There are many reasons why we love the blog French Laundry at Home. The site is bold in its endeavor (to make every recipe in "The French Laundry Cookbook"). It's enamored of its subject (cuisine, cooking, and chowing down). And it vividly translates the joie de vivre of the kitchen to the webpage.

Carol, the tour de force behind the webpage, also has the humor and the moxie to respond to stove-side emergencies with flair. Check out this line from a January entry where things threaten to go awry: "I felt the presence of MacGyver enter my soul, and I flung (flang? flinged?) open the door of the corner cabinet in my dining room to see what I might be able to use." Naturally, the culinary secret-agent saves the day. We leave it to you to find out how.

Why did this passionate home cook (and full-time business woman) start the site—and has she heard yet from Thomas Keller, the legendary chef/owner of The French Laundry? We wrote her to find out...

Hey Carol! You have several great posts explaining why you embarked on this project. Was the blog always a part of your idea of the endeavor? Have you blogged before?

I'd helped clients and others set up blogs but hadn't really done one of my own. I knew if I did a blog, it would have to be interesting not only for readers, but for me. I didn't want to start something I couldn't keep doing, or would lose interest in.

I think blogging is a great way to tell the "story" of what I'm doing with "The French Laundry Cookbook." I love the interactivity and the feedback. It's so much fun to hear from readers who've tried some of these dishes, and it's heart-warming to hear from people who are now buying the book and making the food because they've seen that someone out there is doing it and they want to be more adventurous in the kitchen, too. That's freakin' awesome.

We know you’ve talked to food writer Michael Ruhlman, emailed with the French Laundry’s one-time pastry chef, and toured the kitchen at Per Se, Thomas Keller's vaunted New York City restaurant. What about Thomas Keller himself? Any word from him?

Nope, no word from Chef Keller. I hope to meet him at some point so I can give him a big ole smooch and thank him. He has done so much to change the restaurant landscape in America, and I'd love to spend a day in the kitchen at The French Laundry, Per Se, Bouchon, or Ad Hoc and just observe and absorb.

Food prep and cooking time aside, how long does the actual blog-work take, the photographing and writing and posting?

The photography is easy (have you SEEN the quality of my photos? I'm no Ansel Adams, that's for sure), and I write the posts in my head as I go. When the dish is done and the kitchen is clean, I open the laptop and start typing. Usually takes about an hour or so. I hold the draft for a day or two, then go back and look at it, tweak it a bit or fix typos, but what you end up reading on my site is the narrative in my head as I'm actually making the dish.

What has your lousiest experience been so far in the cooking process—cutting the heads off the crabs? Burning your hands?

I'd rather burn my hand again than see another *&#$%*! softshell crab. Strike that. I'd rather burn BOTH hands.

And the most surprising?

Oysters and Pearls. My readers know I've hated oysters with a passion for nearly 40 years. But this dish changed that. Oysters and tapioca—who knew? I won't eat oysters any other way. I was almost embarrassingly giddy when that was one of our dishes at Per Se. I think I actually did that bouncing in my chair while clapping thing. I'm such a nerd.

We know you love Ruhlman's blog. Any other food sites you can’t live without?

Ruhlman is fantastic, and he's now started a second blog called Elements of Cooking that is a companion to his new book by the same name; he's a great teacher. I always loved Megnut, but she's on maternity leave right now; I hope she'll come back. I also love Claudia at CookEatFRET, Kate at Accidental Hedonist, David Lebovitz, and Heidi at 101 Cookbooks—I'm addicted to her wheatberry salad.

What's next? Can Alice Waters expect a similar treatment?

Good question! If the El Bulli books were in English, I think I might just be crazy enough to try those... There are a few French Laundry dishes I'm going to go back and do once again, now that I know what I'm doing. I've also thought about taking each dish and coming up with ideas using those elements for things to make for a family dinner, or dinner for one or two. So, that's a long way of saying I'm pretty bummed out that I'll be done cooking all the dishes by early summer.

My readers are fantastic and supportive, and I couldn't be more thrilled with the support I've gotten from the culinary community since I've started. This has been one of the most fun, interesting, happy, and humbling experiences of my life.

Thanks for talking to us, Carol. And thanks for the marvelous blog. Bon appetit!

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Has it come to this? Not only are we blogging and photographing every last thought and experience for all and sundry to see, but now we feel the need to open up to the world that most accurate revealer of personality—the inside of our refrigerator. Of course, peeking inside this international smorgasbord of ice boxes brings up a host of questions about global attitudes. Pew Research Center, take note.

For instance, why no old take-out cartons filled with mouldering American food in this Chinese refrigerator? And who'dathunk you could get 7-UP in Saudi Arabia? And, rather than a few bottles of hooch, we expected the raw ingredients of some culinary delight to occupy the center shelf of honor in this French fridge. This food repository from the Ukraine, the former Soviet Union's breadbasket, features nary a loaf. This one from Italy contains Häagen-Dazs, not Gelato. And all we can say about this one is: Girl, get a grip! Ever hear of diabetes? Next time we check, we want to see a head of lettuce in there.

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Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.

Yeah, got it. Now, how about lunch? We think it's the most impossible. By eating out, you face an expensive, potentially bloating waste of an hour. Bring your lunch and dine on a hastily constructed sandwich, made soggy from too much tomato. In either case, the caloric chaos is a likely risk.

Bring in Biggie, the self-proclaimed speedy lunch packer and proprietor of Lunch in a Box: Building a Better Bento. Biggie's efforts to quickly prepare healthy and convenient mid-day meals for her family offer sustenance for us all. A bento lunch is nourishing, compact, and, if done the proper way, filled with just the right calories for a productive and happy afternoon. Beyond some of the delicious Japanese recipes, a bento lunch can be more familiar than you think. For those of us who wear lunch around our waists, Biggie's better bento means building the perfect lunch.

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Should you ever motor west, you'll see that the burrito is the signature food of San Francisco. While the city is home to a number of trend-setting chefs and a wide variety of ethnic cuisine, the humble burrito is the common food that unites folks throughout the Bay Area.

With San Francisco's prolific taqueria scene and its bountiful burrito offerings, one man has made it his duty to impose some order on the carne-based chaos. Charles Hodgkins is that man. We first wrote about his site back in late 2005 and he had roughly 150 burritos reviewed on his site. Today, his review total stands at over 500 whopping slabs of tortilla-wrapped goodness.

