I want to eat this.

If someone buys this for me, I'll love you forever. Just sayin'...

The very best distractions.

March 29th? That's the last time I posted? Geez. Sorry guys. I guess March and April have been full of distractions and the blog suffered as a result.


It's not that I haven't been baking. In fact, I've been enjoying my baking more than ever recently. What makes it so much fun, you ask? Well, I've been baking for someone. A specific someone. An earth-shatteringly cool someone. So instead of baking and then jumping on my laptop, I've been packaging up my finished products and heading over to share the wealth with the coolest dude in New York.

I'm sure he'll pop up more in this blog as we spend quite a bit of time in the kitchen together. Yeah, it's pretty, pretty awesome. Thank you very much.

The other distraction involves peanut butter and a project I've been working on for a local restaurant in New York. Unfortunately, I can't post anything here about it, but once things get into gear and things start popping up online, I'll be sure to post links to let everyone see this currently top secret info.

Did I mention that I'm going to be on a Japanese game show?

Did I mention I'm going to be on a Japanese game show called Clash of the Foodies? Well I am...

Fingers crossed my future career as a Japanese game show contestant isn't like Chris Farley's experience...




CLASH OF THE FOODIES!
Live Game Show
4:30-5:20 pm

Colorful teams of showbiz stars, wrestlers and food experts across the city, featuring cabaret superstars Kenny Mellman (aka Herb of Kiki & Herb), Bridget Everett, and Neal Medlyn of Our Hit Parade, pro wrestler extraordinaire Queen of Squeeze Amazon Annie & Her Lobos Locas and daring bloggers squad The Taste Buds will gather to compete in a live game show that will challenge all five senses. It'll take stamina, lightning-fast reflexes and a connoisseur’s palate to emerge victorious!  Hosted by culture clash comedian, Kenji America. Tickets are released at 12:30 PM.

Counter Space, a new kitchen design exhibit, invites us to dinner on September 15, 2010

Example of the "Frankfurt Kitchen" design.

One of my goals this summer is to make my first trip to Washington, D.C. to see Julia Child's kitchen at the Smithsonian. However, if I don't end up making the trip, I'll have a nice substitute as of September 15, 2010, when the MoMA (Museum of Modern Art) in New York opens the exhibit Counter Space: Design and the Modern Kitchen. Here is how the folks at MoMA are describing the new exhibit:

Counter Space explores the twentieth-century transformation of the kitchen and highlights MoMA’s recent acquisition of an unusually complete example of the iconic “Frankfurt Kitchen,” designed in 1926–27 by the architect Grete Schütte-Lihotzky. In the aftermath of World War I, thousands of these kitchens were manufactured for public-housing estates being built around the city of Frankfurt-am-Main in Germany. Schütte-Lihotzky’s compact and ergonomic design, with its integrated approach to storage, appliances, and work surfaces, reflected a commitment to transforming the lives of ordinary people on an ambitious scale. Previously hidden from view in a basement or annex, the kitchen became a bridgehead of modern thinking in the domestic sphere—a testing ground for new materials, technologies, and power sources, and a spring board for the rational reorganization of space and domestic labor within the home. Since the innovations of Schütte-Lihotzky and her contemporaries in the 1920s, kitchens have continued to articulate, and at times actively challenge, our relationship to the food we eat, popular attitudes toward the domestic role of women, family life, consumerism, and even political ideology in the case of the celebrated 1959 “Kitchen Debate” that took place between Richard Nixon and Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow at the height of the Cold War.

Featured alongside the Frankfurt Kitchen is a 1969 mobile fold-out unit manufactured by the Italian company Snaidero. These two complete kitchens are complemented by a wide variety of design objects, architectural plans, posters, archival photographs, and selected artworks, all drawn from MoMA’s collection. Prominence is given to the contribution of women throughout the exhibition, not only as the primary consumers and users of the domestic kitchen, but also as reformers, architects, designers, and as artists who have critically addressed kitchen culture and myths.

This exhibition is organized by Juliet Kinchin, Curator, and Aidan O’Connor, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Architecture and Design.

For more reading on the "Frankfurt Kitchen" design, check out this 2006 article from The New York Times that touches on the subject: Kitchen Aide by Caroline Roux.

What happens when you spend an afternoon eating cookies?

This video, that's what! Gimme Jimmy's in New Jersey recently sent me some of their cookies to sample and review and I decided this would be a great opportunity to put a few more miles on my Flipcam. Ever wondered what I look like eating? Watch this - mystery solved!


Gimmee Jimmy's Cookie Review: The attack of the mall cookie! from Mary Ann Porch on Vimeo.