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Food Blogger Spotlight: Susan Filson of Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy

Stephanie Stiavetti — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 16:00:50 +0000

For our next Food Blogger Spotlight, we’re chatting with Susan Filson of Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy. Susan’s one of those multi-talented food bloggers, taking as much joy in cooking savory dishes as she does sticky, gooey desserts. Her food blog is one of the most open and heartfelt I’ve ever read, and I think that makes her a 100% superstar.

I first met Susan at IFBC 2009, and I was instantly captivated by her natural warmth and candor. She infuses her recipes with these same qualities – every time I make one of her dishes, it’s like getting a big hug from a good friend. I know that sounds cheesy, but I dare you to make one of her recipes and disagree. Go ahead, give it a try.

Please welcome Susan, and as always, feel free to ask further questions in the comments.

We all have staples that we couldn’t live without. What three ingredients do you *always* have in your kitchen and why? I’m not talking snacks like chips and hummus, but rather ingredients you use all the time in your cooking.

It’s hard to limit the list to just three! It kind of depends on whether I’m cooking or baking. I’m going to answer this from the “cooking” perspective. The three things I always have in my kitchen are onions, olive oil and chicken broth. With those three ingredients at my disposal, I can pretty much create a dish out of anything. In fact, I can create a great dish just using those ingredients alone and some pasta.

Onions are so versatile. They add something to almost any type of dish. You can cook them fast over high heat to make them kind of crispy, or cook them low and slow into caramelized, gooey goodness. Plus, you can deep fry, grill or roast them.

Olive oil is a staple in the kitchen of anyone who enjoys Italian cooking. I use it to sauté meats and vegetables, in sauces and salads, and even to just drizzle on top of various dishes or bread to add some extra flavor. There are even lots of great dessert recipes that feature olive oil.

I call chicken broth my “magic ingredient”. I use it almost daily. It’s a great flavor booster. I use it for cooking rice, for steaming vegetables, to deglaze pans and as a base for many soups and stews. It can be added to almost any recipe that calls for water.

Imagine you moved to the smallest apartment possible – a shoebox, really – and you only had room for a single cookbook. Of all your cookbooks, which one would you keep? Why do you love it so?

Although I have a vast collection of excellent cookbooks, if I could only keep one it would have to be The New Basics Cookbook by Sheila Lukins and Julee Rosso. It’s a classic! That was the first cookbook I ever bought for myself way back when I was a new bride. I taught myself how to cook from it. The first full meal I ever cooked for my husband was a recipe from that book. It was a fancy veal stew, and it took me about four hours to make. It took me almost as long to clean the mess up afterwards! But, it was the most marvelous veal stew, and well worth the effort!

The New Basics Cookbook has over 900 recipes ranging from nibbles and appetizers to all kinds of desserts. The book is also filled with information on all kinds of different ingredients and styles of cooking. It includes tips for entertaining, a glossary of cooking and wine terms, suggestions for a well-stocked pantry and instructions on how to pick good seasonal ingredients. With all of that, what else could you possibly need?

When you’re looking for new recipes (or creating one of your own), what is your number one priority? What makes you pick one recipe over another?

Obviously, my first priority would be taste. Why would I bother with a recipe if I didn’t think it would be delicious? After that, I think my top priority would be ease of preparation. By that, I don’t necessarily mean fast, although that’s a plus. For me, a recipe has to make sense. Both the directions and the ingredients have to be uncomplicated. I see so many recipes by well-known celebrity chefs that have 500 hundred ingredients and are 10 pages long. Real people don’t cook like that! And frankly, they shouldn’t have too. It’s overkill.

I’m a busy person, and most of my readers are too. Even someone who loves to cook can feel like a slave in the kitchen when preparing a family meal turns into a marathon. I want to show them that they can come home from work, create a fabulous dish with a handful of good quality ingredients and still have time to watch TV with their kids.

Blogs have the potential to be so many things, from personal journals to outrageous adventure reports. What is the most important thing you put into your blog, and what is the most important thing you get out of it?

Rather than a personal journal, I look at my blog as more like a personal journey, with occasional outrageous adventure reports. My tag line is “a blog about food with a little life stirred in,” and that is exactly what I try to achieve with it. It isn’t just an index of recipes. Along with the food, I share bits and pieces of my life – the good, the bad and the ugly!

I really put a lot of myself into my blog, and I always try to be open and honest with my words. I sometimes share thoughts or feelings with my readers that I haven’t even shared with family or close friends. I figure that whatever I might be going through, someone else might be going through it too. Maybe something I have to say can help someone else.

