Things-That-Look-Like-Food Club presents - "Give us it"

Soap again!!

My dad sent me some fabulous little X-mas gifts, and when I opened up these lovelies from
Ella Cris and placed them side by side I had a strange urge to chomp down with all massive, joy-lit delight. Gladly I didn't, I mean, it's still soap, but how gorgeous can you be?

I imagined some swirly tops of blue lavender whip cream and a thick honey comb wedge of butter on the side. yesh.

Leda's Bake Shop - Food Lover's Haven

There's a great place in Sherman Oaks called Leda's bakeshop, with the best brownies scones and cupcakes in the valley, pretty much hands down. As much as I know I adore food, I'm always surprised at my obsession for the naked parts, or just baked forms, of pastries, cakes and cookies...

THE BROWNIE

Every time they make these I find myself falling into a trance as they crunchy-crunch *SLLLICE* the thick chocolate wedge with the big serrated knife. mmmm, momma loves you freshly just barely baked gooey walnut brownie innards.


THE COLD BUTTER CHUNKS

They scoop ALOT of cookies, (you can see them working just behind the glass windows) and they're pretty cute, all lined up in rows, though just like any normal cookie would look. BUT, when a slab of cold, shiny butter exposes itself like this in one of the cookie dough balls, I swear to god I could have a baby. And name it OMG I F**KING LOVE BUTTER.


THE DULCE

They also make homemade ducle de leche, and I'm still amazed at how easy it is (*boil a can of sweetened condensed milk, taking care to keep it submerged at ALL times, for 4-5 hours. Das' it!)

And then it looks like that.


ya.

Go check them out! yumm

Things-That-Look-Like-Food Club presents: "Shove it in My Mouth"

Ok, I know it's not real food, but that doesn't mean it's not hot as F**K or that I don't want to eat it. (ahem).

But seriously, one look at these amazingly crafted soaps from Mollycoddle's shop on Etsy.com and you'll forgive the impostors. www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=62537

Sometimes you just have to come right out and say it: Yes, I will eat that soap, thank you.

Gourmet Magazine - warming the cockels of the stomach.

Taking a break from the oozy-sexiness and easing into the sweet, lovely and to-die-for, I decided to share with all of you the most gorgeous spread of holiday delicacies this side of Santa's kitchen. (hyuck)
I fortunately have a subscription to Gourmet magazine and this month it was one doozy after another...

Gimme a BANG!












Gimme a BOOM!


Gimme a BABYHOTMAMMA!!












just Gimme Gimme Gimme!













MM!
sex is always better when you're in love.

visit http://www.epicurious.com/gourmet/ for more of these delectable photos and their recipes.

Um... do me now

A few years ago my sister and I visited my dad and went to Boston. I remember there was something about a "Paul Revere" and maybe a "Freedom Trail" and like, history, birth of the country or something, and then there was - MIKE'S PASTRY!

Maybe it was just the fact that we'd been walking for hours and had seen about 3 people carrying the bakery's tightly wrapped, white boxes, (God's will my child) but there was something holy and deeply, deeply seductive about that crowded, steamy room, that wide cupped cappuccino, and oh yes... that cannoli.

Now I remember why.



http://www.mikespastry.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc

Something Special at Specialtys - the joy of a smashy sandwich

I was searching through some older photos of food when I came across this gem. It's one of my favorites not only because it's a sticky stick, 'muh bread's stickin' to much mouf' type o' sandwich, but because it's from one of my near and dear SF haunts, Specialty's Cafe and Bakery. They bake all their bread fresh, and make amazing, giant wobbly shaped cookies that are enough to send your throat shivering from the sugar halfway to China and back.