We recommend reading his extensive FAQ for an explanation of his innovative moustache-based rating scale and the key elements behind his detailed ratings. However, we were curious about how he was bitten by the burrito bug and the site's origin story, so we posed a few questions to the salsa-slathered mind behind Burritoeater...

Hey Charles, when did you start Burritoeater? What was the impetus?

I began working on the project on New Year's Day, 2003, but the site itself didn't see the light of day until June 24, 2005. I wasn't all that into the idea of creating a website around my taqueria data until I was laid off from my job at CNET in October 2004. I was sitting around with two of my colleagues that had also been laid off, and we were discussing what our next steps would be. John's an author and was going to publish his next book; Tim's a musician and was going to finish his next record. I shrugged and said, I'll do the taqueria website. Fast forward three years later: International notoriety is now mine.

What were your goals when you started?

The goals of the site are the same now as when I launched it: To cover San Francisco's prolific taqueria scene like a blanket, and to have a bunch of fun doing it.

When did you know that your site had "made it"?

I knew I was onto something even before the site launched, because everyone knows how popular taquerias are in San Francisco. I knew I'd be able to research and present all this information in a concise and entertaining way.

Making it entertaining is one of the most important elements of a site like mine, and I think I do pretty well with that part of it. It's also important to keep the database accurate and current, and given the shelf life of certain taquerias around town, sometimes that requires more legwork than you might expect.

I knew Burritoeater had hit the big time when it spread like some kind of word-of-mouth wildfire within the first week. The New York Times mention and San Francisco Chronicle Magazine piece didn't hurt the cause, either. But I suppose I knew it had really made it a few months before the NYT thing, when I overheard a couple people at the table next to me at a taqueria talking about "that weird site that rates burritos in mustaches."

Did you have another site or blog before Burritoeater?

No. I had a lot of experience working for online-based companies—music websites, specifically—but I never had my own show on the Web until I created Burritoeater.

Did you have any previous experience in the world of restaurant criticism?

No, although I have a long history of grousing about La Taqueria's burritos off the record. I just didn't have an audience for that until Burritoeater.

What's been the most gratifying thing about running Burritoeater?

No contest—the limo rides. Man, that sort of star treatment is no joke. I never knew how comfortable a limousine could be. I can't go back to driving a car at this point.

What's been the most surprising thing about running Burritoeater?

The fact that someone will read my answer to your previous question and think, if only for a split second, "Wait, he only rides in limos now?" Come on. I walk, I ride the MUNI, I drive a Volkswagen Golf.

Are you a native of San Francisco?

I'm originally from the swine country, Napa. Graduated from Berkeley after that. I've been in San Francisco since the late '90s and don't plan on leaving anytime soon. I've traveled a fair amount, and every time I return home, it only confirms that I wouldn't be better off anywhere else. I mean, how many cities of three-quarters of a million people can you criss-cross on foot in a few hours? And how many would you want to criss-cross on foot? San Francisco is a singular spot on the map in so many ways. It's hardly perfect, but it sure beats Pensacola.

When did you have your first burrito? When did you have your first authentic taqueria burrito?

I probably had my first burrito at Taco Bell on Jefferson St. in Napa when I was a kid. As for my first más autentico burrito—Tio Alberto's, San Luis Obispo, February 1991. I was onboard for life from that day forward.

Why do you love burritos so much?

What's not to like? They're designed to be eaten by hand, they're often delicious, they're mighty filling, they're cultural flashpoints, they're excellent weapons of defense when frozen, and they're generally pretty affordable. No two burritos are the same, which I'm thankful for, considering I've reviewed well over 500 of them on Burritoeater.

Are you into all varieties of the Mexican food experience? Or are you laser-focused on burritos?

Obviously, the scope of my site is burritos. Hopefully I've conveyed that in a clear way from the site's name. But I just like food, you know? So, yes, I hit other high points on the taqueria menu on off-days. Just over the last few weeks, I've had tacos, quesadillas, flautas, and tortilla soup at various points and places.

Where do you stand on burritos vis-a-vis tacos?

Tacos are rad. I enjoy a finely produced taco. I just have to eat several of them to equal the food content of one super burrito. I even like hard-shelled tacos with ground beef... you know, the kind that scream "Ortega" in aisle 14 at your local supermarket. We had taco nights at home on occasion when I was growing up. Good grief, I can just see the Latino community out there right now, shaking its collective head.

Do you have a favorite food blog besides your own?

Burritophile.com. It's a terrific user review-site managed by my friends Aaron, Dan, and Cate. It covers taquerias nationwide, which is no small task. I get e-mails from time to time from people who want to write for Burritoeater, but since I'm never in a collaborative mood with the site's content, I send them over to Burritophile.

Is there an area outside of S.F. where you're dyin' to check the burrito scene?

I don't get to San Diego too much, but I'm a fan of fries and really want to try one of those fries-inclusive burritos down there. I'm serious. It sounds like the kind of thing you'd get in Pittsburgh, not San Diego. Maybe I'll just go to Pittsburgh instead and get a ham sandwich with fries in it. That sounds pretty good, too.

What's the most unusual burrito filling you've ever had?

I had sesos [brains] in a torta a couple years back. I'm not so into the variety meats scene, but a certain amount of drinking had occurred earlier that evening, and liquid courage was rearing up big by 1:00 a.m. munchy-time, so I ordered up a brains sandwich at El Farolito on Mission St.

I was with my friend Tyler, he was sitting across the table from me, and every time he'd look away from his plate, I'd pinch off a piece of sesos from my sandwich and stuff it into his quesadilla. After three or four times doing this, I finally got a stern and well-deserved, "KNOCK THAT @#!% OFF!" Sesos is even more disgusting than you'd expect. Its taste, its appearance, its texture... I only recommend it to people I don't like.

Do you prefer a sit-down taqueria or a taco truck?

No preference. San Francisco's got plenty of trucks at this point, and it's OK with me. Eating informally is fun sometimes, and there's really nothing more informal than eating a burrito while sitting on a street curb. I'm an awesome date, I know.

You're going to have a final meal. Money is no object. Intestinal difficulties are inconsequential. What do you order?

I know you're expecting me to respond: Super burrito, pastor, extra spicy, refried beans, no sour cream, and that would be a very reasonable response from someone like me. But really, I'd probably just want about 15 of my mom's Toll House (chocolate chip) cookies. My word, those things were the greatest things ever. I was the most popular kid on the playground at lunchtime at Browns Valley Elementary.

You're still popular with us, Charles! We raise a hefty horchata in honor of your diligent work on the burrito beat.

