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With thanks to Keats' Ode to Autumn for inspiration: Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness... Our first stop was in Barrie for a brief visit to one of Kerry's customers, The Georgian Chocolate Company. This is housed in the smallest, cleanest, most organized chocolate making space I have ever seen. It is one very small room in a gluten-free bakery. Beautiful packaging too! The bakery offerings look very appetizing for something that was gluten-free. We then drove around the corner for breakfast at Deb's Place: Kerry's tea with almost enough milk. Kerry's breakfast - no homefries and (shudder) brown toast. My breakfast with homefries and sensible white toast that arrived after we took the photograph. You all recognize this bridge. And because we have our priorities straight these are the additions and replenishments for the bar.

Hello Everyone! Happy to join eGullet in hopes to share my passion for culinary and kitchen with others. I have an Instagram account, but I don't think that is enough as I want to learn more, expand, and share my love for food with individuals who share the same passion. Here is a brief bio about myself: Born and raised in Los Angeles, CA by my Filipino parents. Having no brothers and sisters, I am very independent and surprisingly social with others but also love spending time on my own and with my boyfriend Louis, who is my kitchen partner in crime (this is how we actually met, working BOH at a local Vietnamese restaurant in LA). Having attended college majoring in accounting as an undergrad and grad, I orignally wanted to become a licensed accountant for finance and real estate, but it was not fulfilling and the content honestly bored me to death! I also desired to leave the corporate business world and join the professional kitchen. So I took the leap, graduated culinary school, quit my desk job, and worked in the professional kitchen. Then my health and finances took over, and I had surgery and I needed more money to survive in a city of ridiculous rent prices. I had to leave the kitchen and go back into accounting. Fast forward to 2017, I am currently unemployed having been laid off two days before Christmas the prior year! Using this as a sign and as an opportunity for self growth and realization, I am once again on the culinary path. Not necessarily to work on the line, but to learn more, cook and bake more at home, and expose myself out there to all things food and kitchen. Not also forgetting to mention I am always surrounded by food: Louis is also still in the professional kitchen, and we WILL have that restaurant one day (dreams DO come true, I just know it!). Anyhow, I am super excited to be posting here and exchanging ideas! See you out there! Margie

Ciao! I'm Christine and I'm a born and bred New Yorker. I’m an Italian by blood (and at heart, of course) since my parents actually came from Italy. My father was from Sciacca, Sicily while my mother was from Sondrio, Lombardy. Despite coming from different regions, or because of it, love for food and cooking has been one of the mainstays in my family home life growing up. And I’ve always loved the dishes my parents prepared during special occasions, and even on regular days. And of course, I love cooking (and eating) Italian food and I have a few recipes from my mother, but I'd really love to collect some more, especially the traditional ones. And if anyone can contribute some historical background to each dish, that would be really great. Grazie mille!

We're 50 something Aussies who enjoy travelling, eating, cooking, markets, kitchen shops, cooking utensils, animals & plants (often food related), architecture & photography (both kitchens and food) and exploring different cultures (of which food is a big part). The trip was January 14 - February 6, it was just marvellous. My favourite meal is now masala dosa with sambar, I had many. Here's some highlights of the food. A late afternoon snack of Sichuan pepper squid was washed down with a beer at the Ajantha Seaview Hotel on the promenade in Pondicherry. It's a colonial building with a first floor terrace overlooking the colourful display of women in their finest, and the Bay of Bengal. We're here on a Monday public holiday for the Pongal festival, a four day celebration of the harvest, with many different ceremonies and traditions. A visual bonus, cows (and sometimes goats) get their horns painted and wear flower garlands or other decorations.

