Impromptu Haiku Contest

Yesterday I decided I to get someone this copy of Michael Ruhlman's Ratio I have lying around that went unclaimed by its winner from the initial giveaway. So I went to Twitter and asked you all to send me food haiku and I would choose a winner after I had compiled fifteen. 

Here they are: 

Introducing Wednesday Haiku

For a little while I've been debating something I could do regularly to ensure at least one post a week. Life, as it gets from time to time, has been quite busy as of late. I haven't been posting as frequently and its not for lack of inspiration but merely lack of time to devote to writing and writing well. It has never been my style to slap up a series of photos and put them out into the blogosphere to be ignored. 

What I have come up with for you combines two of my dear loves and creates a format I will easily be able to maintain on a weekly basis: culinary haiku. Somewhere in my heart I believe I have felt inspired by haiku even before learning about them in school. My affection for them flourished in one of the most memorable classes I took as an undergrad at SUNY Geneseo: Literature and the Environment. One of our first assignments was to write haiku. We were also asked to keep a journal for class. Somewhat naturally the two combined for me and I am glad to have a small notebook replete with haiku on a variety of topics. Typically haiku is supposed to focus on themes in nature, but I quickly argued in class and maintain the argument today, that everything that surrounds us is nature because it all exists within the natural world. Sure, a tree that grew without being planted or cultivated that lives in a dense forest may be more natural than a laptop, but they both are made from the earth and its naturally occurring inhabitants.

Follow Fridays: #Favorites

We have come to the final post in my Follow Friday Series. We've talked about my top tweeters for #Reading, #Activism, #FoodJobs, #Friends, #Shopping and now we come to my overall #Favorites. Some of these accounts are just things I really love, some not even related to food. Others are food related favorites that really don't fall into the other categories but I want you to know about them because I think they are great. 

Each week I change up who I put in my #Favorites tweet but I usually cycle through the same batch of people depending on what I've been thinking about during the week. So here is my last group of Follow Friday (#FF) accounts, #Favorites: 

@chefludo - Of course Chef Ludo is on my favorites list! I talk about him nearly as much as I talk about macarons! Follow him on Twitter for tweets with fun photos (lots of coqs), menu items for LudoBites and information on Ludo Bites America. 

@frenchchefwife -Krissy Lefebvre keeps the business side of Chef Ludo's work in order and takes to Twitter to keep a lot of things in order. Hoping for a last minute reservation opening at LudoBites? Better be following Krissy on Twitter. She also tweets pictures of Chef Ludo you just won't see anywhere else, like him eating a just-killed-buffalo's heart (Warning!: not for the squeamish). 

@mylastbite - Jo Maxwell Stougaard of My Last Bite is a wonderful food blogger based in LA. She is well-known for her informative Twitter feed that has over 87,000 followers. She is one of the main LudoBitches and I found her from retweets of her tweets by Krissy and Chef Ludo. After reading this LA Times article about her, she quickly became one of my favorite food bloggers and tweeters (she's also the one who I learned about Google Reader from- which has changed how I get my food news). She has a fabulously positive outlook on life and like her website states: "MyLastBite shares just the positive and never the negative. If I like it, I share it… If I don’t, I don’t!" She's a must follow for anyone who loves food. 

Follow Fridays: #Friends #Foodies

One of the many nice things about being part of the culinary blogosphere is that you are never without friends, and most often never without friends who were there long before you got involved in talking about food 24/7. I am fortunate to have a combination of very old, dear friends and new found friends who are food lovers that I can always count on.


Enjoy following their adventures in eating, cooking, and pastry school! My Follow Friday (#FF) picks for #Friends and #Foodies:

@M_Sweettreats - Marliese is my oldest friend on this list. We grew up around the corner from one another and when I was little I even had a separate birthday party (one of three) every year for her and her sisters - the "Engel Party." Now that we're grown women she is still a close friend and is doing marvelous things in the baking department. She has a budding baking business: Marliese's Sweet Treats. She chronicles the wonderful desserts she makes and eats in her blog. Most recently she began the pastry course at the French Culinary Institute! Be sure to follow her on Twitter as she juggles pastry school and a full-time job with finesse and sweetness.