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Seems like everyone's a foodie these days. People stick their noses in the air and rave about organic, grain-fed asparagus and hand-picked, shade-grown chicken, all cooked in delicate fusions of seasonal sauces and paired with eclectic, flinty wines. Um, yeah.

Instead of hipster eats, we'll take some history for dinner, thanks to Janet, "the Old Foodie," who we discovered late last year. This culinary blogger has been serving up 400 words on the history of food, plus a fascinating recipe, pretty much every day for a couple years now.

Janet bypasses current trends and instead gives context to long-standing food favorites from around the world like coffee (nope, not invented by Starbucks). She even indulges us with a peek into the stranger pots of the past with recipes such as roast camel's hump (does not taste like chicken!). We popped into Janet's virtual kitchen to see what's cooking now.

Why did you start this blog?

My son nagged me to do it, that's the short answer! I have been interested in food for as long as I can remember, and in food history for almost as long. I wanted to improve my writing and to get more efficient at it, with a long-term goal of it playing a bigger part in my retirement (whenever that happens!). I decided to commit to sending little stories out every weekday to friends and family, as a writing discipline, to see if they had an appeal and to get feedback. Pretty soon, I found that my emails were being forwarded to others who I didn't know.

From the beginning my son nagged me to "blog" them. At that time I don't think I even knew what a blog was. Eventually, to get him off my back by proving it was technically beyond me, I logged onto Blogger.com... and within a few minutes had a blog! I was so amazed I decided instantly to take the risk and go public. It has been—and still is—enormous fun.

Where do you get all this great information? You must have a huge library in your home.

I do have a pretty good library, but many of my resources are electronic. The real versions of very old manuscripts and texts are for libraries and museums or very wealthy collectors. Many of these old sources are available via online databases—some only through subscribing institutions such as university libraries, but there are still a huge number that are freely available.

I have made up a list of over 500 of these freely available online historic cookery texts, which anyone can download via a link in the sidebar of my blog [PDF link here].

So why can't we have Christmas pudding / Easter eggs / birthday cake every day?

Ah! But we can! I am determined to prove that there is a celebratory food for every day. That is the point of my perpetual work-in-progress, which I call my Food History Almanac—my collection of food history events and information related to every day of the year. I use it to trigger the ideas for the blog stories, and sometimes to write personalised birthday food histories.

Have you used many of the historic recipes? Have any favorites you'd recommend?

I haven't used as many as I would like, in their original form, for a variety of reasons (time pressure at this point in my life, and the need to persuade my regular and frequent dinner guests to let me experiment on them!).

One of my favourite themes is the idea that there is nothing really new under the sun, and that there is no such thing as a new recipe, only an evolution or adaptation of a pre-existing idea. There are some great old ideas waiting to be rediscovered, and I am constantly surprised that we don't use the past more for inspiration when it comes to cooking.

One good example (which I have cooked) is a 14th century English recipe called "Fenkel in Soppes," which is fennel braised with saffron and sweet spices. If you saw that on a restaurant menu today you would think it was very innovative.

What are some historic recipes you'd never want to try?

I'd pretty well try anything, apart from the downright poisonous, like pickles cooked specifically in a copper pot to "green" them. They probably looked good, but the "greening" came about because of the interaction of the vinegar with the copper to produce very poisonous copper salts.

Having said that, I don't think I'd be too enthusiastic about the calf's eyeballs carefully placed along with the rest of the filling in an 18th century Calf's Head Pye.

Seems like you have a lot of articles about eggs—why do you think they come up so often?

I wasn't aware until you pointed it out that I had so many! I guess they are a universal food, easily available everywhere, and adaptable to so many recipes. There are almost 800 historic recipes on the site now, so it is a bit hard to keep track.

I have specially featured recipes for potatoes and gingerbread, so perhaps now I should start an egg archive!

Tell us a little about the Christmas recipes. You have quite a collection!

I am sentimental about Christmas, that's the main reason behind my collection of recipes! I am also fascinated by the way recipes evolve and are adapted as times change and people migrate and so on—yet they retain echoes of the past.

Almost the entire history of the development of cooking techniques can be seen in the modern Christmas cake. The simple staple dish of wheat porridge called "frumenty" was enriched with eggs and wine and dried fruit and minced meat for special occasions such as Christmas, and this basic mixture gave rise to Christmas pudding (a thicker mixture boiled in a cloth) or Christmas cake (baked in a tin in an oven).

Mince pies are essentially the same mixture baked in pastry cases or "coffins," which also functioned as an early way of preserving foodstuffs before canning and refrigeration. It worked pretty well, provided the pastry did not crack or get wet. Eating a mince pie is eating history. I love that idea.

Some of the older recipes feature meats that are, well, less common on today's tables—turtles, parrots, organ meats, even horse and kangaroo. Have you gotten negative feedback about those?

I've never had any abuse—even in one of my early posts on eating dog meat. I guess that is because I'm not promoting the eating of one's pets, I just record that it has happened in times past. That is not to say that I don't get some intrigued or puzzled or disgusted commenters—but it hasn't been personal.

Do you cook as much as you write and research?

I cook a lot and entertain a lot. I find it extraordinarily difficult to cook small quantities—even though it is a long time since I had adolescent offspring bringing hordes of hungry friends home. My friends and family almost expect to take leftovers home after a meal here.

My interest in food history arose out of my love of cooking—which is why my food history interest is recipe-driven. I am more interested in what went onto the dinner table than in the grand sweeps of spice routes and agricultural change.

Where have you traveled and what world foods have interested you the most?

I have travelled to quite a lot of places around the world—never on long trips unfortunately, but I hope this will change soon. It is almost impossible to say what has interested me most—am interested in all food.

The street food of Asia I love. Anything in Paris is fantastic, even if it is not. I love seeking out very local specialties made in a single small area—such as the little sweet/meat pies in Pézenas in the Languedoc. It is always a treat to find good bread from an artisan baker. I am going to buy a Scotch Egg from Fortnum & Mason when I go to London later this month, because they are supposed to be very good—and eel pies at the oldest Eel Pie and Mash shop.

You were born in England and give a fair amount of space to English recipes. What stereotypes about English food, past and present, do you think are most unfair?

That is a good question—meaning it is not an easy one to answer. I have always been a champion of English food and cannot ignore my heritage. On a daily basis, living in the hot climate of Queensland, I am more inclined to cook light, Asian-inspired food, but the British culinary tradition is magnificent.

