looking and sounding dinner menus.

Janet here: Rachel pretty much summed it up except I will add this: Their Easter cook-off is hysterical, complete with bunny peeps. I wish these guys lived near me. I would want to eat with them all the time.

Blogs That Make Us Hungry: Not Derby Pie

Rachel here: This week we're bringing back the blogs to Tuesdays (we've been featuring books for the past few weeks) and excited to do so with Not Derby Pie, a blog that my dear friend Jessica directed my attention towards. In the name of full disclosure, Jessica is friends with Rivka, the lady at the helm in the Not Derby Pie kitchen. This, however, is not why she steered me towards Rivka's site. No, she steered me towards Rivka's blog because it's AWESOME.

First of all, the girl can cook. I mean, I haven't tasted anything actually, but there is no way that with the breadth and variety that she embarks upon in her kitchen that she can't. Plus, her photographs are gorgeous, her recipes are clear and her general attitude towards cooking (you know, that it's fun and that normal people do it) is entertaining and endearing. She seems adventurous and excited about her culinary undertakings, a feeling I can totally relate to and appreciate. Anyway, I highly recommend clicking over to Rivka's blog and giving her some love. I'm confident you'll be glad that you did and a little hungrier for having perused her photographs and recipes as well.

Janet here: And I fell in love, love, love with her photos. Frankly, just about everybody who's doing a food blog has us beat in that category, but until we move up a notch technologically, I'm just going to have to have food photo envy. Rivka's post on Caesar Salad yesterday made me want to jump into the bowl. Seriously!

Blogs That Make Us Hungry

Janet here: I love my name in no small part because it's not that common. I was one of only three Janets in my entire school system growing up and I loved it. All those Marys and Bills struggling to differentiate themselves. Not the Janets.

Not surprisingly, I was obviously curious, then, to discover a fellow food blogger with the name Janet and clicked through to her blog, Janet is Hungry. Lo and behold it was a post about some kind of fabulous chocolate and peanut butter confection. Clearly we are soul mates.



While Janet doesn't post a ton, what she does post is doable, varied and easy to follow. I like that in a cook and will absolutely be getting on her chocolate peanut butter mud pies ASAP.

Rachel here: Chocolate and peanut butter are two of the absolute greatest things of all time and when coupled together they are simply magical (if done in the right proportions). When my mom sent me perusing this blog I initially suspected it was just on the grounds that the woman's name is Janet (yes, this is not the first time I've heard my mother sing the glories of her name...and yes, Ma, I am busting on you but no, it's not because I don't agree that you have a great name...it's just my obligation as your child). Then, though, I saw the top recipe and I knew it was because my mom had found her soul mate. I looked through the rest of Janet's blog and liked her variety as well as her gumption (she seems totally down to try anything and to seek what she desires). I definitely recommend checking her out.

Blogs That Make Us Hungry:

Janet here: Having started this food blog with Rachel just six weeks ago, I have been amazed at two things: the number of food blogs out in the blogosphere and the number of terrific ones. It can make me feel more than a little anxious if I think about it too long, as in those kind of self-esteem-crushing thoughts like Who do I think I am to be doing something like this? Self-help guru Wayne Dyer called that kind of thing self-defeating behavior, something I tried to banish after my starter marriage.

Anyway, the blog that makes us hungry this week is Eat Make Read. As an avid reader, I was intrigued by the title. Then I fell in love with the simplicity of the recipes (Kelly features one for grilled cheese and apple sandwiches) and that she features DRINKS. I don't make drinks — ever. (That's another long story for another time.) But I love drinking good drinks and so far I haven't found many blogs that feature drinks. Her post on Manhattans and happy hour made me think fondly of my husband, Peter, who recently created a winter drink just for me called the Cranberry Corker after I told him how much I envied that he could drink Manhattans; they just look so wintry and seem like the perfect drink for a cold winter's day. In the summer I'm a gin-and-tonic gal and it just seemed so boring to only drink wine in the winter, so I was very happy when he presented me with the corker, which is also made with tequila, another favorite of mine.

But I digress. If you're tired of blogs that seem really complicated and make cooking look like something only special people can do, check out Eat Make Read. This is down-to-earth talk about food.

Rachel here: Ok, so I'm pregnant (in case you haven't been following or umm...seen me lately) and Kelly's blog leaves me seriously itching for a stiff drink. Her approach to food is refreshingly unpretentious and so is her tone, but (like mother, like daughter) it's the drink component that really grabs me with her blog (maybe we should have called this post: Blogs That Make Us Thirsty). Her drinks, like her food, are presented with simple and clear instructions that ooze accessibility and scrumptiousness all at once. I highly recommend checking her blog out, although perhaps waiting until 5 pm (although, of course, it's always 5 o'clock somewhere). Enjoy!

