Cooking With Ideas

Coriander (aka Cilantro) Roots

Once in a while you find cilantro (aka coriander) complete with roots. Until I was given (thanks!) Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet , a truly fabulous cookbook by Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid (for another book reviewed on this blog, click here),I had noideathey were edible -- and certainly had no idea what to do with them. Turns out they are a key ingredient in some Thai food. The roots are white and sometimes quite stringy -- but on occasion big and lush and -- it turns out --quite tasty. Here, adapted a bit from Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet, is a recipe for a great marinade made from the roots. Here's what to do when you see cilantro/coriander with roots:

(1) Buy it immediately. once you have used the leaves (and stems) for other purposes (e.g., added as a garnish to a lovely spicey coconut fish curry), snip the roots off and stick them in a baggy in the freezer.

(2) When you have what will turn out to be at the very least three tablespoons when chopped -- and when you feel like it -- take them out and create a paste with the roots, using the following ingredients:

3 Tbsp roots
2 tsp black pepper corns
5-6 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tsp Thai fish sauce

To make the paste, stick this stuff in a (very) small food processor or spice grinder and process until a very smushed up. (It will not be smooth but the aim is to ensure the pepper is crushed and the garlic is integrated into the overall theme. What you end up with should be sort of smearable)

(3) Use the paste to make one of two dishes (only one of which I have made: (a) chicken thighs which can be grilled or baked (marinate it for a minimum of one hour at room temperature in the paste --adding 2-3 Tbsp of fish sauce). When grilled these get very charred. I usually bake the thighs at 400 degrees for 35 to 45 minutes and serve with a vinegary- garlic red pepper sauce made by boiiling for five minutes 1/2 cup of rice vinegar and 1/2 cup of sugar -- and then removing from the heat and adding several very finely chopped garlic cloves, a little bit of salt and more than a little bit of crushed red pepper seeds; or (b) a whole fish, made by smearing it with the paste and inserting lemon grass in its interior and baking for a while.

Anyway, the coriander roots are surprisingly tasty. Not just waste -- the roots are as food-worthy as the leaves. Who knew? Now you do!

For more on coriander/cilantro, click here.

Wrestling with Gravy: a life, with food

Jonathan Reynolds is not one of "those" Reynolds -- Reynolds wrap, for example. But he is famous -- a playwright, actor, author and television producer -- who also did a biweekly column for The New York Times Magazine on food. (To read a few of those clumns, click here.) And, one of his plays, "Dining with Demons" is definitely about food! (He cooked on stage.) In Wrestling with Gravy (2006) Reynolds reflects on his life-- so it is, indeed, a life with food. The book is filled with anecdotes (including the death of his cousin Lee Remick) which are amusing and on occasion sad, though only rarely veering into the sentimental. The theme of the book, not surprisingly, is "how I came to treat food writing as my profession rather than a hobby while I thought my real vocation was XYZ," a narrative device which appears frequently in books with titles like this (and more generally in food literature these days). Like some of these memoirs, Reynolds includes recipes -- from deep fried turkey (adapted from Paul Prudhomme) to Golden Gazpacho with Ahi Tuna and Heirloom Tomatos (adapted from Patina). (I am photocopyng the latter for a summer treat.) And like many of these memoirs, Reynolds also includes lots about his other vocations -- screenwriting, acting, etcetera and thus life in Hollywood as well as Broadway -- and his personal life (the ups and downs of the first marriage, ending with a second marriage which works). His humor is sort of poignant -- and I ended up liking Reynolds as depicted in this memoir, but then again, it was not the most memorable book I have read and I do not have the time or will to re-read it so you get more juicy details. I got it from the Geneva Public Library. You can too (once I return it).

What Does Galloping Have to Do With Food?

