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by gansie

Now Simmering on Tumblr and Pinterest

We’re full service over here at Endless Simmer: we travel where the food lovers live.

We’ve recently expanded our food porn to Tumblr and Pinterest. So if you play on those sites, come by and say hi. And of course, we’re already on Facebook and Twitter.

Speaking of Twitter, make sure you follow the whole gang: @gansie, @russellwarnick (formerly Britannia), @bakersroyal, @forkitude, @emilyteachout, @madelinesho (ML), @mcj4476 (tvff), @BellyRulesMind (Borracho) and @roodeloo.

in Personal 5 comments

by Russell Warnick

When The Lights Go Out

With the great East Coast Earthquake behind us and Hurricane Irene fast approaching, it’s about time for some disaster preparedness here at ES. This weekend I suffered one of the scariest things that can happen to a food lover…the dreaded dark fridge.

It was Sunday morning when I realized the freezer wasn’t working. Water was dripping from the ice box, the M&M’s ice cream cake a friend brought over the night before was a mess (possibly the best thing to happen from all of this), and the tequila was near room temperature. There was much frustration in the household. The BF and I are not practical grocery shoppers, we’re menu-specific shoppers. If we need ingredients we tend to buy them for the meal we’re going to cook. But this Sunday we wanted to go out and do a full shop, for the coming week or two. A lot of the items on our shopping list we were going to freeze, so we decided it was best to hold off, reset the freezer and hope for the best.

Ten hours later, upon our return home, the power in the fridge was gone too, the beer was warming and the butter was soft. What to do?

in Personal 6 comments

by BS

It’s an Endless Wedding!

Close readers of ES noticed that gansie went and dropped the f-bomb in her post yesterday. No, not the f-bomb she uses every day. The other one — fiancé. Eek!

Yes, it’s true, our founding editor is engaged to the blogger formerly known as 80 proof! And since I think the ring looks like caviar, it’s officially fit for inclusion as a topic on this food blog. For a more nuanced expert analysis, we turn to longtime ES commenter Mariah Carey:

Bennett gave this ring to Stef with the explanation that it’s not necessarily an “engagement ring.” Rather, it’s the ring he’s giving her while asking her to spend the rest of her life with him. “Wear it all the time, don’t wear it all the time, wear other rings as well…”

So fucking cool.

Congrats 80p and gansie!

Feel free to leave catering suggestions, gift ideas and foodie-friendly baby names in the comments.

by Roo de Loo

My Shit Don’t Stink: Five Observations on a Vegan Diet

Charcuterie from the Downtown Grocery

Salad greens from Coger's Sugarhouse

I grew up in a meat and potatoes household. My father was (and still is) the type that had strong feelings about what went on the dinner plate, and if it didn’t moo or cluck it was considered a side dish. So imagine my culinary bafflement as I have undertaken a two-week chef gig to cook for a yoga teacher training at Good Commons, a boutique retreat center nestled in the rolling hills of Vermont.

Three meals a day and not an animal in sight. Not only are these yogis avoiding meat, but also dairy, soy and gluten. And I thought downward dog was tough.

It’s not that I don’t have experience or interest in cooking vegetarian dishes. I love connecting with the local farmers and menu planning based on what is coming out of the ground. But how much roughage can a person take? The answer—plenty.

I should qualify… I could easily be sneaking off to the local pizza joint for “Instructor Wings,” a winning combination of hot wings and barbecue sauce named after a special request from the snowboarders who work at Okemo Valley during ski season. Better yet, a mosey to The Downtown Grocery in Ludlow, where chef Rogan Lechthaler is doing some amazing charcuterie. But I’ve been feeling a bit too much junk in the trunk and thought a two-week meat sabbatical might do me well. So here’s what I’ve learned so far.

Top 5 Observations on a Vegan Diet

5. It’s more fun to chew a perfectly marbled strip steak than bite into a piece of “extra firm” tofu, no matter how well it’s seasoned or seared.

4. Kale is brilliant: it keeps for almost a week in the fridge and can be eaten raw, blanched, sautéed or even creamed with a vegan béchamel, which I made with Earth Balance (soy, I know!), gluten-free flour, almond milk and plenty of salt and pepper.

in Personal / Rants & Raves / Trends / Veggie 5 comments

by Borracho

At the Root of It….

Summer is only halfway over and yet I am already seeing ads for school supplies. I lamented that fact to a friend and it got us talking about the relative simplicity of times when all we had to worry about was new classmates and teachers, purchasing Trapper Keepers and writing essays about what we did on our summer vacation. It’s a shame because it hasn’t been until recent years that my summer’s have been worth writing about.

This summer, in addition to a few vacations and long weekends, I have tried to take some trips right in my own kitchen. You see, earlier this year, our local grocer made a concerted effort to rotate in small amounts of “exotic” produce that are typically not found in upstate PA. Because of this, I decided that each week I would purchase whatever was new and figure out something to do with it.

There seems to be little rhyme or reason to how each week’s produce is chosen and so my results have been hit or miss. At different times I have been greeted by tamarind with its beautiful brown pod and fleshy fruit, pungent salsify, dragon fruit and the kiwano melon (which looks like it is straight out of a 1970’s Star Trek movie). One of the more successful attempts I have had with this rotating produce experiment was when I walked in to find dozens of waxy, starchy pieces of yucca root piled high. While I had never worked with it before, my produce guy Brett said that it was similar to a potato and could be prepared as such.

in Personal / Recipe / Veggie 3 comments

by Miss K

Good Enough to Put Your Name On

Once, last year when I was pregnant, my husband and I had Chipotle for dinner. He ate his whole burrito. I ate half of mine. I put mine in a container in the fridge with a note that said, “Do not eat this burrito. If you eat it, you will be stealing your baby’s food.”

In the same vein, my friend Colleen is one of the most generous people I know. She lives in community at a Catholic farm in West Virginia, where she, her husband and a handful of other year-rounders play host to hundreds of volunteers every year. She is a master at cooking food for a crowd. And, sometimes, she puts her name on her food.

So, what is it about certain foods that turn normally mild-mannered women into petulant 3-year-olds, yelling, “Mine!” while clinging to a beloved box of truffles? Well, it’s not a character flaw. It is simply a sense that certain foods and beverages deserve special treatment and savoring. I don’t want my husband scarfing my burrito at 11pm when he could just as easily make a peanut butter sandwich. Similarly, volunteer coming across some tangerine Spritzers in the fridge would probably not recognize that they were imported from the nearest Trader Joe’s, which is four hours away. Which brings me to the tea.

in Drinks / Personal / Rants & Raves 0 comments

by ML

The Perfect Companion

Have I found the perfect companion to Endless Cocktails? Maybe.

A few weeks ago I traveled to Vegas to attend Bloggers in Sin City ,where we were given Sprayology’s Party Relief Spray. Yes, a spray that claims to prevent and cure hangovers.

I know what you’re thinking. This can’t possibly work, right?

Well, it might. The instructions are: spray 2 sprays under tongue prior to drinking, then again after each hour of drinking. Considering Vegas never sleeps, this is a lot of fucking sprays in one night. For two nights in a row I diligently sprayed each hour, and both mornings I woke up hangover free, even after drinking Four Loko and Mad Ballr. The third night was a bit fuzzy…I tried to remember to spray, but when you’re at the bar until 3am and Brittania is buying you drinks….sometimes you just forget and wake up the next morning with the worst hangover of your life.

I have yet to have a hangover while using this spray, but if I’m remembering to use it, maybe I’m not drinking enough to have a hangover in the first place.

What are your best hangover preventions/cures?

in Drinks / Personal 2 comments