Amber Benham

Food bytes: What’s cooking online?

Tonight three food blogger icons will meet at the New York Institute of Technology to tell us how they made it big in the culinary blogosphere.

The panel begins.

Meet the panelists:
Thomas Barritt- moderator
Ed Levine- founder of Serious Eats, author of New York Eats
Lisa Fain- blogger on Homesick Texan
Michael Laiskonis- Executive Pastry Chef at Le Bernardin, food blogger

6:43 Ed Levine kicks off the panel with the story of how he left the established food writing world for the blogosphere.  His colleagues thought he was nuts, but Ed says he loves how blogging allows a conversation between writer and reader to continue.
“It removes all the gatekeepers,” he said.  He seems quite pleased with his own story.

Lisa, a humble gal from Texas, says her blog career in started in 2005 as a hobby.  After a couple years at it, people said why not try to make some bank off this?  She says it’s not enough to live on, but she appreciates the significant second income.

Michael’s boss at Le Bernardin said he should start a blog, so he did.

6:50 Thomas asks panelists why so many people are drawn to food blogs, considering you can’t smell it or taste it online. Ed says, “Whether you live to eat or eat to live, it matters.”

6:53 Shocking revelation: Lisa admits to spending about 8 hours on a single post.

6:57 Ed just pointed out that “unlike Lisa” Serious Eats posts 150 times a week.  Was that a dig?

The crowd.

7:04 Michael says his blogs are about mentoring other cooks and documenting what he does at Le Bernardin.  He hopes it’s personable enough for amateur cooks.

7:05 “The food is a way to connect back to my roots, my family or my friends,” said Lisa.

Ed says he wants Serious Eats to be passionate, discerning, inclusive and most of all welcoming.  And it is.  Too bad he can’t be more inclusive of the other panelists…

7:09 Ed takes another crack at non-Serious Eats food bloggers.  “I want you to feel like you’re plugged into an electric socket…and if you come back in hour, it’ll be different,” he said.  “And that’s just something individual bloggers can’t do!”

Then he called gourmet.com “static” and said food magazines are “pamphlets.”

7:11 Thomas’ face says, “How can I get Ed to shut up?”

7:15 Michael doesn’t put ads on his blogs for aesthetic reasons.

7:20 Each of the panelists estimated the unique visitors to their blog(s) each month.  Michael said 20,000-25,000 for one of his blogs and 35,000-40,000 for the other.
Lisa beats his score with 200,000.
But, of course, Ed wins.  He says his numbers are “north of a million.”

7:26 Q & A begins.

7:33 “I guess there’s a lot of Texan’s out there who miss the food,” said Lisa.  She’s just so darn earnest.

7:37 Ed just knocked twitter!

7:38 Lisa fields an audience question about which technologies are most effective for growing your food blog.  She says Facebook is dead, Twitter is where it’s at.

7:44 Woman describes an ethical dilemma.  She wrote a bad review, chef followed up and offered to have her back “on the house.”  She needs to write a second review to follow up, but it will be negative, too.  What to do?

Ed says it’s tricky, but you have to draw lines.  (Like don’t let chefs court you!)

7:51 This should have been called “Listen to Ed Levine talk about himself and his brilliant blog career.”  What’s with the shy Texan and pastry chef?

7:54 Ed warns against making the amateur food blogger move of documenting your every meal.  “I don’t think people care about what I had for dinner last night,” he said.

8:00 A chef from the south tells the panel he’s disappointed in the panel.  He thought it would be about what’s so great and inspiring about food writing on the internet.  Me too.

8:05 Thomas wants to know what the panelists read to get inspired about food.  Michael says he never looks at his more than 200 culinary volumes now since he prefers to look on the Internet.  Lisa says she depends on church cookbooks and original family recipes.  Ed rambles on about RSS feeds and reading “so many” blogs.  Yeah, yeah.  We get it, Ed.  You’re a god.

Ed Levine answers questions and accepts business cards after the panel.

The Q&A winds down and by 8:20, the room clears out.  Ultimately what could have been a very real, very pragmatic panel for budding food bloggers turned into an awkward spotlight on the not-so-eloquent Ed Levine.  Maybe the other panelists didn’t know what questions they were going to be asked, or maybe they got into food writing for love of food rather than love of self?  Guess we’ll have to get them alone to find out.

