“Mom and Apple Pie”

As a follow up to my post about Kate McDermott, I wanted to share this great video about her. It was produced by the amazingly talented Xurxo Martínez, a former classmate of mine in the Master of Communication in Digital Media (MCDM) program at the University of Washington.

Life and pie lessons with Kate McDermott

My husband is an excellent cook, and when we were first dating, I was very nervous about making a meal for him.

The first time I cooked for him was a dinner at my apartment. As part of the meal, I wanted to make him an apple pie, which is his favorite dessert.

I didn’t have a lot of time to cook the entire dinner so I bought a frozen pie crust from the grocery store, and I consulted a recipe I had found on the Internet.

I had never made a pie before, but I baked cakes and cookies frequently so I was confident that I would succeed.

Ah, hubris.

A special occasion: Eating at the Walrus and the Carpenter

My husband and I parked, and went into what we hoped was the entrance to the restaurant. There was no sign.

We uncertainly started to make our way down a dimly lit hallway when another couple came up behind us.

Uncertain that we were headed the right way, my husband asked them, “Do you know where you’re going?”

The woman laughed. “No,” she said. “We were just following you!”

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Amazing Angry Birds cake by Sweet Teeth Bakery

For my husband’s birthday this year, I surprised him with an Angry Birds cake, made by our friend Amelia Franada, who owns Sweet Teeth Custom Cakes & Pastries in Renton, Washington.

I’m constantly impressed by Amelia’s artistry and versatility. She can make everything from a kick ass ninja cake to elegant French macaroons. I also love her creative spins on traditional Filipino desserts.

Go ahead, “like” her on Facebook and visit her booth at the Renton Farmer’s Market on Tuesdays. You won’t regret it!

Would you eat this chicken?

My friend Adam lives in New Orleans, and he constantly posts on Facebook about the amazing food in that fine city–not only making me jealous, but insanely hungry.

Unfortunately, I have no plans to visit Louisiana anytime soon so I hatched a scheme to have some New Orleans food travel to me.

Back on the blog

I originally started this blog three years ago when I was on maternity leave. I wrote for a living, and I didn’t want my skills to get rusty. But I wanted to write about something fun and something that I love. So I became a food blogger.

I knew I would never be a “serious” food blogger, especially after I attended the International Food Blogger Conference last year. I don’t write recipes, I don’t take beautiful food photos, and I definitely don’t blog on any kind of regular basis.

But that’s okay. This blog has always been a fun hobby for me. I enjoy writing about whatever I want—my latest collection of random food photos, “the official snack of hip hop,” or belated gratitude to my parents for cooking thousands of meals for my brother and me.

I haven’t posted to my blog in over seven months. That’s a long time—eons in the blogging world. It’s weird—I hadn’t stopped thinking about it. I continued to develop ideas for blog posts and took many photos, but I had lost my will to blog.

Party in my tummy on “Yo Gabba Gabba!”

I was having lunch with some friends when the kids television show, “Yo Gabba Gabba” came up in conversation. If you have small children or are a serious recreational drug user, you are probably familiar with it. But if you’re not, it’s a pretty hard thing to describe. This food-related video clip perfectly captures the bizarre educational dance party vibe of the show.

Dim sum disgrace on Top Chef

I must admit that I felt a thrill of schadenfreude when I saw a preview of “Top Chef: All-Stars” showing the chefs cracking under the strain of a particularly difficult challenge–making dim sum at a restaurant in New York’s Chinatown.

In the end, however, I took little pleasure in watching how thoroughly the chefs failed at this task.

It was as if none of the chefs had ever heard of the concept of dim sum or Asian cuisine. They seemed outraged when they couldn’t find someone who spoke English at the Chinese market. Many of them looked completely baffled when they entered the kitchen of the Chinese restaurant and saw the steamer baskets and woks. They couldn’t make their food fast enough, and for the most part, the dishes they did prepare were bland and boring.

Dale and Angelo, who specialize in Asian food (Dale works at Buddakan!), provided zero help or leadership in the kitchen.

Nobody cared about the crowd of hungry people waiting for food. They just cared about cooking for the judges and winning the challenge.

I understand that Top Chef is a competition, but there is no excuse for souless cooking and not feeding people. That is a shame for any cook at any level–and a disgrace for a group of professionals vying for the title of “Top Chef.”

YOU: On a kitchen gadget diet

When you like to cook, you’ll inevitably accumulate tools that you think will be useful but you never actually use. I did a recent purge of our kitchen gadgets and learned the following things.

My husband really likes cheese.
In one of our drawers, I found five cheese slicers (three of which were identical) and a hand crank cheese grater.

We are obsessed with measuring.
We had multiple sets of measuring cups starting at 1/4 cup all the way to 1 quart. There was a set that drove my husband crazy because the numbers had worn off them so he couldn’t tell which was which, but for some reason we kept them anyway–even though we had bought a replacement set.

When you upgrade a gadget, get rid of the old one.
I got a Microplane premium zester and grater a few months ago, which I love and constantly use. So why was the cheap knockoff version taking up space in my kitchen?

Presses and spatulas are not our thing.
I received a Vietnamese coffee press as a gift and held onto it for years even though I don’t drink coffee. I know many people swear by their garlic presses, but we never used the one we had. We also got rid of a wide spatula that was too big and unwieldy to be helpful and spatula tongs, which sound cool but really aren’t.

Laziness creates clutter.
If you can complete a food preparation task with a knife or your hands, there’s no need to buy gadgets like an egg separater, apple corer or cork puller (which I found brand new still in its package).