Here's a pretty quick, but special breakfast. I ground the cardamom seed in my coffee grinder. I don't mind a little of that in my coffee later.

2/3 cup flour
2 eggs
1 cup milk
3 T butter, room temperature
1/4 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp cardamon, ground

Whip the eggs, butter and milk together to get some air into the batter, then add the dry ingredients. Mix well and let sit for a minute.

A crepe pan would be perfect for this, but you could just swirl it around in a good non-stick pan so it's thin enough. Fill with nutella and roll up. If you are really energetic in the morning, you could make your own, but I just bought mine.

Some new food blogs to add to the list. Some of these are brand-spanking-new. Usually I give new blogs a few weeks before I include them, but this crop is particularly good, brimming with food passion, enthusiasm for exploring a variety of foods and recipes, and nice photography. All necessary ingredients for blogs with a long life-expectancies.

Delicious Biting "musings of a L.A. flaneuse on all things delicious, irreverent, and incongruous. yes, L.A. really"

A Cat In The Kitchen "written by a cat addicted lacto-ovo vegetarian who however also eats fish. As her beloved boyfriend is a meat lover it's not easy to decide what to cook in their household." From Sweden.

The Devon Dumpling "Tales from a West Country kitchen"

Folkfood New Hampshire

The Sour Patch "A dollop of sweet and a pinch of sour..." From Toronto.

The Thorngrove Table "Personal adventures, discoveries and disasters in Medieval and modern cuisine."

Who Wants Seconds "an American living in the U.K., trying to improve my photography and expand my culinary horizons at the same time."

And a couple, not so new, blogs that should have been on there a while back.

I love Sandwiches

Fresh Approach Cooking "Talking about cooking classes, at Fresh Approach Cooking, in Los Angeles."

I have to comment on this The best, worst of new grocery products in 2004 article. While I don't have any issues with their worst list (just what is the point of low carb ice cream and chocolate bars?) I have to take issue with their best of list.

It's full of things like packaged apple slices, packaged salads, individually wrapped 100 calorie packs of cookies, lemon juice in jars and rice that takes 90 seconds to cook but is 15 times more expensive than regular rice.

Is this what we should be praising? Should we really be clamoring for products that we can cook without even owning a knife or a stove? Are we that lacking in self control and so full of guilt that we can't buy cookies without paying a premium, and accept the waste of extra packaging because we're afraid of what might happen if we buy 2 dozen of them?

I know convenience is important for busy parents, but for God's sake, can we really not cut up an apple by ourselves anymore? If our time is really so expensive that we need to pay a ridiculous price because we don't have 15 minutes to make rice, we may want to figure out what the hell we're doing with our time.

A few items that really pissed me off:

"Earthbound Apple Slices. Slices of crisp apples packed in individual bags to make eating fruit on-the-go easy and appealing."

Never mind the stupidity of paying for someone else to slice your apples for you, you might want to think about what happens to those individual bags once they become "Earthbound" as opposed to what happens to an apple core and its seeds.

"Sunrich Naturals Frozen Edamame. Fresh soybeans taken out of their pods, bagged and frozen so they're now as easy to enjoy as frozen peas."

Guess what? I hate frozen peas. (I've edited out a certain curse gerund in that sentence that would describe just how much I f'ing hate them.)

"Keebler Sandies Fruit Delights Shortbread Cookies. Despite the name, these taste more like delicious little strawberry or apple pies. Like pie, they're very crumbly and therefore not ideal for dashboard dining."

Guess what? Maybe you wouldn't be worried about whether you need to buy 100 calorie packs of cookies if you weren't "dashboard dining". The only times you should be eating in your car is when there's a tray hooked on to your door's window that someone on roller skates delivered or when you're on a long trip on an interstate. Then you can have a cookie.

"Nature Path Flax Plus. Chock-full of the whole grains and fiber that make breakfast cereals worth eating. Tasty too."

This might be really good, I'll never know though, since the name itself makes me wonder what flax plus would do to my internal "nature path".

"Birds Eye Voila! Chicken & Sausage Tuscano. A restaurant-quality dish featuring big pieces of peppers, mushrooms, chicken and fennel-accented sausage in a delicious, medium-spicy red sauce. It's pasta-less because it was designed with low-carb dieters in mind. But I'd gladly boil water for one of the best frozen dinners I've ever eaten (and this is the voice of experience speaking)."

