Month: May 2010

Homemade Vanilla Extract

vanilla extract

This morning, I read How to Make Your Own Vanilla Extract.  The author claims one cannot purchase vanilla extract in Germany, which is where she lives, so she’s been forced to make her own.  She also bakes zucchini bread every week.

1.  This person cannot possibly have a job.

2.  The ingredients are 6 vanilla beans and 2 cups of vodka.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but there is no reason to let this amazing cocktail go to waste.  Do NOT put it in the cupboard for 2 months.  Put it down your gullet.  

3.  Apparently making your own vanilla extract is all the rage (judging from my rampant googling), which honestly could be directly connected to the recession.  Unemployment goes up, so does homemade vanilla extract.  It’s a plausible theory.

I think it’s in restaurants’ best interests to accommodate them [bloggers] just a bit more, better lighting for example.

Chuck Arendt from Chuck Eats on photographing his food, courtesy of Eater.com.

Eater goes on to say:  While we’re at it, how about a permanent light box in the middle of the dining room? Should restaurants provide light meters? Instead of high chairs, should they make tripods available?

So, I too would like to add some necessities, as I am now a food blogger.  I will be needing a magic carpet upon leaving the restaurant so I can quickly be taken to my bed. Also,  a drug dealer on staff (just in case),  a physician, laptops for all diners,  a dentist for teeth cleaning upon exit, and all meals should be complimentary.

Backyard Farming as Survival Strategy

LA Times story today about families selling the produce from their backyard farms to get by:

Tacey Perkins decided her best customers may be the neighbors around her Riverside County home. Last fall, the mother of two and former real estate agent posted a sign on her front lawn in Mira Loma advertising home-grown pumpkins. She sold $100 worth.

This summer she plans to have a farm stand on the family’s picnic table with baskets of zucchini, peppers and eggs.

“My husband works in the construction industry, and while he still has a job, things are slower,” said Perkins, 35. “Every little bit helps.”

I had a yard sale last weekend to try and pay some bills—did someone say that the economy is getting better? Sure doesn’t seem like it. —Snacktime

The Food Stamp Stimulus Package

The USDA announced a new program today to make it easier for recipients of food benefits to find stores that accept food stamps. They also released stats on how food stamps not only reduce hunger and increase food security, but also build local economies:

SNAP benefits, which are now provided to recipients electronically, help low income families put healthy food on the table and provide an economic stimulus that strengthens communities. Research shows that every $5 in new SNAP benefits generates as much as $9.20 in economic activity. While SNAP benefits are administered by states, they are 100 percent federally funded and move quickly into local economies, with 97 percent of SNAP benefits redeemed within a month.

—Snacktime

Jimmy Fallon’s Ode to Hot Pockets

Link: Jimmy Fallon’s Ode to Hot Pockets

All right.  ALL RIGHT.  So Jimmy Fallon and guests sang a lovely celebratory ditty to Hot Pockets on May 18’s episode.  While I could point out how using a style of music derived from a starving continent to sing about an American hyperprocessed junk food is tasteless (pun intended), I’m just gonna roll with it and say – Hot Pockets are damn good when you’re hungover.  Go Hot Pocket.

Consider Pimm’s!

Only the most sour-faced leftie would refuse a Pimm’s: it evokes the other Eden, demi-paradise version of England: the languid days on level croquet lawns; the plock of leather on willow; splashing, passing oarsmen; the Glastonbury chumminess of Henman Hill. I first tried it as an undergraduate at Oxford (I can feel the comment love already) and I never taste it today without remembering those sunlit, sozzled days.

Oliver Thring, my favorite posh, snobby, verbose foodie at The Guardian, in “Consider Pimm’s.”

Ahhhh christ.  I just… I could… I mean, reading this is like… oh, he’s just a modern-day Jane Austen, isn’t he!?!