Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

I've used the modified Heston Blumenthal approach for roasted potatoes ever since I read about it here on Serious Eats (http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2008/05/heston-blumenthals-roast-potatoes-recipe.html) and have been very pleased with the results. Elsewhere, however, he claimed (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/food_and_drink/heston_blumenthal/article7090586.ece) that olive oil works better than duck or goose fat at crisping potatoes. On the one hand, I tend to believe he knows what he is talking about; on the other, I am suspicious.

Regardless: duck fat is amazing. (It was for sale at the Marin Sun Farms butcher stand here in Oakland the other day, and was announced on the chalkboard as "The magic carpet flavor rides in on!" And how!)

Yeah, add me to the chorus: Dried fruit sure is delicious, but think about how easy it is to eat like ten dried apricots vs. ten fresh apricots. Then consider how much sugar is actually in that amount of fruit. I was recently pregnant and had borderline gestational diabetes, and it was a HUGE eye opener when I would test my blood sugar after eating the dried fruit I once so loved to mindlessly snack upon. (Of course, then I had to cut out almost all sugar and carbohydrates, and had trouble gaining ENOUGH weight - so there you go.)

Anywhere? Bianco makes the best I've ever had, which is probably news to absolutely no one likely to read this. Local to us in the San Francisco Bay Area, our new superfavorite is Emilia's Pizzeria in Berkeley. OMG, that's some tasty pizza. When I lived in Portland I was a devotee of Apizza Scholls, though I haven't been in like five years.

I've never had the chance to do a proper pizza crawl in NYC, though that is absolutely on my list the next time I get to visit.

Add me to the chorus of people who are surprised to see shark used in a recipe. Please find something a little bit less environmentally horrifying if you make this (inasmuch as any fish these days can be said to be so, sigh).

It's not that Naval employees are awesome at resigning, because Hunters Point is no longer a Navy facility! Now, it's one of the largest artist communities in the country. Many of the the former barracks and offices were converted into artist studios a couple of decades ago, and it's grown and grown since then. I always love visiting there during open studio month. :D

I did this with cupcakes and it was AWESOME. (However, I tried to make mine actual real food and used the Cupcake Blog's aaaawesome vanilla cupcake recipe.)