If ever a board game was in high demand, Foodie Fight would be it. Remember hannukah way back in December? That’s when I was supposed to get this board game but due to an overwhelming amount of back orders, I didn’t get it until just recently.

Fortunately, it was worth the wait!

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April Fool’s! Let me let you in on a little secret: That is not what it looks like! The infamous April 1, day of trickery and pranks, has us fooled in so many ways that even our food can not be trusted. Until you can safely confirm that it’s 12:01 AM on April 2, trust no one and no food…

But in the meantime, enjoy this roundup I put together of some of the most fool and drool worthy food photos on the web. Is it dinner or dessert? You won’t be able to tell!

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I haven’t raved about it much (if at all) on the blog, but I am, to put it lightly, absolutely wild about fondue. Whenever I discover a restaurant with fondue of any kind–savory, sweet, pricey, cheap, whatever–I make an immediate phone call.

“Hey,” says I.
“Hey!” says Foodie Friend.
“So there’s this new place I want to check out.”
“Have you read any reviews?” She asks suspiciously.
“They have fondue,” I reply matter-of-factly, the thought of that pot-of-cheese (or chocolate, or oil, or…) as good as a pretty triad of Michelin stars and a Zagat 30 in my mind.

I first encountered fondue after trekking for hours up a frozen mountain, so no wonder it’s made such an impression on me. …okay, okay, it was after perhaps forty minutes of trekking up a ski slope, but it was cold! And the snowshoes were ill-fitting! And the air was thin! I’m lazy! Regardless of just how manly and trying this journey was, it definitely made me hungry; stepping into an elegant, nearly-empty restaurant tucked away alongside a Utah green run and smelling rich melted cheese didn’t help much. If biting into the first slice of apple and tasting the savory cheese as it gave way to crisp tartness was a revelation; tasting the first slice of banana dipped into melted chocolate was almost erotic, and I’ve been obsessed ever since.

Problem is, you can’t just up and make fondue. Unlike, say, guacamole, it’s not just about the freshest ingredients, a bowl, and some tools. You need a double boiler, probably a portable burner, a bunch of those goofy skinny forks that look like the brain picker out of Total Recall…it requires aforethought, is my point, and devoted readers may be realizing I’m not a master of that particular skill.

But I’m trying anyway, because of this recipe: Fondue Royale.

Oh yeah, you read that right. Truffles and Champagne. Adapted from the long out-of-print Fondue Cookbook by Ed Callahan (apparently they were nuts about this stuff in 1968), it looks right up my alley, possibly even up my driveway and into my front hall.

Of course, if that ain’t your thing, we’ve got other fondue recipes, like:
Sharp Cheddar Cheese Fondue
Cheese Fondue
Chocolate Grand Marnier Fondue

Whichever you choose, enjoy it, and be sure those Total Recall forks only stab into the food!

-Jim is strangely unimpressed by chocolate waterfalls

“It’s always eating out with you, isn’t it? Why don’t you ever stay in and cook?”

A foodie friend of mine asked this recently, his IM window bristling with impatience, when I suggested we all go out for a nice, big dinner. He and his ladyfriend are the Master Chefs to my Novice Who Shouldn’t Be in the Kitchen, and their culinary opinion carries a lot of weight with me. So I asked myself, I asked: why do I like dining out so much? It’s expensive, it’s wasteful, it’s unhealthy. But, I realized, there’s one thing it’s not:

Work.

Cooking, for some of us, is work. The very acts that other foodies adore–picking out a recipe, buying the ingredients, prepping and cutting and cooking until what was once a pretty picture on paper is now a proud reality on the table–some of us unlucky folks abhor. We’re in it for the eating, and nothing else; cooking is the inconvenient part, the part we wish we could skip. And, hey, suddenly there’s a magical place where the food is prettier and tastier than what you could ever make, and for a low low price you can just sit there, sipping wine and eating bread, while other people do the hard part for you! It’s like a grown-up version of mom making supper!

But…there’s no pride in that.

As much as I love, love, love sitting at a softly-lit table and talking with the people dear to me, as much as I love, love, love an endless array of deliciousness brought to me on silver platters, as much as I love, love, love effortless eating…it is not, when it comes to food, a meaningful experience.

