I love any business makeover show. Hotel Impossible, Tabatha Takes Over, Restaurant Impossible, Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares (and the lesser American equivalent), Bar Rescue. Except for the screaming and yelling; that I could do without. Particularly Restaurant Impossible's Robert and Bar Rescue's Jon, who both shout-talk almost everything they say and then act surprised when the restaurant owner doesn't take an immediate liking to them.

Hotel Impossible's Anthony Melchiori is by far the best host, not just because he knows his shit, but because he seems to genuinely care about each and every hotel owner. And you would be surprised at how interesting it is to learn about standard occupancy rates or how often a hotel should be deep cleaned (although many owners seem to be finding out for the first time that rooms should be cleaned at all).

I have watched hours of these shows and there are more than a couple problems that pop up in almost every epsisode. What might those be, Mike? Glad you asked. Here are eleven:

I was going to make an introduction about some nonsense that has nothing to do with the recipe and then tie it to the recipe with the thinnest of transitions, like I usually do, but the note about using a scale became so long that I have decided this whole post is going to be about using one.

Look, I know every Tom, Dick, and Mary Baker says to invest in a scale. Every baking book starts off with an introduction about the importance of weighing your ingredients. Bloggers are adding the metric weights to the ingredient list with the hope that you'll make the switch.

Honestly though, I swear, just do it already. (If you have done it already, you don't have to read any of this. You get a "Meets Expectations" for today). If you aren't going to do it, just go buy Entenmann's.

Introducing...Chicago Food Bloggers!

This is what I have been working on for the past few weeks. It's based on Boston Food Bloggers, whose founder, Rachel Leah Blumenthal, gave the site her blessing. Cities like Austin, Charleston, Los Angeles, and New York all have their own food blogger groups or directories, why shouldn't Chicago?

It's hasn't officially launched. I'm still working out kinks, trying to get a few blogs on the site, etc. In two weeks I'll send out e-mails and press releases and all that jazz.

If you are a food blogger in Chicago or the suburbs, add your blog! Or, if you know one, spread the word! At its simplest it's a directory of food bloggers, but I'm hoping it becomes much more. I hope it becomes a way for the city's bloggers to learn about each other, meet for brunches and dinners, share information, and learn about new events and conferences.

So that's why posting around here has been a little sporadic. As soon as the site finds its groove I'll be back to posting recipes coupled with crazy introductions that have nothing to do with those recipes. In the meantime, head on over to Chicago Food Bloggers and find a new favorite food blog to follow! 

Sometimes the men's magazines, in particular, have pretty great food coverage (although the recipes tend to treat guys like kindergarteners) and legit journalism. In between, however, are strangely confident "What's In" features that tell you everything that you should be wearing, eating, watching, reading, etc. that month. And it's all $5,000. And would look silly if you wore it with your normal, not-model body to your regular workplace (unless your job is jumping in the air in an all-white room). But, just for you, I went through all of the month's issues to find out what's in for March. I read (well skimmed through) the March 2013 issues of Details, GQ, Esquire, and Men's Journal. And I'm reporting on my findings here. You are welcome.

Did you watch the Academy Awards yesterday? Kind of strange. That's nice how Chicago won everything. Were you offended by Seth MacFarlane or not? He enunciates well, but he also seemed to hate everyone and cover all of his jokes with meta-humor and snark. "Are we still going to do this joke?" "You liked that joke, eh?" He kept saying things like that. Own your material! Good review.

I like the Academy Awards though! I like movies! I like to hope Zero Dark Thirty wins and then be mad when it doesn't. I like a good montage. Although, like everyone, I have some ideas for how to improve the Oscars:

Tell the presenters that they are performing the role of a lifetime. For some reason the presenters are always bad at presenting. They look straight ahead, awkwardly misread the teleprompter in a robot voice, mess up jokes, mispronounce every name, and then complain about how difficult it is to open the envelope. I'm embarrassed for them. When you recall that performing is their job, it's kind of strange. But maybe that's the problem! Maybe they are freaked out because they have to be themselves and not Ace Ventura or Neil Armstrong or a geisha. So give them a character to play! I don't think it even has to be really creative. Just tell them, "You are playing a very interesting, charismatic, and funny actress who needs to build interest and tension in this list of people you are about to read, because in a moment, for one of them, all of their dreams will come true, but for the other four, their every hope and wish will come crashing down all around them. Here is your script and there is the camera."

