Mike Samonek wants you to play with your food.
That’s part of the reason he came up with the SPECIAL EFFECTS COOKBOOK and Special Effects cooking website, as a way to encourage experimentation in the kitchen and having fun while you eat.
Some of the recipes that are featured include:
Continue reading "Zombie Fun: How to “Eat Your Face” for Halloween"
Weber’s Way to Grill: The Step-by-Step Guide to Expert Grilling
Web Watch knows that there’s nothing that tastes better than some meat cooked fresh on the grill.
And when it’s football season, you have to have a grill to really do the tailgate up right. Web Watch even won a Weber Grill a few years ago in a football tailgating cookoff contest with our grilled steak sandwich with carmelized onions. One of the judges even came back to our setup and took an extra sandwich with them “for the road” when the competition was over.
So we have that going for us.
Which brings us back to today’s point – that when it comes to tailgating and grilling, nobody knows their stuff better than the folks over at Weber.
Which is why every year Weber releases their own WEBER TAILGATING STUDY, a look at the tailgating habits that we should expect to see this upcoming football season.
Continue reading "Most tailgate party cooks prefer chicken or burgers; Some spend over $1000/year on tailgates"
Web Watch enjoys watching the WILL IT BLEND videos on YouTube. Whether it be a blender full of marbles, a broom handle, or an iPhone — the BlendTec Total Blender makes fast work of turning those items into inedible shrapnel.
As they say – don’t try these experiments at home.
But there’s something about having a blender with over 1600 watts of ice crushing power that makes you say, “we gotta have that”. In part because we’ve blown through other blenders when trying to go through different food prep over the years, and in part it’s because Web Watch wants to have the option to shred a jar full of marbles.
We may never do it, but it’s nice to know that we could if we had to.
Continue reading "Chocolate Oreo ice cream done in 40 seconds – The BlendTec Recipe"
Web Watch knows that making great food requires having great spices.
If you don’t have a PENZEY’S SPICES store near you, then maybe you have some other fresh spice retailer or farmer’s market that you could hit up for some glass jars of spice goodness.
And even if you end up buying your spices at the local supermarket, drug store’s food aisle, or giant-size Super Center Warehouse Emporium, the most important thing you can remember is to rotate your spices on a regular basis. Dry spices especially will lose their flavors anywhere from 6 months to a year after your purchase. You wouldn’t serve a beer after it’s “best by” date – you should apply the same philosophy to your spice cabinet and toss out anything that’s more than a year old.
Your taste buds will thank you.
Continue reading "The most popular spice found in homes today? Dry Garlic Powder"
Friends of Web Watch have a large-scale annual Cinco de Mayo party featuring a salsa competition. We’ve been lucky enough to have walked away a prize every year with various takes on salsa, so when this year’s invitation indicated that there would be a guacamole competition instead (“to shake things up a bit”), we took that on as a challenge.
Because, let’s face it, guacamole really isn’t all that hard to make. It’s making prize-winning guacamole that people will declare as “the best thing I ever ate” that takes a little bit more effort. Continue reading "Award-Winning recipe for Cinco de Mayo Guacamole with Blue Cheese and Bacon (inspired by Food Network Best Thing I Ever Ate)"
The Kentucky Derby Museum Cookbook
Next week is the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky.
And if you’re like Web Watch, you will be tuning in to watch the race with friends – holding a mint julep in one hand, and a racing form in the other… all while trying to see the race through the forest of giant Kentucky Derby hats worn by the ladies in the room.
But Kentucky isn’t know just for this long-running horse race.
No, Kentucky is also known for bourbon.
So if you’re going to host or attend a KENTUCKY DERBY PARTY on race day, you may want to make something bourbon-related. You know, just because.
Continue reading "Just in time for the Kentucky Derby: The Ultimate Bourbon Ball Recipe"
It really shouldn’t bother Web Watch as much as it does.
