Who remembers that jump rope ditty? "First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes momma with the baby carriage." So too goes the nutritional lexicon for plant-based foods, where first comes fruit, then come vegetables. But think, who ever talks about 'vegetables and fruits'? It's always 'fruits and vegetables', 'fruits and veggies'. But if we want to improve our health through our diets, vegetables must come first. So first off --

This month’s Daring Bakers challenge was hosted by Kelly of Sass and Veracity and Ben from What’s Cooking . This is one of the first challenges where I really know each of these bloggers and so I couldn’t wait to see what they would come up with to challenge us this time. I should have guessed from this pairing that we would end of with a pastry! Ben is a master at making Puff Pastry and Kelly is always coming up with great ideas of how to make the DB challenges reflect her culinary style. Therefore, it just made sense when I saw the challenge would be a Danish. On the outset, I must admit that I wasn’t too excited about the challenge, as I generally don’t like Danish. It is always so sweet and the dough is generally plasticy, wet and gummy from the filling sinking into it. But as I have come to learn with these challenges, the things we sometimes buy, often do not reflect what the original homemade variety would taste like. Once I saw that cardamom was involved in the dough recipe they had picked out for us, I began to feel slightly more relieved, as I have a huge love for this spice. Then when I read further that we could experiment with the filling I felt even better!  read more »

There a came a moment on Saturday at The Baltimore Book Festival where I looked out at the crowd and down at the food in front of me and realized: "Holy (expletive): I have to cook something for all...Adam Roberts

Cross Posted At Megan's Minute.

"Lost" is back and not a moment too soon!  Welcome to the debut of "Lost" recaps at Megan's Minute.  I've been anticipating the return of "Lost" since last year's stunning finale and after watching this premiere, I'm thrilled to say the show has still got game.

We open on a closeup shot of a pyramid of what looked to me like yellow squash. It's in front of a blue sky and ocean in the background. We're on the shot for about three seconds with no sound until a red sports car comes crashing through the pile of squash toward the camera.  As the veggies tumble to the ground and the car screeches by, we see that the blue sky and ocean background were part of a picture on a delivery truck.  We're not on the island.  We're on the streets of LA and cop cars, sirens blaring, are chasing the sports car.  read more »

"Defeat should never be a source of discouragement, but rather a fresh stimulus." ~South Yes, it's Tuesday again, and we all know what that means. It's Tuesdays With Dorie day!!! The one day a week that I join in with a multitude of other keen bakers who are baking their way through Dorie Greenspan's cookery book, "From My Home to Yours." Each week we bake another tempting and taste bud tingling delight! This week, Mary of Starting From Scratch has chosen . . . . The Most Extraordinary French Lemon Cream Tart. Now . . . my Todd is not a lover of lemon anything (I know???  read more »

Port Meadow is a large and ancient grazing ground in Oxfordshire. It is a floodmeadow, flanked by a thin, brambled-over stretch of the Thames, and no matter the season it is hung with a sense of the sodden. Mud and mists linger above, but there is also the feeling, as you make your way across the soft ominously soft ground, of something congressional below. Obscure half-paths emerge from out of the turf, criss-cross briefly, then disappear. The enameled colours of the narrow boats that sidle up against the abrupt riverbanks are the only real brightness anywhere. Cows, sometimes ponies, happen alongside you sudden companions, made of meat and vapour. Freemen and Commoners of Wolvercote have grazing rights on this wide, flat ground that has never once been ploughed, and it is a place where peripatetics become dwellers, and the more conventionally lodged briskly out for walks in their green wellies - are the transients. One November day on the meadow I stumbled across a small and straggly television crew interviewing a group of Travellers. The water-proofed interviewer asked his wrap-up question: So whats the one thing most necessary in life?  read more »

Im a little nervous about putting this recipe before this crowd, which probably includes more people with dearly-held opinions about barbecue and tacos than I could find anywhere else. Me, I like pulled pork, but Im from Texas, so thats not the brand of barbecue I was raised on; and again, Im from Texas, so Ill accept a crispy shell full of ground beef and orange cheese as a taco just as happily as Ill eat carnitas wrapped in a fresh tortilla. In short, people with standards more exacting than mine might argue that this is not real pulled pork and these are not real pork tacos. But recently I fed them to a discerning friend who went back for seconds and thirds, and their excellence has made it hard for us to enjoy pork tacos at our former favorite places, soIm going to risk putting this out there. I have been in thrall to The Lee Bros. Southern Cookbook  read more »

Tyler Wiard (pronounced wired, not weird), the executive chef of Elways Steakhouse in Denver, won this years Taste of Elegance for his cumin roasted pork loin and braised shoulder with green chile, posole cake, smooth avocado and red chile. Thats a very Coloradan dish, featuring the green and red chile of New Mexican cuisine, which we Coloradans have adopted. Its a tough event. Chefs compete regionally, and then the winners all meet for the nationals. This year 22 chefs were supposed to compete, but only 21 did as Patrick Ponsaty, the local winner from Bernardo in San Diego, had to back out suddenly.  read more »