How have I not heard about this until now?

I have found a new obsession to fuel my food fantasies. How come it took me this long to find it? Tastespotting.com is fascinating. It aggregates pictures of food and recipes or articles about food from food blogs everywhere. Want to salivate over some good lookin' food, or find some new recipes or inspiration? This is the place to go!

I signed up for an account and have already added 3 favorites that I'd like to try:
How to Cook a Turkey: Part 1 - A No-Fail Method for People that Would Rather Watch Football than Wash Dishes - I've made turkey several times. When I purchased my first turkey, probably about 12 years ago during our first Thanksgiving as a married couple, I read a lot of articles about turkey and how terrifying it is to deal with it for the first time. I bought a fresh turkey, took it out of its packaging and took a good look at it, and started laughing. What is the big deal? It's just a really, really big chicken!

My turkey was fabulous. Really, people, turkey is not such a big deal.

The recipe in the aforementioned link (I haven't watched the video yet), seems to call for brushing butter over the turkey before cooking it. This sounds really interesting. Obviously, since I keep kosher, I'd use a pareve substitute like margarine. I usually use Earth Balance Buttery Sticks to replace margarine in all my recipes.

Steamed Broccoli With Grain Mustard Vinaigrette - I love, love, love broccoli, but never really do anything interesting with it. This looks like a simple, tasty recipe.

Turkey Chili - I have been having really bad luck with with our traditional cholent that we eat for lunch on Shabbos. My husband and other people like it, but I take one look at it and just don't want to eat it. I've been making it in a tiny crock pot when it is just my husband and I for the meal, so that we don't have so many leftovers. I'm thinking that the crock pot is just not made for this type of cooking, plus I could use a break from traditional recipes. So I'm planning to make larger batches of cholent replacement every few weeks in my 6 quart crock pot, freeze the leftovers in smallish containers, and heat them up the small crock pot. One of the items I'm thinking of making is chili, so I may try this recipe. (Without the green pepper. I hate peppers.)

Ok, now I'm hungry. Must go eat supper now ;).

Cooking Tools that Rock - Microplane Zester

My darling sister gave me a gift card for Williams-Sonoma. That girl knows the way to *my* heart! So I went on a little shopping spree (a very little spree...$50 only goes so far at this store).

One of the things I splurged on was a new zester. I have the Oxo zester and have used it to zest lemons and limes, but found it pretty tedious and didn't look forward to using it. On a whim, I picked up a Microplane Grater/Zester while spending my gift card, and had a chance to use it before the holiday of Sukkos.



Wow! It was quite a difference. The zest came off that orange with a minimum of effort. I was actually having fun getting the peel off the orange, and can't wait to use this tool again.

One thing I particularly like is that the zester comes with a cover that the tool slides in and out of easily. This tool is *sharp*, so you'll be glad that the grating surface is covered when you're rooting around in your kitchen drawer for some other tool.

So, if anyone out there would like my old Oxo zester, let me know! It's up for grabs. My new Microplane is the only tool I want to use now.

Rating for the Microplane Grater/Zester: 5 stars out of 5.

Oh, and what was I making that required orange zest? I was baking the Chocolate-Orange Carrot Cake, which I originally saw in Bon Appetit magazine in 1998. The list of ingredients is odd (chocolate AND grated carrots AND sweetened shredded coconut), but the cake is delicious. Try it! This is a very special cake, which is very rich.

Unfortunately, my cake burned a little this time. Oh well. It was still good. Especially with the dark chocolate frosting on top ;). Mmmmmmmmm.