A while ago I read David Kamp's The United States of Arugula (for commentary on that book, click here). There I was reading along,having a sort of retro/nostalgia fix, when I came across the Galloping Gourmet. Here's what Kamp had to say about Graham Kerr, the galloper in question, and his television show which premiered in 1968:

Six foot four, handsome, English, prodigiously sideburned, and unable to resist an innuendo-laden wisecrack about a cake pan's dimpled bottom, the thirty-four year old Kerr was part Hugh Grant and part Austin Powers, with a soupcon of Julia thrown in. He opened each half-hour episodeof his syndicated daytime cooking programby bounding onto his kitchen stage and hurdling over a chair, often with a full glass of wine in hand. A prefilmed trave, clip woudl then be shown, revealing whichever exotic locale Kerr had visited of late. He'd proceed to prepare some sort of outrageously rich dish -- a Brisbane prawn souflle, for example-- ad banter with his studio audience of bedazzled housewives, the bouffantd aunties of the girls who'd swooned over the Beatles. Kerr added an extra frisson of naughtiness by periodically raising a crystal goblet to his lips and saying: 'I think I'll have a short slurp.'" (p. 110)

Kamp continues for a page or two, quoting Kerr (who says he barely had a glass of wine in an evening of filming 3 shows) and trying to explain the then food establishment's disdain for New Zealander Kerr. Kamp, of course, writes in a sort of tell-all gossipy tone with (to use his wonderful word) a soupcon of intelligent historical research so his commentary is a bit arch. And it is delightful.

So, when my sister sent me a copy of The Graham Kerr Cookbook by the Galloping Gourmet I was delighted. The cover, to begin with, had me all atwitter (IS that a word?) -- with a very late 1960s-ish Kerr leaning oh so cooly against a countertop. Sort of James Bond meets the kitchen (in which case, of course, the wine would be a martini). Inside, there are pictures of herbs --and then a handwritten letter from Kerr to the reader (and/or buyer) of his book. Kerr writes:

Dear Friend, If you have taken the plunge and purchased me -- congratulations. I trust that I shall serve you well. If you have stillto make a decision -- this may help. I am known mostly for my television show 'The Galloping Gourmet.' On this show Treena and I try to entertain you (whatever that may mean). Because of this you may rightly say 'Is he a performer or a cook". I hope I am both -- at least I try. . .

Thus, Kerr addresses the very issue that other foodies of his time raised about his work (which continues to appear on occasion late at night on the Food Network, I think). Inside, he offers recipes organized from basic methods to "graduate"; and each is set out with a recipe to produce specifying portion numbers and ingredients; method of preparation which is more or less (he says) mis en place, method of cookery, and serving directions. And, of course there are pictures, pictures, and more pictures. Some are quite useful such as cutting up a chicken prior to frying it and carving poultry, one of those things I am simply unable to do well. The recipes usefully give quantities in USA,Imperial and metric measurements. Perhaps most fun, the book includes quite a few recipes which are truly priceless in their era-specificity!

So: Graham Kerr is taking his place on my growing shelf of old(er) cookbooks -- and maybe one of these days I will cook something from it while playing Beatles music.

David Kamp
Graham Kerr
Galloping Gourmet

Harissa-ing Wegmans: A Minor Tirade

When Wegmans first opened in Geneva, NY, you would have thought the earth moved. In the late 1980s, when I interviewed for a job in Geneva, one of the main selling points was that Wegmans was "opening a store in Geneva soon." At the time, I had no idea what Wegmans was. I had no idea that people I would eventually think of as friends had sold their homes to Wegmans nearly a decade before in anticipation of this miracle store. So, when they entered some sort of odd ecstatic state and uttered the word "Wegmans," I nodded and thought "what are these people, nuts?" Even after I moved to Geneva (after living in Earlville, NY for a year and watching the opening of a very small grocery store in Hamilton, NY with headlines the size of VJ Day --that's Victory in Japan in WWII Day and the headlines were huge), I remained puzzled; then finally Wegmans opened in Geneva, complete with all sorts of vegetables and fruits I had never heard of. And the service. Wow, the service. Whoever you approached actually knew what those weird nobbly looking things were and how to cook them. For a brief period, there were little computer terminals to help you find things. Wow. Wonderful food AND good service in the middle of upstate NY. Who knew?