A while back, I cooked a ladyfriend some vodka penne. I made the sauce from scratch, scorched the bottom of it, put in slightly too much vodka so the pasta tasted sharp, and in general made a somewhat good but rather messy version of the Italian staple. Even longer ago I prepared risotto with spicy Italian sausage; I panicked constantly, called a more experienced friend twice, and in the end dumped in too much shredded Parmesan. In both cases, I was stressed from the time I turned on the stove ’til when I plated the food.

In both cases there were dishes and messes and all sorts of worry wracking my freak out-prone brain. But in the end, I was left grinning down at my plate, proud and happy beyond imagining. This here, I wanted to say, was made by none but mine own hand! I am creator, it is created; I am this kitchen’s GOD! And that feeling only sank in further with each happy bite.

Cooking your own food connects you to that food in a way that simply ordering it in a restaurant does not. It was you who chopped those onions, you who hovered over that wok, you who did everything! And then it’s you who eats it, with joy that lasts long after your plate is empty. Restaurants can leave this lingering happiness, too, but not for the same reason.

When I cook, I feel a meaning to my meal attainable only by preparing it myself.

I only hope that with practice I can experience that connection more often, with less drama and screwups along the way.

-Jim is feeling artsy today

Usually, my lunch hour is spent in front of my laptop, browsing news and forums and anything else I can’t justify doing on a computer while I’m working. Since I spend many hours of free time each week melding with my MacBook anyway, this isn’t that surprising. But it’s an on the whole joyless way to eat; it’s about as food-centric an activity as hurriedly swallowing Pop-Tarts on your way out the door.

Today, I did things differently. There’s not much in the way of a park around here, but there is a stretch of grass and trees by the nearby deli, idyllic despite its setting in the middle of a parking lot. I took my sandwich and sat back against a tree to eat, enjoying the last bits of sunshine left before Chicago enters its Gloom Phase. What I expected to be a pleasant little change turned out to be absolutely blissful.

Maybe it was the grass tickling my wrist whenever I set my food down, or the roughness of the bark against my back, but suddenly eating that turkey on wheat felt more…meaningful. Something important, as opposed to something I just do every day. I ate slowly, which I don’t usually do, and even found myself licking my fingers, savoring every crumb.

There’s something about eating outside that makes you focus on the eating. Ideally, you do this in a peaceful setting. Park, backyard, graveyard, wherever–someplace that lets you focus on the taste, the smell, the feel of your food. Contrast the satisfying crunch of wheat crust to the gentle, yielding turkey; delight in bending a pickle against your teeth until it gives; wash it down with fresh, clean water and lie back to just savor feeling full.

While Fall pries the weather from Summer’s (not) cold, dead hands, everyone should take some time to eat outside. Get in touch with nature, get in touch with your food. I think I’ll do so on my birthday this weekend. Make some proscuitto paninis, bring a bottle of wine, pack some fresh grapes, and find a nice bench somewhere. I bet everything’ll taste a whole lot better.

I’m still gonna check the news on my iPhone while I’m there, though.

-Jim may start advocating Slow Food

I am a slave to recipes.

I’ve cooked enough by now to avoid that numb terror you first feel upon picking up a knife (or a spatula, or a pan, or a…). I make certain foods, like guacamole, with confidence and ease and nary a glance at a slip of paper. But for the most part, if I haven’t cooked a dish at least a dozen times, I still clutch a recipe and God help us all if I vary from its instructions.

Everyone knows baking is a science, but for me all cooking is–and recipes are its immutable laws. If I add more than exactly a quarter-teaspoon of pepper, the house may explode. If I substitute powdered garlic, the planet cracks in half. Many times during my cooking adventures, my brother has sighed, strolled on in, tasted whatever I was convinced ‘d destroyed, and added a pinch of this or that to make it edible.

How do you people do it?

Take last night’s dinner (and today’s hastily-eaten lunch, hence the empty bowl): gazpacho-based tomato sauce with meatballs and angel hair. We started with a big jug of thin, cold soup leftover from a recent family party; my mom puttered about in the kitchen for a while, opened a few jars, and when dinner hit the table the stuff had magically become a real good, totally different, totally hearty sauce.  When I asked her what she’d done, the answers seemed so obvious: boiled off some of the water. Added some crushed tomatoes. Smashed in some meatballs. And yet, had I been in front of the stove, I would’ve stared glumly at the gazpacho for a while before cooking up a side dish and dining on cold soup.

Maybe, once my brother’s done with it, I should take a look at The Improvisational Cook. But something tells me I’ll be reading How to Boil Water and its ilk for a while, yet.

