The contest is closed. However, I’d love for you to fill out the survey so I can keep making the site better.

The humble site you are reading, Clever Food Blog, has only been around about a year.  I appreciate all the emails and comments I’ve received from my readers.  If you’ve shared a link to the site with others, thank you for spreading the word.

Furthermore, I want to make sure that the next year goes even better.  Help me improve the site, help shape it into something you love.  Share a story and your opinions on a bunch of things.  Please fill out my survey, created through Google Forms.

In about a month, after the New Year, I’ll choose a respondent at random to receive 2 (new, unopened) packages of Taza Mexican Chocolate (see the picture… you get 2 disks in each package).  You can read all about these delicious disks in my last post.  I’ll try to figure out something else special to give the lucky winner, and maybe a runner-up as well.  If you’re local, I’d be happy to hand-deliver the prize.  Otherwise, I’m happy to box it up and send it to you wherever you are.

To have a chance at the give-away, you need to fill out my survey.  I love filling out surveys, but what I hate is having to answer questions.  In that light, I made most of the survey questions optional, however the more questions you answer, the better your chances of winning will be (respondents will be weighted based on how many questions they answer).

So go take the survey!

You may have read some statistics recently about childhood hunger in the United States.

• more than 12.4 million – 1 in 6 kids live with food insecurity, and are at risk of hunger
• nearly half of US children will be on food stamps at some point in their childhood, and
• 90% of black children will be on food stamps at some point in their childhood
• over 900,000 Illinois residents rely on food pantries
• In Champaign County, over 32,000 people (18.8%) live below the poverty line
• In Champaign County, over 7,000 children (18.7%) live below the poverty line

- stats from Share Our Strength, Feeding America, Associated Press article (link broken), and the Eastern Illinois Foodbank

Please click on some of the links to the sources of this information to learn more about how childhood hunger affects our country.  With Thanksgiving and the holiday season are coming up, we are blessed to have an abundance of food in our house, enough to share with friends and family, but others don’t have that luxury.  Giving just a few dollars can make a difference.

If you want to help fight childhood hunger across the United States, donate to Share Our Strength.  $25 dollars can provide three meals a day for a month for a child.

Since this is a food blog, your special incentive here is to donate through fellow (much more famous) food blogger, Carol Blymire, who writes Alinea At Home, and wrote French Laundry At Home.  She is giving away some great cookbooks to five lucky winners.  The only way to get a chance is to donate through her link.  Read all the details and donate to Share Our Strength through her link.

If you want to keep the money local, donate to your local food bank.  Find yours through Feeding America.

No, not that CIA.  This is a food blog.  The only CIA that matters here is the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York.  I have dreamed about going there and becoming a bona fide chef, but money, time, family, work, and life all have kept that as just a dream.  No worries, though.  I’ve found many ways to educate myself in the ways of the culinary arts, especially by surrounding myself with other people passionate about food.

Some of my education has come from the web.  I know how to use Google to search for recipe ideas, which helps a lot.  I also read a lot of food blogs.  You can see a long list of sites that I regularly follow, from authors near and far, on the right side of this blog.  The web has made food knowledge very available, but people at home still need to have a large base of knowledge to know how to find what they’re really looking for and how to execute what they want.

Many cooking websites and TV shows will tell you that one of the most important things you can do to help you cook better is to get a good knife (and keep it sharp).  I was blessed some years ago with a beautiful 8″ Shun Kershaw knife, which I continue to use and love, but it’s grown slightly dull.  I know that I can send it in to Shun for a free sharpening any time, but then I’d be left with one of a handful of less-than-stellar knives.  Not any more.

I got a package today in response to a Twitter trivia contest I won.  It was held by the Culinary Institute of America (@CIACulinary) presumably as a promotion for their official CIA line of products.  You can see their Cook’s Tools Twitter feed and their official web store to find out more information about their products.  These products and more from the CIA (including many books they publish) are also available on Amazon.

The question was:

What is the name of the reaction that is responsible for the browning of meats? Spelling counts!

I saw it and I knew.  I probably learned it from an old episode of Good Eats, like the Season 4 classic “A Chuck for Chuck” wherein we learn that proteins and sugars undergo an interesting chemical reaction at high heat that creates brown color and hundreds of tasty compounds (different from caramelization).  This is the “maillard reaction“.  It’s what makes grilled food taste good, it’s why you brown meat before making stew, it’s why you sear steaks.  It is, quite possibly, one of the most important reactions you will ever need to create when cooking.

I was the first to respond, and for my trouble I won a brand new 10-inch chef’s knife from their Hyde Park collection (NB: It’s on sale right now for 50% off, so if you’re in the market for a 10″).  It came in a beautiful black box with CIA logos all around.  I opened it up and saw a gleaming piece of German steel.  It is quite a different knife from my current Japanese-style Shun Classic.  I picked it up and felt its weight–very heavy in the hand, but fitting in the classic German style of knives.  If you have a Henckls or Wusthof knife, you know the feel I’m talking about.  Japanese knives are thinner than most, and so they weigh far less.  If you’ve been working with cheap knives, then the difference in weight when moving to a real professional-quality knife can be unsettling.

I haven’t gotten to use it yet, but I’m looking forward to taking advantage of its size when preparing my Thanksgiving feast.  Maybe I’ll go brunoise two quarts of mirepoix to really start getting the culinary school experience.  I’ll have to get used to the size and weight of it, but I think in the end it will help me be more productive.  It’s surprising what you could do if you had a couple more inches.

Oh, the inside of the box, if you can’t read it, says “Experience the difference.  Savor the results.”

Thank you to the Culinary Institute of America for holding this contest.  I am looking forward to using this knife for years to come.

In the interest of full disclosure, I received this knife from the contest I mentioned, and was in no way asked to promote the CIA, their products, or their Twitter feeds.  If you buy the knife from them during their sale, I get no portion of the sales, but you will get a great knife.

I’m not one to plug something unless I really like it.  You’ll find a number of products mentioned on this site with links to places to buy them or find more information on them.  One of the places I link to a lot is Amazon.  Sure, if you buy something through my link, I’ll get a little kickback, but I also shop there a lot.

I’m not going to make a big link-fest out of this post, but you can get just about anything on Amazon, from foie gras to bundt pans, food chemicals like transglutaminase (meat glue) to olive oil.  Even if you don’t want to buy something now, put it on your wish list and share it with your family, maybe they’ll pick something up for you.

I’ve got a wish list there, it’s got mostly cookbooks and DVDs that I want to get.  It helps a lot around Christmas time when family members are asking for ideas on what to get me.  This year marks the 10th anniversary of Amazon Wish Lists, and they’re having a sweepstakes.  This week (Oct. 12-18), create, add to, or share a wish list and you’ll be entered to win a dream kitchen.  They have plenty of other prize packages, but if you’re reading this blog you probably care about your kitchen.  Read more about the wishlist sweepstakes or take a peek at mine.

I was uploading other photos and saw this one again.  I really love this picture (enough that I have a 5×7 on the wall).  Sometimes it’s fun to take a close look at your food.  These were being prepped for use in carrot halva (gajar ka halva), an Indian dessert which I’ll have to write up in the future.  Until then, enjoy looking at these colorful nuts.

I’ll post more on tempering chocolate soon.