By restaurant quality you're talking about Olive Garden right? I thought so. Because they serve pre-prepared frozen dinners too.

Link found via Sour Patch, one of the good, new food blogs I was about to list before I plunged into this rant.

Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005 "Consume a variety of nutrient-dense foods and beverages within and among the basic food groups while choosing foods that limit the intake of saturated and trans fats, cholesterol, added sugars, salt, and alcohol." The US Food Policy blog has some good comments and links to viewpoints and reactions from food industry and public interest groups.

The Kosher Bachelor has a PDF link to military regulation deserts "3.3.5 Brownie coating. The brownies shall be completely enrobed with a continuous uniform chocolate coating (see 3.2.14) in an amount which shall be not less than 29 percent by weight of the finished product. "

Hilarious Australian commercial from an Australian Rules Football player. Don't get busted eating anything but Lamb this Australia Day. "I'm sickened by the creeping tide of unAustralianism eroding our great traditions. A balanced Australia Day diet should consist of a few nice, juicy lamb chops and beer... Your long-haired, dole bludging types are indulging their pierced tastebuds in all manner of exotic, foreign and often vegetarian cuisine..."

Newcastle Brown Ice Cream It's like a dream come true. "Premier league ice cream maker, Doddington Dairy have teamed up with Edinburgh based, Scottish Courage to produce Newcastle Brown Ice Cream - a delicious blend of the North East's most famous brew, with its most famous ice cream."

Sauce in Translation "In many Asian countries, soy sauces are brewed, aged and collected like fine wine. There are soy sauces for special occasions and sauces for daily use. In Japan, there are more than 2,600 soy sauce breweries... In general, the two main types of natural soy sauce, shoyu and tamari, are produced through the fermentation of soybeans, water, salt and koji (Aspergillus) spores. Tamari is made from the liquid that collects atop miso, a fermented soybean paste. In the case of shoyu, the yellowish-green mold inoculates the wheat. This takes about three days to develop. 'Like bakeries that each have their own sourdough yeast, each soy sauce brewery will have a proprietary koji,'..."

More to add to the list:

A Banana in Australia Food writings from a Malaysian-born, New Zealand-raised and now Australian-based, Chinese.

Food Migration "the chronicles of a young lady's culinary misadventures"

London Chef

Nourishment

The Skinny Epicurean "I'm just a girl who is taken by the endless works of amazing visual art that can possibly come out of the kitchen. In short, food porn."

GungHaggisFatChoy "Asian Canadian adventures in inter-cultural Vancouver and home of Toddish McWong's Robbie Burns Chinese New Year Dinner"

Shoik Chef's notes "A regular selection of kitchen tips, recipes, and cooking principles" I keep forgetting to get Madhu's blog on here, especially since it's full of valuable stuff like How to make perfect steamed rice. Professional-level photography too.

Trans Fatty Blog "Because fat, by any other name, is still the same"

Waiter Blog

winosandfoodies "A personal review on wines, restaurants, books, movies, people and anything else of interest at home and on my travels." From my favorite city in the world - Auckland NZ.

I just completed the rounds of my food blog list, updating a few URLs and removing some dormant ones. In the course of my travels, I wound up with a list of recipes and foods I need to try out soon. Visiting all those sites makes me realy hungry.

Nasi Lemak Rice made with coconut milk. Sounds simple enough, but I'll to find out what pandan is.

Pita bread I've done this before, but without yeast. It's simple and you don't need to have any diary on hand.

Eggnog pancakes

Homemade nutella

Crawfish Cornbread

These gingersnaps or maybe these gingersnaps.

General Tso's Chicken

Carrot Habanero Soup

Southwest Pinto Bean Burgers with Chipotle Mayonnaise

Banana Mango Ice Cream

The Boston Globe did a story on food blogs and the Food Blog Awards - Food bloggers chronicle their delicious obsession The article notes there's well over a hundred food blogs. I have 267 of them on my list (not including the coffee and wine blogs).

UPDATE: If you're coming from the Boston Globe, you may be looking for the list of food blogs they told you that you were going to when you clicked the link.