It’s a long–and hopefully delicious–road ahead.

-Jim should probably start filing these recipes

October’s here! That means many things: fall vegetables, Halloween, and of course, the latest Monthly Mouthful! Each month, we survey some of our fave food bloggers, asking questions. Sometimes the questions are serious, sometimes they’re fun, but whatever the case, they’re always food for thought.

For October, we asked: “What is the one thing in your refrigerator or pantry that you cannot live without?” As usual, we got some awesome responses. So check ‘em out below…

Jennifer from Last Night’s Dinner:

This came down to three items for me, and while kosher salt and sherry vinegar are absolute essentials in my kitchen, I think the one item really I can’t live without is the ever-present bowl of lemons on our countertop. The juice lends brightness and acidity to everything from salad dressings to pan sauces, the zest livens up grilled and braised meats and seafood, and my roast chicken just wouldn’t be the same without those thin slices of lemon under the skin, infusing the meat and keeping it juicy and moist as the lemons themselves become meltingly tender and jam-like. And of course, they play a very important role in our pre-dinner cocktail. :o) They may not be local, but I can’t live without my lemons!

Maki from Just Hungry:

A bit boring perhaps, but salt is probably the one indispensable ingredient. Not even some exotic salt either, just plain salt. It’s like the fairytale of the princess who tells her father that she values him like salt, and incurs his wrath - you only know how important salt is when you lack it. In our day of processed foods with hidden added salt everywhere, it’s easy to forget the critical role salt has played in the history of humankind.

Veronica from Veronica’s Test Kitchen:

As one who loves to bake I could never do without flour, butter, eggs and sugar. But given one ingredient to pick I’ll have to go with chocolate. If there is one special spot in the pantry which I give special attention to, it’s my chocolate section. I keep a stock of different percentages of Scharffen Berger, Valrhona, and Callebaut just so I would have the required type (bittersweet, semi-sweet, unsweetened) of chocolate at hand whenever the craving hits me. It can be as simple as making a nice cup of hot chocolate. And if we take the word “living without” literally, I think chocolate is a complete food – it has carbohydrates, fat and some protein. Hmn – now that I have revealed where to find it in my house – I need to move it to a secure location.

Lydia from The Perfect Pantry:

Okay, it should be impossible for someone who has more than 200 items in her pantry to name only one ingredient… but, actually, it was easy. I thought about what I always keep in multiples, what sends me into a panic when I run out of it, what is incomparable and un-subbable. In other words, my culinary security blanket. I ruled out olive oil and canned tomatoes, both of which I always have. I can live without Fresca, which isn’t an ingredient but is always in my fridge. Believe it or not, the one thing I cannot live without is Lan Chi brand chili paste with garlic. It is hot, hot, hot, and it’s essential to most of my Asian cooking. I always have two or three jars in the pantry.

Cybele from Candy Blog:

I always have raw almonds on hand. I usually have two or three bags open at once. One at the office, one that travels with me in my laptop bag and one in the snack box on the kitchen counter.

They’re the perfect snack: crunchy, not too sweet and of course filling. Sometimes I mix them with other things like pretzels, dried fruits, cheese and crackers, but for the most part I just eat a handful or two of the straight everyday.

Jen from Milk and Cookies:

The ingredients that I wouldn’t be able to live without is butter, sugar and eggs. As an avid baker, and especially one that has a sweet tooth, I don’t think I could make anything without these three ingredients. I would even go as far to say as they are the holy trinity when it comes to dessert making.

Jaden from Jaden’s Steamy Kitchen:

Nam in Vietnamese, Nam Plah in Thai, and Holy Stinkbomb in English - fish sauce is the reason why Southeast Asian foods taste so incredibly flavorful. It’s the umami thing - rounding out the corners of flavors and providing the sweet/salty/full hit that you just can’t quite describe. While extremely pungent if you take a whiff, the fish sauce melds away during the cooking process and tastes nothing at all like fish. Look for fish sauce that is tea-colored and not cola-colored. The tea colored brands are top quality, usually the “first pressing.” My favorite brand is Three Crabs.

Tammy from Food on the Food:

If you want a sexy answer, you have to ask a sexy question. The truth is that I can’t live without onions. They’re so versatile. Cooked. Raw. Sweet. Spicy. Soup. Not soup.

