Although I haven’t posted in a few months, I’ve kept up with my favorite blogs through Google Reader.  There’s a fun little meme going around food blogs for the past couple of days that I thought would be fun to post.

The Omnivore’s Hundred is one food blogger’s very subjective list of foods that all food-lovers should try in their lifetime.  Andrew Wheeler co-authors the British food blog Very Good Taste, and he says “Don’t worry if you don’t recognise everything in the hundred, either; Wikipedia has the answers.”

He instructs participants to bold items you’ve tried, and lineout items you would never try.  Instead I’ll just add a yes or a no after each item.  I couldn’t resist adding some commentary as well.   So here’s mine, what are yours?
1. Venison – yes (Venison summer sausage was one of my Grandma’s favorites.)
2. Nettle tea - yes 
3. Huevos rancheros – yes
4. Steak tartare – no (but I would love to try it.)
5. Crocodile – no
6. Black pudding – yes (sorry, but ick.)
7. Cheese fondue – yes
8. Carp – yes
9. Borscht – no
10. Baba ghanoush – yes
11. Calamari – yes 
12. Pho – yes
13. PB&J sandwich – yes (I hear this isn’t so common in Europe.)
14. Aloo gobi – yes
15. Hot dog from a street cart – yes
16. Epoisses – no (not many cheeses I haven’t tried, but here’s one.)
17. Black truffle – yes
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes – yes
19. Steamed pork buns – yes
20. Pistachio ice cream – yes (one of my favorite foods!)
21. Heirloom tomatoes – yes
22. Fresh wild berries – yes
23. Foie gras – yes
24. Rice and beans – yes (who hasn’t had rice & beans?)
25. Brawn, or head cheese – no (not sure I want to, but I would if someone served it to me)
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper – no (ummm, why?)
27. Dulce de leche – yes
28. Oysters – yes (one of the few foods I just don’t care for.)
29. Baklava – yes
30. Bagna cauda – no (never heard of this until this list, but sounds lovely.)
31. Wasabi peas – yes
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl – yes (we are just 45 minutes from San Francisco.)
33. Salted lassi – no
34. Sauerkraut – yes (I even posted a recipe for making it at home.)
35. Root beer float – yes
36. Cognac with a fat cigar – no
37. Clotted cream tea – yes
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O – yes
39. Gumbo – yes
40. Oxtail – yes
41. Curried goat – no
42. Whole insects – no (unless you count eating bugs while running or riding my bike)
43. Phaal – no (kind of like the scotch bonnets, not really interested.)
44. Goat’s milk – yes
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more – no (but I’d love to sometime!)
46. Fugu – no (not sure it’s worth the risk)
47. Chicken tikka masala – yes
48. Eel – yes
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut – yes
50. Sea urchin – yes
51. Prickly pear – yes
52. Umeboshi – yes
53. Abalone – no
54. Paneer – yes
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal – yes
56. Spaetzle – no (there are a few of these that I’d think I’d have tried at some point in my life, but can’t quite remember.)
57. Dirty gin martini – no (dirty vodka martini, yes.)
58. Beer above 8% ABV – yes
59. Poutine -no (French fries with fresh cheese curds and gravy… where can I find this delicious concoction!)
60. Carob chips – yes (but why would this be on the list?  carob is one of the most uninteresting foods)
61. S’mores – yes
62. Sweetbreads – no (I’d definitely try it, but I can’t say thymus gland sounds very appetizing)
63. Kaolin – no (umm, maybe it was in my toothpast and I ingested some?)
64. Currywurst – no
65. Durian – no (and I haven’t heard anything convincing me I should try it.)
66. Frogs’ legs – no
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake – yes  (that’s quite a few items in that category!)
68. Haggis – no
69. Fried plantain – yes
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette – no
71. Gazpacho – yes
72. Caviar and blini – no
73. Louche absinthe – yes
74. Gjetost, or brunost – yes (delicious)
75. Roadkill – no (suppose I try a clean, well-cooked piece of roadkill on principle.)
76. Baijiu – no
77. Hostess Fruit Pie – yes
78. Snail – yes
79. Lapsang souchong – yes
80. Bellini – yes (love champagne cocktails!)
81. Tom yum – yes (love it!)
82. Eggs Benedict – yes
83. Pocky – yes
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant – no (the French Laundry is on my life list)
85. Kobe beef – no (I don’t think so anyways)
86. Hare – yes
87. Goulash – no (technically, I don’t think I’ve had this, although I’ve made many dishes at home that I’ve given that name)
88. Flowers – yes
89. Horse – no (why is that so unnappealing?)
90. Criollo chocolate – no
91. Spam – yes (Spam musubi anyone?)
92. Soft shell crab – yes
93. Rose harissa - no
94. Catfish – yes
95. Mole poblano – yes
96. Bagel and lox - yes
97. Lobster Thermidor – no (mmm, sounds lovely)
98. Polenta – yes (there are some items in this list that seem very ordinary to me)
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee – no
100. Snake – no (strangely, snake meat sounds much more appealing than horse meat)

I’m surprised that I’ve only tried 63 of these items, but a person has to have something to live for right?  That’s 37 unusual and questionably delicious food items for me still to try.  :)

Coming soon are recipes for lemon-lime curd, almond meringues, and best of all, homemade mozzarella!

In the meantime, be entertained with a funny food fight. (It goes on a little long, but it’s worth a few moments for a chuckle at least.)

I haven’t posted a new recipe in a couple weeks, but it’s not for lack of cooking. Jeremy and I have been resetting our metabolisms (I don’t think that’s a word that’s usually plural) by doing Phase 1 of the South Beach diet, and while we’ve eaten well, I haven’t really cooked anything new. I’ve repeated some favorite recipes, and generally made very simple food, like last night’s sauteed Brussels Sprouts, with a little butter, a little garlic, and not much else. (They’re delicious like that, by the way.)