I think that was about a decade ago. Since then, I have either gotten used to Wegmans -- even the Wegmans in Pittsford which we all call the mother ship where knishes and caviar and orchids and whole fish and . . . where everything imagineable is available -- or things are not as good as they once were. Oh for the good old days -- right after Wegmans appeared on the horizon and right before its decline started. And yes, it has declined. Cashiers, dummied down by bar codes no longer simply inquire about the flat parsley versus coriander leaf difference (discernible only by smell and taste) but are puzzled by ordinary things like scallions. And, more importantly, all those bar codes, which hint at great inventory control and thus incredible knowledge of what is hidden in the store somewhere if only I could find it -- well, the codes turn out to be useless when you call and ask "do you have XXXX?" I do so on occasion --and am sent via the miracle of modern technology (aka the telephone) from person to person -- each of them asking what the item I am calling about IS and then asking me what aisle it MIGHT be in and then, on most occasions, failing to find it.

And that is what this story is about. Trying to find harissa in Wegman's -- ok Geneva, Canandaigua, and then the great Wegmans in the sky, 1-800-wegmans. I called Canandaigua. I asked, do you have harissa? I think it would be in the international aisle. It's Moroccan, I said, and I got some in Turkey I muttered and maybe its Lebanese. I talked with International -- a disembodied voice said "what is harissa?" and I tried to answer (while thinking -- why work in food service if you do not care?). No, they could not find it, though they looked up and down the aisle for what I imagined to be a small yellow can. And then I was directed to 1-800-wegmans. Several voices said "what's harissa?" and then "I'll have to look it up in [ok, I admit I cannot remember the name of the reference book but I think it was more or less an encyclopedia]." Like the disembodied voice in Canandaigua, this one, too, offered to order it for me if I knew where to get it. And, the 1-800-wegmans person took my name and number and said she would investigate. (Surprisingly, she did and she called a while later to say so.)

By then, I had gone to Pittsford Wegmans for another reason entirely. So, while I was there, I cruised the international foods aisle. Guess what? Small yellow cans of harissa. Hurrah. By this time, I had forgotten why I wanted it (other than the container of it I got in Turkey ran out finally).

My questions: why did no one anywhere in the land of Wegmans know of the existence of this harissa? What are computers for (besides blogging)? Are they not more than magic typewriters -- aren't they also involved in inventory control? Isn't that what all those bar codes are for, besides ensuring increasing ignorance among cashiers and allowing price changes without changing stickers on items and trcking us through our Wegmans cards to decide which zip codes deserve which food items? Couldn't someone -- certainly the 1-800-wegmans person at minimum -- have TOLD me that Pittsford had harissa -- or is it too much to believe that someone other than the person who stocks that aisle in Pittsford knows? More generally, my question is: is service gone? Even at Wegmans?

For more on harissa (and a place to order it) click here where you can also find preserved lemons (another tale of woe with Wegmans that ledme to eventually make my own). To send your very own email to Wegmans asking them your favorite questions, click here (by the way, a student of mine is trying to get the Wegmans in Geneva to stock LGBTQ magazines in case you are looking fora reason to email Wegmans).

Wegmans
harissa

Short Snippets -- A New Place and Some Old Faves

The end of semesters means eating out a lot -- both out of laziness, business, to say good bye to students one has grown fond of, and for meetings disguised as social obligations (and vice versa). So, over the past few weeks, I have visited a whole array of restaurants -- old favorites and a new place in Geneva, each of which merits a short snippet as I try to catch up on things!

Tastings: Yes, this old favorite in Pittsford at hte Mother Ship (aka Pittsford Wegmans) offered a new pleasure recently: the 3 course sushi dinner. The dinner started with flash fired tuna with ponzu sauce, followed with miso and clam soup, and concluded with an array of sushi including yellowfin tuna, eel, shrimp,salmon, and a few others. This was a new adventure for me as I am not always a big suchi fan. Most of what I ate was wonderful -- including the eel which I had thought would be slimey and my least favorite. (It was neither slimey nor yucky. It was the most tender of all and quite tasty.) I had a drink called "Flock of Seagulls" which I often like to have at Tastings (a martini of sorts) and the sushi was also available with either a wine or sake pairing. For en earlie, more full review, click here.