My heart WAS, in fact, left in SF, so I am particularly biased when it comes to the cities eateries, but I ask you, is there anything sexier than this sandwich right now? (and what's sexier than that bread? that smashed bread? that smashed, warm, freshly oven-ed bread?.... that's right, NOTHING)


Oh! I think I feel my heart beating a little bit stronger! sigh, swoon, shoooooooo (faint)

specialtys.com

WHITE GOLD HONEY

White soft and batter-textured bliss, white pretty incandescence lost on melting, melting tongue. It took me twice to swallow, pretty sugar paste, it took me twice to bleed that brooding pearl straight down my slowly melting throat. Soothe me once from the tip of your plastic spoon, and here I am...
Three cheers for raw, unheated honey!! 3 cheers for purest pure and sexiest of truly sexy sex!

Available at Whole Foods

www.whitegoldhoney.com/

and www.pancakeshop.com/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=WG-01

Pad Thai Me Up Thai Me Down

The other day we got thai food where the local singer smiled at us from the stage and sang 'Hey Jude' as a personal request. I went classic white person and got Pad Thai.
It was only afterwards, while eating the left overs with some cabbage that I was somehow overtaken by a force as yet unseen since the days of Dexter chi chi. Meaning, I don't think I've taken this many pictures of something other than my cat. ever.

As I passed my roving camera eye over the peaks and valleys of this burst of crunch and color, I saw every new angle as some beautiful, sick, twisted noodle work of art.

Dirty and pretty.
Plain and glorious. Half eaten, half reverred.
Honestly I don't know what came over me.

Playboy, Eat Your Heart Out

If food is sex, this is porn.

The Many Wonders of Toast

Oh how I love a little swath of mayonnaise/God nectar on some grilled cheese with onion




And the time I accidentally threaded gold with my honey and peanut butter snack



In Santa Cruz I used to stack piles of Sun Maid raisin bread on top of one another for a midnight party snack, buttering feverishly all it's nooks and crannies, until a big, strong knife came and sliced right through the batch. *CRUNCH*

OMG! "I'm toast, let me just be perfect and amazing and gorgeous and crunchy."

I am currently obsessed with Rudi's Organic Sourdough Bread for making some of the best toast I have ever had: dense, tightly woven, cake-like, with a light and crispy, solid toast finish. (no sagging!)

(Wow, I sound like Paddington Bear and Alton Brown all rolled into one.)

A Healthy Breakfast

*sigh*

Red Velvet Wonderfulness

Now THIS, is sex. I challenge you to find a better red velvet cake anywhere in LA. I dont' remember where it was from, but I will find out soon. No matter how far no matter how long, I will find you!!

Beard Papa for the Win

Have you ever made love with a Tupelo honey rainbow made out of Ewan McGregor's smile? Or kissed a melted buttery, chocolatey pot of gold at the end of that rainbow that was actually made out of Ewan McGregor's entire BODY? Or maybe just done a little waltz on the caramel coated rooftop of Hogwarts Castle with Matt Bellamy dipped in custard cream...? if so, you may have come close to the heaven of what this Japanese cream puff den of bliss has to offer.




OMG oozing!

A simple beauty

If you don't think this is sexy, you shouldn't be here.
(Or France, for that matter.)


I love it because both the 'chocolat chaud' I drank here, and the counter woman, were completely below my expectations, proving that even when the reality of the image doesn't live up to your expectations, you still get the image! And sometimes that's all you need.

PARIS JE T'AIME

The best meal I have ever had. And quite possibly the sexiest.

A 1000 Words Are Worth a Picture

Truffles, black chocolate truffles, nearly unmentionable they were so perfect and dark as I knew they would be. I ate them simply with a paper cup of hot chocolate.
I was looking out at the rain and watching the meter, time slowing down in the daze of consumption. So delicate they were, the gluttony barely had a chance. I snapped their shells and swallowed: taste so exquisite there is nothing to do but taste. My silent moment, my reward, as normal a task as any. Dusted fingertips the only trace of it.
I do miss you in these times, but without overthinking you are merely another earth sign. Perhaps I don’t need another. Sex substitutes well with widened eyes from chocolate intake, fresh baked bread, it sticks to your mouth, tempts the fingers to go inside, touch, tip, sip a rounded head of macchiato foam...it’s all sex. There was the missing ingredient in us. But the missing link that kept us what we were.
In any case it’s not about that. It’s not about that right now. It’s about white bread yielding to white beans soaked in vinegar. White daylight in a pastry shop and Serge Gainsbourg singing while we cut vegetables.