After all, eating too many cookies of any type isn’t good for you. Heck, even Cookie Monster says that “Cookies are a Sometimes Food”
But as the Chicago Sun-Times and others pointed out last year, Girl Scout cookies were getting a bit smaller, perhaps due to the recession. There’s even a FACEBOOK page devoted to fans who want to get their 8 cookies back in the box.
But now an entire whole year has passed since, and Web Watch dutifully went to the local grocery store to buy our annual allottment of Thin Mints, Tagalongs, and Samoas from the Girl Scouts (and their parents) trying to sell off their excess inventory*.
And Web Watch can confirm that this year’s Thin Mints Economic Indicator shows that the economy is still in the gutter as the 2010 box looks to be the same as the 2009 box. That is, in 2010 we’re still looking at a smaller box and fewer cookies.
Continue reading "FOOD ALERT! Girl Scout cookie Thin Mints are still smaller, so try this recipe"
Web Watch has enjoyed watching Gordon Ramsay yell at both potential and actual restaurant employees for years on HELL’S KITCHEN and KITCHEN NIGHTMARES, respectively.
And in the end, we wholeheartedly agree with the yelling, as he is yelling for good reason the majority of the time. All Gordon wants is to bring out the best in people.
So while you may not agree with his methods, you can agree that when it comes to food he does know what he’s talking about.
Which is why FOX has decided to import yet another British series for Ramsay that shows a decidedly softer side of the typically angry chef in GORDON RAMSAY: COOKALONG LIVE, airing live on FOX on December 15th.
Continue reading "Want to cook like a professional chef? Set your TiVo on Dec 15 for “Gordon Ramsay: Cookalong Live”"
Everyone jokes about ubiquitious holiday food, from the green bean casserole to the fruitcake.
But no other holiday food has garnered as much interest as the TURDUCKEN, an epicurean concoction of a deboned chicken stuffed inside of a deboned duck, stuffed inside a turkey.
Continue reading "A new holiday treat: Turbaconducken! (Order yours today)"
Oaxaca Traditional Recipes Cookbook by Zalera Martinez
Web Watch enjoys watching Food Network, and one of the limited-run series that Food Network has been airing for the past few weeks is entitled THE BEST THING I EVER ATE.
Each episode has various Food Network stars (Guy Fieri, Duff Goldman, Bobby Flay, Giada De Laurentiis, etc) raving about the Best Things They’ve Ever Eaten in different categories. If you’re a foodie, these are the places around the country that you should stick your head into to see what’s up.
One episode, entitled “Obsessions”, covered foods from Miami to San Francisco. Finally, an episode that featured three(!) restaurants that Web Watch has already visited. So far, so good.
Everyone who uses Twitter knows that Twitter limits all tweets to 140-characters.
That means some people get very creative with their abbreviations and phrasing in order to squeeze every last bit of information into those 140-characters.
But even with that restriction, it is possible to write TWECIPES aka COOKING RECIPES in those 140 characters.
Continue reading "Twecipes – Chefs Cook Up Recipes with Twitter"
A few weeks ago, Web Watch bought a Vosges Chocolate Bacon candy bar, just to see what all the fuss was about.
We get it. It wasn’t perfect, but it had promise. We shared the bacon-chocolate with others and reviews came back ranging from “ewwww” to “wow”.
So considering how many people are putting bacon into all types of desserts, Web Watch thought we’d throw some of the more interesting ideas together here. Try some of these and report back what you’ve come up with. Be careful and don’t eat too much: chocolate-covered bacon is also why you’re fat.
Just in time for the Kentucky Derby in Louisville running later today, here is just one of many different recipes you may find for KENTUCKY DERBY BOURBON BALLS.
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The History of the Green Bean Casserole
Green Bean Casserole
Every year at Thanksgiving, families across the country descend upon their local grocery store and clear the shelves of French’s Fried Onions, Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, and cans of green beans – all in the name of recreating that traditional holiday side dish of GREEN BEAN CASSEROLE.
But did you know that this fabulous holiday treat isn’t necessarily as traditional as you might think? It was created by the Campbell’s Soup Company as a way to sell more soup.
Continue reading "The History of the Green Bean Casserole" »