I heart the food journalism and blogs

Okay, this is one of those posts that is mostly just a bunch of annotated links. So be it.
I have always liked to read about food. I collect cookbooks and have read them eagerly since I was a child, when my mother collected the kind that Pillsbury published and you could purchase at the grocery store checkout. I have a sizeable cookbook collection of both historical and contemporary titles and I cook from it quite a bit. Ironically, I don't usually follow recipes but instead use them as a base and improvise a whole lot based on experience. I'll have to do another post about cookbooks I actually use regularly.
One of my favorite things about the Internet has always been the opportunity to read new recipes and food journalism. I used to read and sometimes post to the newsgroup rec.food.recipes in pre-web days. Now I read a whole lot of food stuff online.
Online versions of food journalism:

• I love Meredith Brody (even though I will never forgive her review of Tristan's 7th birthday party in the LA Weekly and she is hard to find these days. She is a terrific writer who writes about food and cinema together--my dream!) and Jonathan Gold's work so I'll read that when I can. I also read Mark Bittman's work for NYTimes and occasionally read Washington Post style/food sections. I read the Epicurious blog every weekday b/c it is so good.
  
• Francis Lam's Salon column rocks and Serious Eats "A Hamburger Today" and "Slice" blogs make me very happy. HuffPo has a delightful aggragated section of Food News, as does The Food Section. GOOP sometimes does "Make" issues about food that are really good and have great photography. And I believe WhatTheFuckShouldIMakeForDinner.com is my favorite "web 2.0" site. I even showed it in class to discuss the database-driven web.
  
• More proper, single author food blogs: Orangette is good and makes me miss Seattle's food scene; Smitten Kitchen is my fave and I always want to try her recipes. Stay At Stove Dad is good.
• Locally, Ann Arbor has some good but less regularly updated blogs, including The FarmersMarketer, Ed Viemetti's cooking stuff, Mother's Kitchen and more.
  
• Then there are food-related apps: UrbanSpoon, Epi's app, Everyday Food's Dinner Tonight app (love that).

See, I like to read about this topic a lot! I also do like to cook quite a bit too, but after a long workday I'd probably prefer reading about food online than making it myself. Luckily in the summer I get to grow stuff and cook it and that is way fun!

I'm totally excited for this IFC show!

On June 24, 2011, IFC will premiere the new show Rhett & Link: Commercial Kings. Now the premise of this show--it follows two indie commercial makers who make and love wacky local TV commercials--is already wonderful. What makes me totally excited for it though is that, according to the trailer, they appear to do a commercial for Super Shmuttle!!!
I heart Super Shmuttle for oh-so many reasons. My dear friend Anne was a client and huge supporter of Judy Rudin and her dogcare business in Los Angeles. Judy was, in fact, a favorite of Nemo, one of my most beloved canine friends. Since Nemo passed away several years ago, Judy's business has taken off and become the Super Shmuttle, complete with artwork by my favorite OC artist Shag. I think Judy has a dream job--picking up pooches and ferrying them to parks and canyons for walks and wags and so forth. I'd be her intern any day! So I'm super-happy to see that she and her pack might be on IFC soon. As Anne might have said, "Woof!"
My own gorgeous PWD Allie would adore a day in the Shmuttle.

Best Website Ever!

I love this site. It has everything I adore about the internet--user-submitted content, horrific images produced unintentionally, and a celebration of embarrassing, unplanned moments. What's not to love?
Awkward Family Photos
I found it via BBC via today's Since You Asked column by Cary Tennis on Salon.com. I've been reading Cary's columns since the late 1990s and he is a brilliant writer and someone who has been through much and learned from it. I really admire him and adore his writing voice, which is simultaneously smart, real, literate and empathetic. Good stuff. I can't believe how long he has been doing this column (with breaks for serious life-threatening illness). He took it over after Garrison Keillor stopped writing his Ask Mr. Blue column for Salon, back in the day (as they say).
In honor of Awkward Family Photos I'm including my own awkward self-portrait. Call it "SCMY as TinTin, or My Hair After a Night in New Orleans."

Garden update

I planted some of my tomato seedlings this week--a Burpee Long Keeper, a Roma and a Super Italian Paste. Already in ground are transplanted Brandywine, Amish Paste, Purple something or other (a Frog Holler I paid $ for at Downtown Home and Garden), San Marzano. Sense a pattern? I like paste tomatoes for sauce and drying.
Also in this year's line-up: butternut squash, patty pan summer squash, blue lake beans, peas, black simpson and romaine lettuces, arugula, thyme, basil of different sorts, rosemary. Still figuring out where I will put the pie pumpkin.
I'm up to three raised beds now and have my eye on the spot where S. cleared out his horrible bamboo invasive plant creature. it gets good sun...
Also reading garden stuff at You Grow Girl and elsewhere.

Our House Guest

Pickles is with us for the rest of the week. Three legs and lots of fun...I think she looks a bit like Nipper the RCA dog.

America's Subsidy Garden

From Huffpo, what the White House Garden would look like if planted according to farm subsidies:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/06/01/white-house-garden-subsidized-crops_n_869616.html