@twelvefortyfour - Lexie (or Alexandra as she is known at school) is a new, but very dear friend. I was introduced to her by my friend Kyle when she moved to NYC. She too is a student at the FCI but is at the tail end of her pastry program there. Her blog Belle Nana Sans Banane explores what it means to be a pastry student and is also a great resource of  technical pastry/culinary terms. Over the past year I have happily accepted treats she has made in class- I never encountered a pastry I didn't like! But my favorite was the Linzer Torte she shared with me, mmm. Follow her tweets for what it is like to be a busy culinary student and what happens after graduation.

Follow Fridays: #FoodJobs

Food jobs are near and dear to my heart, as I hope to have one of my own someday soon. I started blogging in part to get my passion for food out of my head and into words but also as a means of creating a reference point when applying to food jobs, a field I have no formal training in. Luckily, there are some really great resources for people who want to make a living from their love of food. Here are some of those resources who keep up excellent Twitter accounts and who I always give a special Follow Friday (#FF) to with other hashtags like: #PostYourJobs #Jobs #FoodJobsforAll. 

@GoodFoodJobs - The account I always list first in this category is Good Food Jobs. There is not enough I can say about what a great resource Taylor Cocalis and Dorothy Neagle have created. The site is a job listing board, a way to find out what sort of businesses are up and coming, and a wonderful blog (The Gastrognomes) that interviews one amazing person after the next. The Gastrognomes blog is my favorite part of their site. The best question they always ask their interviewees is: "What advice do you have for others in search of a good food job?" The answers to these always make me think of something new and give me a boost when I feel like my job search is becoming futile. If you are an employer with a good food business, please post your jobs here! It is the best place to post if you want to hire people who are truly passionate about food and want work that satisfies the need to express that passion daily. Job seekers: keep applying! Sign up for their newsletter to get job listings and the blog post of the week in your inbox every Tuesday morning.

@TheSFJblog - Similar to Good Food Jobs, Sustainable Food Jobs is a blog that has job listings focused even more closely on the sustainability side of things. They often list internships and other non-traditional means of gaining experience in the culinary world. If you are seeking a food job, this should be a site you follow. Since it is a blog you can easily subscribe to the RSS Feed and simply get their job postings the same way you read your favorite blogs. 

Follow Fridays: #Activism

This week's Follow Friday (#FF) post is all about my favorite food activists. Thankfully, Twitter has become an important platform for educating the public and creating discussion about the plethora of issues tied to the food we eat. Be it what the latest recall is (all that ground turkey), to how to learn more about the Farm Bill to where young farmers are starting to grow food and provide for this nation-- these are Twitter accounts that will keep you up-to-date on all the moving and shaking in the world of food politics and culinary activism.

@slowfoodusa @slowfoodnyc - Slow Food is a movement that started in Italy and has been going strong in the US since 1986. Their national Twitter account gives relevant information about the latest issues and progress in food politics. They also tweet about ways people are supporting local food and events that are happening. If you love to eat and you believe in the future of local grown, locally sourced food, following @slowfoodusa is a must. I include the @slowfoodnyc account because it is the Twitter handle for my local chapter. 

@marionnestle -The grand dame of Food Politics herself, Marion Nestle is always up to date with what is happening on the political side of food. Her opinion is sought out for most topics about food- from recalls to regulations to information about the farm bill. She is a great resource and anyone who eats should know who she is. If you don't follow her blog, Food Politics, you should be following her on Twitter as she tweets links when she has new posts as well as links to other pertinent news stories. 

Follow Fridays: Introduction and #Reading

In my first months of tweeting I learned about #FF which stands for Follow Friday. It’s a way to suggest to your followers who they might enjoy following on Twitter based on the fact that you like how they tweet. If you are starting out on Twitter it is also a great way to get your handle out there and show some appreciation for the people who keep you tweeting. Friday’s hold a special place in my heart thanks to Twitter and it is all because of #FF. Since I still tweet my series of #FF every week, I thought I would explain the people I typically suggest. Also, I wanted to extend the list beyond the 140 character limit to include the accounts I like but don’t always make room for on Fridays. For the next six or seven Fridays I will give you a post on Friday mornings with all the accounts I like in one overall category.