I have to apologize to excellent food bloggers every time I update the list of food blogs, since I manage to pass right by some of them every time. I use a very unscientific method to find new food blogs - if I recognize it, I figure I've already included it. Of course that means ones I do recognize, but haven't included, will never get on. Also, years ago I screwed up and updated the list with an older version, so a few long-time blogs disappeared. Here's three who should have been on the list a long time ago:

The Accidental Hedonist That's right, I managed to miss kate's site on the list, even though see's the one that worked so hard to put together the successful Food Blog Awards. Not a good way to try to influence the awards is it?

101 cookbooks A know I've listed this one in the past. The 2004 Best Photography Food Blog Award winner. It's only natural that someone who spends so much time with cook books, combined with great photography skills should have her own cook book.

shiokadelicious! "Personal Experiences of Shiok-Eats From My Kitchen and Around The World
Shiok! [shee-oak] (adj) colloquial Straits Chinese/Malay; fantastic; marvelous; an exclamation of enjoyment."

And here are some other sites I just found to add to the list:

Bay Area Bites Culinary rants & raves from Bay Area food professionals from KQED.

Culinary Epiphanies

Esurientes - The Comfort Zone, Melbourne, Australia

The Food Whore

KiTcHeN cRaZy adventures with pots and pans!

Love and Cooking

Mom's Kitchen

My Adventures in the Breadbox

Raging Yoghurt

I've got a backlog of pictures and reviews from my last two East Coast trips over Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Here's a behind the scenes shot of me shooting food. There's the Nikon 885 that takes all the pictures for this site, and my famous "stick the lens into the food technique". The subject is Alligator Chili at the Lambertville Station, right next to the Delaware in NJ. Their chili is very tasty, spicy without too much burn, generous on the alligator meat too.

If you're into other "zoo food", check out Wild Game Schedule for specials on elk, caribou, kangaroo etc.

This is the typical American-strip-mall Chinese Restaurant style dish. Lightly battered and fried chunks of chicken get a luscious reduced sauce of pineapple juice with a slight vinegar edge. My version has mandarin oranges and is loaded with ginger and spiced with some thai peppers. The juice from the oranges, and some honey give my recipe a more sweet-than sour side. I think I've done this recipe before, but I just recently noticed that many of my early recipes never got imported back into the archives. I'll work on that sometime, but for now, here's the recipe:

1 red pepper, diced
1 green pepper, diced
1 or 2 thai peppers
2 T minced ginger
3 or 4 green onions
1 8oz. can of pineapple chunks
1 small can of mandarin oranges
2 T cornstarch
1/3 cup of honey
1/3 cup cider vinegar
1 T soy sauce
1 1/2 lb chicken breast and/or thigh meat, cut into 1 inch cubes

Batter:
1 beaten egg
1/4 cup water
1/4 cornstarch
1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground ginger

Your favorite rice

Cooking oil for frying

The first picture is from my archives, it may have been a lost recipe, or maybe I never wrote it up. I'm not sure what i did with the rice that time, I might have made it with saffron or something to color it. I think I prefer regular jasmine rice for this dish. The second image is from tonight. I added mushrooms this time which didn't do anything bad, but they really don't belong here.

This recipe is a bit of a pain in the ass, but everybody loves it.

Put on the rice. I threw in some minced ginger and a green onion. This is a good time to prep your veggies.

Grab your big-ass cast-iron skillet and put about a cup of oil in it to heat. If you don't have a cast-iron skillet, consider getting one for this sort of thing. If you have a deep fryer you can use that.

Mix up the batter in a big bowl, in the order of ingredients above, until smooth. Dump your chicken chunks into the batter and make sure they're all coated.

Drop each chunk into the hot oil carefully, one by one allowing each piece some space. Don't try to do them all at the same time, you will have to do three or four pans. My recipe from a Better Homes and Garden Chinese Cooking cookbook says 365 degrees F, but that sounds really hot. I'm afraid you'll just have to learn how hot the oil needs to be. I've learned from experience that a little less than medium flame on my stove is perfect. The chicken chunks should take about 3 minutes a side until golden brown. Too much faster and the batter will brown before the chicken is cooked. Flip them carefully with long tongs. (with a deep fryer, you won't have to worry about flipping). Drain the chunks and keep them warm.