For as much as I put into SGCC, the return on my investment has been tenfold! I have “met” so many lovely, helpful and caring people on this journey. My readers and fellow food bloggers are the best! They laugh with me during my successes and cry with me during my disasters. More importantly, they let me just ramble on when I need to – and they keep coming back! They are constant source of support and inspiration.

Humans are visual creatures, and great images are a huge part of a blog’s draw. What makes your personal photographic style uniquely yours? What elements do you think set your images apart from other pro food photographers?

I’d never picked up a camera before I started SGCC. You can tell this by the pictures in my early posts. They were AWFUL! Two Christmases ago my sweet husband gave me a DSLR and my mother gave me my macro lens. Things got a lot better after that!

I don’t consider myself a great photographer. I think I’m an average photographer who sometimes manages to get a great photo. My style is pretty minimalist. I’m not a food stylist. The more I try to “stage” a shot, the deeper the hole I dig for myself to fall into.

I like to focus on the actual dish I’m shooting with the least amount of props and busy background effects I can get away with. I probably shoot 90% of my food with my macro lens, and I like to get in really close. My favorite way to shoot food is using a white or light background and white dishes. I want you to notice the food first – its color and texture – not my pretty china pattern.

I also don’t like my photos to look too perfect. The little drips and drops make the food more approachable. I want you to feel like you can just stick your fork through the computer screen and dive right into it!

Thanks for stopping in, Susan.
(all images property of Susan Filson)

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Some of my favorite posts from Susan Filson’s Sticky, Gooey, Creamy, Chewy:

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Food Blogger Spotlight: Hank Shaw, Hunter Angler Gardener Cook

Stephanie Stiavetti — Mon, 17 May 2010 14:00:48 +0000

For this week’s Food Blogger Spotlight, I’d like to introduce you to Hank Shaw of Hunter Angler Gardener Cook. Hank writes about honest food from the point of view of someone who’s knee deep in the process from beginning to end – and I mean that quite literally. As a hunter, fisherman, gardener, forager, butcher, and cook, he is familiar with almost every aspects of eating. Hank is one of the only people I know that if you dumped him off in the middle of nowhere with nothing but his wits, he’d probably eat just as well as he does at home. So in the event of WWIII, I’ll be heading straight for his house.

Besides blogging, Hank also writes features for several publications such as Field and Stream, Art of Eating, and Edible Sacramento. You’d never know it from his current topic, but he spent many years as a political writer and journalism teacher. I guess this writing thing is in his blood, eh?

So, please welcome Hank Shaw and be sure to say hi in the comments.

(Note: all photo courtesy of the fabulous Holly Heyser)

I have a lot more than three ingredients in my kitchen at all times, but if I needed to narrow it to three staples it would be olive oil, flour and dried mushrooms.

Olive oil is my go-to fat, as I am primarily a Mediterranean cook. Sure, I love duck fat, lard and even butter, but if I am absent-mindedly putting something together on a Wednesday, I’ll reach for olive oil first. And I use two kinds: a plain-old Costco extra-virgin, plus a “finishing oil,” usually either a local, like Apollo or Bariani, or a Greek or Italian oil; I like the powerful green oils better than the softer yellow ones.

As for flour, I am not a huge baker, but I am a huge pasta maker, so by saying “flour” I really mean either flour or dried pasta. I eat a lot of pasta. I make homemade pasta roughly once a week or so, and it can be as easy as tagliatelle, which can be made in minutes once you have the dough rested, or as elaborate as tortellini and such. I find the rolling, kneading and repetitive shape-making to be therapeutic. OK, maybe that’s a little psychotic…

And life would suck without dried mushrooms, specifically porcini. Powdered, they go well in pasta dough, and they rehydrate fast enough to make on work nights. I like them as much as meat, and I can serve them to vegetarians, should some wander by unexpectedly. I tend to have four to eight kinds of dried ‘shrooms lying around. Right now I have porcini, chanterelles, yellowfoot (yellowfeet?), black trumpets, maitake and matsutake.

Imagine you moved to the smallest apartment possible – a shoebox, really – and you only had room for a single cookbook. Of all your cookbooks, which one would you keep? Why do you love it so?

That’s easy: Chef Paul Bertolli’s “Cooking by Hand.” It is the kind of cookbook I would make if I were writing a cookbook – and that’s a good thing, because not only am I actually doing that right now, but I am working with Pam Krauss, who was Bertolli’s editor on that book!