To begin with I always give a list of my favorite writers or sources labeled as #Reading. This list stays pretty consistent but changes depending on what I am reading that week. If the author, magazine or blog I’ve been into lately has a Twitter account I will always include them. So here is how I tend to get things rolling on Friday mornings:

@GaelGreene – Gael Greene is a food critic and author best known for her hats and sensual writing that blurs the line between food and sex. When I started tweeting as @culinarylibrari the second season of Top Chef Masters was airing so my love for Gael was just starting to bloom. After I read "Insatiable" this past fall my head was filled with all sorts of naughty ideas thanks to Gael. My appreciation fully bloomed and she has been on every #FF #Reading tweet since their inception.

@ruhlman – Around Christmastime I learned about Michael Ruhlman while watching Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations Holiday Special. I thought to myself—who is this handsome man with great knife skills and even better hair? After Googling him and finding a recipe for homemade English muffins on the first page of his site I knew I wanted to learn more about him. He is the author of a myriad of books about cooking and being a Chef in addition to the handful of books he has co-authored with the heavy hitters like Thomas Keller and Eric Ripert.

Je retourne à Paris....

For any of you who follow my Facebook page or my Twitter feed you may have heard that I will be going to Paris, France this week. This is more than a vacation for me, it is a return to a place I once lived for a time. During the fall of my senior year of college I studied in Paris for the semester. While in Paris I experienced every emotion in the book. My start was rocky, vexed by fatigue, loneliness, foreignness, and a lack of modern comforts (ie internet in my room). My transition was difficult but eventually I got a handle on Paris and my concerns about returning to the USA disenchanted by Pairs and completely over my 2 decades of francophilia faded completely. I love Paris and La France more than ever. 

See the Stars on the Eiffel Tower?
France was "president" of the European Union while I was there.

This is my chance to see my Paris with my friends, without loneliness, without being so foreign... So I am packed up, have my list of the best macaron places from Girls Guide to Paris printed out, my Paris Moleskine I had when I first went to Paris, I've been looking up restaurant suggestions from David Lebovitz, finished reading Paris Was Ours last month, and have been testing my rusty French on my friends. I am ready. The anxiety I had been feeling about my trip since I bought my plane ticket has mostly subsided and I feel fully prepared to return to the City of Light. 

Eating lunch along the Seine
(that's probably some baguette filling my cheeks)

Fortunately this is all working out thanks to one of my very best friends who needed to be in Paris for her masters and offered for me to come along and play tour guide to fellow visitors. I'm very grateful to her and lucky to be going back with such wonderful company. 

I will probably not be updating The Culinary Librarian Facebook or Twitter pages much this week, but periodically I will try to post a picture or an update, so keep an eye on them. As of yet I'll keep what I am thinking about for Paris blog posts until I return... I can never be sure what I will find there, anyway. Here's to wishing you all a wonderful week while I am away, a favorable exchange rate for our mighty dollar, and beautiful weather. À bientôt mes chers! 

My profile picture was taken when I was in Paris at Les Fous en L'Ile restaurant on Ile St-Louis, where I lived.
The restaurant was decorated with tons of chickens and coqs. Chef Ludo would love it!

The Locavores' Dilemma: A discussion about what to eat.

Thanks to my avid reading and tweeting on Twitter I found out about the event at the New York Public Library (NYPL) I attended Thursday October 21, 2010 from @SlowFoodUSA.

The Locavores' Dilemma brought in former Cullman Center Fellow Melanie Rehak, author of Eating for Beginners, Chef David Shea of applewood Restaurant in Park Slope, and Steve Jenkins of Fairway Market; the discussion was moderated by another former Cullman Center Fellow Patrick Radden Keefe journalist and author of The Snakehead.  Odds are unless you're a New Yorker you might not have heard of any of these people (yet). I recognized Fairway, of  course, and had seen Melanie Rehak's book cover but did not really know much about any of the participants or what they do. Jean Strouse, director of the Cullman Center, gave thorough introductions for each participant (a recipe of hers is included in Eating for Beginners, which Patrick Keefe drew attention to due to her memorable instruction to "add a stick of butter" to a dish of brussel sprouts- and Strouse added joyfully "and bacon!").

