SaltShaker

A question for regular, and irregular, readers of the blog. As many of you know, I’ve been hard at work on a Casa SaltShaker cookbook. Part of me wants to have it simply be a recipe book, with a touch of the background and the story behind some of the dishes, and part wants to [...]

 The burning Macedonian forests sing new songs, new news. Macedonia is liberated. Liberty lives!
- from the Macedonian National Anthem
There was a time, many moons ago, when I could have told you the entire geography of Europe, hell, probably most of the world, along with various things like capital cities, primary languages, religions, etc. It was [...]

 The United Provinces had not at this time any general conspicuous for military genius. The laurels gained by Don Antonio Gonsalez Balcarce at Suipacha were blighted at the Desaguadero. His brother, Don Martin Balcarce, was in Chili in command of Argentine auxiliaries. The victory of Don Jose Rondeau, in front of Monte Video, was the [...]

 It sweats as if masturbating”
- Tom Gates, The Five Worst Pizzas In the World
It began, as many things do these days, as a single tweet. Tom Gates, who writes a fun little travel blog called waywardlife’s posterous, had dared to criticize pizza in Buenos Aires in a column on the MatadorNights website. And he didn’t [...]

 It’s difficult to name a dish that is typically Indonesian, because many favorite recipes and flavors come from other countries.”
- Cooking the Indonesian Way, by Kari Connell and Merry Anwar
Recently I’ve gotten quite a few e-mails asking for more details on exactly what it is that we’re doing in our cooking classes. The questions are [...]

 Private dining rooms within restaurants have always been popular even if something of a contradiction in that restaurants are ostensibly public, egalitarian places which people visit to see and to be seen.”
- Nick Lander, Financial Times
We’ve hosted a good number of private dinners over the last four years. Generally, they’re bigger groups – anywhere from [...]

 On the occasion of World Food Week and World Food Day 2009, let us reflect on those numbers and the human suffering behind them. Crisis or no crisis, we have the know-how to do something about hunger. We also have the ability to find money to solve problems when we consider them important. Let us [...]

 The question that women casually shopping for perfume ask more than any other is this: “What scent drives men wild?” After years of intense research, we know the definitive answer. It is bacon. Now, on to the far more interesting subject of perfume…”
- Luca Turin, biophysicist
This is just one of those geeky things I run [...]