YUM.neatlysliced.com

Make that 117 Nagging Food Questions and counting! Over at Chow, a food media site, every week the answer of a new nagging food question is posted. As of January 15, 117 answers are at your disposal!

Some of my favorites?

• How Long Can You Keep Dry Spices? [Short answer: 1-3 years, depending on whole or ground, unless you bust out the fancy storing techniques]
• Why Do Onions Make You Cry? [Short answer: It's all about the chemical reactions]
• How Long Can Dried Pasta Be Stored? [Short answer: Years and years!]
• What Makes Cheddar Cheese Sharp? [Short answer: Bacteria from aging - gross, but so delicious!]
• Is Soy Lecithin Bad for You? [Short answer: Like anything, it's ok - in moderation. It's a natural derivative of the soybean]

via Wordhole

A lot of food groups on Flickr are pure fluff – just pretty photos of food with no utility beyond the visual. Once in a great while I enjoy looking at food, but more often than not, I’m going to want to reproduce it!

I stumbled upon a a few groups whose premise is that each photo must be accompanied by a recipe or a link to a recipe. It combines my love of looking at delicious food with real life reviews and reproduction ability! Recipes to Share, Cooking (recipe required), The (un)official Flickr cookbook, and Food with Blogged Recipes are all recipe based Flickr groups.

One delight that I found through The (un)official Flickr cookbook is this excellent idea of a Lemon-Ginger cookie:

You can find the recipe at the user’s blog, Coconut & Lime.

View my “food” tagged Flickr items to see more yums that yours truly has made or just plain eaten.

I needed a delicious treat, so I pulled out my trusty favorite pastry cookbook (Biggest Book of Cookies – you will need no other pastry cookbook!) and thumbed through until I found this sweet delight.

I highly recommend this option from the book. I shared it with about 15 people and the average rating was about an 8.5.

The cream cheese frosting really made the treat. Half of a brick of cream cheese, half of a stick of butter, and one teaspoon of vanilla mixed together. The recipe says then to add powdered sugar starting with 1 cup and then adding an additional 1 3/4 to 2 1/4 cups, but I found that about 2 1/2 cups total sufficed for me. Of course add more or stop adding to reach the consistency you like. I think the slight less firm consistency of the frosting is what added to this pastry’s draw.

My mouth is watering just looking at it. Seriously, this bar is amazing. So carrot-cake like, yet retaining the hints of pumpkinish goodness.

UPDATE:
I happened to look at my tracking and it looks like this image was used in a newspaper blog post – the News Gazette. Hurray for beautiful food photos!

This afternoon I upgraded the site to use WordPress 2.7. The site was on such an old install – still using 2.2! You won’t see much on the user end, but trust me, the administrative portion is so vastly improved that I’m sure I will be writing more, I almost guarantee it. Isn’t it funny how a nicer environment encourages productivity?

Along with the upgrade, I included the Sociable plugin, which inserts social website sharing links at the bottom of each post. It’s a nice feature if you want to e-mail, tweet, or bookmark something quickly.

I have an awesome pastry post in the works, so stay tuned!