It’s been quiet here on the Munch Monster front. Too quiet, I know. I apologize for that, and instead of excuses I’ll just say I hope things will begin picking up very soon. I start work at a new restaurant in a few days, so for a late anniversary gift I took my wife to my new place of employment. The restaurant is fine dining Italian, but with a casual and family flair. more…

Mark Bittman twittered: “A post I should’ve written long ago.” He then provided a link to his blog post at the New York Times regarding what you see on cooking shows versus real life cooking. In the piece Bittman talks of an incident during the taping of The Next Food Network Star where he witnessed a contestant putting a piece of meat on a too hot grill that was instantly charred. The cameras were stopped, an assistant found a replacement meat and cooked it properly, and then the contestant came back on with a big ta-da! more…

I run a blog here, but I hope that my readers will always hold me accountable for the claims I make. There’s no mistake that “journalistic integrity” isn’t necessarily a part of a blog that deals in recipes and kooky food items. But when I sit down to opine on a subject I damn well had better be sure that I’m not misleading my readers. And it’s that thought I had running through my mind yesterday when I read through James E. McWilliams’ Op-Ed piece in the New York Times about trichinosis in free range pigs. more…

Author Michael Ruhlman has recently released his latest book on cooking, and it gives me a slight tingling sensation. It’s the sensation you get when something just clicks and makes sense in a massive way. Ruhlman isn’t your typical recipe/cookbook author, he brings something of interest to the food reading masses. Rather than list ingredients he is more inclined to help the reader understand a part of cooking. While Charcuterie was a good idea, I have this feeling that Ratio may just be huge. more…

It looks like Andrew Zimmern may have some competition of the eating weird things variety starting this fall. The Food Network has announced they’ve reached a deal that would see an eight-episode order of Extreme Cuisine With Jeff Corwin. The show will follow the anthropologist as he travels around the world tasting the local cuisine and learning about the local customs of the native people. more…

I’ve long been a fan of fennel. Freshly cut fennel in a salad is such a great thing that I can’t see any home going without. So when walking through Wegmans this week I couldn’t resist buying just one fennel bulb. I had no idea what it would be used for, but there it was and I had to have it. more…

People like to say that they’d bathe in gravy. Hold on just a second, what kind of people say this? Why do I recall hearing persons in my past making such a sentiment? I mean, gravy is fine – sometimes even great – but I’m not certain how bathing in the savory sauce is a positive thing. If the gravy is so good then you should just eat it, like a normal person. But if you are one who’d bathe in gravy Archie McPhee has the solution for you: Gravy Bath Salts. more…