the SIMMER blog

blogs with taste: the cookbook chronicles

Note for the end of foodblog week: it's hard to say, really, how you get attached to a foodblog. After all, there are thousands out there. Some update a lot, some a little. But even if you restrict your attachment to those with great photography and frequent updates and mouth-watering descriptions, there are still more than you can count.

Sometimes, it's about the story.

It's no surprise that the internet can make you feel like you know someone even when you don't. A few years ago I was a frequent reader and poster on eGullet, and they featured regular, short guest foodblogs from members. When reading one such member's foodblog, I realized that the other person mentioned in her foodblog was also a member, and the two were, shall we say, romantically involved.

Happy ending: they got married, and are still cooking and eating up a storm.

So when she started blogging the process of putting together a cookbook for newlyweds, I went into the blog already attached. The gorgeous stuff she blogs on a daily basis is, shall we say, just icing on the (wedding) cake.

The Cookbook Chronicles.

blogs with taste: serious eats

There are several different kinds of foodblogs, and up til now, I've been focusing on one particular kind: the single author, semi-professional home cook type. But that's not all there is. Oh no.

Sites like Serious Eats aggregate the heck out of the food world, pulling together multiple authors and regular features and even snippets from their food discussion boards, throwing in recipes from serious food figures like Gina DePalma and diet advice from Ed Levine and selected posts from their family sites Slice and A Hamburger Today... anyway, it's nonstop food paradise all day long, and that's the major edge aggregating blogs have over single-author blogs: SO MUCH FOOD.

Cupcakes. Salads. Potluck tips. Pizza reviews. Burger reviews. Fistfights over noodles. More cupcakes. Chicken feet. Taro. Bubble tea. On and on and on.

Get overwhelmed in the best possible way over at Serious Eats.

blogs with taste: top fermented

Full disclosure, Top Fermented is run by a friend of mine. But the food-and-drink blogging world is so crazy-intertwined, you'd be hard-pressed to find a blogger who doesn't fess up to knowing a bunch of other blogging folks in the same zone. Especially in Seattle. It's crazy in Seattle. Shauna knows Molly knows Lorna et al. One event happens and suddenly five of your favorites are blogging about it.

Anyway, that was a digression.

But Erik's in a different zone: he's talking beer, not food. And beer and food belong together, don't they? Absolutely, from what I know. Except that whatever I know about beer, Erik knows about eighty-three times more. He samples. He homebrews. He analyzes industry shifts. He scatterplots. He gets really excited when discovering an infected tapline? Indeed.

Read all (and I mean ALL) about beer over at Top Fermented.

blogs with taste: mattbites

I always roll my eyes when "Top Chef" is on and the judges taste something and they say, "I can really taste [chef] in this...he's really thought about this. You can tell how much he cares." I always think, You can't really tell. An angry chef who doesn't care can still make something delicious. How can you look at someone's food and see how much they care?

Matt cares.

If you look at mattbites.com, it's just there. So clearly. He's passionate about food. He loves food. He cares cares cares about it. The detail in the descriptions. The amazing photography that could so easily be in a magazine (and often is). Interviews with food stylists and travelogues of amazing foodie vacations and just down-home at-home love-the-humble-[insert food here]. Matt's writing is wide-ranging, and he's covering a lot of ground. Tacos and beet greens and cocktails and bacon jam.

And yes. You can tell how much he cares, just by looking at it.

Check out mattbites.com.

blogs with taste: smitten kitchen

Some food blogs stand out on their writing. Some, their photography. Some, their recipes. Smitten Kitchen, well, it's all of 'em. It's the first foodblog I check for updates, and the one I'm most likely to giggle happily over when that update happens.

Put another way: When I decided I'd spend a week pointing you to other foodblogs there was no doubt in my mind who belonged on Monday.

Revel in the baking. Sink deep into the zoomed-in sponge cake, buttercream, batter. Imagine the crisp tang of the summer vegetables from the Union Square Greenmarket. Giggle and sigh and swoon at Deb's lovely prose. Envy the baby who's due in mere weeks to join the Smitten household, cuz that child is going to eat so very, very well.

Enjoy Smitten Kitchen. I know I do.

talkin bout turducken

Okay, so, here's the deal. I'm rewriting the book again (now called SIMMER again, by the way) and that's one of the reasons it's been so quiet around here.

And next week I'm going to be working on the book full time, so I definitely won't be giving you lovely long posts about recipes and strategies and strawberry-lime sorbet.

But, I do owe you, and so next week I'll be directing you around the web to some of my favorite food-related websites so you can get your foodie fix.

In the meantime, here's just a tiny smidge of writing: one of my entries in the Writer Unboxed Most Hilarious Analogy contest has made it to the finals, and since the final choice is in the hands of the voters, I'd like YOU to be among those voters.

Drop me a vote (#7) and I'll be ever-grateful.

One vote per person. This isn't a voting contest, it's a funny-awful-impressive-eyerolling-laugh-out-loud contest. If you don't love the turducken thing, feel free to vote for someone else -- but if #7 makes you laugh, let 'em know.

wine it up

You know what goes with food? Wine. For some people, anyway. Over at Intrepid Media, I've got a column musing about why wine isn't exactly our national beverage. Click below to check it out.

the grape-ist generation

a moment in the lavender

A combination of traveling and book stuff and technical difficulties... hoping to be back on full blogging duty soon. In the meantime...

 

Imagine standing in this field of lavender. Inhale. Exhale. Relax.

Lovely, isn't it?