What makes the book so special is that Bertolli makes no bones about trying to be comprehensive – he writes about what he views as the foundations of his Italian cooking. Pasta, whole-hog butchery, charcuterie, deeply flavored sugos and stews, a light touch with fresh vegetables and the concept of building your menu around the dessert; after all, it is the last thing your friends or guests will eat before they leave the table. I’ve had the occasion to briefly meet Bertolli at a salami event, and I am hoping someday to work with him, at least for a time; I suspect there is much I can learn.

When you’re looking for new recipes (or creating one of your own), what is your number one priority? What makes you pick one recipe over another?

I design recipes based on what I have in my hand at the moment. If my garden runneth over with leeks, as it is now, I think about ways to cook leeks – now, and not later, as vegetables have an imperative that cannot be ignored. Wait a week too long and you have wasted what, in the leek’s case, can be a year’s effort in the growing.

Likewise, if I’ve come home with snipe or wild ducks or a pheasant or deer, I play off that meat with the season. If it is warm, I grill. If it’s cold, I braise. Root veggies or zucchini, it all depends on the season.

Seafood takes this to its extreme. Your life needs to stop when you are blessed with a surfeit of seafood. I’ve caught so many mackerel once that I ate them every day for 10 days, in every which way. Mackerel does not freeze well, so you enjoy it while you can.

Food is meant to be eaten. Now, not later. Preserves are lovely, but only when they bring something else to the party – never preserve anything if you like the fresh product better. I happen to like pickled things, in many cases better than in their fresh incarnation (Jerusalem artichokes are an example), so I do make a lot of pickles. But I digress…

My website is a home for my generally random adventures and experiments in food, a place where I can set down my thoughts on this odd pursuit that occupies so much of my mind: I am always thinking about how to perfect my craft, and while I am aware I will never achieve that perfection, the life is in the journey.

What I really love about using a public venue for this is the response I get from the community. I routinely hear from other gastronauts, readers more expert than I am at this or that, as well as rookies seeking advice – being able to help others is a huge deal for me, as one of my goals is to offer others what knowledge I have been able to accumulate over the years. Without the interaction, I am not sure I’d still post my thoughts on the web. I’d still write of course, but it might be in a private journal, not a blog.

Thanks for sharing, Hank.

Click here for more Food Bloggers Spotlight interviews.

Some of my favorite posts from Hank Shaw’s Hunter Angler Gardener Cook:

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Food Blogger Spotlight: Michael Ruhlman

Stephanie Stiavetti — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 13:00:14 +0000

For the next installment of our Food Blogger Spotlight, we’ve got a guest that needs no introduction (unless you’ve been living under a culinary rock for the past decade): author/food writer Michael Ruhlman. Besides blogging at Ruhlman.com, Michael has written countless books about food – and others that aren’t about food at all. In fact, the Michael Ruhlman catalog is hovering at somewhere around 16 books as of this posting. Holy prolific writing career, Batman.

Here are a few of my favorites:

Michael has also worked on other notable cookbooks:

The French Laundry Cookbook with Thomas Keller
A Return to Cooking with Eric Ripert
Michael Symon’s Live to Cook: Recipes and Techniques to Rock Your Kitchen with Michael Symon

On top of his published writing, which includes articles for some of the country’s most influential food magazines, Michael regularly blogs about the art and craft of cooking at his personal website. He’s a tireless advocate of encouraging Americans to prepare real food at home, going so far as to present to the everyday home cook the keys to the kingdom of culinary freedom. Anthony Bourdain also makes the occasional guest appearance on Ruhlman.com, adding a little ~~sugar~~ spice to Michael’s already witty tone.

Please welcome Michael Ruhlman as he answers four burning questions. Feel free to ask questions in the comments.

All photos below were taken by Michael’s wife, Donna Ruhlman, a fabulous photographer who also shoots all of the images on Michael’s site. I wish I had an amazing in-house photographer! Lucky guy!

Onions, fish sauce, and parmigiano-reggiano.

I’m seriously handicapped when I let myself run out of onions, THE single most important grown ingredient in kitchen. I use fish sauce in most hot foods, everything from salad dressing to meat sauce to soup. As for the cheese, starches and greens tastes better with reggiano on it.

Imagine you moved to the smallest apartment possible – a shoebox, really – and you only had room for a single cookbook. Of all your cookbooks, which one would you keep? Why do you love it so?

