Information: Excuses

Yes, yes. 11 days later and 10 posts behind. Actually, I'm not, I've been writing them on paper. Not a whole lot of time to transcribe to the internet, but I promise they're coming!

As you know Savory and Tele have been working hard to get our site looking amazing. I have been busy requesting features and testing current ones as well as recruiting a few new authors.

So, it is sad to admit, but all of our creative resources have been being poured into the site on the design end and not on the posting end. We do apologize for this situation.

All of the site design should be done shortly and then we can start bringing you the wacky and crazy food insight we know that you have come to expect from us here at EU. Please stick with us as we get this behind the scenes code stuff out of the way.

Feel free to let us know what you think of the new looks, functionality, etc. We want you to feel at ease on the site. It should all work/flow seamlessly. If you feel it isn't there is a chance we will agree with you and change it up.

Let me share with you a little known fact. I hate sweets. Yep, Thats right. Cookies, Cake, Candy bars, everything. I do eat one on occasion to stave off diabetic shock though. Let it also be known that the sweets I hate the most are cupcakes. What? How can you hate cupcakes you ask? because they are filthy, chemical ridden mini cakes. If I wanted chemical poisoning I'd go to 'nam or hang out with some middle eastern dictator. Cupcakes suck! Or thats what I thought. Enter: The Cupcakery. A few colleagues and I go out to lunch every once in a while, and on the chance we go to a favorite sushi place, we see the cakery. I was bewildered at this sight. "A cupcake store?", I thought as we drove by, "What the hell are people thinking?". And then, it happened. One of the saints in our office bought our department a dozen cupcakes from said cakery.

Oh. My. God.

The cupcakes. Oh, they were good. The first one I had was the equivalent of a red velvet cake. The cake was soft and moist, the frosting was cream cheese frosting of the highest caliber, and I actually was saddened when I finished it (which took all of a minute). It was fantastic.

FANTASTIC.

F-A-N, TASTIC!

If I had to recommend a cupcake place while you're in Vegas, GO TO THE CUPCAKERY. YOU WILL LOVE IT. IF YOU DON'T YOU MAY HAVE MENTAL PROBLEMS.

Now I hate all sweets except cupcakes. Booyah.

I was going to wait to post an actual recipe, but man, is this funny.

After he annoyed me for hours with the whole Asia4Dinner night, he's been bothering me about our upcoming Greek night. But he hasn't yet posted about his stir-fry.

I mean, he probably has a "Send 'Greek Night!' to ViRaLeLiXiR" script installed on his box, or else he's just prodding me like a ritalin-deprived child with a stick, but geez.

Where is he? Probably at this adult cake store. Seriously. I heard him mumbling something about hot buttercream the other night. Or thought that's what he said after his "special" mushroom pizza.

Dear Savory: Post.

• Chicken soup and lemon Jell-o.

• Or just tiger urine...

• Abuse your eggs.

• Not disgusting food, but did you know the Aztecs invented salsa to go with human sacrifices? Delicious.

• When the first ingredient is three tablespoons of fat, you know you're in for a treat.

• White castle casserole. Warning: banners may be NSFW.

• I'm sorry. Hawaiians eat the worst sushi ever made.

• You don't have to go to the southern hemisphere to see people eating horrible wormy filth.

• What people do to cure hangovers. As seen on Cowboy Bebop.

• Tic Tacs are not an ingredient. EVER.

• This is a way to provoke yourself to suicide.

• Dear America: Paula Deen wants you to die. That is all.

• FOR THE LOVE OF GOD!!!

I'm looking for the worst recipes on the internet for a running thread on EdibleUnknown. Here's a few of the ones I found so far: * California jail burrito spread. Apparently, this is a special treat for the inmates. Ick.

• I am speechless. Look at this. Yes, I'd like to teach my kids to eat out of the litter box. I can't imagine how this could be fun.

• Some of the comments for this recipe on Food Network's site are too good to pass up.

• Food Network has the best complaints ever. I swear.

• Paula Deen's heart is going to explode one of these days.

• A satire on how not to write a recipe.

• This can't be real.

• It takes a lot of Google page views to find the really good failures at foodtv.

• This looks like something James Lileks might own.

• What in tarnation might this be?

• Mmm, fish just oozing with goodness.

• Yes, I know some people like animelles. Via Look At This.

• Some commenters can be so ungrateful.

• Even the name sounds good.

• The recipe might be just fine, but the first commenter acts as if though the very existence of the recipe ruined CHRISTMAS.

• Trying to imagine what this tastes like is like the whole Mary's Room thought experiment- very difficult. I wonder if Sandra Lee has a grassroots rating-inflater/dumper society; her recipes seem to polarize the food network bunch.