Happy Pączki Day! 

Are you aware it's pączki day? Are you Polish? If so, of course you are. If not, too bad for you, eh? Pączki are Polish pastries eaten on Fat Tuesday, or lent eve.

When I was growing up my whole family would go to my Great Grandma Jenny's house in East Chicago, Indiana, for pączki day. She made giant platters of them that only the kids were allowed to dust with sugar. We would eat too many of them as a last hurrah before we couldn't have soda or gum or whatever we had given up for the next 40 days (when you got older it was all sweets).

Nowadays a lot of bakeries would like you to believe that pączki are just classic yeast donuts without holes, probably so they can use their regular donut dough and call it a day. But Grandma's were different. Her pączki were a bit breadier and eggier, like a cross between a yeast donut and challah. We also did not eat them filled. Here in Chicago I have yet to find them unfilled (and some bakeries are getting a bit crazy with the fillings, like strawberry vodka or mocha), so I had to make them myself. Also, we pronounce them "poonch-key." Not "panch-key."

I'm just going to act like it's been one week since I updated this blog and not over six months.

A lot has happened in that week. I moved back home to Chicago! There just weren't enough shootings in Boston, you know. I already miss the oysters. And the people. Hi Danielle! Hi Daphnie! Especially the ones with "D" names. And the witches in Salem. Hi witches. I'm sad I'm going to miss the blizzard this weekend, to be honest.

But it's great to be back near family again. I spent a weekend cooking with my Aunt where we made two racks of lamb, shrimp, scallops, tuna, two types of aioli, pita salads, roast chicken, and alligator. I had alligator on a stick at a fair years ago and would you believe it was not so delicious? This time it was amazing, like a cross between chicken and catfish and very juicy and tender. Eat it. We made all of that for the two of us. For one dinner. Like I said, it's good to be back.

Where to live, where to live.

So, now that I have graduated, I have been searching for jobs. It's finally time to answer that question people have asked so often over the last two years: "So what are you going to do with that degree?" I have been applying like crazy. If you are hiring, let me know!

And when I tell people I have been applying, they always ask, "Where?"

On the one hand, I think anybody can learn to live anywhere. It's surprising how you acclimate to places. A few years back I lived in a small town in Iowa while working on a political campaign. People invited me into their homes, made me dinner, let me sleep in their guest bedrooms. They let me camp on their farms and invited me to parties. They donated chairs, desks, and food to our office, let us pass out candy on Halloween on their front porch, and bought me a pork tenderloin and a beer for breakfast. 

And then you go to the Fancy Food Show. You can't fathom how big the Fancy Food Show is. Try to imagine it and then add a second level. If you eat only one thing at every single booth, you would be eating nearly 2,500 different products. But of course each exhibitor has multiple products - the National Association for the Specialty Food Trade (NASFT), which organizes the show, estimates there are over 180,000 products being exhibited. That's like eating every single thing in your local supermarket over four-and-a-half times.

The kind people at NASFT provided tickets to a group of us in the Boston University gastronomy program to see what's going on in the world of fancy food, talk to producers and eat all of the cheese. We spent a day at the show, held in Washington DC this year, and I'm here to report back on the world of fancy food. Normally I don't believe in shilling for companies that throw a free bag of chips your way, but in this case we tried about a million things so I can be choosy and only write about the good ones.

Because, at a show this size, it takes a lot to stand out. I had no idea how many companies were putting fruit purees into squishy, squeezable containers. And you start to get the feeling that some companies won't rest until they've covered every nut in existence in some type of flavor powder. Also, a surprising number of producers told us how their foods could be mixed with alcohol. 

Do you sometimes wonder what the plates of the future will look like? What am I talking about, it probably keeps you up at night. I'm not talking about the plate itself, those will be holograms, but the plating style. How a chef puts the food on the plate. Remember when it was weird pointy things rising from the plate? A few years ago The New Yorker described them as "small towers of something wrapped in something--with the tops sliced at an angle; crumbly landscape of some kind; and a reflecting pool running around the edge." You saw it everywhere. Then it got to the point where Applebees was cutting their BBQ egg rolls or whatever at an angle and placing them every which way on a bed of slaw and it was time to move on.