Until the 17th century, when the world started to open up, English food was probably the best in the world. The view that British food is awful and stodgy and dull is ridiculous—you can eat badly anywhere in the world. Good food always has to be sought out. I don't like any stereotypes; they are prejudices with another name.

Do you collect cooking paraphernalia? We're picturing the Old Foodie standing by a big cast-iron stove, pouring an exotic stew into an ornate china dish…

No, I am not by nature a collector of "stuff," although I am an information junkie. I do rather fancy the ornate china dish you have tempted me with, but mostly I love my thoroughly modern kitchen.

I don't have any desire to do things the hard way on a day-to-day basis, my life is too busy in other ways—although I am full of admiration for those that do try to recreate things in a historically accurate way.

Describe your favorite dinner. Would you cook it yourself or have it made for you?

Much as I am fascinated by the history of food, my day-to-day pleasure centres around eating good food with good friends. Any good food—fine bread and excellent cheese will do nicely.

I do love to cook for people—I think I am happiest when I am cooking for those I love (I'd hate to cook for strangers in a restaurant). We are blessed with good friends who live very close (and also like cooking), so we are all a short stroll away from a dinner party. Often we combine forces, each contributing something to the meal, which is really great, although I never mind doing all the cooking.

I love variety, so my favourite meal would include some new idea as well as something familiar. Something made with excellent chocolate is obligatory for dessert. There are a few historic recipes that I am keen to cook soon, so I am thinking that my next dinner party will have Turkie with Raspis (turkey with raspberries, from a French cookbook of 1653) and Parmesan Cheese Ice Cream (from an English cookbook of 1760).

Want to come to dinner?

Oh yes please! We can't wait to tuck into a meal—real or virtual—with the Old Foodie. Thanks for the mouth-watering history.

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There once was a time we were satisfied with the candy bars sold at corner stores and supermarkets. Those stunted sizes. Those puny, foil-wrapped portions. Pimp That Snack! changed that forever.

Now, we long for Cadbury's Eggs the size of coconuts, snowballs as big as football helmets, and Almond Joys that come in sizes L, XL, and cookie-sheet. Oh, joy!

Since launching his web-wide experiment in colossal pastry making, Pete—the Pimp Daddy behind Pimp That Snack!—has seen his page explode into a popular forum for wannabe chefs with visions of grandiose sugar-plums dancing in their heads.

We wrote about the site just over a year ago. Now, we check in with the U.K.-based Pete about the state of affairs in the kitchen. He told us how a KitKat paved his way into free-form snack baking...

Hey Pete, tell us what inspired you to start Pimp That Snack!

In April last year, I bought a KitKat Chunky with Peanut Butter and I thought to myself, "I wonder how this would taste with regular peanut butter in it, instead." So I cracked it open and took out the peanut butter that was in it, and replaced it with my own. Then I put it all back together and tried it out, and it was great.

During the process, I documented it step by step with photographs, and then posted it on a popular forum where it got a very good reaction. It was also featured in the b3ta.com newsletter that week, which got it a lot of attention.

Then, another guy from the same forum suggested I start a web site doing the same kind of thing, which sounded like a good idea, so I did. You can see a copy of the original post I made here.

Ha! We love it. It's so scientific and well-documented. Did you then find yourself searching around for another snack to pimp—or did the ideas come rushing at you?

The guy that suggested I make the site submitted one himself, and also got a friend of his to do the same. I made another one and put that up to, and by the time the site had four or five it was starting to get several thousand hits a day.

Wow.

After that, people just started submitting them themselves and I didn't have to do too much more myself. I really wasn't expecting it.

How much do you monitor the forum? Like, have you ever had to reject any pimps—or does that happen a lot?

The snacks themselves don't get posted on the forum, people email them in to me as text with pictures attached. I have had to reject a few. Some have been so badly written, or the pictures have been so blurry that you can't make out what it is. But aside from that, as long as the effort has been made, it generally gets put up.

Do you have a favorite?

I like the bourbon biscuit. They're a big favorite in the U.K. and the recreation is extremely accurate.

We love the giant Twix. We wish it were higher in the most popular listing!

It's hard to beat that Creme Egg.

The site has all this great interactivity, such as the popularity listings. Does it take up a lot of your time just running the backend?

Back when it first started it almost took over my life. But these days it does run itself, with the exception of putting up some new pimps now and then.

Tell us about the fund raising you're doing.

Just after the site first started, a girl who was waiting for a double lung transplant emailed me asking if she could make a post on my forum about her awareness raising activities. I had a read into her background and got really taken in by her story.

She has cystic fibrosis, which is a genetic condition that badly damages the lungs resulting in the need for transplant. By that point, she'd been on the waiting list for over a year. I decided to try and help her as much as I could, so we put up some banners to her campaign website, Live Live Then Give Life.

Happily, she received her transplant just in time in January this year and is now living a nearly normal life, whereas before she was pretty much confined to a bed. There is a big shortage of organ donors in the U.K. so the fundraising is us trying to help raise some money for the campaign and help raise awareness.

That's a wonderful use of the site's popularity.

Well, what good is a popular web site if you can't do something productive with it?

When you first started the site, it had a different name. Can you talk about what happened with that at all?

The original name of the web site—"Pimp My Snack"—was suggested to me. And I didn't really think about it too much when I registered the name. I didn't anticipate more than 10 people would visit it. So its popularity was a surprise, no more so than the big threatening letter I received a couple of months after the site became popular.

Apparently, I was purposefully infringing on an existing trademark.

We remember how you had to write us and ask us to change the name. Whose trademark was feeling tramped upon?

MTV and Viacom International, Inc. They had two trademarks, one for "Pimp My Ride" and one was for "Pimp My."

So you went with "Pimp That Snack." We like that, too.

It didn't really bother me. If the guy had suggested "giantsnacks.com," I'd probably have used that. It was just chance and a bit of bad luck. I don't think the name made the site popular.

I should really give "the guy" his credit, as he did suggest putting the site up: His name is Steve Piers. He didn't put the site together or anything like that, but I can't deny he's the one who suggested I do it.

What are some of your other favorite sites online?

Ah, there are a few. The man behind Fat-Pie.com is a genius. I've never seen funnier Flash videos in my life. But another one I like is How It Should Have Ended. More Flash movies, showing how they think some popular movies should have ended, really funny stuff.

We've been checking out your Website of the Week section, too. More great stuff there.

My definition of week does stray a bit—it's more like whenever I remember to update it.

Hey, it's your site!

