blog

Today, August 31st, is Blogday 2006, the idea of which is to link to 5 blogs that you would normally not link to on your blog. (The site seems to be having some issues right now, hopefully they will recover before the day is done.) One of my other major passions besides food and cooking is design, and there are a number of great blogs that concentrate on what's new in the design world, from various angles.

It was really hard to pick just five out of many great design blogs, but here are some of the best out there.

One of the best things about hosting, or participating in, a food blogging event that it can lead you to blogs that you've never encountered before. Such an entry came in just this morning, from Hungary via Belgium. Chili & Vanilla is written by Zsofi, who is from Hungary but currently lives in Belgium.

ThisNext is a brand new social shopping site that just officially opened last week. I have been using it for a little while now - it powers the Japanese Snacks feature you see on the sidebar of this site.

A reminder that the deadline for Food Destinations 2: My Local Greenmarket is this Saturday, September 2nd. I haven't gone out to my local market yet myself, and I sure hope that the miserable grey weather we are having will clear up by the end of of the week!

It's a lazy Sunday afternoon (mainly because I'm avoiding the task of Defrosting the Freezer...more about that later) and I'm sitting here contemplating TV Reality Cooking Shows.

Someone who had read my rather detailed reviews of Top Chef, as well as my adventures following the BBC Masterchef challenges, asked me recently why I didn't do similar reviews of Hell's Kitchen.

Over on my GenevaLunch blog, I've written about the wonderful taste and smell of Swiss butter. If you have a chance to come here please make an effort to try some, and if you can, melt some in a hot pan.

The Observer Food Monthly, one of the best food-related publications available online, recently held a food photography competition. The results have been posted, and all the winning and runner-up photos are terrific. The winner of the "Food Glorious Food" category, a very humorous arrangement of some jelly babies, made me laugh out loud, but the one that struck me the most is the overall winner, a beautiful black and white photo by Ikuko Tsuchiya titled "The Widow in her kitchen".

I have moved Just Hungry to a new server. Because of DNS issues for the next day or so you may not be going to the right location. You will know if you're at the right place if you see a new site design, without the gigantic fennel top. (Edit: oddly enough, justhungry.com seems to be resolving all over, so if www.justhungry.com takes you to Giant Fennel, please try clicking on plain justhungry.com.)

In his blog post Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word, Frank Bruni of the NY Times recounts a long and unpleasant wait for a table, where he says the front desk person didn't handle the situation well. I worked for a while as one of those hapless front desk persons, or FDP as I'll call them here, at a very busy NYC restaurant. Here's my take from the other side of that front desk.