Dano's on Seneca: Once in a while this winter, it felt like just the right weather for Dano's Viennese food. But, of course, Dano's is closed in the winter, right, like many of the places along Seneca Lake. WRONG! One of the things that we always do when school ends is head out for our favorites along the lake --and this time we went to Dano's and discovered that it had been open all along (on limited winter hours)! Wish we'd known -- but it was still great to get reacquainted. The treat: a pork knuckle (there were only three in the back!). They also had a curry spread on the menu with currants and green mango chutney that was swell. For a fuller review, click here.

The Red Dove: We have been hearing about the "it's coming soon" phenomenon "The Red Dove" for ages -- from a friend who works there and from others in the restaurant community. So, we were eager to drop by -- and did so recently. We knew folks at several tables -- graduating students and others -- as well as one kitchen maven (aka a chef) and one waitress! We also met the owners, Giulietta and Rune Hilt. We had imagined this sort of like a tapas and wine bar and, like its full name, The Red Dove Tavern, it's a bit more like a tavern, perhaps. The menu is on blackboards on the wall and includes a few small plates (e.g., hummus and french fries), sandwiches (pork, chicken, eggplant parm, falafel), and a few entrees. We had a caeser salad and french fries; a pork sandwich and french fries; and, to drink, a red wine (Shiraz) and the Red Dove Cosmo (whcih turned out to involve tart cherry juice which I truly like). The french fries are the best I have had in years -- very thinly cut (like potato sticks of yore). And their kitchen is open late, which is refreshing for Geneva where there are very limited places to eat at truly human hours like 9 pm. just open, we know the Red Dove is working on perfecting other things -- so we look forward to return visits. We're hoping to see them develop their wine list much more fully (they had maybe 4 red wine choices) and we can't wait to see what else will happen. (Don't change the Red Dove Cosmo.) Where is it? 30 Castle Street in Geneva; the phone is 315-781-2020. For an ongoing discussion of the Red Dove's strengths and areas for improvement, check out the discussion on Finger Lakes Forum.

Plants and History: An Interview with Derek Linton

Derek Linton is Professor of History at Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY. Derek joined the faculty in 1984 and has published several books, including one on the first Nobel Prize Winner in Medicine, published in 2005. In describing his teaching, Derek has said “I strongly adhere to the notion that “all history is contemporary history.” . . . I very much hope to convey to students that understanding the past is crucial both for comprehending the present and taking effective action.” At the Colleges, he teaches courses on a variety of topics, including Nazi Germany, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution and, most recently, plants. Its this last course that led me to ask him to “interview” – having heard it described with great enthusiasm by several students who I know who took it this past Spring.

Bibliochef: I discovered you teach a course on plants because I know some students in it, but I don't really know much about the course. Can you describe the course? How long have you been teaching it? What's its title?

Derek: The title of the course is “Plants and Empire: Plants, European Empires and Globalization from Columbus to Genetically Modified Crops.” This spring was the first time that I have taught it, although it picks up on themes that (Professor Emeritus) Bill Atwell and I used to emphasize in our global history course, the Making of the Modern World. The course looks at the dramatic transformation of the geographical distribution of plants since the Columbian voyages. It especially focuses on the profound economic, social and biological consequences that followed. We examine plantation systems, global trade in plants products from sugar, to opium, to quinine; bio-prospecting and even the development of botany and botanical gardens such as Kew in London and botanical illustration within the imperial context.

Bibliochef: How did you come to teach the course? Why a course on plants?

Derek: Successful empires have battened on plants-not on gold, diamonds or silver. Perhaps it is so obvious that we tend to overlook it. But so many of the foodstuffs, flowers, medicines and industrial products that we take for granted-think of tea, coffee, sugar, cotton, quinine- are pervasive because of imperial projects. I thought there needed to be a course that highlighted this- a course on the way that tea, for example, became a global product and its links with the British opium trade, horrifyingly brutal plantations in Assam and Ceylon with repercussions for India and Sri Lanka until today, and a global network of merchants and marketers.