Hey, that's a good point.

Thanks again, Pete. We're off to try our hand at a Mega Massive Mars. Life is good!

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Does grocery shopping feel like just another chore? Maybe that's because today's big-box retailers and discounts stores have lost the kitschy charm of 1950s architecture and sleek 1960s modern styling.

If you miss the pre-prefab Safeways or perhaps you're lucky enough to have a vintage Luckys down the block, you may want to join David Gwynn and the legion of "groceteria" fans who swap photos and stories about charming Winn-Dixies and A&P markets.

Gwynn's site combines well-researched history with a dash of nostalgia, a small dose of irony, and a lot of love for the days before cookie-cutter strip malls overtook America. We caught up with David in between shopping trips to see what's new in the land of old stores.

When we reviewed your site way back in 2001, you were living in San Francisco and hunting down the few '60s-'70s era Safeways left in Yahoo!'s neck of the woods. Now you're in North Carolina. How does the grocery landscape compare?

Everything is a lot cheaper. And the lines are a lot shorter. And here, we have liver pudding and Cheerwine freely available in all stores.

But as far as history—which is my primary focus—goes, there are a lot fewer old stores here. In California, land is so expensive that it's often more economical to work with the same old space you're already in rather than try to build a new store. That's not the case here, though. Thus, it's really hard to find vintage stores still in operation here. But you still run across one here and there.

Are you back in A&P country? Can you smell the coffee?

Actually, A&P has pretty much retreated to the Northeast. Their last remaining southern stores (around New Orleans) were really hit hard by Katrina, and they're up for sale now. It's sad, because the French Quarter store has been open for 70 years and probably qualifies as the oldest continuously operating chain supermarket in America now.

Alas, the coffee smell usually comes from an attached Starbucks now.

So, what's the price of tuna at your local supermarket these days?

Fifty or sixty cents, usually. But the cans keep getting smaller.

Do you run across many people who get the "bottles" reference?

Sometimes. It's usually people in their 40s and over who remember. There have even been some discussions on the message board about the convoluted ways stores used to do bottle check-ins.

We have to admit, we didn't have bottles. But some of us got a kick out of the Charles Chips picture. That's probably too specific for a web site though?

I don't think there's any subject too specific or obscure to have its own web site now. It's just like how there's a porn site for every imaginable fetish. If your obsession happens to be a specific cereal or a McDonald's uniform type, there's probably STILL someone who's beaten you to the punch and put up a web site about it. Most of these sites aren't very good, mind you, but they're there.

Do you have a favorite era of grocery store architecture?

Definitely the period from about 1948 to 1968. That's when stores started being really purpose-built (rather than just being inserted into existing commercial buildings) and when they really started having a sense of style. If you saw a Safeway or an A&P from the distance, you knew what it was; the designs were distinctive, if not always distinguished.

Is there a least favorite? We're guessing it might be right now...

Actually, it would be the 1990s. That was the peak of the bland, stucco-clad "this building could be dang near anything" period. We're actually starting to see a little more style and some differentiation in newer stores now, as competition intensifies.

It's not a supermarket chain, but Target's new buildings are really cool, and I think their attention to design is filtering down to other retailers. Stores are becoming much more iconic again. I like that.

Where you surprised by the reaction to your site? Your message boards seem pretty active—lots of people are asking about supermarket chain history.

Yeah, I've definitely been surprised, particularly when semi-major news outlets started contacting me once in a while. And it was nice when the hometown paper interviewed me and put me on the front page.

There are a lot of different angles that can hook people on the subject: Some are interested in the architecture and design aspect, some are into business history, and some just love the nostalgia of it all. Pretty much everyone has spent time in a supermarket, much of it during childhood, so lots of memories get stirred up.

What are the grocery-store fans like? Any flame wars erupt on the boards?

We're generally a polite and rather geeky bunch. I don't remember any significant flame wars, and that's probably because everyone knows I'm always standing right next to a fire extinguisher. Generally, current operations are off-limits on the site (and the board), so there aren't any strike arguments or Wal-Mart bashing or that sort of thing. It's all about history and determining what that old building on El Camino Real or Peachtree Street used to be.

What keeps you updating the site? You've been at it a long time with a unique topic.

Everybody's gotta have a hobby, I guess. This one gives me an excuse to travel and to visit neighborhoods (and whole cities) that most tourists would probably skip. I love exploring strange cities. I love taking pictures of buildings. And I love spending my time lurking in dark, dusty local history rooms at various libraries and carefully entering data into spreadsheets while leafing through old city directories and newspaper clippings. It's heaven for me, even though it probably sounds like torture to most people.

Has Groceteria lead to any new developments in your life? New career path? New friends? New shopping habits?

Indirectly, it led to my meeting the love of my life. He was a reader of another of my web sites, and we met when I was on a Groceteria research trip to Fresno in 2001. We've been together ever since, and he's amazingly tolerant of my quirks. That's the joy of marrying a fellow geek. Also, spending all that time in libraries has inspired me to start work on my Master's in Library and Information Studies in the Fall.

What web sites do you frequent the aisles of?

Malls of America—vintage malls; U.S. Highways—from US1 to US 830; Under the Orange Roof—Howard Johnson's tribute site; Agilitynut's Roadside Architecture; and The Comics Curmudgeon [For more on The Comics Curmudgeon, check out the Picks Profile!]

Thanks bringing back those bottles, David! See you in the checkout line.

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In a world dominated by "Sex and the City" cosmos and James Bond "shaken, not stirred" martinis, Paul Clarke might be something of an anachronism. But he's not the only one. In just two years, his urbane and witty site dedicated to obscure drinks such as the Blood and Sand and the Ramos Gin Fizz has created a lively online cocktail party. Bellying up to the bar are dozens of fellow drink-related bloggers who join him on Mixology Mondays, where they pick a cocktail theme and toss a few back at the keyboard. We bought a virtual round and had a chat with the bartender.

Hey Paul, why did you start blogging about drinking?

The blog came about because I had all of this information I'd accumulated, and I was looking to do a bit more with it than simply sending out emails to my friends with recipes and interesting historical tidbits. I'm also a working journalist, and by setting up the blog I hoped to have an outlet to exercise my writing chops, as well as to explore a topic I hadn't really had the chance to touch upon in my professional work.

OK, we can't help but ask—what's your favorite drink or spirit?