Rebecca Jimenez hopes to be a food journalist someday.

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Michael Laiskonis blogs about making pastries at Le Bernardin.

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Click here to view the slideshow.

On an island in the middle of Broadway, a woman unwraps a muffin and pauses.  A bike messenger whizzes by.  A taxi driver pounds on his horn and swerves to miss a herd of jaywalking people, impatient to cross the street.  Semi trucks rumble by.  It’s lunchtime at the corner of 40th Street and Broadway.

“Even though peaceful and busy don’t really go together,” says Kristin Socci, a computer consultant, as she breaks off a bite-sized piece of her muffin, “here they do.”

In the middle of Manhattan, in the middle of Broadway, on a bumpy strip of pavement, metal tables, chairs and benches offer New Yorkers a place to grab a bite, or just take a load off.  Along one side of the path, giant, weighted flowerpots form an imperfect barrier from the bustling lanes of traffic.  On the other side, bike messengers and deliverymen peddle along a green painted bike lane, paying little attention to the arrows indicating a southward flow of traffic.  This car-free oasis is just one piece of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s grand plan to improve the way New Yorkers move about the city.

Last summer Bloomberg converted two lanes of car traffic on Broadway into a pedestrian esplanade and bike lane. The non-car zone currently stretches from 35th Street to 42nd Street.  Just last week the mayor announced plans to expand his efforts to halt traffic congestion. His “Green Light for Midtown” project will soon cut some blocks entirely off to cars in order to improve the flow of traffic.

But as plans advance to create more car-free zones in the city, one area of the new Broadway continues to cause conflict—the bike lane.  Pedestrians constantly enter it, stepping in front of bikers peddling at high speeds.   They drag suitcases and push strollers, forcing bikers to slam on their brakes and swerve to avoid collisions.  Even delivery people see the bike lane as a viable thoroughfare.   It’s smoother than the pedestrian path and less crowded than the sidewalks.

Bikers, pedestrians and drivers may not agree on how to use the new Broadway, but the experiment has certainly sparked public interest in how to better utilize outdoor space in the city.  It seems everyone on Broadway has an opinion on the matter.

“Is this parking right here?” asks Caitlin Russell, a software applications specialist, about the parked cars a few feet behind the bench where she is seated.  She gestures with her hands, offering a few landscaping ideas.

“I could picture European cafes with seating and then there’s the sidewalk,” she says, pointing toward the bike lane.  “Maybe it would work better if people walked over here.”

When Jon Orren, owner of Wheelhouse Pickles, pulled out his wooden cutting board and sliced up a few jars of pickled goods, he started with his Sour Barrel Cucumbers-but I’m not sure why.  Sure, the cukes offered a pleasant crunch and their intoxicatingly garlic scent made me crave a pastrami sandwich.  But they just weren’t as tangy as the cute label on the jar implied.

Now his Asian-style Irma’s Pears-those were damn good.  If one can describe pears like wine, then I’d say these pears were full-bodied, with a honey nose and a hint of hoisin.  Delicate in texture, not mushy, not crunchy.  Just perfect.  Draped across a slice of sharp cheddar on a thin cracker, these pears would brighten the grayest of winter days.

To explore Orren’s entire collection of playful pickles, including Horseradish Spiked Wax Beans and Big Bang Okra, check out wheelhousepickles.com.

Tags: Jon Orren, pears, pickles, Wheelhouse Pickles

In the wake of be-green campaigns, many New Yorkers are reducing their carbon footprints by eating locally.  Farm shares, food co-ops and farmers’ markets make it possible, even in New York City.  But when faced with the prospect of eating kale, onions and potatoes all winter, even the greenest New Yorkers think twice about their all-local diets.

As winter approaches, local produce starts to dwindle.  But does that mean city dwellers can’t maintain their local diets?

Allen Zimmerman, general coordinator at the Park Slope Food Co-op in Brooklyn, says it’s possible to eat locally in the winter, but he wouldn’t do it.  After 10 years of ordering produce for the co-op, he is all too aware of how few items grow in the area during the coldest months.

During peak season, he says that the co-op gets about 125 different kinds of locally grown fruits and vegetables, which is about half of all the produce.  But that period ended two or three weeks ago.