Bibliochef: I know not all plants that are historically important are foods -- tobacco, marijuana, for example. And I certainly know that some plants have been critically important -- sugar or cotton or potatoes, perhaps. But what plant foods do you teach about? Why those particular food plants?

Derek: You have already mentioned one, sugar. We discuss both the West Indian and Brazilian plantations and also the way it became a hugely important foodstuff as sugar trickled down from being sculpted delicacies gracing the tables of the wealthy to a deleterious staple inserted in virtually everything that constitutes ordinary western and increasingly global diets. We also examined tea, coffee and chocolate at length and ended up with GM (genetically modified) corn.

Bibliochef: What do you read in the course? What's your favorite reading? Why?

Derek: Well the reading list was quite extensive. We began with Michael Pollan's Botany of Desire to examine some of human relations to plants-food, beauty, intoxication, relations that are central to the entire course. We then read Wolfgang Shivelbusch, Tastes of Paradise: A Social History of Spices, Stimulants and Intoxicants (spices, coffee); Sidney Mintz, Sweetness and Power (sugar); Londa Shiebinger, Plants and Empire (for more on her, click here); Roy Moxham, Tea (for an interview with Moxham, click here); Fiammetta Rocco, Quinine; Nicola Shulman, A Rage for Rock Gardening and Mark Winston, Travels in the Genetically Modified Zone. I like all of the readings but the Pollan, Schiebinger and Moxham are favorites. The Pollan for the perspective it provides on plant and human coevolution; the Schiebinger for the way she examines knowledge, power and social interests (it it about the way aborifacients used by slave women in the West Indies in the 18th century were ignored in Europe despite a vast interest in medicinal plants-the way knowledge doesn't transmit or is ignored.) Moxham I like for his ability to demonstrate the crucial importance of the tea trade and tea plantations to the British Empire.

Bibliochef: Can you tell us something about the students who take the course? What are they like? Why do you think they take it? What do they do in the course? What do you want them to get from the course?

Derek: The students are varied but many were in environmental studies with which it fits well. Some are interested in the British Empire, which tends to be neglected here. We mostly discuss the readings, although we also made a field trip to the New York State Agricultural Experiment Station in Geneva and had a tour of the apple orchards with Phil Forsline who travels to China and Kazakhstan tracking down Ur apples. Geneva is a major repository of apple gene plasm. The class this year was a wonderful group-very engaged, curious and critical.

Bibliochef: What's your best memory related to the course?

Derek: I enjoyed the guided tour of the apple orchards, especially the wild looking Ur apples with their imposing thorns.

Bibliochef: If you had an unlimited budget, what would you add to the course?

Derek: We would probably visit one of the sugar islands -- Barbados perhaps, and also take a trip to Kew Garden in London.

Bibliochef: Do you garden or cook? That is, what's your relationship to plants outside the course?

Derek: Hmm. Do I garden? A qualified yes. My wife maintains that she is a gardener and I am a plant freak. I try to acclimatize Himalyan blue poppies and lavish care on specific projects-tree peonies, offbeat hybrid day lilies, ferns. As for cooking, I make stir fries. I love Chinese food-mostly Cantonese. I am also a compulsive hiker, botanizer-with a special attraction to wood ferns-ancient and mysterious.

Bibliochef: Who would you most like to take your course? (I don't mean which student, I mean in your imagination. . . .) If you could have any guest speaker at all for the course who would you invite? Why?

Derek: I think a wide range of students would enjoy and benefit from the course. I doubt that it is good to entertain some vision of an ideal student--classes really work when there are diverse interests and experiences in play. As guest speakers I would like to have Pollan because I very much admire his work on both plants and food; Schiebinger because of the way she brings together plants, power and knowledge, and perhaps the present director of Kew to explore the millennial seed project and what it means to preside over a post-imperial botanical garden.

Bibliochef: What’s the absolutely best meal you have ever had? What made it the best meal?

