Something To Snack On

Most of you have probably seen this already. In case you haven't, or in case you need a reminder of why summer is amazing and why beaches are the best and why family time can sometimes be really, really rewarding -- I give you Jack Gardner's retirement plan.

This is Retirement. from McSwayze Film. on Vimeo.

We'll be back out there next week to check on how his commercial fishing license is treating him. Fish on!

The Business of Giving Asparagus the Business

Don’t tell me you’re tired of asparagus already. If you’re anything like me, you gobble up these harbingers of spring with extreme prejudice. They’ve been sauce gribiched, sliced into ribbons, pureed into soup — we really gave asparagus the business this season.

Asparagus for snacks, dominoes for fun.

A Return to Deviling that Shit

Sometimes life changes in really big ways. For us, this time, it's been a really great change, but change messes with blogging consistency regardless of how exciting it is. Which is where I've been.

Pickles in the Middle "Optional"

But I, like you, feel backyard barbecue season coming on regardless of life's curve-balls, so I'm here to bring us all back down to earth with some deviled egg talk.

All the Mushroom Secrets

Because good things always come in threes, let's round things out with a third video in a row. From the guy who brought you Plum Jam, please enjoy Mushroom Foraging with Nik Westacott.

Foraging and cooking Wild Mushrooms from www.carlpendle.com on Vimeo.

You just try to tell me you don't want to eat mushrooms out of a frying pan in the woods with Nik Westacott. I want to do that AND bring a bottle of ale and ask Nik to tell me everything he has ever known.

I'm dead now. This Carl Pendle guy has really got my number.

You Serve Your Mother That Cocktail?

Sometimes, you want to do something elaborate and show-stopping with your cocktails. Sometimes you want to flame an orange peel, measure three different kinds of bitters with an eye dropper and squeeze kumquats one-by-one over hand-chipped ice.

Mother in Law Cocktail. from Rebecca Orchant on Vimeo.

And sometimes, you just want to pour something strong out of a big, manly bottle and drink it. Fast. Which is why we're presenting you today with the Mother In Law cocktail.

The Jam

This is relevant to all my interests. Except fountain pens. Fuck fountain pens.*

Plum Jam from www.carlpendle.com on Vimeo.

In case you were not aware, two things are happening this weekend: 1) my birthday and 2) New York gets twenty degrees warmer. I am pretty excited about both of these things, and the video above sort of encapsulates all of those feelings. Hope everyone has a great weekend shoving their faces full of things.

* Just kidding, Marcy!

Conversations with Flynn About Cheese

 10:29 AMSarah: christ, i'm hungry

 me: I just ate a whole grapefruit at my desk and it feels like it just made a grapefruit-sized hole.

 Sarah: i had granola for breakfast which is really only useful for like an hour

 me: Totally. That shit is like rocket fuel for my metabolism. I need to eat a planet one hour later.

10:34 AM Sarah: also did not help that i spent like an hour looking at cheese on the internet last night

 me: I have been digging for food videos all day, so also guilty.

10:35 AM Sarah: after i ordered i was like "oh NO. i could have gotten a LOAF OF CHEDDAR"

 me: Ha ha ha!

via Wisconsin Cheese Mart

For Those About to Ham Ball, We Salute You.

I'm relatively certain that there are things this blog conveys to you about me.

I'm about eating.
I'm about drinking.
I'm about talking about those things, often during actually doing them.
If you come to my house, I will feed you snacks.
One other thing I'd like to specifically convey: sometimes those snacks will be weird.

Let's talk about Ham Balls.

The Season for Canapés

Last night, after a particularly frustrating and discouraging day (even the chronically excited among us have them), my Sidekick whisked me away to Henry Public for a "Let's Celebrate Learning Things from Failure by Eating All of the Things" kind of a meal. He brought out the big guns out for this meal, "Bone marrow?" he asked. "Oysters?"

"No," I said, "radishes, please."

Bringing a Community Together

Well, DC Central Kitchen just made me feel feelings. The opening shots will make you hungry. The rest will give you goosebumps.

Healthy Corners from DC Central Kitchen on Vimeo.

Food deserts. We hear about them often. We hardly ever see them. We certainly never think that they could be plunked down in the middle of some of the most metropolitan cities in America.

There are a few amazing things about this video: 1) It's gorgeous. 2) It highlights a community helping itself in a powerful, practical and simple way to profound effect. 3) Not nearly enough people have watched it. Please help me spread what DC Central Kitchen and Healthy Corners are doing like wildfire.

Avocado Musses Easily

Last week marked a year of recipes from A Book of Hors d'Oeuvre. I have come to terms with the fact that this project is going to take much longer than I expected. Sometimes life gets in the way. Sometimes, no matter where you look, you can't find a tiny mold in the shape of a fish to stuff with aspic and parts. Sometimes, you just don't want to eat any more toast points.

Which is what makes today's recipe really special: it requires no molds, no toast and very little effort. The ingredients are not particularly exotic. And that's what I really want to talk to you about today. Avocados.

Consider the Kumquat

How great is citrus season, you guys? I love that it comes right at the tail end of winter, when we never want to see a potato, beet or apple again.

Can we have a moment of Real Talk about kumquats? They are freaks. I used to love to eat them whole when I was little, because I am weird and love sour things. My Sidekick will occasionally soak them in bourbon or rye for the tartest Manhattan or Old Fashioned you've ever had. But really, what else is there to do with these little weirdos? They do not yield enough juice to be useful. The spelling of their name is ridiculous. Turns out, good ol' Lucy G. Allen's got a trick up her sleeve.

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.

Strain Your Damned Tomato Soup

We all reach a point where we think we know best. My guess is that every single one of us occasionally skims a recipe and thinks “I already know how to do that.” Usually, when I get here, I use the recipe for inspiration and go on my merry way, cooking as I would normally cook. This is both good and bad. Cooking with your own brain is one of the most important skills any cook can possess. You decide how much salt seems right. You decide how much oil you want to fry in. This makes us confident, makes us take risks and leads to delicious discoveries. But sometimes, you guys, you need to strain your damned tomato soup whether you want to or not. And sometimes, following recipe steps that seem finicky or unnecessary give you smooth, creamy tomato soup that makes you really happy.

 

 This brings us to the recipe in question, from the America’s Family Recipes iPad app.

On Our Patients, Our Remedies and Our Failures

"INVALID COOKERY - In preparing food for an invalid, one should bear in mind that it is of the utmost importance that the appetite of the patient be tempted. Large quantities of food should never be served to an invalid. The most attractive dishes procurable should be used, and the linen should be immaculate. A fresh flower adds color and daintiness to the tray. Hot dishes should be served very hot and cold dishes thoroughly chilled. Never ask a patient what he would like for a meal but find out from the doctor what he may have; then surprise the invalid by serving something unexpected, nourishing and dainty." - The Wise Encyclopedia of Cookery, 1948

Last July, I had the unfortunate task of rushing my Sidekick to the ER with extreme pain from a herniated disc. After six hours, a few morphine shots, and many neighbors in various states of duress, a kind-looking volunteer with an apologetic eye made his way to us.