I'm a major fiend for rye whiskey. Most people have never heard of rye, or they think it's some old-time thing that their grandpa drank. And it is, kind of; rye is a classic American whiskey that has a longer and richer history than bourbon, and a leaner, spicier flavor than bourbon -- think of the difference in flavor between corn bread and rye bread, and you'll have some idea of what I mean. Most classic whiskey cocktails like the Manhattan were developed using the drier, spicier taste of rye.

The first time I had a Manhattan made with rye instead of bourbon, it was like the clouds opened up and a golden ray of sunlight came through—I understood how the Manhattan became one of the world's greatest drinks. Fortunately, there are plenty of people like me who are rediscovering rye, so the range of available ryes has blossomed exponentially in just the past couple of years. Now, some of the best whiskies being made in America are ryes.

I guess my desert-island drink would be a good Manhattan. The Manhattan used to be more popular than the martini, and when you have one made right, it's easy to see why. Right now my favorite way to make them is to take two ounces of a nice, spicy whiskey like the Rittenhouse 100-proof Kentucky Straight Rye, and match that with three-quarters of an ounce of Carpano Antica, a complex, slightly bitter Italian vermouth. To this I add a couple of dashes of these rich, aromatic bitters that you have to special order from a pair of bartenders in Germany who make tremendous artisan-crafted cocktail ingredients, and stir the whole mix with cracked ice.

If I'm feeling really old school, I'll dribble in a few drops of French absinthe—with this, the Manhattan tastes like it was made by a New York bartender with a handlebar mustache and arm garters, back in the days of Boss Tweed and bowler hats. It's absolutely fantastic.

What do you think is the most overrated liquor right now?

I'm constantly amazed, and dismayed, by the popularity of vodka. Vodka is to a spirit like gin what tofu is to bacon—it has little virtue of its own. Vodka is, by definition, flavorless and odorless, so flavor-wise it contributes nothing to a cocktail.

To me, part of the whole appeal of enjoying a civilized alcoholic beverage is enjoying the taste of the drink, whether it's a good microbrew, a decent glass of wine, or a well-made martini. When you build a cocktail around vodka, you're only tasting the mixers you're putting in the glass, and you're not really creating a well-balanced libation.

When you use a spirit with flavor, however, like a decent rum or gin or whiskey, you're not only introducing more flavor and depth into the drink, but you're giving yourself and your guests an opportunity to enjoy the distiller's art. The entire point of a cocktail is to take a spirit and mix it with ingredients that complement and contrast with that flavor; with vodka, you're merely fortifying your mixer with flavorless alcohol, and I find that to be an unsatisfying drinking experience.

Do you drink wine and beer too? Or do you just stick to cocktails?

I live in Seattle, so there's no shortage of well-made microbrews or locally made wines, and I'm a big fan of a hoppy IPA or a crisp Pinot grigio. Ultimately, though, I find the world of spirits and cocktails to be absolutely fascinating—there's such a rich history to the story of cocktails, and it's an American history, too.

When researching vintage cocktails, you come across all these stories about colorful people and bygone places, and it really provides an interesting outlook not only on the types of things people tasted in years past, but on the history of America and the way people lived their lives. That's why I find the topic so fascinating.

The choices are more varied, too—with beer or wine, if you want to taste something different, you have to go out and buy another bottle. With cocktails, as long as you have a reasonably well-stocked home bar, you can always mess around with different combinations, proportions, uses of different mixers, and so on. There's just so much to choose from, it's hard to get bored with it.

Why early- to mid-20th century classic cocktails? What makes those the prime potables?

The late 19th and early 20th century was really the golden era for cocktails. You had these old drinking palaces like the bar at the Waldorf Hotel in New York, or the El Dorado in San Francisco, that were temples to the creative minds behind the bar. In that era, bartenders were seen as professionals, and were well-respected men around town. Their professional approach was apparent in the drinks that came out of that era, and that exist in vintage cocktail manuals.

They didn't have things like artificially flavored liqueurs or radioactive-green apple schnapps—they had honest-to-god spirits and fortified wines that were examples of the highest art of the distiller, and they worked with them to enhance the flavor of each ingredient, and to produce tasty, well-balanced drinks.

Even after Prohibition, in the drinks that you see from bar menus and cocktail guides from the 1940s and '50s, you see a sense of this creativity. It wasn't until the 1960s that vodka really started to gain traction as a cocktail spirit, and that was about the same time that people were turning away from cocktails as being too old fashioned—they were what your parents drank, and who wants to drink like their parents?

Today's emphasis on using artificial flavors, or on taking something flavorful like a mango and using it as an alcohol delivery vehicle to mask the burn of a shot of vodka, is several steps behind what these guys were trying to do. The craft of the cocktail has never truly recovered from Prohibition, and when you taste a drink as designed by one of the old masters and compare it to something you find in your average bar today, that's sadly apparent.

Fortunately lots of people are rediscovering this art, and there's an increasing number of bars around the world where you can go and find one of these perfectly crafted drinks.

Do you have fancy cocktails shakers, vintage barware, and the like? Seems like those would go well with the hard-to-find brands in your liquor cabinet.

I have a tendency to collect and hoard unusual things, and I'm trying to keep that under control. Right now, that means I've been focusing on spirits—I lost track somewhere, but I believe I have close to 200 different spirits in my home bar.

I also compulsively collect cocktail and bartending manuals, especially those published before 1960; I think my collection is between 150 and 200 books by now, including things like old temperance songbooks from the 19th century.

To keep this interest from totally taking over my house and my bank account, I try to limit the collecting to spirits and books, though I have noticed a gradual creep in the types of glassware now on my shelves.

Tell us about Mixology Mondays. What's the response been like?

The response to Mixology Monday has been really surprising. We started out in April 2005, with an idea to take blog events like "Is My Blog Burning," which is a food-blogging event, and "Wine-Blogging Wednesdays" for the wine crowd, and do something similar for spirits and cocktails.

At first, I expected maybe three or four of the dedicated drink-bloggers to join in, and that first round we had about eight participants; it's picked up ever since. We keep running the events every month, with a different host each time, and we'll typically have 25 or 30 people participate.

Right now it seems like it's still on the upswing, and with the continued growth of interest in fine cocktails and the increase in the number of drink blogs out there, I think it'll only continue to grow for the foreseeable future.

What Mixology Monday theme was the most popular? Did one turn out to be a dud?

We've had several hits. A couple of the most popular have been the Mixology Monday event that focused on tequila cocktails, and another from last December that focused on holiday drinks; that one, especially, brought out the festive nature in our bloggers.