The New Professional Chef, 5th edition. It’s the book I bought before learning to cook for real, before I went to the Culinary Institute of America, and then used at the Culinary, during the writing of the book about my time there, The Making of a Chef. Besides loving the book for its definitive treatment of the fundamentals, it’s powerful to me because when I bought the book in 1995 I was one person, and two years later, I was a whole other person, and that book both explicitly describes, and also symbolizes, the transformation. Also, if you have that book, there’s nothing you couldn’t do in the kitchen, or figure out how to do, like making a cake or skinning an eel.

(Ed. note: there’s a more recent edition of The Professional Chef.)

When you’re looking for new recipes (or creating one of your own), what is your number one priority? What makes you pick one recipe over another?

When I do a new recipe, it’s to learn something new rather than to eat something good. When I want to eat something good, I just cook it that way; you learn, but not as fast – especially if you’re late making dinner and need to do something quickly.

I hope it’s my passion for cooking and sharing good, useful information, and also to call attention to bad information or stupid thinking. I think cooking technique is important to convey. The more people that understand fundamental technique, as opposed to, say, a recipe for Asian coleslaw, the better cooks they become. My goal is to encourage people to cook, and to encourage the people who read my blog and blog themselves to encourage others to cook. The more people cooking raw food, the better the world becomes.

What I get out of it is multifaceted. I love connecting with people who care about cooking; they’re who read my blog and comment. I like the sense of community. I like that it allows me to vent when I need to. I like that it allows me to promote my work and also the work of people I admire. The hardest part is managing the times spent on it – I want to spend more time on blogging than is good for my other work!

Thanks, Michael!

Click here for more Food Bloggers Spotlight interviews.

Some of my favorite posts from Ruhlman.com by Michael Ruhlman:

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Food Blogger Spotlight: Garrett McCord

Stephanie Stiavetti — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 13:00:39 +0000

Sorry for missing last week’s Food Blogger Spotlight, but I was on a tropical beach on the other side of the world. I’m going to make up for it today by introducing you to the one and only Garrett McCord, Mr. Sassy-Pants Academic Foodie himself. He blogs over at Vanilla Garlic, a site that you really need to be made aware of.

I can’t even count all of the reasons that I love Garrett – besides the fact that he’s a fabulous drinking partner and quite the Robot Chicken aficionado, Garret is also insanely intelligent and one of the food world’s best up-and-coming writers (just you wait). His posts transcends your standard food blog fare, and instead of just posting recipes, he posts reflections and insights. Like, for reals. I love reading his blog because he’s not just a squawking recipe box. He’s a real person.

I learned to cook in college. When I was the Resident Advisor in one of the dorms, the first floor of the building I took care of was almost all Chinese and Thai. They’re the ones who taught me how to cook for the most part, and as such I keep a very Asian pantry.

Now, narrowing me down to just three things is just plan unfair so I’m going to list six because you can’t stop me: green onions, garlic, chili peppers, curry paste, coconut milk and dark soy sauce. Those basics are enough to get me by on whatever I need to throw together for lunch or dinner.

I suppose I need a good kitchen knife too. Not only will it cut, but I also use it as my bludgeoning tool, whether using the flat side to crush things like garlic or the end of the hilt to tenderize meat or bruise stalks of lemongrass.

Imagine you moved to the smallest apartment possible – a shoebox, really – and you only had room for a single cookbook. Of all your cookbooks, which one would you keep? Why do you love it so?

Oh, oh that’s an unfair question. You suck, Stephanie.

I suppose it would depend on my mood at the time, but I guess with forethought I would go with Joy of Cooking simply because it’s the godly tome of everything kitchen-wise and would serve me the best. Bad part though? No purty pictures to entertain me.

When you’re looking for new recipes (or creating one of your own), what is your number one priority? What makes you pick one recipe over another?

I think what makes me pick one recipe over another is simplicity. Though, every so often, I like to tackle a project like making marshmallows or something that obviously isn’t so simple and requires some techniques, finesse and possibly a hunt for specialty ingredients.

However, when it comes to my everyday cooking I try to look for recipes that allows me to utilize what I already have in my kitchen in new and intriguing ways or can easily be thrown together after picking up an ingredient or two. 101 Cookbooks recently put up a great looking coconut curry lentil soup that I’m planning to make after I pick up some lentils because it looks like something I would normally cook anyways and uses ingredients I usually have on hand in a new way.

