Lazy Sunday Morning: Interesting Recipes from the Web

• Chicago Style Spicy Cheese-Caramel Popcorn. Oh, my. During the holidays, when everyone else groans and rolls their eyes when they receive a tin of popcorn (you know, the one with the Santa or puppy with a Santa hat on the front), I am gleeful. Cheese, butter, and caramel popcorn all mixed together?! Well, there is a cardboard divider that keeps them separated, but as soon as I can, I take the divider out and mix the hell out of the popcorn. I can devour a can of that popcorn in an embarrassingly short time span. Anyway, this recipe looks absolutely ridiculous. Tabasco, caramel, and cheese. Yes, please. 
• Stir fried Clams with Thai Chili Jam and Basil: One of the things that is so appealing about this recipe to me is the fact that it comes together quickly with just a handful of ingredients. The major players of this dish are fresh, briny clams and Nam Prik Pao, which I have never worked with before. I think this would be a good recipe for someone who was interested in making Thai food, but a bit intimidated by unfamiliar ingredients or processes. If you weren’t interested in using clams, I’m sure you could substitute any protein–tofu, chicken, beef, pork–any of these would work well. 
• Boozy Watermelon Rosemary Lemonade: This recipe won a contest for Best Poolside Drinks. Doesn’t it make you wish summer would hurry up and get here? 
• Okonomiyaki: I have forever been intrigued by this dish. Has anyone had it before? I’d like to have it in a restaurant or prepared by someone who knew what they were doing before I try it for myself.
• Chocolate Thai Green Curry Cake: Please! Someone who bakes! Make this and blog about it…or better yet, send me a slice!

Daily Dishes: Recipes that Caught My Eye

Dal Makhani from Indian Simmer.  This is easily one of my favorite new food blogs. Please check it out.  Gorgeous pictures, delicious recipes–this is my go-to blog for authentic and user-friendly Indian recipes.

Asparagus Salsa  I have never seen a recipe like this before. And, this original recipe is from Sunnyside, Washington, where I grew up.  It’s a small community in the Yakima Valley.  Small world.

Bucatini with Rita’s Spicy Baby Octopus Sauce  I have tried my hand once at cooking cephalopods and it was disastrous.  This inspires me to try again.

Pad See-Ew from She Simmers.  If Indian Simmers is my new go-to Indian food blog, She Simmers blows me away with her beautiful and graceful Thai recipes.

Interesting Food Links, News, and Recipes

• Panda Express is expanding to… China?! “We’re working on some angles,” they say. . . 
• And the frenzy continues:  someone found a jelly bean that looks like Jesus…I mean Kate Middleton. 
• Drug Resistant Bacteria Found in Half of U.S. Meat
• I’m always looking for new ideas for lunches to pack for work.  Here is a list of 10 from one of my favorite websites.
• This recipe for Baked Pineapple Casserole is simultaneously intriguing and revolting.   Pineapple, cheddar cheese, and ritz crackers?  Really? How can something so strange sound so…good? 
• Thai sauce for beginners
• Blue Cheese Scalloped Potatoes with Chipotle and Bacon

Interesting Food Links, News, and Recipes.

• Red Lentil Thai Chili
• Super interesting article on why foie gras is not unethical
• Artist Re-Creates Death Row Meals
• Five of the Weirdest New Genetically Modified Foods
• Another Ridiculous Video from Epic Meal Time

Too Busy to Blog (Sunday Menu/Interesting Food Links, News, and Recipes)

I haven’t had a weekend cooking marathon in about a month.  Instead, we have been eating lots of sandwiches.  And burgers from Wendy’s (still need to explain about my lapse in vegetarianism).

Tonight, I will cook, I think.  I found a recipe from one of my favorite food blogs: Closet Cooking.  Every recipe this blogger makes speaks to me.  One of my favorite features of this blog is the blogger’s tendency to use one special ingredient in several different ways throughout the week.  Kimchi, for example, was one of his recipes and then many of the following recipes were fusion-type recipes that used kimchi in super creative ways.

• Kimchi…quesadillas?
• Kimchi…bacon, and shitake mushroom pizza?
• Kimchi…egg salad sandwich?

There are many more and it’s fun to watch the wheels turn in this blogger’s mind as he tries to repurpose bold ingredients.

When he was on a peanut sauce kick, we saw gems such as:

• Thai peanut turkey burger
• Thai Spicy Peanut Chicken Enchiladas
• Thai Chicken Mole

His fusion recipes are fun, but he also makes a wide range of authentic dishes from different countries as well.  So for every riff on a quesadilla he creates, he also has a recipe someone’s grandma would cook in that given country.

So, tonight I will make his latest recipe:  Tuna and Caper Tomato Pasta.  I’ll let you know how it turns out.

In other news, here are the best food links of the week:

• Scrambled Eggs, I like your legs… for all of you Paul McCartney/Beatle lovers out there…
• 100 Ways to Cook Sweet Potatoes…I love lists like this.  I tend to get hung up on one certain ingredient and I love to find new ways to fix it (I fondly recall the Summer of Hummus).
• Seven Worst Stocking Stuff ideas…fetus shaped cookie cutter?
• Garlic Butter Roasted Mushrooms…I can’t stop drooling.