Rise and Shine

I went all out one sunday morning with the eggs in the fridge, the frozen sausage, and the potato that had been sitting there for way too long. Sometimes old friends make the best lovers. Especially when you get up in there with a macro lens and some barely melting cheese. EUH YA!

I left my stomach in San Francisco

OMG Stack
My sister and I waited for almost an hour to eat here. As always, breakfast is better in the bay!!!!!! (even when it's just pancakes with walnuts on top). I dont' even want to eat it, I just want to stare.

Dark Chocolate Terrain

Nothing says LOVE like a gently cracking chocolate cake just out of the oven. Naked, untouched, waiting... heheh.

CONFESSIONS OF A CRAZED POPCORN LOVER - the glory of movie night.

When I was in Paris last year we popped corn kernels in a wide skillet without a drop of oil, and strung it on our little Charlie Brown-sized Christmas tree. (His name was Norman).

In early June when it was my mother's birthday and we were settling in for a cozy night of movie-renting and popcorn-candy binging, my desire for making fresh, un-microwaved popcorn struck hard. I remembered Paris and fell under images of a deep, heavy skillet spilling over with mounds of crackling light, homemade popcorn. And butter too! Bowls of butter bathing every crevice, and steaming sweet salty nothings onto our dissolving tongues.

Soon enough I was clanging about the cupboards, digging for the giant stove top pot and smacking alarmingly large wedges of unsalted butter off and into a small saucepan for melting. My mom became tense with all this calmour, and led herself to fretting at the slightest indication of a burnt pan, or the lack of (or over abundance of) coconut oil being used to heat the sweet yellow seed. I rattled and shook, covered and uncovered the pot, peering at the thin layer of glistening kernels bobbing slightly under the pressure of all that growing heat and ignored her. My hair separated and frayed, grew larger over eyes crazed with desire, my face blurred in the maddening steam... She would just have to wait and see.

Mountains! Glorious glowing bright butter colored mountains of pale white yellow popcorn began to erupt from the pot. A few soared like flying fish from The Muppets while I reigned over the rest with my aluminum sheild. A few shakes more and my crop was delivered to the crayola blue bowl waiting on the table. Then came down the warm, heavy rain, drizzling two sticks of unsalted, freshly melted butter over the billowing bowl of hot, dry popcorn. And what could be better than that? (Perhaps dishes of sea salt plucked from their shelves, the thin flakes crushed lightly with all 5 fingers in a flurry and zeal as yet undiscovered since the days of the freshly-picked garden basil or the peppercorns-cracked over homemade vichyssoise. )

In a giant bowl, butter pooling lightly at the bottom and sides scraped with invisible grains of salt, I brought the glory into the den, and we ate. we dug we dug we dug down deep into the bowl, hungry, happy and heavenly fresh.

Food Muse - BROWNIES aka SWEET HEAVEN DIPPED IN CHOCOLATE FOG - the best BROWNIE RECIPE

Our local paper is pretty cool, but not a place where an occasional food snob like me would assume I would find the BEST BROWNIE RECIPE EVER. I stumbled upon this recipe in an article that covered a few different types of how to make the luxurious chocolately fudgey cakey dream confection-thing known as our beloved brownie. This recipe is attributd to Nick Malgieri from the book Chocolate: From Simple Cookies to Extravagant Showstoppers .

I made this brownie recipe for my aunt's 64th birthday after making them once before just for us (my mom, stepdad, me and my boyfriend Danny boy) Imagine late night wedges cracking as you gently lift them up from the pan, cheeks stuffed with heavy, hidden warmth as you sneak a bite for breakfast, and spontaneous ziploc bag stowaways anytime you fear you may be gone long enough to need a light, throat sticking, sweet chocolate humming brownie injection.

ahem. heh...