As for developing a recipe, well, that’s all kinds of random. I just sort of follow whatever idea or inclination I seem to be obsessed with that week. This can range from simple cookies to elaborate tarts and cupcakes stuffed with adzuki bean ice cream or whatnot. I’m like a racoon finding shiny things and then turning them over in my paws until I get bored with them.

I think the most important thing I put into my blog is simply myself and my time. My blog has been a lot of things from a cupcake blog, to a personal diary, to a restaurant review site. I shift its focus to whatever I need it to be and my readers either follow or don’t; some learn to like whatever my content focus shifts too, some eventually stop visiting and some new people find me because of it.

What’s core of the blog though is the fact that it’s fun for me. I want my blog to be a place I can practice my food writing and learn about the things in the food world that interest me. If other people want to follow then I’m honored to have them and value their sharing the experiences with me and their feedback about it.

I think the biggest problem some blogs have is they try to write to cater to their audience and the second you do that – take your own wants and needs of the blog out of the equation – the blog begins to suffer. The blog is a focus on your experiences (let’s admit it, blogs are somewhat based on ego) and how you relate those to others is what makes them so engaging.

Thanks, Garrett!

Click here for more Food Bloggers Spotlight interviews.

Some of my favorite posts from Garrett McCord at Vanilla Garlic:

Food Blogger Spotlight: Casey and Danielle, Good. Food. Stories.

Stephanie Stiavetti — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 13:00:45 +0000

For this week’s Food Blogger Spotlight, we’ve got a dynamic duo: Casey Barber and Danielle Oteri of Good. Food. Stories. These two ladies bring you a wide swath of food culture, running the gamut of all that is good about the culinary life we love so much. Full of reviews, tutorials and narrative gold, Good. Food. Stories. is all about eating well. Here’s a snippet from their About page:

“Good. Food. Stories. is an online magazine that shares stories of eating and drinking through variety of voices and perspectives. Instead of a singular focus, we cover a gamut of topics including book reviews, restaurant recommendations, recipes and killer ingredients, as well as wide-ranging essays on food. Both a trusty resource and a forum for storytelling, Good. Food. Stories. always wants to hear about how you eat.”

Let’s welcome Casey and Danielle, and as always, feel free to ask questions in the comments.

C: I start to panic if I have fewer than two full bulbs of garlic in the pantry, if I’m down to four eggs in the fridge, and if I’m scraping the bottom of my flour bin. Surprisingly, despite how often I use it, I have been known to run out of olive oil from time to time. I never think to check how much is left in the big metal tin.

D: I always keep garlic, extra virgin olive oil, and grated parmesan cheese. With those three things I can make pasta or gussy up greens.

Imagine you moved to the smallest apartment possible – a shoebox, really – and you only had room for a single cookbook. Of all your cookbooks, which one would you keep? Why do you love it so?

C: I would like to cheat slightly and choose the “cookbook” that’s actually a massive binder filled with recipes I’ve compiled over the years‚ more than a decade’s worth of tear-outs from magazines, handwritten notes, and printouts from my various online explorations, like the yet-to-be-blogged-about-but irreplaceable pork ragu recipe. It’s way more valuable to me than any of my real cookbooks, none of which I have cooked my way through entirely.

D: Even though I’ve only had it for a few short months, I just love Arthur Schwartz’s “The Southern Italian Table: Authentic Tastes from Traditional Kitchens.” There are so many quick and easy recipes in there, as well as a good array of meatless dishes that actually taste good. Also, being that southern Italian cooking is largely a “cucina povera,” there are plenty of ideas to accommodate a lean budget as well as room for improvisation.

When you’re looking for new recipes (or creating one of your own), what is your number one priority? What makes you pick one recipe over another?

C: It’s always about the ingredients, right? I’m drawn to favorite ingredients prepared with new accompaniments (you would likely be appalled at the number of recipes I have on deck that involve scallops) or one that’s been on my mind. My recent favorite, the potato-fennel hash, came about because the fennel was looking so beautiful at the market that I had to create something with a bulb that afternoon. If there’s a certain level of manipulation involved, I might flip past; there are a number of dessert recipes I haven’t tried because I get frustrated with the multiple chill times I usually find therein‚ but usually I’m up for anything.

D: I don’t like recipes that call for lengthy preparations. A Thomas Keller recipe is not for me. I appreciate process and discipline, but ultimately it just doesn’t speak to my senses. I’m Italian and when Vesuvius blows I rather be drinking wine and eating pasta with my friends than alone in the kitchen tying herb bouquets. I’m happiest when I’m spicing a sauce. I also love the drama of deglazing a smoking hot pan.

