Just Hungry

This hasn’t been a good couple of weeks for me health wise. First there was the ‘acute tonsilitis’ thing (that is much better, thanks for your nice notes!) Now I have a self-inflicted case of Whisk Elbow. That’s where you 1) forget to charge your cordless electric whisk, 2) have an uncontrollable urge to make some little almond cakes which use the classic French method of whipping the eggs with sugar over a hot-water bath until they become a foamy, lemony-yellow mass of heaven, and 3) do it by hand with a wonky whisk. Now I have shooting pains from my elbow running down my forearm.

The moral of this story: When you have a cake urge, and your electric equipment is kaput, don’t be a hero. Go to the store and buy one. Something to remember if you’ll be doing a lot of holiday baking and your muscles are not trained up for heavy-duty whipping. (eh…)

(And by the way, no I do not own a KitchenAid. Whenever I look at one, I see the price - they cost more than 650CHF (about US $580) here - and think: For that I could go away for a nice weekend in, say, Aix-en-Provence, or Florence, or Strasbourg, or even Paris. I’d rather do that anytime! And so I do. Whenever I feel the urge for a quick getaway, I go look at a KitchenAid mixer, and make do with my cheap electric whisk.)

On a much happier note, there are already some great responses to the book giveaway mini-contest. Come and share your own food memories too, for a chance at a great book!

We had a major spillage accident in our refrigerator today, which required removal of all shelves and drawers. So I took the opportunity to give everything a wipe and wash and re-organize.

The end result was rather enlightening. continue reading...

The sister site to Just Hungry got discovered by several sites overnight (while I was not at the computer, as always happens in such cases) and the traffic went up about 100 x, mainly thanks to it being on the del.icio.us popular page for a while. I haven’t even ‘officially’ launched it in my mind, since I am occasionally breaking it by fiddling with the engine (Drupal, for the technically inclined) in the background, but it’s very gratifying to know that people are interested in the subject. I think it must be timely. continue reading...

I am a usually a big fan of the Italian design firm Alessi, who make, besides other things, all kinds of cool, funky and expensive kitchen gadgets. However, this Mr. Chin line of kitchen timers and other gadgets made me wonder, what were they thinking.

continue reading...

There’s quite a lot of slightly matted plush fur flying in Britain this week over the new Marmite TV ad, which features the lovable Paddington Bear, devotee of marmelade sandwiches, tucking into a Marmite sandwich. It made so much of a furor that it even made the evening news on the BBC yesterday. Paddington Bear creator Michael Bond has been accused of selling out and for supplying the script for the commercial (he has denied both). There have been dozens of news stories and editorials devoted to it (my favorite headline is What Next, Rupert Bear in Burberry?). continue reading...

Following up on my previous post, here are some more recipes that use wiener sausages on Cookpad: continue reading...

• Wiener caterpillars - oddly cute
• Chorizo style wieners…basically wieners sauteed with a bit of ground chili pepper. You might ask why…I guess because chorizo is much more expensive?

I often like to peruse the excellent Japanese cooking site Cookpad. Cookpad is a unique cooking community site. The bulk of it consists of cooking blogs, where people post recipes and pictures. People can post short responses to the recipes called tsukurepo, where they show a photo of their attempt making the recipe. A lot of recipes also note which other recipe on the site inspired the poster to come up with theirs. This is what makes the site unique - you can follow a complete genealogy of a recipe, and keep on discovering new variations on themes. continue reading...

Some time ago, when there were blog memes galore, I vowed never to do another meme again. Then I got tagged by Mei from mei eats, a really fun food blog from Taipei. So since this gives me a good excuse to link to Mei, here are some non-food facts about your humble author, other than what’s on my about page. continue reading...

The disaster zone kitchen has been largely cleared up now. The kitchen table is still piled up with foodstuffs that need to be re-housed, but otherwise things are mostly back to normal. Except that is for my general will to do some serious cooking. There is something about throwing away bags of ruined flour, sugar, and formerly dry pasta that damages ones will to live, er, that is cook with a light heart.

What I did discover though is that I am a hoarder. With a small household, there’s no need at all to have so many things stockpiled. Why did we even have 6 bags of sugar and buy flour by the ten-pack anyway, when it’s not even cheaper to do so? I don’t bake that much, and I only need sugar in large amounts during jam and preserve making time, which is still weeks down the road. Likewise, we have still 10 cans of tuna when we barely eat the stuff at all. continue reading...

A shoutout to all U.S. readers who have a Baskin Robbins store nearby: tonight (May 2nd) they are holding a 31 cent scoop promotion from 5 pm to 10 pm. It’s been a long time since I’ve had one of the 31 flavors, seduced as I’ve been by richer ice creams, but for 31 cents…why not? Spread the word!