Halloween is always fun, but eventually you reach an age when candy alone just isn’t exciting enough anymore. And that’s when you start getting creative.
1. Milky Way Brownies
What’s better than a candy bar? A candy bar inside a chocolate brownie.
Sometimes it takes more than just a glass of wine. Actually, for us over at ES it usually takes a bottle (or two). But why have a bottle when you can have a bucket?
Trekking around Philly can be exhausting, but luckily there are no shortage of BYOBs where you can put your feet up. Based on several strong recommendations, we ventured to Wedge + Fig, a gem of a market-cum-restaurant in Old City. If the weather is right, head thru the side door and walk down the exposed brick walkway to a secret courtyard at the rear of the market — it really isn’t a secret but you’d be forgiven for thinking so — here you’ll forget about your day and find yourself enamored with the tall walls, rusting fire escape and silence of the city. Oh yeah, and the cheese.
The menu is simple: tell the kitchen what kind of wine you brought and they’ll pick the cheese and meats. The nearest wine shop, Pinot Boutique had a display of Pardocx Vineyard’s paint cans full of paint cans full of wine, and obviously we couldn’t resist. Despite our klassy choice, the folks at Wedge + Fig were still nice enough to pick out a matching cheese plate for us:
Parents. Food. Technology. Somehow, okay, inevitably, this combination turned into hilarity. As we mostly turn to text for communication, it’s only natural that food dominates the keyboard.
When I was in high school, we had a tradition every Thursday night before Friday football games. Myself and a few of my friends would finish up with practice and show up sweaty and famished at my house. For some reason my Mom not only condoned this, but encouraged it by offering to feed the huddled masses. Dinner was always the same on these nights; grilled cheese with bacon, lettuce and tomato on wheat bread. This tradition has permanently seared in my palate the sweet, smoky combination of late-season tomatoes, gooey cheese, thick bacon and chewy homemade bread as the perfect complement to fall days and Friday night lights.
Grilled cheese is somewhat difficult to pull off at a tailgate and even harder to bring when you are invited somewhere. Can you imagine the reaction to showing up to watch a game with a tray of soggy, lukewarm BLT grilled cheeses? From then on you would definitely be the asshole in charge of bringing the soda and chips. Because of that, I have tinkered with a homemade grilled cheese/BLT dip over the years. It hits all the right notes, though early in the process I realized that lettuce just wasn’t a good fit so I switched to the dip staple: spinach. This has been my go-to takealong for last-minute tailgates and game-watching.
I appreciate the idea of hummus because it’s such a stinking fantastic dip and it’s not even based in fatty sour cream or cream cheese. I think eggplant based dips, to be honest, aren’t as delightful as bean dips, but I keep trying anyway, especially with almost-out-of-season eggplants filling crates at the farmers market.
I googled for a few baba ganosh recipes and turned to my friend Justin’s fav, David Lebovitz. Lebovitz accentuated the smoky qualities of the dip and I ran with it, adding extra smoky flavor everywhere I could.
To celebrate/mourn the end of the summer, I did what any old-fashioned, hard-drinking American girl would do: hopped a flight to Vegas for a weekend of pool parties, 52-oz. margaritas, slot machines, and food exploration. I know it’s important to look hot in Vegas, and part of looking hot is not stuffing your face with so much buffet food that you get all bloated and oily. That’s why I took it relatively easy until the final day of our trip, when I said “screw it” and headed down to the old end of the Strip to try out a diner I had read about and was desperate to experience for myself: the Peppermill, where everything is larger than life.
The Peppermill is equally lauded for its immense portions of epically greasy diner food and its gloriously tacky atmosphere. Upon entering the Pep, the hostess will probably say something like “Okay, for three? It’ll be about 20 minutes. But you’re welcome to wait in our lounge…?” Yes, yes, YES. You will wait in the magnificent Fireside Lounge!
It looks like Xanadu crashed into a jungle, and then disco balls covered the sky, then half of the wildlife in the jungle turned into flatscreen TVs that blare blurry 80s music video programming. How’s that for a mental picture? Can you imagine it? Well, here’s a taste:
It’s America’s favorite meal — the state fair! Every year, the fairs across this great land compete with each other to invent bigger, badder, greasier fair food. But after Texas stepped up its game last year with deep fried beer, this thing hit a whole ‘nother level. The 2011 state and country fair foods have been more insane — and more amazing — than ever. Here are our top 10 favorite finds.
10. Chocolate Covered Corn Dog – Orange County Fair
Could there be anything more American than dipping a hot dog in batter, deep frying it and eating it off a stick? Why yes, there could be. You could cover it in chocolate and put sprinkles on top, a treat that was found at both the OC Fair and neighboring San Diego County Fair. My Burning Kitchen has more on food at the San Diego fair. (Photo: www.myburningkitchen.com)
9. Deep Fried Kool-Aid – San Diego County Fair
In another strong showing for California’s other great fair — and originator of last year’s hash brown covered hot dog, San Diego debuts what is surely the trashiest food ever conceptualized. It’s just unclear why they didn’t wrap it in bacon. (Photo: Cuttlefish)
8. Deep Fried Butter on a Stick – Iowa State Fair
Texas may have invented deep fried butter at their own fair a few years back, but Iowa thought to put it on a stick. See, America, we can do great things when we work together. Yes, this involves frying an entire stick of butter, and yes, you simply have to watch the video for full effect.
7. Buffalo Chicken in a Flapjack – Texas State Fair
The first of several entries from the Lone Star state, this monstrosity is a chicken strip, coated in pancake batter and jalapeño bread crumbs, then deep fried and…you guessed it — eaten on a stick. (Photo: State Fair of Texas)
6. Red Velvet Funnel Cake – Florida State Fair
Funnel cake has fallen behind on the list of outrageous fair foods recently. After fried beer and fried Coke, plain old fried dough starts to look pale by comparison. But this year we saw funnel cake get a new southern fried twist that injects some new life into it…and probably injects all kinds of chemicals too. Why eat fried dough when you can eat red fried dough? (Photo: Bob B. Brown)
