Here We Are Again

I definitely thought that with this winter being milder, I would complain less. So far, that's been (just go with me on this) mostly true. However, at the end of February, as always, I am itching for spring again. To put it mildly: this really didn't help.

Made by Hand / No 3 The Beekeeper from Made by Hand on Vimeo.

Listen, guys, I am a curmudgeon. I love to be all "UGH, here's my sustainably-grown, artisanally-roasted Brooklyn joke," as much as the next guy. Because I live there. And while I love it, I do find a lot of it to be kind of insufferable sometimes. But, if you can watch this and not feel the tiniest bit proud of this woman, her commitment to something that definitely seemed crazy not too long ago, and her desire to share it with people, I don't know man. Maybe you're even more of a grump than I am. 

That said, watch all of Made by Hand's videos. They are crazy delightful.

The Way Marcella Told You to Make It

I remember cotton candy. I remember one of my little hands in my mother's milk-soft hand and the other in my father's leathery baseball mitt hand. I remember white overalls with paint splotches on them. Wearing pig-tails that fell into ringlets. I remember running toward something, the zoo or State Fair, a spectacle larger than my brand new brain could understand. I remember being swung back and forth by my arms through the air, and my parents being really excited to show me something. But most of all, I remember cotton candy.

Seriously. These are your ingredients.

This is one of my first memories. And one of my favorites. I have no idea how old I was. Maybe three? It stuck with me. I totally abandon all culinary principles in favor of cotton candy every time. There is a picture of this moment somewhere. **(Update: Not just somewhere, after the jump! Thanks, mom!)** Even if it were lost, it's been permanently burned into my cortex.

Easy, Lovely, Strange

When you love someone, sometimes you do things for them that you don't totally understand.

My Sidekick turned thirty this January and one morning a few days before, I woke up and baked. This is not really normal behavior for me. But, the dude loves corn muffins the way most people love their pets, so I decided to take one for the team.

Happy Valentine's Day, Screw-Up!

Look. Sometimes we screw up. Sometimes we wake up in the morning and our devoted and thoughtful partners present us with cards or gifts for holidays which we've forgotten about. Did you do that today? I'm here to help.

I'm sure you feel badly enough already, but we're all pretty disappointed in you. Here is an hors d'oeuvre so quick, so simple, so cheap and so god damned adorable, it will get you out of any Valentine's Day failure.

The Enormity of Their Flat Brain

In case this day has lasted hours and hours for anyone else, in the video below you can watch Werner Herzog talk about how stupid chickens are.


Werner Herzog on Chickens from Tom Streithorst on Vimeo.

"By the way, it's very easy to hypnotize a chicken," is so amazing that it has turned my brains to soup.

(via Bon Appetit)

What Else Do You Have to Do?

Oh, guys. You know for certain that I am enjoying this oddly temperate winter. Although I am sure it means we are all going to actually be cooked by the sun sometime soon, I love it. However, even I’ll fess up and say that there are benefits to cold weather. For one, it’s nice to be able to have the oven on for hours without melting into a puddle.

For the One-Hundredth Time

Today marks 100 posts on Chronicles of a Stomach Grumble. If you are saying to yourself, "wow, you've had this for a long time and should really have more than 100 posts," you are right. But here we are.

A sign of nerdy things to come.

To commemorate, I wanted to share a tweet of my dad's I stumbled across from 2006 (yes, my dad was on twitter before I knew how it worked). My dad never got to read this blog, but he definitely knew where I was headed all along. And, just in case anyone is wondering, I have the ingredients to make the above-mentioned soup in my fridge as we speak.

A New Year of Stuffing Cheese Into Other Things

Oh, hey guys. I started out the year so serious on you. So... let's probably talk about olives now?

Most of you probably do not think of olives as comfort food. Most of you probably did not devote the entirety of your teenaged, after-school snacking to piles of them. It just so happens that I do and I did.