We’ve just returned from a fun filled 16 days on the beautiful island of Sri Lanka. The food was fantastic, the people friendly, the markets chaotic, the temples serene, the mountains breathtaking, the wildlife plentiful and the weather ? Well, you can’t have everything, it was mostly hot, and at times very wet. Why Sri Lanka ? We loved time spent earlier this year in southern India, especially the food. Sri Lanka lies just off the southern tip of India and has been influenced over time by various invading Indian dynasties. Often referred to as the spice Island, it’s been an important trading post for centuries. Other countries have also played their part in shaping Sri Lankan cuisine. The Portuguese arrived in the early part of the 16th century, the Dutch gained control in the 17th century, the British had control by 1815, and independence was proclaimed in 1948. Throughout these years, Chinese traders also contributed to the evolution of Sri Lanka. So, what’s the food like ? Delicious ! Our first night was spent at a homestay in the coastal city of Negombo. All day the rain bucketed down. It was difficult to go anywhere else, so we asked our hosts to provide dinner. Good move ! The rain let up long enough for a quick quick visit to the fish market, the first of several we’d see. Our hostess made 10 different dishes including a mango curry where I watched her pluck the fruit from the tree in the front yard. There was sour fish curry, chicken curry, dal, several veggie curries, chutney, two rice and roti bread. The meal cost 900 rupees pp, or about $6. Gosh it was good. Lousy photo, some better ones to come.

“… and so it begins!” Welcome to “Tales from the Fragrant Harbour”! In the next couple of days I am hoping to take you to a little excursion to Hong Kong to explore the local food and food culture as well as maybe a little bit more about my personal culinary background. I hope I can give you a good impression of what life is like on this side of the globe and am looking very forward to answering questions, engaging in spirited discussions and just can share a bit of my everyday life with you. Before starting with the regular revealing shots of my fridge’s content and some more information on myself, I’d like to start this blog and a slightly different place. For today's night, I ‘d like to report back from Chiba city, close to Tokyo, Japan. It’s my last day of a three day business trip and it’s a special day here in Japan: “Doyou no ushi no hi”. The “midsummer day of the ox”, which is actually one of the earlier (successful) attempts of a clever marketing stunt. As sales of the traditional winter dish “Unagi” (grilled eel with sweet soy sauce) plummeted in summer, a clever merchant took advantage of the folk tale that food items starting with the letter “U” (like ume = sour plum and uri = gourd) dispel the summer heat, so he introduced “Unagi” as a new dish best enjoyed on this day. It was successful, and even in the supermarkets the sell Unagi-Don and related foods. Of course, I could not resist to take advantage and requested tonight dinner featuring eel. Thnaks to our kind production plant colleagues, I had what I was craving … (of course the rest of the food was not half as bad) Todays suggestion: Unagi (grilled eel) and the fitting Sake ! For starters: Seeweed (upper left), raw baby mackerel with ginger (upper right) and sea snails. I did not care for the algae, but the little fishes were very tasty. Sahimi: Sea bream, Tuna and clam ... Tempura: Shrimp, Okra, Cod and Mioga (young pickled ginger sprouts). Shioyaki Ayu: salt-grilled river fish. I like this one a lot. I particularly enjoy the fixed shape mimicking the swimming motion. The best was the tail fin Wagyu: "nuff said ... Gourd. With a kind of jellied Oden stock. Nice ! Unagi with Sansho (mountain pepper) So, so good. Rich and fat and sweet and smoky. I could eat a looooot of that ... Chawan Mushi:steamed egg custard. A bit overcooked. My Japanese hosts very surprised when I told them that I find it to be cooked at to high temperatures (causing the custard to loose it's silkiness), but they agreed. Part of the experience was of course the Sake. I enjoyed it a lot but whether this is the one to augment the taste of the Unagi I could not tell ... More Unagi (hey it's only twice per year) ... Miso soup with clams ... Tiramisu. Outside view of the restaurant. Very casual! On the way home I enjoyed a local IPA. Craft beer is a big thing in Japan at the moment (as probably anywhere else in the world), so at 29 oC in front of the train station I had this. Very fruity … When I came back to the hotel, the turn down service had made my bed and placed a little Origami crane on my pillow. You just have to love this attention to detail.