While your doing this, open the canned fruit and dump all the fruit and juice except half the pineapple juice into another skillet (don't splash into the hot oil!). Start it towards a boil, throwing in the vinegar, honey, peppers, onions and ginger. Add the cornstarch to the reserved half of the juice and mix well, then add to the boiling mix. Cook until bubbly and thickened enough to coat.

You should have perfectly timed this to be ready just as the rice is, and all the chicken chunks are fried. Dump the chicken into the sauce, and cook just until heated through. I usually add more honey at this stage, it give everything a nice sheen. Plate over rice.

I should mention, if you're lazy, that these fried chicken chunks are delicious on their own. They're great dipped in a mix of honey and Sriracha hot chili sauce (the stuff with the rooster on it).

Amuse Bouche

The Barefoot Kitchen Witch

Eat Barcelona Memories of Barcelona dining.

Blue Plate Bachelor "Basic Dining for the Basic Bachelor"

eggbaconchipsandbeans

That reminds me - I was watching Pink Floyd's Live at Pompeii and Nick Mason orders eggssausagechipsandbeans, and a tea. But the best food line is from Roger Waters, who when asked if the Oysters he's eating are French, answers "I don't know what nationality they are. I'd like to think that oysters transcend national barriers."

Kosher Bachelor

Kosher Vegan Lasagna
"...and other recipes for an increasingly complicated world"

ForkAndPen "Where the fork comes before the pen."

A Full Belly "is a weblog about eating well"

Good Food "Good cooking, Southern cookin" There are some really good sounding recipes on this one - Sopapilla Cheesecake, Old South Caramel Cake, Sweet Potato Biscuits, etc.

Oh My God It Burns

Oklahoma Wine News Oklahoma state wine industry news and vineyard events. Bet you didn't even know there was an Oklahoma Sstate wine industry. To be fair there is an Illinois Wine industry too.

Pastry Elf "slouching towards ganache"

The Radical Chef "A Filipino mom re-defines Philline cuisine." I could have sworn I had this one, but it slipped away somehow.

You gonna eat that? "Random musings on food and life in Orange County, California."

Two serious food issue blogs:

U.S. Food Policy "U.S. food policy and economics from a public interest perspective. Parke is a food economist. If there were a profession called 'nutrition economics,' he would belong to it."

U.S. farmpolicy A blog featuring news analysis and commentary regarding U.S. farm policy. Written by another professional - an Agricultural Statistician.

And more to add to the list of food blogs:

Baby Rambutan A rambutan is a "spiky bright red Malayan fruit, with soft, sweet and juicy flesh, and a stone pit." From Boston.

Baking beast "a suspicious creature has been lurking around the streets, leaving behind delights that dreams are made of. what's to become of this baking beast?"

Green Mansion "Suplada's Food Blog"

In A Vegan Kitchen From Nova Scotia

Jonny Angel an archivist in Palm Springs obsessed with Asian food, mid-century modernism, and Things Japanese.

Lafang List

KookyKookbook "Simply Simple but Good Food Recipes."

Oslo Foodie

The Pilgrim's Pots and Pans

Seven Kinds of Soy Sauce Adventures in home cooking, often (but not always) Asian. From New Jersey.

Cheese Net Not a blog, but it does have a cheese of the day.

This being a food blog, I should mention that I'm in the process of getting a new kitchen. Unlike some unfortunate people, it's being done in stages, so I can still cook, it's just that some of my stuff is packed away in a bedroom closet, and my food processor and all my knives are in living room, in the kitchen cart I bought at World Market (the one I have is not on that site anymore, but it's still a good place for stuff like that).

I now have a full countertop and a stainless steel double sink, we just have to finish the walls and floor. And I'm looking for some restaurant-type steel shelves. I don't need all-around cabinets, since I have a pantry room with plenty of storage space.

I see a lot of articles on designing a kitchen for functionality, like this recent Trib one - True cook wants a kitchen that gets down to business but they all seem to miss an important point. Walk into any commercial kitchen you will see an important item that is centrally located in every single work area - from the prep area, to the sous chef station, to the dishwasher station - the garbage can. In every area in a real kitchen, it will be placed within arms length of the work area. Many times there's a convenient hole opening right into one. Also notice there's no cute little covered-pails that can't hold a square foot of garbage before overflowing. They're giant 55 gallon-drum type things. Handy to be able to prep a case of lettuce without having to stop to take out the garbage.