“Today, in the second week of December, we have 54 local items, which is, I think, something still to be proud of,” he said, “but that’s down to 20 percent.”

Zimmerman says that in the middle of the winter the co-op can only offer local roots, potatoes, sprouts and mushrooms.  And, he points out, the situation gets worse in the spring when even the storage crops run out and the new crops haven’t sprouted.

But Leda Meredith, an energetic locavore and member of the co-op, says all it takes is a little planning to get through the winter.  She starts canning, freezing and drying local fruits and vegetables in the summer months, knowing they’ll come in handy when the weather turns cold.

“In the middle of winter if you did put up some beautiful sundried tomatoes, some ratatouille in a jar, some bell peppers in the freezer, some strawberries in the freezer,” she explained, “all of the sudden you can do something with that kale and potatoes and it’s not so boring.”

Still, giving up fresh produce to keep to her local diet doesn’t come without sacrifice.  She says fresh fruit is what she misses most in the winter.

“I freeze a lot of fruit, I even can some fruit during the summer, so I have fruit around,” she said.  “But the only fresh fruit available locally where I live in the Northeast, by now it’s pears and apples.  By February, it’s basically apples and by April you’ve had nothing but apples for about 4 months.”

Despite these challenges, Meredith remains committed to the local food movement.  She even wrote a book about learning to eat locally called “Botany, Ballet and Dinner from Scratch.”  In the memoir, she shares tips for planning and spending less, as well as recipes she picked up along the way.  She hopes to make eating locally easier for those who follow in her footsteps.

Though Meredith and Zimmerman disagree on how possible it is to eat locally in the winter, but they both see a shift in the way Brooklynites buy produce.

As they said, “Local is the new organic.”

Tags: eating, farm share, food co-op, local food, locavore, new york, produce, winter

Jonathan and Nina White, an engineer and a dancer/choreographer/teacher by trade, decided to leave New York City and their careers to pursue another kind of passion-good cheese.  Now, fifteen years later, the couple has expanded their cheese-making, bread-baking operation, Bobolink Dairy, back to the city they once left.  They bring their goods to various farmers’ markets around the city each week, offering New Yorkers a taste of pure grass-fed deliciousness.

Click here to listen to Jonathan about making cheese

Tags: Bobolink Dairy, bread, cheese, farmers' markets, grass-fed, Jonathan White, Nina White

Three days before the 2008 presidential election, New York City voters had a lot on their minds-the economy, two wars and retirement…to name a few.  To hear where voters want to see the United States in four years, click on their names below.

John Bay

Lena Zaritsky

Bipin Mathew

Teresa Rizzo

Trevis Lester

Tags: country, election, presidential, voters

I’ve always wanted to be a New Yorker.  For years, I have lusted after their complete lack of emotional response to things that make normal people scream, cry or run away.  And with several years living as a wannabe Brooklynite, I thought I had mastered the act.  When that man flipped me off and screamed obscenities at me for asking for his reaction to the vice presidential debates, I laughed.  When a mentally disturbed man had a shouting match with himself on the subway, I kept reading my book.

But when I walked by the Sony store on 5th Avenue Saturday night and realized there was man IN the store window, lounging in a recliner reading an e-book, I stopped with my friends and took a picture.   (”Tourist,” a true New Yorker would scoff.)  And when I walked by again hours later heading home, I stopped and stared at the man in the window, asleep with his bare feet dangling out from his blanket.

Then I came home with a need to settle my curiosity.  Who was this man and why was he sleeping in a Midtown store window?

His name is Dave Farrow and he is a two-time world record holder.  He once memorized the order of 59 decks of playing cards shuffled together, and he’s a speed reader.  So Sony hired him to live in the display window for the month of October to promote the Reader Revolution, which is basically a pledge the company made to donate 100 e-books to a school for every page Dave turns.

It sounds like a win-win, right?  Sony sells a ton of digital book readers and gets great publicity while school kids get free digital books.

But what about Dave?  Is it really humane to make him live in a store front window, for all the world to gawk at, just to save Americans’ dwindling interest in books?