So how do these people fit together to make for a discussion about locavory? Rehak lives in Park Slope just blocks away from applewood restaurant (small "a" intended). She is a locavore and spent time working in the applewood kitchen to write her book; she also follows the food the restaurant uses back to  its sources; spending time making cheese, picking greens, and even out on the ocean to catch the restaurant's seafood. Chef David Shea is a consistent voice and presence in Rehak's memoir. During her time working at applewood he encourages her to believe in herself and in her abilities in the kitchen. Steve Jenkins is a mainstay in the New York grocery scene and brought insight to the more commercial side of local sourcing and eating.

Destiny Calling. The New York City Wine & Food Festival Part I: Alton Brown's Cooking Demo

By bouts of good fortune I had one of the best weekends of my life this month during the New York City Wine & Food Festival October 7th through 10th. 

First and foremost my good friend Marlie of Marliese's Sweet Treats offered me the awesome opportunity to work the American Lamb Board table during the second session of Sunday's grand tasting and the opportunity to attend the first session on Sunday as a guest. The chance to participate in this important part of the festival got me throughly excited for the upcoming weekend! I was living in New York last year during the festival but since I did not have tickets to events I did not even think to go loiter around Chelsea Market (which I recommend you do with or without tickets during the Festival-- lots of activity and foodie celeb sightings!l!).

During the week leading up to the event my Twitter feed was a-buzz with #nycwff attached to all tweets about chef appearances, events, details, and the most fortunate tweets for me-- giveaways! My love of Twitter and Whole Foods combined to bring me what would become great fortune....

Great resource for starting Culinary Research from NYPL's Rebecca Federman!

From the Cooked Books Blog
"A Guide to Culinary Research" by Rebecca Federman, the NYPL's culinary librarian. 
Follow her on Twitter! @cookedbooks


http://cookedbooks.blogspot.com/2010/05/guide-to-culinary-research.html



This information definitely would have helped me doing some research for college papers and will help me researching now! 

Her first point about the keyword "cookery" is very true even if it seems a little odd. 
Go get one of your cookbooks and look at the copyright page-- look all the way at the bottom of the page where the book is classified and... ta-da!:
I. Cookery
Usually listed first then further classified into a regional cuisine (many of my cookbooks say "Cookery, French"). Even some of your favorite food memoirs will have Cookery listed-- definitely the place to start!!

Culinary Tweets

When I first started my own Twitter account back in the fall I really didn't know what to do with it. I thought Twitter was kind of pointless (due to facebook) and confusing (because I didn't get notified everytime anything happened by email, again due to facebook). I also was frustrated by the character limit and felt as if my thoughts were constantly being cut off.

It took me about a month to get the hang of it and realize just how useful 140 characters of microblogging can be-- especially for foodies! For one, tons of celebrity chefs, food critics, and respected foodies tweet many times a day, providing insights on a wide range of culinary areas. There are also plenty of restaurants/cafes/bakeries, grocery & specialty stores, food carts/trucks (especially helpful in NYC for the trucks who move daily and update their location on twitter), farmer's markets, foodie newletters, and culinary publications such as magazines & cookbooks who all provide insider tips, general information, event news, and promotional notifications. Twitter has become an excellent resource for me to find out about what is happening in the culinary world around me which is constantly changing. It is also an excellent forum for give-aways which I myself have been lucky enough to win (Gift Cards from Lenny's in NYC). The tweeters who win these give-aways are known as "Twinners" = Twitter + Winner. Some recent culinary give-aways include:

• Kitchen Aid Mixers from @MarthaStewart
• Kitchen Aid attachements from @KitchenAidUSA
• Gift Cards to Whole Foods and NYC restaurants
• Cookbooks from celebrity chefs such as @jamie_oliver (King of the US School Lunch Revolution)
• A popcorn maker from @bonappetitmag

In all, whether you're looking to share information with others, post pictures of your latest gustation, tweet to your favorite chef about how much you love her/him, learn about all of @GaelGreene's latest thoughts about NYC Restaurants, or win something you've always wanted (i.e. a Kitchen Aid!) then Twitter is definitely worth trying out.
To follow me and check out some of my favorite culinary tweeters, check out my twitter page to the right or click here: @culinarylibrari.


Happy Tweeting!