At least in the northern hemisphere, it's now officially grilling/barbecue season - and we understand that it's actually never not grilling season down under. So we thought a brief primer on the difference between barbecue and grilling, courtesy of this video at Southern Cooking, might be helpful to all our members.

So what is the difference? It's simple:

Barbecue is cooking long, low, and slow. Grilling is cooking hot and fast. Suitable meats for barbecue are ribs, pork shoulder, brisket - meats that take a long time to tenderize. Foods suitable for grilling include boneless breast of chicken, hamburgers, steaks, and seafood. 

And while we're on the subject - is it barbecue or barbeque? Well, both spellings are acceptable, but if you want to be fussy, stick with "barbecue." According to the Grammar Girl, "The most accepted spelling of the word is "barbecue" because it most closely resembles the word from which it's derived--"barbacòa." The shorter forms, such as "bar-b-q," are just abbreviations that play on the sounds from the syllables "be" (b) and "cue" (q)."

Finally, this also gives us a chance to announce our latest board on Pinterest, Summer Grilling - lots of great ideas already and more to come.

Photo courtesy of Flickr

Forrest Pritchard is a farmer who just published a well-reviewed book, Gaining Ground: A Story of Farmers' Markets, Local Food, and Saving the Family Farm (his is an eighth-generation farm) - you can read Michael Ruhlman on the book here. But Pritchard also publishes an interesting blog at his farm's website, Smith Meadows. One of those blogs we thought would be very informative to share.

Titled 4 Questions You Should Never Ask at Farmers' Markets, Pritchard leads in with: "I've spent over 1,000 Saturdays and Sundays selling at farmers markets, and even after all this time I still love to answer questions. Farmers markets are one of the few places where customers can directly connect with their food, meeting face-to-face with the people who grew it. Questions are expected at market, and even encouraged. From livestock breeds to production practices, organic certification to chemical usage, I've been asked just about every food-related question under the sun.

Though most farmers will happily answer all inquiries, there are a handful of questions that make even the friendliest farmers want to choke a carrot. If you don't want your farmer to turn three shades of beet red, here's the reasoning behind 4 questions every customer should avoid."

Here are the questions, with a condensed version of his response - the full blog is well worth reading, if for nothing more than the humor.

Was this picked fresh this morning? As he explains, given the work involved in getting ready for the market, the farmer and his crew would have to be up all night.

What time do you get up? Apparently this is a no-win question, so he has learned to say 4:30 - all farmers always get up at 4:30

I know you're not open yet, but I'm in a hurry… could you sell me something before the bell? No - it's a rush as it is to get ready for the opening bell.

Since it's the end of market, can I get a special deal on what you've got left? Again, no. This is a no-win question - people would either wait until the end or complain about paying full price.

And now you're a "market insider."

Adam Roberts, over at the Amateur Gourmet, recently provided an antidote to Food TV. He gives links to five past food shows, now available online, that really defined good food television - they actually give you tips and advice on how to cook. In no particular order, they are (with our comments):

• Molto Mario, with Mario Batali (probably the best show ever on cooking Italian)
• Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home (Julia Child and Jacques Pépin together are a magical combination - the ultimate power kitchen couple)
• Lidia's Italy, with Lidia Bastianich (not quite as dynamic as Mario, but there's always room for two Italian cooking shows)
• From Martha's Kitchen (whether you find her too perfect or not, it's hard to deny that  Martha Stewart can cook)
• Avec Eric  (this has a lot of travel in it, but Eric Ripert presents spot-on cooking lessons at the end of each episode)

These are all on Hulu, but you can watch them on your computer without a paid subscription (though there are commercials).

Since we doubt that anyone is unaware that kale has been soaring in popularity (stand aside, tomatoes) we haven't tackled it as a blog item -  it seems to be almost passé. But sometimes events overtake the best of intentions, and the event that overtook us was the final, canonical blessing on kale by the New York Times who just announced that kale has been accepted in "Manhattan social circles."

In their article, Oh, How the Humble Has Risen, they note that "Along with midriff-baring tops and all things Gatsby, another trend has swept the spring social circuit: kale salads." Apparently, we can "Forget about filet mignon or caviar. The fashionable plat du jour these days is the humble kale salad, which seems to telegraph a certain veggie-chic for the juice-cleanse set."

Don't get us wrong - we love kale. But the premise that a Manhattan social set acceptance should turn us on to kale does befuddle us - it's not a group that we turn to for vegetable blessings. 