Derek: Absolutely best meal, hmmm. There have certainly been some standouts -- one at I Quattro Amici in Florence, Italy, really excellent fish restaurant and dim sum at a wonderful restaurant in Guanzho. The quality of the food in both places -- extraordinary tastes.

Bibliochef: What music, films, books related to food and/or food and/or plants would you recommend? Why?

Derek: Two films that come to mind are Ang Lee's film "Eat, Drink, Man, Woman" about a Chinese chef and his four daughters-a subtle exploration of aging, family life and the way food bonds families together. The other film is Satyijat Roy's A Distant Thunder about the Bengali famine of 1943, a famine caused by the British extracting and shipping off grain for the war -- an indictment of empire that gives one a rather different perspective on World War II. Not the good war for Bengali peasants.

Bibliochef: What do you eat for comfort food?

Derek: Nuts -- especially peanuts in elephantine quantities.

Bibliochef: If you were not a historian and faculty member, what other occupation would you like to have? What job would you hope never to do?

Derek: I started out in pre-med-so probably a medical researcher-integrative physiology and biochemistry. I could also imagine doing similar work in botany. I would never want to be an academic administrator, a public relations person for a pharmaceutical firm, or a prison guard--though I have known my share of the first two and have limited experience of the third.

Bibliochef: Do you have a favorite restaurant in the Finger Lakes?

Derek: Chen's Garden on Monroe Ave in Rochester; Cantonese House on Winton for dim sum and Ming's on Monroe for an unpretentious, but very good noodle restaurant-Ho Fun and Shanghai noodles recommended.

Bibliochef: What am I not asking that I should?

Derek: I will let you figure this one out.

I Laughed Out Loud

Talking with My Mouth Full is something I do on occasion, but it is not this book's title that made me laugh out loud. In fact, when I picked it out of the newish books on the shelves of the Geneva (NY) Public Library, it was its subtitle that attracted me: Crab Cakes, Bundt Cakes, and Other Kitchen Stories. Written by Bonny Wolf, NPR's Weekend Edition food commentator who is also an occasional blogger (ok, it's way out of date) and contributor to Kitchen Window (a web newsletter from NPR), this 2006 book is a reasonably quick read. In fact, the book is sort of bloggish, by which I mean it is comprised of short pieces strong together in a sort of chatty fashion and followed by recipes. Wolf has organized her book into three sections: "Generation to Generation," "Feeding the Multitudes," and "Foreign Foods." Topics range from those mentioned in the title -- bundt cakes and crab cakes -- to such wonders as toast and fish cooked in salt (I have always wanted to do this and lived in fear of doing it with the wrong salt. Turns out Wolf got there ahead of me.)

So: what made me laugh out loud? It was a short essay toward the beginning of "Generation to Generation" that made me laugh out loud in pleasure. The essay, entitled "Aunt Esther's Antipasto" begins with the following sentence: "I was married and living in the East before I found out that antipasto did not originate in the Minnesota Iron Range"(p. 21). It was not the notion of the Minnesota Iron Range that made me laugh (though I had never heard of it and I admit the notion puzzled (and puzzles) me; in fact, because I was reading about cooking I sort of imagined a huge cooking appliance somewhere in Minnesota. I have since been corrected). Anyway, what brought about the belly laugh was the tale that followed -- and the discovery of something very familiar embedded in this story of someone else's epiphany. The story -- spoiler alert -- is about Wolf's discovery that what antipasto meant to her -- jarred and seasoned vegetables -- was not what antipasto meant to many other people (trays of meats, cheeses, pickled vegetables, for example, or the first course in an Italian meal). She eventually traces this fixation to a modified (Minnesotan) version of a Sicilian food. But what really made me laugh -- simply and truly with pleasure -- was nothing but the particular antipasto she mentioned part way into the tale as representing something much like what she means by antipasto and what it meant in the Minnesota Iron Range. She mentioned "Something Special Deli Foods" Gourmet Antipasto made in Alberta, Canada (and pictured below). This is the very antipasto which I was introduced to in trips to Alberta and which we were recently utterly frustrated to realize is now impossible to bring home. Why? The new air travel regulations treat this antipasto like they treat toothpaste and shampoo and other liquids and gels. Only 3 ounces can come through in your carry on (and it must fit into a very specific size baggy). And while we love this antipasto, the risk of it (tasty though it is) distributed haphazardly throughout our checked luggage should the (glass) bottle break is just too much.