I didn’t realize how dependent on them I was until I found myself completely out of onions during the Eat Local Challenge last month. How can every farm stand be out of onions? They’re onions.

I was paralyzed from the waist up. (I did eventually find some, but my resulting carbon footprint was HUGE.)

So, now, just to be on the safe side, I squirrel them away all over the house. Don’t mind that stench. It’s just my backup onion supply.

Amy from Nook and Pantry:

It’s so hard to just pick one! I love my pantry so much. Does salt and pepper count? Other than those two things, the next thing that came to my mind was soy sauce. I just can’t do my Asian cooking without it.

Anna from Sunday Night Dinner:

I am afraid my answer is a bit of a cheat since it’s so basic and obvious, but it is my very own and I shall stand by it: I cannot go a day without olive oil. I mean the good stuff: thick, deep green, so strong you can smell it from across the kitchen. Every single thing I cook begins with a pool of olive oil and often ends with a drizzle for gloss and flavor. I use it for just about everything. Besides being the base for everything that I make in a pan, olive oil is an instant bread dip (perhaps topped with coarse salt or balsamic), a salad dressing, or even a dessert, when poured around a scoop of very dark chocolate ganache. I would (possibly literally) cry if I were ever kept apart from my bottle of olive oil.

Carol from Paris Breakfast:

I recently discovered Turkish black olive tapanade in a Greek store and I can’t live without it! It makes a great base for a vinegrette plus Balsamic. It’s perfect on grilled vegetables or grilled/baked anything like fish, chicken. And you can always spread it on bruscetta for a quick starter.

Cate from Sweetnicks:

That is definitely a tough one, but I think I’m going to go with extra virgin olive oil.

Ruth from Once Upon a Feast:

Wow….that’s probably the hardest question of all! One thing? Only ONE thing?… Obviously, you’ve never been to my house…but, I guess I’d have to say pasta, because no matter what else you have on hand, you can make a great meal. Of course I wouldn’t be caught dead without garlic, olive oil or lemons either!

Luisa from The Wednesday Chef:

This is the most difficult question, I feel like I’m in some kind of foodie version of Sophie’s Choice. The one thing i probably couldn’t live without would be olive oil. Or canned tomatoes. But probably olive oil. Wait! My liberte yogurt! No, olive oil. I’m ending this before i think of something else.

And though it’s late, Adam over at Men in Aprons wrote a fantastic full-length post to answer our question. Check it out!

Many thanks to everyone who participated this month! Now, readers, what in your pantry can’t YOU live without?

And if you were not asked to participate but would like to be for future Monthly Mouthfuls, please e-mail us at chewonthatblog [at] gmail [dot] com.

So, last Friday I had my first experience with Jury Duty, and let me tell you, any excitement I felt at participating in this kick-ass country’s flawed but awesome justice system completely evaporated upon my arrival in Daley Center’s 17th floor. Now, it wasn’t the huge, lecture hall-sized room filled with zombified people of every race, age, and gender (that was inspiring, actually; united in boredom) that did it. Nor was it the knowledge that every agonizing minute spent waiting around doing nothing was another minute added to my (not reimbursed) parking bill.

It was the food.

“Bring plenty of change for vending machines” has such a…defeated ring to it, but I assumed there’d be something worth eating when I saw their rotating, refrigerated vending monstrosity. Sandwiches, perhaps. An apple. But ah, no, every shelf was reserved for bottled water, soda, and juice! All this next to the drink vending machine. On the other side of the worst party room ever was a machine filled with more standard fare: Krunchers chips, those damn tubes of powdered donuts that liquefy once you bite into them, and the eerie orange peanut butter crackers. I opted for the latter, washing down the vaguely peanutty styrofoam with unhappy gulps of Diet Coke.

Look, Mr. Courthouse Manager, I know that we can’t expect haute cuisine out of the jury area in Daley Center, but I bet you’d get a hell of a lot more people taking their (extremely important!) civic duty seriously if you treated them like, say, human beings with taste buds. Put some fruit and sandwiches in the refrigerated vending machine instead of hawking bottled water. Put up a map of good restaurants nearby, since we have a limited amount of time for lunch and may not be familiar with the area

Hell, have a bowl of mints.

Maybe then you wouldn’t have so many citizens trying to BS their way out of Jury Duty once a year.

-Jim would have rather been at Oktoberfest

Let’s make this clear:

Stadium food is, by and large, utterly horrible stuff.

