"Seated on a diminutive column a foxy goddess seductively plays a lyre. To date, the only occurrence of: 1. a Doric column 2. a foxy goddess and 3. a musical instrument. Classic text, color and geometric detail prove the obvious lineage of this design. Foxy goddess is most likely Erato the giver of pleasure and muse of love poetry. Note the ellipses at the end of the text, adding yet another meaning to the 'pleasure of serving'."

NYTrash examines the various makes of the endangered species known as the "greek-motif coffee cup."

I joked yesterday that with low-carb mania going full bore, I'd be surprised if it was still possible to buy a loaf of bread anywhere in health-crazy Southern California. Today, MSNBC.com's "Is bread dead?" article looks at how this trend is affecting the bread industry.

You might have noticed that the viking-kitten "Immigrant Song" is gone from the Rathergood site. If you're looking for it, it's here, and you can download it as a zip file.

Blurry, low-light photo of onion soup from the other day:



Chris, my partner in this bicoastal onion-soup cookoff, blogged his own efforts.

Some photos from around Brooklyn, New York, U.S.A..

Boohbah: the hot new thing in drug-damaged kiddie entertainment!

A week after revisiting The Best French Onion Soup On This Continent, I decided to try my hand at an onion soup of my own. I used Rachael Ray's recipe -- and yeah she's a skank ho and there are much more creative recipes I could have followed (Alton Brown's calls for unfiltered apple cider), but I just wanted a rough sketch of what and how much to use, and as I do with nearly all recipes, I shitcanned the rules pretty early on and followed my instincts.

My soup came YAY close to matching the majesty of the Croton Colonial's -- I would have browned the cheese longer but the kitchen started to fill up with smoke (leftover fat in the broiler tray), and I could have given the crouton some hind legs (garlic? thyme?) instead of just using plain toasted baguette slices. Maybe a real beef stock instead of dodgy bouillion. But the broth came out fabulously, thanks in part to HEAPS (hic) of dry sherry and beaujolais, and red onions sauteed in really good Trader Joe's olive oil. The gruyere I bought had BIG attitude and kept getting all up in my face and saying "eat me" while I was grating it up, and you know, peer pressure. But the broth! Really splashy and perfumey, smooth and simmery but just a little tawdry -- onions and wine coupling happily under a warm top sheet of cheese, cheerfully ignoring the winter doldrums of the outside world. I'm quite satisfied.

I've finally got a chance to sit down and blog after a couple of madcap weeks cavorting around the eastern seaboard. There's a lot to report, and Chris is working on getting all the pics uploaded (I didn't take any this time around, and really he took enough for both of us).

We spent New Year's Eve in Wildwood, a faded New Jersey resort town that almost completely shuts down in winter. Of course we were instantly drawn to the desolation -- we wanted to be as far away as possible from the millions of raging assholes polluting Times Square, and since we're both introverts repelled by crowds of any sort, we found the empty beaches and abandoned motels very tranquil (in that eerie ghost-town-americana way we like). Pretty much the only sign of life, save for a few restaurants and liquor stores, was the swanky Starlux motel, a retrofuturistic work of kitsch-vomit Jetsons genius designed in tribute to the doo-wop architecture of Wildwood's older motels. (Yes, we stayed there; within two weeks of finding out about their New Year's package back in October, I had my $100 room deposit down.) Our New Year's dinner (the only bum part of a package that included a two-night stay, a $70 Italian dinner for two, a couple of free breakfasts at the local diner, and a bottle of champagne) was unspectacular prom food, but the rest of the night was just great -- we went back to the hotel and feasted on pumpkin doughnuts, sweet potato fries, black russians, and champagne, and watched the Iron Chef Battle Tokyo X by the light of the room's orange lava lamp.

More commentary to come...