A couple of the themes have been a little lackluster—one time a host wanted to focus on shooters and the kind of joke drinks you see in college bars; that event never really took off—even the host didn't participate.

How has writing this blog changed things for you?

When I first started the Cocktail Chronicles, it was a very personal kind of exercise, and I thought maybe a handful of people would stop by. Two years later, I can say that starting the blog was one of the best ideas I've ever had. Blogging has put me in touch with literally hundreds of like-minded folks, including some of the top bartenders and spirits professionals in the world, along with some of the most knowledgeable and articulate writers and historians whose work I've found so inspiring.

It's also paid off for me in other ways. This July, I'm heading to New Orleans for the annual Tales of the Cocktail conference, a five-day event that attracts some of the top figures in food and spirits. Thanks to the blog, I've been asked to organize and moderate a seminar on cocktails and blogging, and to participate in another major panel on "lost" and forgotten cocktail ingredients, which is a topic that's of major interest to me and that I've blogged about extensively.

In addition, I'm co-hosting a special dinner at the Delachaise, one of the city's top restaurants, with another drink blogger; between us, we came up with cocktails that pair with each of Chef Chris DeBarr's creative courses.

My writing on the Cocktail Chronicles has also helped lead to a regular gig as a contributor to Imbibe magazine, where I've written about topics ranging from rye whiskey to vintage cocktail ingredients to profiles of some of the most interesting people in the cocktail renaissance.

It all started with a laptop and a little free time, and it's paid off in so many ways.

For you and for us, Paul. Thanks for all the great cocktail tips and lore. Cheers!

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The delicious Taquitos.net was a Yahoo! Pick way back in January 2001. We were smitten with the snack-tastic site then, and it's only gotten better as the years have passed. Taquitos.net was ahead of the crunchy curve in food-obsessed blogs by at least a couple of years, and its copious reviews of snacks of all sorts are essential for anyone who loves to munch.

Jeremy Selwyn runs Taquitos.net and has gone from being ribbed as "the chip guy" at work to an influential dude in the snack industry. Snack companies send him new products for review and hang on his every salt-stained word.

We put aside our bag of Baked Ruffles long enough to chat with the engaging Mr. Selwyn...

Hey Jeremy, what was the impetus behind the launch of Taquitos.net?

Well, my collection of chips from around the world had grown to about 100. By then, I was known at work as "the chip guy" and thought it would be fun to share the collection with the rest of the Web.

When did you start Taquitos.net?

Taquitos.net was launched in July 2000, but my chip collecting habit had been going strong for about 5 years by then. It started as a time waster at the job I had at the time. I was often seen around the office eating odd flavors of chips from the local chip company, so it became sort of a contest among co-workers to try to find the strangest potato chip flavors.

How did you and your colleagues find strange flavors?

I look for chips everywhere I go, whether it's a convenience store in my own neighborhood, or on the other side of the world. Friends, co-workers, and family also bring me chips from their travels. In the past few years, chip companies have started sending me samples of their products directly because they want me to review them.

Who was the first chip company to contact you directly?

Hmmm...not sure I remember who was first. Actually, one of the early ones was shortly after we published a very negative review of a type of Stacy's Pita Chips. I was contacted by Stacy, who said maybe we got a bad bag, and she offered to send us her whole line of chips. Since then, hundreds of companies have sent stuff.

Are there still major parts of the chip world left uncovered?

I used to think the number of new things we'd find would slow down. But it never really happened. The more I travel, the more snacks I find, and those ingenious snack companies keep coming up with new ideas.

Yeah! We want to get your thoughts on the flavor explosion in the snack world over the last few years. Has the American palate changed?

In general, I like the explosion of flavors because it shows the snack companies are really trying to offer a wider range and to cater to more sophisticated tastes. But they're also trying to compete and grab shelf space by having new and interesting flavors. Some people like to stick to their standard favorite snack for many years.

Is there a particular flavor trend you're sick of?

One thing I see a lot is that snack makers include "zesty" in the name of some flavors. As far as I'm concerned, ALL flavors should be zesty, and it should go without saying that any given flavor is zesty. And the funny thing is, some of the "zesty" flavors fall far short of being zesty.

What's been the most gratifying thing about running the site?

Well, I look at it mostly as a fun thing, a way to explore lots of different foods and share my opinions. I'm under no delusion of being a gourmet or food expert. I just consider myself an average joe eater, sharing some average joe opinions. But people see our reviews and generally agree with us, probably moreso than they would agree with the experts.

Is there a rare chip or snack you've been dying to find but haven't tracked down as of yet?

I've heard about the Hedgehog-flavored chips that they had at some point in England. I would have liked to have tried those, and if they bring them back, I'm there.

Who would you most like to share a snack with?

Well, if I could sit down with George Crum (inventor of the potato chip) and snack and chat with him, that would be great. Of course, he's dead.

Anyone living?

I'd say Manny Ramirez. He's a great baseball player and just one of the wackiest people out there. I'd bet he'd be fun guy to share a snack with.

What does the future hold for Taquitos.net?

Well, our goal is and remains tasting every snack in the world. We're clearly STILL far short of that goal, so we're open to suggestions from snackers and snack companies for things that we need to try. Any kind of popcorn, chip, candy bar, pretzel, or snack treat. If it's salty and sounds unhealthy, we want to eat it!

Thanks, Jeremy. Keep on snackin'!

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We first came across Jamie Wodetzki's mouth-watering breakfast blog over a year ago and fell in love. We don't make a habit of featuring sites with a narrow local focus, but Jamie's culinary critiques transcended the Melbourne, Australia breakfast scene.

His evocative breakfast reviews accompanied with a side of pleasing photos provided his blog with universal appeal. He proves the maxim that no matter how tiny the appeal of a site may seem, it's all about interesting content executed in an appealing fashion.

We lobbed a few questions about blogging and breakfast at Jamie and he was kind enough to hold court...

Hey Jamie, what was the impetus behind the blog?

I was curious about blogging, so I decided to start one. At about the same time I was moaning about the pathetic coverage of breakfast by mainstream food critics. All they really care about are those other meals. So I decided to fill the gap and start a blog dedicated to breakfast reviews. It also seemed like a good way to force myself to go out a try new places.

Did you have prior experience with restaurant and/or food reviews?

Total amateur.

Your pictures are always delicious. Did you have a photography background or are you just good behind the lens?

Maybe it's genetic. My father is a photographer.

How have you kept up the passion for updating the site with fresh reviews?