I’ve called off the diet a few days early, it was impacting my training for The Relay. The thing about a diet of vegetables, lean meats, and low fat cheeses, is that while my energy level over the course of the day was quite good, my energy for running was not so hot. When on Day 9 I still hadn’t kicked the feeling that my muscles had been soaking in lead after the first, oh, 60 seconds or so of running, I decided it was time for some more carbs. Oh yeah, baby, gimme some sugar. So we’ll see how that first run goes tomorrow with the store of glycogen in my muscles somewhat replenished.

The other thing that’s happened recently is that I’ve just gotten lazy with the camera. And it’s so unrewarding to post a recipe without a picture. It makes me feel like a total half-ass. I know I don’t read blogs without pictures, so why should I expect you to? And, I already have it on my to-do list (my mental to-do list, at least) to go back and make the recipes I posted before we got the camera, and add an image or two to those posts, so the last thing I want to do is to post yet another recipe of something I haven’t taken a picture of.

So you see? Many reasons for the lack of recipe posting. But I promise that will all end this weekend. I have big plans. I may not get to them all, but I promise to make something delicious, and show it to you for your reading (and viewing) pleasure.

In the meantime, here’s one of my favorite photos. (I still haven’t eaten much refined sugar lately, so I’m drooling a bit over chocolate.)

Walnut baguette from Bay Bread, with Gorgonzola Cremificato and Olallieberry Honey.

For those of you who know me, I’ve been pretty public about my severe lactose intolerance for quite some now. A few years ago, I just completely gave up dairy products (except butter), deciding they were just not for me.

Recently, however, I’ve found some new sources of information, and have been looking into lactose contents of different dairy products, and found out that many cheeses really don’t have much lactose in them, as the cheesemaking process by definition separates the curds (milk proteins), from the whey (milk sugars, a.k.a. lactose), and discards the latter portion.

Well, HALLELUJAH!!

I feel as though I have been reborn back into the world of cheese!

At first I experimented cautiously, a little at a time, particularly keeping on the lookout for cheeses with zero carbohydrates listed in the nutrition facts (0 carbs = 0 sugar = 0 lactose). And as I’ve continued to try more variety, I’ve been fine.

Now, I don’t know if cheese is a big deal for you, but it was VERY difficult for me to give it up when I did, and I’d always cheat here and there in the beginning, so I never could tell what was causing my stomach upset. Now that I’ve been able to reincorporate cheese into my diet, well, it’s just great. That’s all I can say about it. Really fantastically deliciously mouth-wateringly great.

Case in point: This completely divine combination of a slice of a fresh walnut baguette, with a bit of creamy, smelly, and wonderful Gorgonzola Cremificato (it’s like a very creamy and not crumbly blue cheese, with even more depth of flavor) and a drizzle of olallieberry honey that’s crystallized a bit from being in my cupboard for a while.

and…

And, yes, I even licked the plate.

At first I was a little weirded out by this whole idea, it seems to involve lots of plastic containers, and lots of food cut into cute shapes, but where do all those discarded edges go? What a waste.

But after reading further, I can see the appeal. I treat everyday lunches so casually. Usually, I pop something frozen into the microwave at work, and save my thought, effort, and creativity for dinner, the important meal. I could get into these adorable and appealing little lunches, that mostly seem very well-balanced.

Here’s blogs about bentos I found that I like a lot:
All My Bento Are Belong To Me
Lunch In A Box
Cooking Cute

And here’s one that’s some really wild and great food art, but I’m not really sure I’d want to eat:
Sakurako Kitsa’s Flickr

We had a potluck Thanksgiving at my folks house this year, which worked beautifully. (And you know I like potlucks.) Everyone contributed something, and no one had to stress out and get up at the crack of dawn to prep a dozen dishes. I’ll post about my contributions, namely the stuffing (gluten-free), the mushroom gravy (also gluten-free), and the delicious brussels sprouts with chestnuts in brown butter sauce from Deb over at Smitten Kitchen.

Anyone who knows me has probably heard me talk about my wedding at some point or another. My husband and I were vehemently opposed to going back into the depths of credit card debt that we’d been working so hard to clamber our way out of, just to feed a bunch of our friends and family some fancy food that probably wouldn’t be nearly worth the price per head that it would cost us. We were lucky enough to have some very generous friends donate the use of their backyard for our wedding and reception, so it just seemed all-around appropriate to have a potluck wedding reception. I highly recommend this to everyone!

Here’s what the buffet table looked like:

The friends whose backyard we were using had the brilliant idea of hiring a couple of servers to collect people’s potluck contributions on their way in, and then the servers managed everything getting plated, heated, and rotated appropriately. So this is just one snapshot of the buffet table, as it evolved throughout the evening.

If you’re looking carefully, you may be wondering about the brown items in the middle of the table. Yes, that is Chocolate-Covered Bacon. With Sprinkles. You’d actually be surprised, this concoction had it’s admirers. And no, not just the family dog, they don’t even have a dog. This fabulous dish was courtesy of Jeremy’s friend Matthew, and it served it’s purpose as the fulfillment of a drunken dream of the best food in the world. (It actually was kinda good.)

In addition to the buffet, we were lucky enough to have a friend make our wedding cake:

And another friend did the flowers (including those on the cake):

Let me just say, I highly recommend doing your wedding this way. Even if you have to pay for a cake and a florist, the potluck adds such a community feel to the event. Everyone gets to show off their favorite dish, and share in good food with friends and family.

Pictures taken by George Paginini and Jayanti Anand.