Yeah, yeah, we’re the city with Wrigley and Soldier Field and Chicago Hot Dogs are legendary and that those brats and Polish sah-sages taste so good by the third quarter. I know. But it doesn’t mean that the food you so happily enjoy at a game is actually good. Robbed of its context–alcohol, entertainment, tens of thousands of screaming fans–a stadium dog is a sad little thing, with its sometimes-soggy, sometimes-rock-hard bun and its squishy tube o’ meat. Same goes for, say, your mom’s really greasy enchilada casserole that’s always so delicious when you visit her but turns out, well, greasy when you make it yourself. It’s not that you can’t cook it; it’s that you learned it was good in a particular set of circumstances and, robbed of those circumstances, it just doesn’t measure up.

I’m sure this rule of context only applies to very specific foods, but it’s interesting to consider how psychology and geography can play into how much you enjoy what you’re eating. I mean, I wolfed down a couple hot dogs at the Bears/Chiefs game (we will not discuss the Cowboys debacle; it never happened) and at the time they were pretty much the best things ever. Imagine if I got the same dogs on my plate at a fancy restaurant–hell, even at some hot dog dive–I’d have an entirely different reaction.

This is promising, really. It means I’ll never attempt some horribly unhealthy State Fair food on my own, because when you’re in your kitchen a deep fried twinkie is just gross.

-Jim is torn between being excited about his car and hyperventilating until he owns this

In addition to meeting Morimoto this weekend, I also went camping for the first time (I told you it was eventful!) Sure, I had gone on the occasional overnight camp outing when I was younger, but I had never gone real camping where I had to do the planning.

While there were various experienced campers speckled throughout the 10 of us that came, the majority of us were first timers unable to answer the questions: What are we going to do when we get there? How many tents do we need? How do you build a fire? (Don’t make fun…)

But I think the most important question of all (at least the one that rang through my mind over and over) was: What are we going to eat?

Ah yes, the concept of camp food alone bears a number of challenges. 1. Foods that require refrigeration have to survive travel to the campsite. 2. Uncooked foods must be easily-preparable by campfire. And in our case, 3. You have to have enough to feed 10 people!

Keeping in mind these obvious points was actually the easy part; organizing the group to bring certain items proved more difficult. We had a free-for-all. Since we were all coming from different directions, there were 4 cars of people. Essentially, each car took their own respective grocery trips (for which it felt like my car bought out the grocery store.) It sort of became a “bring whatever the hell you want to eat” fest, which surprisingly wound up working quite well.

We feasted on 30 hot dogs, 12 hamburgers (and their respective buns,) some varying amount of sausage (I didn’t bring it so I’m not sure), and pierogies for the main meal components. I thought I’d be hungry all night, but after throwing back two hot dogs and a hamburger throughout the night, I was stuffed.

Luckily for the pierogie-lovers (ok just me and Kim), we had a camping guru among us who happened to have a portable stovetop for camping (and the 8 person tent) along with every camping supply you could ever think of. A gas-heated stove, it was easier than ever to cook up those pierogies!

Not to mention, we had snacks and beverages galore. We had chips, chips, and more chips (potato, tortilla…AND pita) and all of the respective dips. We had marshmallows and graham crackers for some chocolate-less s’mores by the campfire. AND, despite recent butter flavor warnings, we even cooked….

POPCORN!

What more could you need? We didn’t go hungry, and as for the activities…we ate, and we ate, and we ate. And that was enough for me. Ok fine, we also went paddleboating and played guitar by the fire. But, preparing and eating the food was my favorite part. Often in the kitchen, you’ll have one person cooking by himself or herself, but during camping, it’s a group effort and that’s what makes it fun.

I was part of the grilling team. I prepped the buns for the meat to be put on which was quite the satisfying experience, haha. Not like there were actually teams, but if I had to pick I’d say our team (myself and David who grilled) was the best. I mean, those burgers and hot dogs were pretty darn delicious…

For the morning, we brought orange juice, bagels and bananas. Some of the others brought muffins and the feasting continued.

So now that I’m a camper, a happy one at that (couldn’t resist,) I have some words of advice:

Do not leave your food out overnight when everyone passes out, the animals will not only come around and eat it, they’ll scare the crap out of you and not let you sleep (ok so maybe that was just me.)

Oh, AND, make sure you bring lots of stuff…

-Hillary, hoping to sleep better on her next camping trip
Editor, Recipe4Living