Yeah.  It probably is, especially in an overstimulated city like New York.  Nevertheless, I’m convinced that there are better ways to inspire young readers in New York City.   My main issue with the Sony experiment is that the scope of its influence is limited.  Sure, it’s great to donate educational things to school children, but most of the kids in NYC won’t see the man living in the store who overcame dyslexia and ADD and loves to read books.  I want to see a pro-literacy scheme that won’t just give kids books, but will also share with them a little piece of the enthusiasm we have for reading.

Any ideas?

Tags: books, Dave Farrow, new york, reading, Sony

Pumpkins abound in New York City, giving the signal that fall has arrived.  The leaves are falling and the droves of tourists have gone home, but where is that crisp, cool fall air?  Temperatures reached the mid-seventies today in the city, driving New Yorkers to once again don their summer duds.

Check out my slideshow Fall: It’s all in the pumpkins

Tags: fall, new york, pumpkins, weather

Biking to work is green, fast, cheap and healthy. But while New York City Council members are debating a bill that would ensure that employees have a secure place to store their bikes at work, Brooklyn bikers say safety is still their number one concern.

Kate Howard

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Audio Clip No. 1

Kate Howard

Kate, 29, is a full-time student at New York Law School. She fears for her safety riding on roads without bike lanes, but doesn’t want to hurt pedestrians by riding on the sidewalk.

Robert Burke

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Audio Clip No. 2

Robert Burke
Robert, 52, has a real estate firm and thinks rising gas prices make bicycle commuting an appealing option. In order for bike lanes to be effective, he says that bikers and motorists have to learn to share the roads.

Gene Park

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Audio Clip No. 3

Gene Park

Gene, 36, works as an assistant professor at Baruch College and wishes he could ride his bike there. Biking in New York presents new challenges for this former Californian.

Caitlin Forbes-Gray

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Audio Clip No. 4

Caitlin Forbes-Gray

Caitlin, 27, rides her bike to the public middle school where she teaches. Communicating with drivers helps her get through the scary moments.

Tags: biking, Brooklyn, safety

Finally the New York Times has published what psychologists have long known to be true: forcing kids to clean their plates ISN’T going to make them like new foods.

Nowadays parents seem to subscribe to one of two camps: the you’re-not-leaving-the-table-til-that-plate’s-clean group or the one where parents buy every imaginable sugary, chocolaty substitute for vegetables in a last-resort attempt at getting their picky kids to eat something.  Anything.

With the nation’s childhood obesity statistics rising at a staggering rate, something must be done about parents who lack the proper training in how to teach their children healthy eating habits.

One of the six mistakes parents make, says the NY Times, is making certain foods off limits.  Basically if you tell kids they can’t eat something, they want it more and will binge on the food when they do get access.  I can personally vouch for this one.  My mom adamantly opposed that classically-chemical, Kraft Mac & Cheese that most kids I knew ate from time to time when they had a babysitter.  And Kool-Aid?  Forget about it.  That was strictly forbidden.

Not surprisingly, as soon as I went to college and had total control of my diet, I went CRAZY with those two products.  I ate Mac & Cheese almost every night (in addition to dinner) and drank multiple pitchers of Kool-Aid everyday.  When that got boring I started eating spoonfuls of Kool-Aid drink mix, not even bothering to mix it with water.

Gross, right?  I know.  The most shocking thing is that I’m an adventurous eater who loves vegetables and whole wheat grains.  It wasn’t that my mom failed to introduce me to nutritious foods, but rather that she made the bad ones so appealing I couldn’t resist them.  I gained 30 pounds freshman year without drinking beer.  How’s that for disgusting?

Another major threat to childhood healthy eating is school lunches.  You know what I’m talking about.  Potatoes galore (often fried), greasy pizza (without vegetable toppings) and chocolate milk at every meal.  Yes, there are vegetables, but they’re generally way overcooked and rarely served in an appetizing manner.  As adults we know that salads are more fun when jazzed up with cheese cubes or dried fruit, but school kids are expected to eagerly consume steamed carrots and peas sans spices or garnish.

So, what can we do to fix this nutrition nightmare?  For one thing, we can use research findings to inform our parenting styles, rather than traditions passed down from the Depression era.  Also, we can get involved in community organizations like the New York Coalition for Healthy School Food that work to make positive changes.  Do it.  New York City kids need your help.

Tags: children, clean plate, diet, eating, food, healthy, kids, new york, nutrition, obesity, parents