And the group is even late to the party. As The Guardian wrote last March, in Kale: the hottest vegetable this season, the British have been tuned onto kale for quite awhile, "According to trade magazine  the Grocer, kale is the "new star" of the brassica family. Sales were up by 40% in the past year, with 3,048 tonnes shifted in the 12 months to February, when its core season ends.  Data analysts Kantor Worldpanel, who conducted the study, don't make the link between celebrities and our new-found fondness for this powerful leaf. But thanks to its high-profile supporters - including Gwyneth Paltrow (whose website  Goop  features recipes for kale juice and kale chips),  Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall  and  Jamie Oliver- some of it may even have been eaten, rather than left at the back of the veg drawer."

Or what about this article in Epicurious, The Next Big Thing: Baby Kale Salad Mix? They note that "Americans are crazy for kale. So crazy, in fact, that we might as well be singing "Kale to The Chief!" All kidding aside, it's taken a while, but kale is now solidly entrenched in our vegetable lexicon. Whether raw or cooked, it has firmly planted itself on restaurant menus. Bushy bunches of it crowd the produce aisles of supermarkets. And the farmers' market? Forgettaboutit. When kale's in season, there are so many different varieties piled high on tables, it's hard to choose."

We're not sure who started the kale craze, but we're glad they did and we'd like to give them credit if we could. However, the least we can do is to note that our EYB members are much savvier than the Manhattan social set when it comes to food (we doubt if many could use the expression "veggie-chic" with a straight face), so here are those online recipes at EYB for kale that have created the most buzz. Enjoy!

Photo courtesy of shutterbean on Flickr

The Daily Meal has a wonderful list today for all of you of a certain age who might have spent a fair time in front of a television set (we plead guilty) in the U.S. It's a list of The 11 Most Iconic Food Commercials of All Time, plus links to the actual commercial on You Tube. As they say, "They're more than just ads, they're cultural touchstones."

Among the ones they list are several of our favorites:  The Claymation raisins singing I Heard it Through the Grapevine, the Spicy Meatball commercial from Alka-Seltzer, and, definitely, Mikey for Life Cereal. But think of the ones they missed - the Bill Cosby Jell-O episodes, the Trix Bunny always losing out because "Trix are for kids," the Wendy's "Where's the beef" lady, and we are even nostalgic for the Green Giant - ho, ho, ho.

Enjoy the trip through memory lane, and let us know which ones you especially liked and don't see on the list.

No less an authority than the Wall Street Journal has chosen to crown hummus as the new king of the snacks. In their online article, Hummus is Conquering America, they discuss how the growing demand for hummus is encouraging farmers to trade transplanting tobacco for chickpeas. Apparently the chickpea harvest has been concentrated in the Northwest, which creates a diversity of climate issue,  and now the large hummus producers (e.g. Pepsi which partially owns Sabra, and Kraft which owns Athenos) are encouraging Southern farmers to add chickpeas to their crop list.

Sales of hummus in the market are skyrocketing; up 11% from a year ago and up 25% from two years ago. And certainly the fact that a low fat, high protein snack item is popular is nothing to sneeze at - any consumption is a good thing. But perhaps this is a classic example where, since it doesn't take much more effort to make hummus at home than buy it at the grocery store, we can do a little preaching and encourage people to take a look at these online hummus recipes from the EYB Library, sorted by buzz. In particular, we noted that this hummus recipe from the prize-winning cookbook Jerusalem (which has 8 pages devoted to hummus) is the favorite.

Or, since we assume that many of our members already make their own hummus, please share your favorites. A fresh batch might make for an unusual, but highly appreciated, Mother's Day gift.

The N.Y. Post published today some news that we thought our members would find interesting. According to recent ratings, the "Food Network shed 17 percent of its audience during the 12 months through April 30.  The average primetime show on the cable channel, which features such series as "Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives," slipped to 1.06 million." Also interesting, by contrast HGTV (Home and Garden TV) showed a 10% increase in viewers.  We're not sure quite what it means, but given that Food Network has almost completely abandoned cooking shows for competition and other specialty shows (although it still does deal entirely with food), maybe viewers are getting a little tired of the cupcake wars.

And while we're on the subject, for those who'd like to understand the Food Network better, Forbes just published an interesting article, "Why There's No 'Cooking with Honey Boo Boo' on Food Network." It's a history of the network, and does indicate that there is a line beyond which the Food Network won't go: "At the end of the day,"says Lowe, "you have to stand for something."

Recently Slate posed a question that has puzzled us for a long time. In Eating Fire, they ask: "Why do people feel compelled to put the world's spiciest chili peppers in their mouths?" Indeed, in recent years, there has been a contest to develop the hottest pepper in the world. In 2012, the new  scorpion pepper edged out the ghost pepper for that illustrious title. To put this amount of heat in perspective, the scorpion pepper has a Scoville unit rating of  1,463,700; a jalepeno, by contrast, can only go up to a measly 8,000.