What should we do? Well, one possiblity is to try to make it. And Bonny Wolf does offer a recipe. Another is to try to find it in the US. There are certainly Costco warehouse stores in the US, which Wolf mentions as one source for the Antipasto. (No, they do not have it on-line.) Or perhaps we could start an import/export business. Any ideas?

There's much more to Wolf's book -- nothing too serious, but I hope you too will find a belly laugh. (I intend to send a chapter on Crab Cakes to a friend who persists in ordering them everywhere I go, but that's a tale for another day.)

antipasto
Bonny Wolf
Minnesota Iron Range

May 2007 Blogs to Watch Out For

I read Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. It is one of my guilty pleasures. I read it. I read the whole thing. And, having just read the July issue (yes, time passes differently in land o' magazines than in the blogosphere) one of the new blogs I have been exploring comes from Ed Gorman's column, Blog Bytes. The site is Cluelass (www.cluelass.com) As Gorman notes, it is a swell site for mystery lovers (not to mention the punny name). If you browse around the site, even you will know when a new mystery with the title (sed a number of times here and elsewhere ) "Murder on the Menu" will be out.

Where else might you stop in the blogosphere these days?

For those of us nonplussed by recent controversy in Geneva, NY about political blogs, I just discovered fingerlakes1.com. Call me slow. There are loads of blogs there -- with entries ranging from snowcones to local politics. Brian Kolb, for example, has a blog. Check it out. And all this preceded No Strings Attached, the blog stirring up political controversy (well, actually just outing it) in Geneva.

If higher education rocks your socks, you might want to check out a 2003 Chronicle of Higher Education article on "Scholars Who Blog" click here. Somehow the whole thing is oddly seriously silly.

And I found a great piece on sabbaticals -- particularly relevant for those of you NOT in higher education -- on this site, which is called Educated Nation. (Novel idea, eh?)

If that is not enough for you this month, there's always the site called "Religion is a Queer Thing."

Yes, I am an academic and it is the end of the academic year. And I seem to be developing a serious case of insomnia. I'll get back to food blogs soon. But meanwhile!

New Link Posted

A new addition to the side bars always merits an announcement. And that's particularly true for our newest link, to Normal Bread. Yes, Dustin Cutler's bread shop, the foodie wonder of wonders in Geneva this past year, has a website. Dustin's bread has been part of this site from the get go, so I am sorry I didn't have the link up before.

If you have never heard of normal bread then you are just abnormal for a Finger Lakes foodie. What to do to regain normalcy? Check out the variety of entries on normal bread right here at Cooking with Ideas, starting with an interview with Dustin before the bakery opened and an entry on the opening itself. Or, better yet, go directly to the source -- either buy some bread at the bakery itself on Washington Street in Geneva or try it at the restaurants that use it -- including Madderlake Cafe (on Rte. 14 South of Geneva or the newest addition to the Geneva restaurant scene, the Red Dove at 30 Castle Street, which is using Dustin's brioche for french toast at Sunday brunch).

Keep An Eye Out For. . .

If you read this site regularly you may know that we are edging up to the one year anniversary of the blog! So, thanks for reading along. In the next little while you can look forward to

*An interview with Hobart and William Smith Colleges' Professor Derek Linton

*A review of Bonny Wolf's book, Talking with My Mouth Full

*Short snippets on a new place in Geneva, The Red Dove, and recent visits to some old favorites

*A minor tirade on Wegman's, pseudo-service culture, and harissa

*A look at Jonathan Reynolds' book, Wrestling with Gravy: A Life, With Food

*A new "Blogs to Watch Out For" entry

(The image, by the way, is an Escher.)