THE BEST BROWNIE RECIPE:

SUPERNATURAL BROWNIES
you will need: a 13x9" baking pan and parchment paper.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2 sticks (16 Tbls.) unsalted butter, plus more for the pan and paper.

8 oz. bittersweet (not unsweetened) chocolate
(I highly recommend Trader Joes Belgian Pound Plus bar for major bang for the buck)

4 eggs

1/2 tsp. salt

1 cup packed brown sugar

1 cup granulated sugar

2 tsp vanilla

1 cup flour

1/2 cup chopped walnuts, or 3/4 cup whole walnuts, optional. (as is any preferred nut)

Butter a 13x9 inch baking pan and line with buttered parchment paper.

In the top pan of a double boiler set over barely simmering water, melt the 2 sticks of butter and the chocolate together. When all have melted together, remove from heat and cool slightly.

In a large bowl or mixer, whisk eggs.

Whisk in salt, sugars, and vanilla.

Whisk in chocolate/butter mixture.

Fold in flour until just combined.

If using chopped walnuts, stir them in.

Turn batter evenly into prepared pan. If using whole walnuts, arrange on top of the batter.

Bake in a preheated 350 degree oven 40-45 minutes until shiny and beginning to crack on top.

Cool in pan on rack.

makes 15 large to 24 small brownies.

let cool and store tightly wrapped.


(Enjoy the brownie recipe you heavily lidded chocolate addicts!)

Someone's in the Kitchen

Obviously I love food, but in browsing through my photos I noticed there is one thing I love nearly as much, and that's a nice kitchen. I'm certainly not talking one that has to be stainless steel and marble (though when we can all afford that, wouldn't it be nice?) What I love are the kitchens that have so seen the celebration of food and company, day in and day out, that they just look like another member of the family. The kitchens I love in my life are inextricably bound to the food memories they gave me. Here is my mom's kitchen, the daily ritual of very long, late morning breakfasts, my sister and her boyfriend reading the paper. One of my favorite things about my childhood kitchen (and most others) is the light. ahhh, so loverly.
This is my friend Thea's kitchen (that's Thea at the sink) I love the light and the blue curtain. Everyone was piling stuff all over the counter and making drinks and getting the place well worn in and messy, it was great.London! Staying with my friend Sean, at his friend's place in east London, they made potatoes and 'veg', with baked lemon chicken and wine. (or was this the day with roasted parsnips? mmm heaven) I was entranced by the light and the steam (as you can see here) It was a simple meal that seemed appropriately British, and I just watched from the couch as they calmly prepared it, chatting away at the counter.

Julien's kitchen! St. Mande. What can I say? cracking bread, half pulled apart baguette and cheese on the counter, popcorn popping on the stove for stringing on the christmas tree, French boys cooking pasta for 8 people making a mess, and a small cold glass of blood orange juice in the morning before anyone is awake...this is the first kitchen that felt like home to me in a foreign country. (and so far the only one!)
Yay echo park! Bright light coming in from the garden window and any assortment of fresh vegetables or fruit, known or unknown, that we can test, slice, suck, slurp, chomp and sample in the spread of culinary comraderie (and maybe a slice of toast with butter or jam) that is Thea's parent's kitchen. Love it.


OMG crepe parties. Laure's dad's Kitchen. What can I say? This says it all.

My sister Bridget lives in SF, needless to say for anyone who knows me, I absolutely adore it there. This was the day her Turkish boyfriend made a Turkish feast. He was wearing a dark green shirt cutting green scallions and I crowded the table deboning two hot, steaming chickens. He made zucchini fritters and white beans soaked in vinegar with onions and tomatos, swathed with bread soaking up the juices, and my sister made fresh roasted babaganoush from the electric stove top burners. I ran downstairs 3 times in the cold, approaching evening to the store on the corner to get ice, fresh parsley and other last minute additions. I have rarely been so content.