My niece has just married and we are in Kerala as part of the celebrations. I wish I could have preserved the whole event in detail for eGullet, as I’ve enjoyed the posts of others so much. In particular I’m thinking of @chefmd's Mongolia blog and @sartoric's amazing South Indian report. Forget that standard! I’m going to try a little mini-blog. Not only am I terribly disorganised and IT challenged but I am also currently suffering from a rotator cuff tear which makes photography painful and difficult. Even though this will be a very scanty record, I think I can offer something a little different to what we've seen before. Prawn fry. Chicken fry. Rice. My mother used to send us off to school with our lunch of fried prawns, rice and yoghurt. I think this rice is basmati, which is not quite correct. The yoghurt is home made daily. The prawns are from the Kerala backwaters; large and fresh caught. These are spiced mainly with chilli paste, and cooked in coconut oil to a somewhat firmer consistency than would be considered polite nowadays in the UK. This combination takes me right back to kindergarten tiffin. The nuns used to roll their eyes and tut at how red and hot the prawns looked. We don’t get it much or at all any more when we’re back in England, so this was an absolute treat. The chicken fry and chicken curry (just pictured with the rice) would normally have been stars in their own shows, but got hardly a look-in today. The thoran (again not pictured) being vegetarian, was sadly neglected. I’m sure it was very good but vegetables really have to fight for their space on my plate. Please bear with me for the misalligned pictures, varying resolution and clunky editing...

Good morning and hello from sunny South Florida! Later this morning, I'm going to pick up my weekly CSA box, and then we'll know what I'm going to be eating this week. Until then... This is a Cara Cara orange, a navel orange with red flesh. It has very low acid and is sweeter than most oranges. I bought some this morning from Whole Foods; they were grown in Winter Garden, FL. A little juice for breakfast: See you after I'm back from the farm!

So Kerry Beal and I headed north today to spend five weeks on Manitoulin Island. As usual we want to share our adventures with you. We left the Burlington/Oakville area about 8:30 this morning, drove north through Barrie and Sudbury and arrived in Little Current on the Island around 3:30 this afternoon. You get an idea here of how packed car was. There was barely room for Kira. The egg cartons which Kerry and I had saved since last fall took up a great deal of space. We discovered in a text message from the Island that our egg lady is no longer in business. We can't imagine not having dozens and dozens of freshly laid eggs. We will be trying to source from a new supplier. You can also just get a glimpse of the mint that will be appearing in our cocktails. Breakfast was a quick swing through McDonald's drive-through. I had a sausage McMuffin with egg and Kerry had a bacon and egg McMuffin. We both had hashbrowns. No photo but then you all know what these look like. Lunch was not a great improvement. From Jeremy's truck stop in Nairn Centre a toasted club for Kerry A toasted BLT for me. Kerry had a side of their famous potato pancakes with sour cream And I had a bag of potato chips We just wanted to keep driving and get to Little Current as soon as possible. We promise the food will improve from here on! Edited to change minutes to mint.

The Manitoulin test kitchen topic has been so popular, it has reached the 20-page mark (the point beyond which the servers are begin bing less efficient at processing) in under a month! We've split this discussion; the preceding section is here: Manitoulin test kitchen (Part 1). So there wasn't much to choose between them taste wise or texture wise. The Ruhlman wet/dry is faster and easier. Most of the prep now done for another dinner of laarb this time using Kerry's recipe. Might have cooked more this afternoon but had a nice nap instead after all this is supposed to be holiday too.

I’m on Day Two of sunning myself on the Redneck Riviera, on the Gulf Coast of western Florida, and it occurred to me I should at least document some of the seafood. Apologies for the two meals I’ve failed to photograph so far; I will do better. Trip down Tuesday was about 2 1/2 hours longer than expected, as we acquired a 3/8 inch bolt through the sidewall of a tire. The delay impacted our lunch plans at Mary Mahoney’s Old French House in Biloxi, MS, one of my favorite destinations for Creole cuisine. We got there about 3, discovered they’d changed from the lunch to the dinner menu, so we had a late lunch/early dinner. My traveling companion is a connoisseur of gumbo, and contends MM’s is the best she’s had. We both had a cup, a rich brown, with plenteous portions of shrimp and lump crabmeat, spicy but not hot. I guess there was trinity cooked in the roux, but none survived in noticeable bits. She had fried shrimp, which looked awfully tasty with a crispy batter, almost tempura-ish but a little heavier. I had an appetizer-sized portion of shrimp and crab au gratin, the seafood in an extremely rich Mornay sauce, topped with cheese and broiled. It’ll make a liar of anyone who says one shouldn’t cook seafood with cheese. Thus fortified, we made it the final 200 miles to our destination, where we enjoyed a late glass of wine on the deck while watching the sunset over the gulf, and I took one of the few photos I’ve taken so far: Yesterday, we lounged on the beach and by the pool, and headed out for dinner to another favorite, Acme Oyster House, a western outpost of the NOLA classic. In a new building on the Intercoastal Waterway, the room is uncommonly pleasant: high ceilings, dark wood, lots of windows. I was, sadly, a little disappointed in the food. Sue had a half a fried shrimp po’boy and a cup of butter beans, sausage and Tasso, and pronounced it good. I was less impressed with my grilled marinated shrimp, which had a Godawfully sweet taste to them. They were somewhat redeemed, though, by the excellent sweet potato fries, which were twice-fried to achieve a crispy outer shell and a creamy inside. Today is more lounging on the beach and at the pool, and debating where we’ll eat tonight. High in the running are Cobalt, a newish place on Perdido Bay where we ate lunch last year; Wolf Bay Lodge, which came highly recommended; and DeSoto’s Seafood House, a classic that’s been dishing up local seafood for 50 years. Or maybe one of a half-dozen other attractive looking places. I promise food photos!