C: I feel like I put into and receive back the same thing with the blog: a connection with others who share my all-consuming food obsession. Good. Food. Stories. was started in part to codify all the emails I would get from friends asking for restaurant suggestions, recipe advice, etc. All these people, and new friends I’ve met because of this addiction, have amazing stories to share too and they’ve become part of the “delicious conversations” we’re continuing on the site.

D: Let’s face it: too many people in this world eat just to survive, and eating the way I do, let alone having acess to the inconceivable options for food I have here in New York City, is a tremendous privilege. Food is one of the greatest pleasures in my life and so I always try to impart that sense of pleasure whether I’m making Sunday breakfast for my boyfriend or sharing an experience on Good. Food. Stories.

Click here for more Food Bloggers Spotlight interviews.

Some of my favorite posts from Good. Food. Stories.:

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Food Blogger Spotlight: Elana Amsterdam

Stephanie Stiavetti — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 05:13:40 +0000

For our next installment of Food Blogger Spotlight, I’d like to welcome Elana Amsterdam of Elana’s Pantry. Elana’s blog is all about gluten free eating that is both simple and satisfying. After giving up her big-city New York life for Colorado, she discovered that she and one of her children were diagnosed with celiac – which meant a big change for her and her family. Just like any other busy mom, she didn’t want to prepare double dinners every night, which meant she had to find a way of making her gluten free recipes tasty to everyone.

This is where you, the reader, benefits: Elana’s blog is a compendium of many of her fabulous recipes. She’s also just recently written a new book, The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook (only $10 on Amazon!). I can’t recommend her gluten free recipes enough – I think you’ll love them as much as I do!

Please welcome Elana!

The Gluten-Free Almond Flour Cookbook, Elana Amsterdam

We all have staples that we couldn’t live without. What three ingredients do you *always* have in your kitchen and why? I’m not talking snacks like chips and hummus, but rather ingredients you use all the time in your cooking.

My favorite 3 ingredients are almond flour, agave nectar and grapeseed oil. These 3 ingredients form the crux of many of the dessert recipes on my blog and in my recently published book, The Gluten Free Almond Flour Cookbook.

The above would be my answer for a “baking” day in the colder weather. My cooking is very seasonally oriented, so I would say that for the warm weather my favorite ingredients are kale (which actually grows in my garden all year round), parsley (which grows wildly during summer) and salad mix (which grows like weeds in my summer garden, and grows a bit more slowly in my cold frame during the cold weather). I love making my family salad or some type of kale dish every day so that they get their quota of green goodness. And I love cooking with parsley; it’s delicious in so many dishes and packed with fabulous nutrients.

Imagine you moved to the smallest apartment possible – a shoebox, really – and you only had room for a single cookbook. Of all your cookbooks, which one would you keep? Why do you love it so?

Well, to be quite honest, I would take my own cookbook since I still cook the recipes from it almost every single day. However, I think that is a very biased answer so I would have to say alternatively, I would take my dog eared, well worn copy of The Joy of Cooking. That book is my cooking bible and I use it as a reference when I am making a new dish and also as inspiration if I need an idea of what to make for lunch or dinner for my family.

When you’re looking for new recipes (or creating one of your own), what is your number one priority? What makes you pick one recipe over another?

I don’t really have any priorities, I love to read magazines and newspapers and sometimes I’ll find an interesting dish that looks appealing – then my determination sets in and I will be on a mission to make it with as few ingredients as possible (to simplify, which is one of my main goals in life); and I’ll also venture to replace ingredients that I don’t think are very nutritious with healthier ones. I like to make quick and easy delicious food that is full of good nutrients. And I love cooking for my husband and children. My main priority around cooking and new recipes is that they eat and enjoy what I make them!

My blog is a vehicle for people to receive information about food, politics and the politics of food. Food is the main theme of the blog. Politics is a very soft sell. My politics might come through in a mention of the chickens I am raising in our tiny yard, or perhaps my review of a book or movie such as Food, Inc.. I seem to have a somewhat endless stream of ideas and enjoy sharing them with others, hoping that I am helping people have a better day in one way or another.

Thanks so much for stopping in, Elana.

Click here for more Food Bloggers Spotlight interviews.

Some of my favorite posts from Elana’s Pantry:

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