kitchenmage

Cookbook for Doctors Without Borders

Kathy at What Do I Know? and Ginger of The Hackenblog are creating a book to benefit Doctors Without Borders, which is a most worthy organization. They are looking for recipes, short essays, some artwork, poetry, and so on. (note to writers: I even read the legal stuff and it's fine, you retain copyright, etc) I've offered my Fish Tail Soup recipe as a sort of cross between humor and cooking. Check out the idea and see if you've got something to contribute to this great project.

International food blogging made easy

When you ask a food blogger — or a reader (food blogee? that so needs an accent mark!) — what they like best about blogs they will often launch into an involved rhapsodic dissertation on all the other food blogs. And they're totally right, there are many amazing food blogs out there. There's one for every taste: bakers, breadBakers, cakeBakers,    carnivores, vegans, celiacs, vicarous world travelers, chocoholics, dessert-lovers, bacontarians, breakfast-lovers, sandwich eaters, cheese devotees, farmers, caterers, adventurers, heck there's even one for when you totally lose it and go nuts!
 

And those are all in English!

Ch...ch...ch...changes

Maybe it's New Year's Resolutions, maybe it's in response to a recent LA Times article that slagged pretty much all non-niche food-bloggers, maybe it's mid-winter doldrums, or the start of a calendar year for business. Whatever the reason, this month is bringing all sorts of changes in the online food community.

12 days of christmas

You really should go read this. You need the laugh. Really.

Useful, time suck, or both...?

Oh my, this could be trouble. Google has a blog searching interface.

My first few searches show a fair amount of noise-to-signal, some duplication, and lots of hits. Some results also show "related blogs" at the top; apparently matches based on blog title since a search for "kitchenmage" shows mine and "pim" shows Pim's, but "Clotilde" doesn't show hers while "chocolate" does. Along with almost three-quarters of a million hits! 

Indexing the blog title for use like this is an interesting aspect of this search feature--particularly for new bloggers. Bets on how long until someone puts up a blog called something like "I want to be Pim!" to take advantage of this?

I am not sure what's up with the duplicated results, and there are quite a few on some searches, but it's still fairly new so maybe this will sort out soon. Also available: RSS and Atom feeds for your searches; sort of like Google Alerts for blogs. (which reminds me, I am still looking for a feed reader I like, anyone got one they recommend?)

I think I'm voting for useful time suck...and now I must go figure out how to tweak my searches and work on that signal-to-noise ratio.

Blog Day: it's not midnight yet is it?

If I am going to slide this in before midnight, it's going to have be a quick list.

Oswego Tea: A Canadian roaming Europe; Germany, Belgium, and she just moved to Paris. Some people live rough lives.

zarzamora: "is it possible to learn how to cook simply by being married to a cook and loitering in the kitchen? " Yes, apparently it is. The best part is that he's a geek, with science and tables and  references and everything! (note to self: get your apprentice a blog)

Seven Spoons: If little tiny Icewine strawberries in sweet wonton cones weren't enough, she's also read one of my favorite books.

The Novato Experiment: A San Franciscan moves to the deep 'burbs of Marin, although I want to see pictures of the plastic garden gnomes--they seem so anti-Marin. Plus, I once lived in Bolinas so this is almost nostalgic.

she craves: she who craves describes it as food life and anxiety from the jello belt, which is good because it's got seven words posted. I like her sense of humor already and if you go now you can discover it before everyone else. Bonus: remember how lonely it is when you have a brand new blog and nobody came by or commented? So go ahead, make her day.

Go, read, enjoy.

quote (and picture) of the day

In my meanderings today I found what may be my new motto on Three Tarts, a self-described collaboration between one cook, one eater, and one cheese smuggler.

Someone gave chocolate fondue to a two-year old and luckily for us someone brought a camera. You really must go here and get your day's dose of cuteness. If you're not convinced of this, how about a quote to make you click the link?

"After all, nothing says "good party" like chocolate up one's nose."

A is for Apple, and April...even in August

Today's post is brought to you by the letters A, B, C, and a few of their friends. (I'm not sure because I am winging this and then posting whatever I end up with — call it a writing exercise — and I only have the first half-dozen letters covered at the moment) It's not really my fault, I had several random small things I wanted to write about and the first one was so elementary — some might say abecederian — that I couldn't get beyond the oh-so-obvious start. Some days, the muse walks up, whacks you in the head and says, "duh, do it that way"...so I did. Wish me luck.

Wizards of Oz (the one with 'roos)

Saffron over at The Food Palate has the latest installment of Omnivoribus Australis up, and I have spent the last hour (or two...okay, maybe three) clicking and reading and planning what to make first. Omnivoribus Australis, for those of you who, like me, have missed it until now, showcases the writing and photography of Australian food blogs — and do they ever have things to showcase!

Apparently I have been wandering around with a delusion that Australian food ran the gamut from shrimp on the barbie to vegemite. Okay, flog me with wet noodles ouch for willful ignorance, I can only say I am making up for it.

let them drool over cake!

Few things make me wish I was closer to a city, but this might be an exception. It as least makes me wish for a transporter so I could beam myself to New York tomorrow. Even stranger than my desire to go to one of the biggest cities around, I just want to go to Grand Central Station, walk around for a few hours and leave. How weird is that?

What, you might wonder, is sufficient to draw the country mage's thoughts into the city.