I think blogging is mildly addictive. So that's a partial explanation. The other part is that I actually do love eating breakfast. The real challenge is to keep the blog from sounding tired and boring.

In your time running the site, has anything happened that surprised you?

Quite a few surprises, actually. I'm surprised that it has so many readers (over 1,000 per day now). I'm very surprised it won a bloggie. And I was totally surprised when a waitress quoted my blog back at me one day when I was ordering. That was funny.

What was the most gratifying moment you've had as a result of the site?

Getting a restaurant to change its menu. That was cool. Can you imagine? They served fancy home-made sausages without any condiments. Outrage.

What area of the world would you most like to visit and review?

I really need to do a serious road trip through the U.S. some time soon and find some good diners. Tips on breakfast hot spots across the U.S. are warmly welcomed.

What other food blogs do you enjoy?

There are plenty of good ones. I check out tomatom.com for local Melbourne food news. The London Review of Breakfasts is always pretty witty, and good for London breakfast ideas. A recent discovery was The Wine Doctor, which came in very handy during a recent visit to Burgundy.

Your dream breakfast? Your dream breakfast guest(s)?

I think I would go with the Iron Chef format. It would be a breakfast/eggs theme, with a cook-off between Iron Chef French, Michel Roux, and Gordon Ramsay as the challenger. The guests, who would also be the judges, would include AA Gill (very funny and scathing food critic for The Times), Shakira (apparently she likes to do paintings of fried eggs in her spare time), Eva Green (just because), and Christopher Hitchens (because nobody said you can't talk politics over breakfast).

What do you do besides run the site? Do you have a day job?

I run a software company called Exari which allows just about anyone to write complicated documents (contracts, sales proposals, etc) by answering a bunch of questions in their web browser. So, as you can see, writing food reviews has absolutely nothing to do with my day job. I think of it as weekend therapy and entertainment.

Thanks Jamie! May your eggs always be sunny-side up.

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Ah, the cupcake. The trendy treat is all the rage in NYC and L.A. as dessert devotees scarf down pricey miniature cakes. But a few folks stirred the frosting before cupcakes became a hot commodity among hipsters. One of those intrepid bakers is San Francisco resident and blogger Cheryl Porro. The ingenious Ms. Porro doesn't settle for plain-jane vanilla cakes. She consistently pushes the boundaries of baking on her blog.

When we discovered the site, we fell in love with the flavor concepts, the audacious ideas, and the luscious cupcake photography. The blog offers up delicious original recipes accompanied by meticulous step-by-step instructions. Cheryl was kind enough to put down her newborn and turn off her oven to join us for a chat about her site, baking, and how she gets those mouth-watering photos...

Hey Cheryl, when did you start the blog?

I started the blog in March of 2005. Before that, I had a site at cupcakebakery.com. I had intended to keep it up to date with recipes and stuff, but it was a pain to maintain and I felt no motivation. A good friend of mine was a big fan of craft blogs and pointed me to the whole food blog thing. That same day I signed up for a blog and wrote my first post.

Do you work on anything besides the blog?

I'm a Software QA Manager at Salesforce.com.

Wow. So the cupcakes are a sideline? That's interesting, since you do it so well.

Thanks. Yes, it's a side thing, but I am equally as obsessive about my day job. So, it's interesting...

Was the response to the blog immediate after you set it up? When did you know you had developed an audience?

It seemed to start off fairly quickly with a small audience. I would get about 10 or so comments per post. In the early days I was very experimental, so I think that got me some attention. Posting my cupcake photos on flickr and commenting on other food blogs (and then getting linked from them) helped build an audience.

We were going to ask you about your photos on flickr. Have you always been into photography? Your cupcake photos are amazing...

That's funny. Basically, no. For the life of me, I can not take a good picture of anything but cupcakes. I know it's weird. The photography thing has been a happy shock for me—I give credit to the good lighting in my kitchen.

Have you considered a career in food styling?

Not really. I hadn't considered it myself, mostly because I have this sense I would only be good styling cupcakes. I have problems with getting a good shot of savory foods.

What has been most gratifying about running the blog?

A few things. First, the immediate response I get on the blog. When a recipe really strikes a chord, I see it right away. It motivates me to push myself as far as recipes go. This was a struggle before I started the blog, because I always wanted to experiment with my baking but had no motivation. Second, I love the fact that someone can post a question about a recipe, and if I'm online and not swamped, I'll answer their question for them.

We love the whimsy you inject into baking. Where do you come up with the concepts?

Well, it's interesting. Part of why I post so infrequently is that the process by which I come up with an idea takes time. Sometimes I'll have some ingredient, flavor combo, or technique in mind, maybe based on something I ate recently. It doesn't hurt that I eat out a lot in a great city like San Francisco. So inspiration abounds.

I work across from the Ferry Building and will often just walk around looking for some other ingredient or something. If I have cherries in mind, I walk around thinking "cherries and..."

So it's all about fresh ingredients and going beyond the norm?

Definitely. Sometimes i will pull out something kitschy if I'm in the mood, like the red hot cupcakes, but mostly its about fresh or exotic ingredients usually not found in a cupcake.

Have you always baked?

Yes, since I was about 13 or so. I would bake for my family. I've gone through a lot of baking phases through the years. I was into tarts for some time, then 5 star restaurant desserts, then I got into cupcakes around 2000. I always played with the idea of going to school to be a pastry chef, but I've been in software for a little over 10 years and have found it difficult to leave.

What do you make of the trendiness of cupcakes? Why cupcakes?

I know for me, I like the individual nature of the cupcake. In general, I don't like to share, especially dessert. A cupcake is your own to enjoy.

What's your favorite recipe you've posted on the blog?

Very tough. I think the thai ice tea cupcake was my most challenging and one inspired by something I love. I still don't feel like I have a great recipe, but that one came pretty close.

Far too modest. Favorite cupcake besides your own?

I feel bad saying this, but I haven't really had a good cupcake "out." Mostly because I bake them so much I never want to eat them when I'm out. I've tried some and haven't been too happy. I need to get down to L.A. or something where there are more shops.

Honesty appreciated. Favorite food blog?

101cookbooks. I've been inspired to cook from her posts.

OK. Never say never—would you leave software behind and consider a cookbook, catering business, or bakery?

I'd consider a cookbook. I actually shopped a proposal through a book packager, but nothing came of it. I still might self publish some day. I may consider catering and/or a bakery especially if my job ever took a turn for the worse.

Thanks Cheryl. May your frosting bag never run dry.

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