Interweb Finds!

I have a television but no cable and as I'm no fan of Two and Half Men, or Law and Order: Predictable Script Unit, when I'm fresh out of Netflix I usually read or surf the interwebs looking for tidbits to share with you, reader. Some especially nice ones popped up this week.

About a year ago I read Julie and Julia, which started as a blog, became a book and then a movie with Meryl Streep, chronicling the author's attempt to make all 524 recipes from the Julia Child classic Mastering the Art of French Cooking in her small apartment kitchen. Though this wasn't the kind of cooking I wanted to do, nor necessarily the kind of eating I wanted to do, it was very entertaining. This turned out to be the pioneer of the "cook-through blog" movement.

In this vein, DC resident Carolyn Blymire undertakes The French Laundry Cookbook in her blog French Laundry at Home. Now this isn't at all the kind of cooking I want to do for I am far, FAR too lazy. And cheap. But it sure is the kind of cooking I want to read about and most of the time, eat (the giant cow tongue and pig head dish was a little off-putting, I'll admit). Carolyn, if you're ever in need of a west coast taster, call me!

One of the many things I find amazing about cook-through bloggers (aside from their astronomical grocery bills) is how they all find the time and energy for shopping, cooking and clean-up on top of their full time jobs, which many clearly have. These are not one-pot meals, reader, and you'll see no evidence of short cuts. In fact, two day recipes after traipsing to ten different stores to obtain obscure ingredients seems part of the cook-through blogging experience. My hats off to all of them, truly. Most nights after work I want to commune with the couch and a glass of wine from Trader Joe's and if I manage to complete one chore, I feel I've done well for myself.

Staying in the food realm for a moment, you may enjoy this surprisingly vitriolic rant against the Chicken Caesar salad. I like it for many reasons, his crankiness natch, but mostly because I can sometimes astonish myself with the breadth of my complaining, but strangely, oddly, Chicken Caesar salad doesn't really bother me.