I certainly don't need anything huge, but I do want it to be within arms length. The diagram shown is my old set-up, with the garbage in the perfect place, between the sink and prep area, where most garbage is generated. My new kitchen now has a countertop that runs only the length of those two walls from that corner, creating lots of work space even with the double sink.

Since I rent, I didn't have much say in the new design. Also the countertop was built and put in while I was away for the holiday. I'm glad to have as much input as I do have, but I would have made some sort of design allowance for the garbage. Sure I could use some sort of bowl while prepping, or drag the can over close to where I'm working, but it doesn't feel very hygenic to be dragging a sloppy garbage pail around to get it in and out of my way. And if your pail is under the sink, behind a cabinet door, your kitchen make look pretty, but you're not being very efficient. It killed me every time I worked in an ex-girlfriend's kitchen to have to wait with a hand full of raw chicken trimmings to move her out of the way of the sink, open a cabinet door and hopefully get the stuff into an always over-stuffed pail.

I'll figure something out, I'm sure. I do have to say, the job on the countertop is beautiful, considering they built it with around a $100's worth of wood. One of the builders has done a fair amount of cabinetry-type work (he built custom caskets for a living). Some pictures to come after the next phase.

More food blogs to add to the list:

Andreayaya.com

Dallasfood.org The latest post has some great BBQ food porn.

Eventual Restaurant "A log of the comedy, pain, and alcholism involved in opening a restaurant."

Glutton's Blog

A Good Beer Blog It's actually a really good beer blog.

Bim and Ruth

English Patis " 'Patis' is fish sauce in Filipino. Writing about Filipino food and cooking and other cuisines in Southern England."

1nstant Gratification Group blog with reviews in London, Sydney and Singapore.

Jamie Eats "Welcome Eat Up & Chow Down"

Kitchen Ni Lola Ko "Here you'll find authentic Tagalog and other interesting dishes, pictures, as well as anything food related."

Kitchen Samurai

Kusina ni Manang " 'Kusina' = kitchen; 'Manang' (aka Ate in Tagalog)= Ilokano term for older sister. This site features (and will feature) favorite Filipino recipes plus American favorites plus new recipes as part of my adaptation to a new surrounding and a new culture"

Obachan's Kitchen & Balcony Garden Food, herbs and bloopers.... Here's my cooking adventures, sometimes with episodes of my family, in a rural town with abundant seafood from the Pacific ocean... "OBACHAN" means a "middle-aged woman" or "aunt" in Japanese."

Prepare To Meet Your Bakerina

Rubber Slippers in Italy "It's a long, long way from Hawaii to Italy. Living in the land of pasta, pizza, and wine is everything that you might imagine, but one thing remains true. You can take the girl out of the island but you can't take the island out of the girl."

Where's my dinner? "A Swedish girl, obsessed with food and cats (and makeup) shares her thoughts, however incoherent they may be, with the world in general."

I also should mention that Murrayhill 5 and what we ate are back blogging. Yay!

And a couple of wine blogs:

Fermentations A wine blog set inside the world of wine public relations where the media, the culture and I mingle. Wineries, wine information, wine writers, wine reviewing, wine rating, wine marketing, wine public relations, the culture of wine.

Professor Bainbridge on Wine Notes on a Southern California Cellarbook

Here are some food links I forgot to post before Christmas.

Show your patriotism with Star Spangled Ice Cream Iraqi Road and I Hate the French Vanilla and other right-wing flavors.

If you really do shop politically, check the Blue Christmas list to see which restaurants, winery, grocery or other store gave to which political party. UPDATE - I waited too long to post this - they took the list down to fact check it.

Or get some of Sierra Club's earth-friendly wines. "All wines have been produced in Northern California with 100% organically grown grapes and have been bottled for the environmentally conscious consumer."

And if you like your food religious, instead of political, you missed your chance to get a grilled-cheese divine apparition. "The grilled-cheese sandwich purported to bear the image of the Virgin Mary, which sold for $28,000 on the Internet auction site eBay last week, likely will not meet the church's criteria of a , according to Catholic experts and theologians."

Krispy Kreme Bread Pudding with Butter Rum Sauce Just the thought of it makes my teeth shudder.