You’re going the wrong direction! I just got off my OKC to Chicago flight for a weekend of Mexican food. I’m not too keen on heading to Mexico City at just this moment, so Chicago it is. We have a 9pm dinner reservation, so engaged in a little pre-gaming at Tortas in O’Hare, one of the best airport restaurants there is. And O’Hare is sort of a food desert, so I’m glad this Bayless outpost is here. Just some chips and guacamole to hold us over for a few hours…

Well, it took a pandemic, but I’m finally in New Orleans. I’ve meant to come for many years and it just never happened: but a relatively last-minute cancellation of a scheduled trip to Amsterdam left me with a week off, and plenty of airline credits. When traveling I typically divide my trips into “food trips” and “not food trips” (for example, in 2021 I did a lot of national parks: those are very much “not food trips”). So finally, here is a trip that is most emphatically a “food trip”. My timing is a little awkward here: to map with the time off I’d already taken, but avoid New Years and football bowl season, I am here Sunday through Thursday—it’s not ideal dining days, but I’m sure I can make it work. So without further ado:

In these challenging times, a full summer vacation is not an easy task. For the last 1.5 years we have been mostly at home with the clear plan to visit Catalonia (or more precise my wife’s family) latest this summer. And it looked good for a while. Unfortunately, the recent rise in case numbers in Spain have resulted in … OK, let’s skip this part. Long story short - my wife and me are fully vaccinated, as are >90% of the people we care about in Catalonia. After some discussion (after all, Germans tend to prefer to be on the safe side of things) we simply fueled up the car, got each a test (for the transit through France) and started to drive … After a leisurely 11h drive we arrived at a small fishing town somewhat north of Barcelona around 3.00am. We unloaded the car and my wife an the little one went straight to bed. I found an expired beer in the elsewise pretty empty fridge and enjoyed the cool breeze on the terrace. Holidays, here we come …

It's been more than a year in which international travel was challenging to impossible, but gladly this is changing, as more countries are able to vaccinate their population. Greece had managed to return to a state of near normality, and opted to allow vaccinated individuals to enter. And so I decided to go on a slightly spontaneous vacation (only slightly, we still had almost a month for planning). To the trip I was joined by my father, to whom I owed some good one-on-one time and was able to travel on a short-ish notice. Many people are yet unable to travel, and many countries are suffering quite badly from the virus, and therefore I considered if I should wait some time with this post. However, I hope that it will instead be seen with an optimistic view, showing that back-to-normal is growing ever closer. We returned just a few days ago, and it will take me some time to organize my photos, so this is a teaser until then.

Greetings eGulleteers, I'm Smokeydoke and I'll be your tourguide for the next seven days on a culinary journey through Las Vegas. First a little about me, I'm a foodie first and foremost, but my real name is Kathy and to pay the bills, I work as an Engineer. My husband works at UNLV. In the past I've worked as a manager for a pizzeria and worked at a bakery. We live in the Southwest community of Las Vegas, more commonly referred to as Mountains Edge. Here is the obligatory shot of our kitchen. Sorry for the bad photos, I made a video but just realized I can't upload videos in eGullet, so I quickly converted them to jpegs. Here's my pantry#1, with my (in)famous shelf of twelve different types of flours. Below that are my oils, vinegars and sauces. And of course, pounds of TJ Belgium chocolates.