Obviously there wouldn't be this competition if people didn't actually eat these peppers. But why inflict so much pain? Slate has a theory that it is a courage ritual:

"Ultra-hot peppers occupy a unique role in the West. They have been created specifically for the purpose of being horribly painful to people (usually men) who deliberately inflict this pain on themselves-typically in front of others. Other cultures have analogs of this behavior: The men of one Amazon tribe cover their hands with venomous ants in a ceremony so painful that one American participant said that he would have cut off his arm with a machete to stop the pain if he'd been able to. Other cultures enjoy ritual cutting or scheduled beatings. Young American men sometimes consent to hazing rituals in the course of rushing a fraternity or joining a sports team, but rarely do they involve pain as pointed as that of eating an ultra-hot pepper."

Of course, hot pepper addicts (and, yes, it can be an addicition) propose an alternative scientific reason for eating super-hot peppers. Eating capsaicin (the chemical in the peppers that carries the heat) is supposed to provide a natural high from the endorphins that are generated by the body in reaction to the pain - endorphins being a pain killer. Somehow, however, the thought of enduring the pain first would, we would think, stop someone in their tracks.

Interesting, it did not stop Jackson Landers, the author,  and his friend Jenny (it's not just males who succumb) from trying a scorpion pepper - raw. As he describes it, 

"The scorpion pepper creeps up on you, getting incrementally fiercer over the course of a minute or so until your whole face feels like it has turned into lava. At roughly the same moment, Jenny and I both leapt off of my couch and ran for the kitchen. We madly mixed together everything that was supposed to help mitigate the effect of spicy food: milk, oil, and sugar, poured haphazardly first into our cups and then directly into our mouths. The combination provided momentary relief.

"Let's never do this again," I croaked from between clenched teeth."

But, by the end of article, he has actually talked himself into appreciating the experiment: "Having eaten the world's hottest pepper, I feel that there's nothing the world can throw at me that's any worse than what I've already experienced. That's a very powerful sensation. For the cost of a vegetable and an hour or so of one's time, it's actually a pretty good deal."

We'd never do it, but it's an interesting question: Would any of you? And we certainly acknowledge that there are many of us who do enjoy a moderate (at least compared to the above story) jolt of heat. The EYB Library lists  over 166,000 recipes in our member's libraries that call for chiles. 

Photo courtesy of Tambako the Jaguar on Flickr

We're sad to announce the demise of one of our favorie food fads - the cupcake. Three separate news sources have published obituaries. 

The first is from no less an unimpeachable source than The Wall Street Journal. In Forget Gold, the Gourmet Cupcake Market Is Crashing they note that the publicly traded cupcake company "Crumbs" has gone from $13/share to $1.70. The over-all problem? "As a business, making cupcakes has a relatively low barrier to entry and the field has become saturated with competitors, including individual bakeries, chains and grocery stores." 

Meanwhile, The Daily Meal is asking Are Gourmet Cupcakes on the Way Out? and is trying to estimate the next craze, "So what's next? Nothing quite has the low entry barrier of cupcakes (one of the cons to the business is, after all, that anyone can bake cupcakes), but  pies have been trending for a while and have a potential mini-size for party appeal, while gourmet donut shops have been gathering a following. We like betting on pies, just because we're obsessed with the sweet and savory possibilities, but the market will decide."

And, finally, we have Grub Street New York, which has Nine Reasons Why the Cupcake Boom Went Bust. Besides the problems mentioned above, here are a few more from their list:

• They've now become symbols of female depression and loneliness.
• Honey Boo Boo's opened a cupcake stand
• They're antifeminist
• There are too many cupcake blogs

So EYBers, it looks like we're back to baking our own. However, as the EYB library demonstrates, we like our cupcakes and we like our cupcake cookbooks - here are our favorites to fill in the loneliness this passing has left behind.

Photo by Grub Street New York

Since many of you enjoy our occasional notices of interesting food-related apps, we wanted to alert you to one that Random House, the long time publisher for Julia Child, has  issued - it's a unique app that is far more than just a cooking app. In AppStorm's just-published review of the app Mastering the Art of French Cooking, they describe this iPad app as follows:

"Mastering the Art of French Cooking tells the story of Julia's life through a multi-media experience including audio anecdotes, rare photographs of Julia Child, original typed and handwritten letters plus vintage instructional videos by the cook herself.

This app is for Francophiles, die-hard fans of the legendary Julia Child, serious foodies and even (especially) freshman cooks. Random House, Inc. has masterfully packaged Julia's wisdom in an app that's everything to everyone - fresh and modern food photography paired with timeless techniques and the most popular of Julia's recipes."

App Storm proceeds to show the app in detail; you can read about all the details here, and figure out why they give it a 10/10.  We should also note that the iTunes store also rated it "Best of 2012." It costs $4.99 and can be downloaded here.