• WHAT. IS. THIS?

• Read the comment entitled "the best chicken mini pot pies ever!". Poor Sandra.

• Number 3 is throwing up? I thought it was "alone time".

Hi all,

This article is part of a series that I will eventually finish entitled "Good Eats Tribute". Basically, I'll be going through every episode of Good Eats to date and reporting my successes and failures at mimicking sir Alton Browns unique (and lets face it, downright awesome) cooking technique. It should be noted that I have no formal culinary education whatsoever.

The first article in the series, well of course it could be none other than "Steak your claim", which features a pan-seared ribeye. Not being a particular rib-eye person myself, I found a couple of tasty, well marbled New York strips at my local Vons.

Recipe is here.

I have to say, that this is by far the best New York I've ever had, no contest. It was juicy and full of flavor, and best of all I didn't have to dirty up the grill. Nice.

Hi all,

Usually, we here at EU are pretty religion agnostic when it comes to our articles. Mainly I think because we don't want to offend anyone or misrepresent anyones holidays. However, I figure I'd touch a bit on Slava, since it has so much to do with food.

Basically, Slava is a feast that's held for the patron saint of the family in Orthodox Christian homes.

When I say feast, I mean FEAST.

The wife and I went the other day to some of our Serbian friends' Slava. With the exception of eating until I thought I was going to die, it was pretty cool.

First, there's soup. Then, stuffed cabbage. Then, sliced Pork loin, Chicken, Lamb, country ham, and salami. And cheese. and then there's dessert. Baklava, cakes, cookies, something I can't remember.

Did I mention there was drinking? Oh probably not.

At the hosts request, we drank. alot. I drank 5 heinekens, and 2 glasses of cognac, along with 3 shots of plum brandy. I was smashed.

Plum brandy is good.

I digress. There should be plenty more holidays where you eat until gluttony no longer applies and it turns into some new word that hasn't been made up yet.

One sushi bar ingredient I have a love-hate relationship with is kappa, known in English as the cucumber. Apparently, the Japanese term is based on a river goblin, named Kappa, who has a fondness for cucumbers. Nice circular logic, there; if I were going to name members of my family for the things they ate, I could name my daughter Random Scraps Of Paper and my wife Tasteless Vegan Filth. But I digress.

Cucumbers aren't exactly my favorite sushi ingredient, mostly because the fresh taste and crispness seems somehow wrong inside something made of raw fish; it tends to make me think I just bit willingly into a bone left in by some sadistic itamae, getting revenge for me not pointing my chopsticks towards magnetic north when I put them down on my plate. But in cucumber salads or sunemono, they come into their own.

Looking at online recipes, I saw an awful lot of recipes that include sake and rice wine vinegar. Since I'm too lazy to drive to Chinatown for one ingredient, and my children don't really need any extra sake in their diet (says the woman; personally, I believe that drunk children are sleepy children), I decided to play with the recipe a bit. And by 'play', I mean get retardedly creative.

I like rice wine vinegar, and I use it in an awful lot of foods. In fact, it's my second favorite vinegar upon God's slightly fermented green earth. However, I do hold true to the belief that the Japanese would have never invented rice wine vinegar if they'd had the miracle that is balsamic vinegar. I'd gush and all, but I believe the Masochist detailed his unending love for the purple here.

Now, people who know stuff about cooking, like to complain, and have way too much time on their hands to search the internet for blogs may interject that "balsamic vinegar is nothing like rice wine vinegar", on the basis that the first is sweeter, thicker, and much more complex. Thanks. Gee, I didn't know that. Of course balsamic and rice wine vinegar are different. Read the previous paragraph.

However, there is a very important factor here- the differences mean that you can't adulterate balsamic vinegar with salt and sugar in the same proportions as rice wine vinegar and end up with a similar salad topping. In fact, Italian cuisine purists might even argue that to adulterate balsamic with anything at all is akin to blasphemy, like some massive malediction called down upon Vatican City.

Luckily, I'm Protestant.

After cubing two cucumbers and mixing them with alfalfa sprouts (no mung beans... darn), I contemplated the balsamic like some sort of scrying pool. And the oracle revealed to me that mixing the vinegar with one third its volume in sugar and microwaving to combine was, as it were, All Good. And there was a tiny amount of salting and peppering, but not enough so as to offend the NeoRomans.

For a final flavor kick, I put about two tablespoons of sesame seeds on foil and put it under the broiler on high for about four minutes, just to toast them for salad purposes. And you know what? I thought it was superawesome. Our resident Tartologist thought it even better the next day (today).

So maybe I'm crossing roads that aren't meant to be crossed. The point is, make do with what you have, be aware of subtle (or blatant) differences, and always smile like a killer when someone else takes their first bite.