OK, I'm back, by popular demand! hehe.... After being back for 2 days, I'm still struggling with crazy jetlag and exhaustion - so please bear with me! This year, for our Asian adventure, we went to Bali, which for those who don't know, is one of the islands in Indonesia. Bali is a very unique place - from its topology, to the people, language, customs, religion and food. Whereas the majority of people in Indonesia are Muslim, most people in Bali are Balinese Hindu, which from what I understand is a little like Indian Hinduism, but has more ancestor worship. Religion is very important to many people in Bali - there are temples everywhere, and at least in one area, there are religious processions through the street practically every day - but we'll get to that later. Bali has some food unique to it among its Indonesian neighbors, but like everywhere, has seen quite a bit of immigration from other Indonesian islands (many from Java, just to the west) who have brought their classic dishes with them. Basically all Indonesians speak Indonesian, or what they call Bahasa Indonesia, or just Bahasa, which, anyone who has read my prior foodblogs wouldn't be surprised to hear that I learned a little bit just before the trip. Unfortunately, I didn't get to use any of it, except a couple times which were totally unnecessary. When speaking with each other, most people in Bali speak Balinese (totally different from bahasa) - many times when I tried using my bahasa, they smiled and replied, and then tried to teach me the same phrase in Balinese! As time went on, and I used some of the Balinese, I got lots of surprised smiles and laughs - who is this white guy speaking Balinese?!? Seriously though, tourism has been in Bali for a very long time, so just about everyone we encountered spoke English to some degree. Some people spoke German as well, as they supposedly get lots of tourists from Germany. As one of our drivers was telling us, Bali is heavily dependent on tourism as they have no real industry other than agriculture, which doesn't pay nearly as well as tourism does. While there are beaches all around the island, most of the popular beach areas are in the south of the island, and those areas are the most highly touristed. We spent very little time in the south as we are not really beach people (we get really bored) and during planning, decided to stay in less touristed areas so we'd have more opportunities for local food... this didn't work out, as you'll see later. So, it wouldn't be a KennethT foodblog without photos in the Taipei airport and I-Mei Dim Sum, which we called home for about 4 hours before our connection to Bali... Beef noodle soup: The interior: This was the same as always - huge pieces of beef were meltingly tender. Good bite to the thick chewy noodles. Xie long bao (soup dumplings) and char siu bao (fluffy barbeque pork buns):

Some of you may recall that in 2016 I had a blog about our trip to Newfoundland. We are going there again tomorrow for a week, returning July 1 and I thought that since we are going to, and eating at, places different from that year, I would do another blog. When I booked our flights and accommodations (7 places in 8 nights) last February, June 23rd seemed like a long ways away. Yet here we are, about to leave. I hope some of you will follow along as we travel through the province.

And so it begins once again. @Kerry Beal is on the road heading to my house to pick me up so we can head north to Manitoulin Island. Hopefully she remembered to put Kira in the van. Things will be very different this time. Change is inevitable. Among the changes iscthat one of our favourite nurses now that she has her children are grown is going back to school to become an anaesthesiology assistant. You might remember her as the owner of a lovely piece of property with horses, dogs, cats, kids and raspberries. But perhaps the biggest change is that the townhouse is to be sold. It is on the market with a closing date of September. Thankfully it will not be shown while we are there! Almost everything in the town house belongs to Kerry except for the furniture and the appliances. One of our challenges will be how to deal with all this accumulated stuff! This will be Kerry‘s 19th summer up there so I leave you to imagine the challenges we will face. But I am determined it will not interfere with our cooking or our enjoyment of the waterfront view or of all the other adventures that we manage to get up to each year. Stay tuned for future installments.

