On our recent trip to the Brooklyn Flea, we sampled some of these tasty Lebni yogurts from Likitsakos Specialty Foods. Sweetened with honey and spiked with vanilla extract, these yogurts are rich and creamy, and flavored with things like real blackberries, almonds, and grapes.

Cupcakes have long needed a makeover. In October of 2007, recent Parsons grad Keavy Landreth turned her procrastination of baking into a decadent little moneymaker called Kumquat Cupcakery. The catch? You may think you can eat 12 of these bite-sized cupcakes, but they are surprisingly rich and delicious. So let’s say it would be like stuffing 12 bonbons in your mouth.

“Recognizing that meat consumption/production has a large environmental footprint and negative human health effects (in terms of carbon emissions, water footprint, pollution of habitats) we’ve decided to serve a vegetarian entrée with a sustainable duck option.” – Global Environment rep for Grub Street

Brunch. Grumpy shrill morning-after 30something women, large sunglasses, whispers about who doesn’t remember what from last night, hungover waiters, overpriced eggs and pancakes, and lots of hair-of-the-dog. Brunch. I gave up on brunch a couple years ago when I realized it’s basically the black void hungover food fade between breakfast and dinner, AND it only happens on my days off. I love me some baked eggs, but I make prefer ‘em without a side of sweaty waiter. Grub Street just reported on Brunch the musical opening April 2. Maybe my fellow New Yorkers will get a little queasy once this scene is set to music. Sample, anyone?

“BRUNCH is a new rock musical about the New York City restaurant scene from the eyes of those who do the serving. It’s about the daily grind, specials, romances, firings, tips and VIPs that inhabit every restaurant, bistro, café and diner in the city. BRUNCH follows a cast of characters — waiters, bartenders and managers — through the most hectic shift of the week, from the first cup of coffee to the last reservation at the tension-filled, comically riotous, patience-trying shift at the end of the restaurant week — Brunch!”

I’m a purist when it comes to lazy or secret eating habits. I tend toward spoonfuls of peanut or cashew butter. I like nut butters so much an ex-roommate of mine would carve initials in his Peter Pan as a marker to alert him of my having been there. I also love skinning a mango with my teeth and then sucking on the pit.

It feels like we’ve been tackling the flu since our return from Japan (or are we just sick with longing to go back?). When I caught sight of this recipe chock full of garlic, ginger, and dark leafy greens loaded with calcium, Vitamin A, and Vitamin C, I thanked its source, Eating Well, for giving me a treatment I don’t need to gag on and swallow with huge gulps of water. Not only are the ingredients healthy, but this salad tickles your sweet, salty, bitter, and sour buds. Throw in some kelp and you’d have all five taste buds present.

3 Buck Bites, Citysearch‘s newest endeavor, attempts to ease our pockets a little by promising to scour our cities for dirt cheap edibles. While it seems like a $4 meal nationwide consists of… you guessed it, burgers, dogs, tacos, sugar, and eggs, there is the occasional oyster ($2 mollusks for the win!) or Asian dish.

The NY offerings are more heavy on the sugar, making me wonder if cost of living can be ignored in this $3.99 bill. Still, there’s hopefully more blocks to walk in our street-food-free, sunless, floating cement box, and cheaper and more edible food to be uncovered in the outer boroughs.

In all seriousness, though, good food should cost less. Restaurants in New York at least (the site currently includes 7 other cities) need to close the gap in price. I am interested to see what sites like 3 Buck Bites will uncover, and what they will instigate.

Choosing a healthy diet today isn’t easy. When I was a kid, class and religion still dictated most of our eating habits. Nowadays pollution, GMO, obesity, and big industry further complicate our choices. The concern over eating a tuna fish sandwich back then was the stink. Today it’s such a loaded issue I take pause before publishing the recipe.

“A perfect bunch of radishes is almost too pretty to eat. A freshly cured head of garlic is a world apart from a dry Chinese clove. A leek split in half along its length. I believe that this moment, recognizing beauty and curiosity of what is before you ready to be cooked is an essential part of the cooking process. It’s also why it becomes harder and harder to eat conventionally grown food. In addition to being questionably grown and nutritionally inferior, it is positively unremarkable.”
- Caroline Fidanza, “Ribollita” for Diner Journal No. 10

Ceramic vessels have been used for cooking for centuries the world over. The sand pot in China, cazuela in Spain, and the tagine (tajine, or طاجين in Arabic) in Morocco all take advantage of ceramic’s porous nature and the moist environment created by these covered casserole vessels that release steam gradually. Vessels like these are used to cook food slowly, creating juicy and tender proteins simmered in rich, flavorful sauces with little need for additional liquid or fat. I recently bought a contemporary version of the tagine from the French company Le Creuset. Our first tagine dish was savory, a little buttery, with a kick of spice, and included incredibly moist, succulent fish and enough broth to dip bread in to our heart’s content. Oh joy.