Blogs That Make Us Hungry: Honey & Jam

Rachel here: If you feel good about yourself, it's probably because you haven't visited Honey & Jam (I say this with all of the admiration and well-wishes in the world). Nineteen year old Hannah does this site all on her own and it is one of the most professional looking and down-to-earth sounding blogs I have ever had the pleasure of reading. Seriously, this girl both makes my inferiority complex swell (so driven! so talented! so unimpressed by herself!) and reminds me of all of the reasons that the kitchen is a great place to be. Her recipes cover an impressive range, her instructions are thorough AND she takes her own photographs (something I grapple with for every post...any tips would be welcome on how to improve!). Check her out. You'll be amazed, inspired and hungry within seconds of opening her page.

Janet here: Although Rachel gave me the heads-up about how great Honey & Jam was when she advocated we highlight this blog on Blogs That Make Us Hungry, I was still unprepared for the simple beauty of this lovely blog about food. The photos are just stunning and the simplicity of the writing, the complete lack of ego, is just so refreshing. Plus she makes homemade donuts that look absolutely killer and carrot cupcakes that make me want to grab one right off my computer screen — and I don't even like coconut! If you're a foodie, you'll love this blog.

Blogs That Make Us Hungry

Rachel here: When my mom directed my attention towards Kate and her blog Savour Fare and I went to check the blog out and was greeted by a recipe for mashed potatoes with broccoli, I knew this was a woman I could get behind. Mashed potatoes are one of my comfort foods and I appreciate any person who spends time experimenting with this pillowy pile of goodness outside of major holidays. As I perused further, my respect only grew. Kate has an interest and determination to cook and enjoy good food that I can relate to as a busy partner and mom-to-be. She has cooked throughout her life, undeterred by law school or motherhood and, through this, the possibility for all of us to eat well seems just a little bit more attainable. Plus, her blog features recipes from pork to plum pie; Kate makes jam and she makes risotto. Her site is a concise little cookbook in its own right and I highly recommend checking it out for inspiration, both psychical and culinary. We'd be sharing a few tempting pictures and a sample recipe (most likely the mashed potatoes I mentioned above), but alas we weren't on our game this weekend and didn't contact Kate in time to go about sharing stuff from her site in all of the right and respectful ways (you know, with her permission). We apologize and suggest just taking a leap of faith and clicking the link over to her site. We're pretty sure you'll be glad you did.

Enjoy!

Blogs That Make Us Hungry

If you ever wondered if the adage about every picture telling a story has the ring of truth to it, look no further than the fabulous photos by Tami Hardeman on her wonderful food blog, Running with Tweezers, this week's Blogs That Make Us Hungry feature. She knows how to make even leftovers look so sumptuous you just want to reach into the screen and take the last delicious bite. Of course, it shouldn't be that surprising: Tami is a food stylist and by her own description one part Carrie Bradshaw, one part Nigella Lawson (which seems like a pretty darn perfect combo if you ask us).

But the photos are just the beginning. Tami offers up terrific but doable recipes and talks about food and its importance in life in a way that seems so honest and straight-forward that I just immediately want to be her friend. (Full disclosure: we've never met.) This recipe she got from her mother's Gourmet cookbook is just one of the many examples. Check her out! You won't be sorry.




Butternut Squash and Red Pepper Casserole
serves 6 as a side dish

* 3 1/2 pounds butternut squash
* 1 large red bell pepper, cut into 1-inch pieces
* 3 tablespoons olive oil
* 2 large garlic cloves, minced
* 3 tablespoons minced fresh parsley leaves
* 1 1/2 teaspoons minced fresh rosemary leaves
* freshly ground black pepper to taste
* 1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan (about 2 ounces)

- Preheat oven to 400°F.

- With a sharp knife cut squash crosswise into 2-inch-thick slices. Working with 1 slice at a time, cut side down, cut away peel and seeds and cut squash into 1-inch cubes (about 9 cups).

- In a large bowl stir together squash, bell pepper, oil, garlic, herbs, black pepper, and salt to taste. Transfer mixture to a 2- to 2 1/2-quart gratin dish or other shallow baking dish and sprinkle evenly with Parmesan.

- Bake casserole in middle of oven until squash is tender and top is golden, about 1 hour.

Rachel here: I can't wait to try the recipe posted above from Tami's blog. It seems so delicious and hearty and, frankly, I often struggle to figure out what to do with squash. Additionally, Tami has a lovely narrative woven through her blog, both enthusiastic and earnest, that I have loved following and I hope you will, too.