Alright so as of a few months ago, I decided to take an impromptu trip to Europe--mostly unplanned but with several priorities set in mind: find the best food and locate the most game-changing ice cream spots on the grounds of each city I sought out for. One of the greatest, most architecturally unique and divine cities I have visited thus far has gotta be Vienna, Austria. But what in the heck is there to eat over there?! (you might ask). 'Cause I sure as hell didn't know. So, I desperately reached out to a local Viennese friend of mine, who knows and understands my avid passion for all things edible, and she immediately shot back some must-have food dishes. Doing a bit of research beforehand, I knew I had to try the classic "Kasekreiner". Please forgive my German if I spelled that wrong. But no matter how you say it- say it with passion, because passion is just about all I felt when I ate it. Translated: it basically means cheese sausage. Honestly, what is there not to love about those two words. Even if that's not necessarily your go-to, do me a favor and give it a shot. Trust me, you won't regret it. A classic Austrian pork sausage with pockets of melty cheese, stuffed into a crisp French Baguette. No ketchup necessary (...and as an American, that's saying a lot). YUM. Best spot to try out this one-of-a-kind treat?! Bitzinger bei der Albertina – Würstelstand. Now here's a shot of me with my one true love in front of this classic Viennese green-domed building-- Karlskirche. Now, go check it.

Recently, there was a thread about stir frying over charcoal, which immediately brought to mind memories of eating in Bangkok in July 2013. At that time, I hadn't gotten into the habit of writing food blogs, and considering that I had some spare time this weekend (a rarity) I figured I would put some of those memories down on paper, so to speak. Back then, neither my wife nor I were in the habit of taking tons of photos like we do nowadays, but I think I can cobble something together that would be interesting to folks reading it. In the spirit of memories, I'll first go back to 2006 when my wife and I took our honeymoon to Thailand (Krabi, Bangkok and Chiang Mai), Singapore and Hanoi. That was our first time to Asia, and to be honest, I was a little nervous about it. I was worried the language barrier would be too difficult to transcend, or that we'd have no idea where we were going. So, to help mitigate my slight anxiety, I decided to book some guides for a few of the locations. Our guides were great, but we realized that they really aren't necessary, and nowadays with internet access so much more prevalent, even less necessary. Prior to the trip, when emailing with our guide in Bangkok to finalize plans, I mentioned that we wanted to be continuously eating (local food, I thought was implied!) When we got there, I realized the misunderstanding when she opened her trunk to show us many bags of chips and other snack foods.. whoops... Anyway, once the misconception was cleared up, she took us to a noodle soup vendor: On the right is our guide, Tong, who is now a very famous and highly sought after guide in BKK.... at the time, we were among here first customers. I had a chicken broth based noodle soup with fish ball, fish cake and pork meatball, and my wife had yen ta fo, which is odd because it is bright pink with seafood. I have a lime juice, and my wife had a longan juice. This is what a lot of local food places look like:

I'm thinking about starting a blog featuring the recipes of antoine Carême that I've translated from 1700s French? No English versions of his works exist and his work is hard to find, even though he is the greatest chef who ever lived. After I get through his works I'd add menon, la Varenne, and other hard to find, but historically important masters of French cuisine.

Prologue: Originally, we intended to spend this Chinese New Year in Hong Kong. We have travelled a lot last year and will need to attend a wedding already next month in Germany, so I was happy to spend some quiet days at home (and keep the spendings a bit under control as well). As a consequence, we had not booked any flights in the busiest travel time of the year in this region … But – despite all good intentions – I found myself two weeks ago calling the hotline of my favourite airline in the region, essentially cashing in on three years of extensive business travel and checking where I could get on short notice over CNY on miles. I was expecting a laughter on the other side of the line but this is the one time my status in their loyalty reward program paid out big time: three seats for either Seoul or Kansai International (earliest morning flights, of course). No need to choose, really – Kyoto, here we come !

@Alleguede and I are in the lounge awaiting our flight to NYC. Saturday is the Fine Chocolate Industry Association's Summer Elevate Chocolate event. I will likely spend a day at the Fancy Food Show this trip. Only one specific plan this time - we have reservations for Dessert Bar - Michael Laiskonis's new dessert place inside the bakery Recolte

Hello, oh wonderful eGulleteers! I know I've been away a while, but at least I'm coming back in style. Not a whole lot has changed here in Ecuador - it's still definitely paradise, and the big Market still runs on Sundays and Mondays. I'll be off towards that shortly, to shop for the week and also to search out some of the food I want to feature in this blog - namely, the quick breads and munchies on the go that Latin America is justifiably famous for! So what am I waiting for? It's time to EAT!