Hell's Kitchen - I Also Teach Manners

Spunk is a good word to describe Colleen Cleek. She's a local chef/businessowner who was chosen from thousands to be a contestant on the Fox series Hell's Kitchen. I've interviewed Colleen before for The Reader, so I wasn't at all surprised to hear she was chosen to appear on the show. She definitely one of the best interviewees I've had--very charismatic, 100% personality. And, the journalist's favorite, she is full of good quotes. I interviewed her again last week for a feature on her appearance on the show, which you can read here or here. And last night, I attended a premier party at her cooking school. She served her signature dish--which Chef Ramsey spit out within the first five minutes of the show (I did not). I hadn't actually ever seen the show before, but I enjoyed viewing it from a new perspective--i.e. sitting in the same room as one of the contestants. They showed Colleen getting berated and cussed out--her family seemed to have a good sense of humor about it, as did she. Apparently, no one was immune to the rath of Chef Ramsey. It was clear Colleen had been nervous about how she would be portrayed on the show. Certainly any sort of public experience like that would incur all sorts of criticism. Some people will love her, some people will hate her. We all should know that when watching a reality show, the producers/editors/etc are obviously taking snipets of what really happened to create hightened drama. When she made the mistake of putting sugar instead of salt in the risotto, she said crew members were walking around the set moving things around. And she said, Ramsey really is that mean. She was never able to see the softer side. I give her, and the other members of the cast, major props. Even if I were a talented cook, I don't think I could take the pressure.

An Old Standby

You shouldn't be surprised by now that my "old standby" is a Giada recipe. I actually can't believe it's been almost six months since I made this risotto. But as we're smack in the middle of the bleak mid-winter, I knew something savory, homey and loaded with parmasan cheese would satisfy. I'll confess I've been a bit uninspired to cook. I'll blame the weather and the apparent lack of fresh, brightly-colored produce. I can't wait for spring asparagus. If you haven't ever tried risotto before, this is a good one to start with. It's one of the more meaty entrees (it's really more of a side) that I make. I even had leftover pork sausage, which I will use to make my other standby next week.

Dirty Risotto: 1/2 pound ground pork sausage
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/2 cup onion, chopped
1/2 cup bell pepper, chopped
1/2 cup mushrooms, chopped
1 cup arborio (or long grain) rice
1/2 cup dry white wine
5 cups chicken stock
parsley, basil, salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup parmasan cheese Brown the meat in a large pot. Drain the fat and set aside. In a separate sauce pan, bring stock to a simmer.

In the first (now empty) sauce pan, drizzle olive oil into the pot on medium-high heat. Saute the onion, bell pepper and mushrooms for about 2 minutes. Toss in the rice and stir to coat the rice with oil. Throw in the wine, let it simmer and reduce. Put the sausage back in the sauce pan with the rice.

Using a ladle, spoon 1 or 2 cups of the stock from one pot to the other (now on medium heat) allowing the rice to soak up the stock. Continue stirring until the liquid has reduced, 5 to 8 minutes. Ladle another cup or two into the risotto, stir occasionally until liquid has reduced. Continue ladling periodically until the rice is cooked through. Turn off the heat. Season the risotto with parsley, basil, salt and pepper. Stir in the parmasan cheese. Serve, sprinkling extra parsley and cheese to garnish.

Guest Chef: Maria

I love when I don't feel much like cooking and Maria sends me photos and recipes. She must know when I'm uninspired or when it's so freaking cold I don't want to step outside. (I need a good soup, and this one looks pretty good.) So here's another dispatch from Maria. A few days ago I was stuck with that age-old question, what should I make for dinner? I assessed what I had in my pantry and fridge and decided to Google "squash and white beans" (Ed note: I never thought of that, such a good idea.) That's my fall back when I don't have a meal planned and only have random ingrediants. I came across this soup from Marth Stewart (never really felt one way or the other about Martha--don't tell my mom that, Maria). I didn't have celery, onion, diced tomatoes or leaf-shaped cookie cutters (who does). However, I did have the broth, squash, and beans. To make up for the onion, I added some frozen onion and bell pepper mix (frozen veggies aren't as good as fresh, but they keep longer and are cheaper, says the poor grad student). While digging around my freezer I realized I still had some containers of frozen leftover turkey from Thanksgiving (Woah, Maria). I'm not a big turkey fan so I just never got around to using it. We stuffed our turkey with spinach pesto so I figured it would taste good. I dumped it all in a pot (kind of following Martha's directions) and it turned out great. My boring bread was toasted and buttered and square-shaped. Ed. note: I actually think Maria's soup looks better than the photo of Martha's soup, frozen veggies aside (we all do it). Squash and White Bean Soup: 3 tablespoons olive oil 1 celery stalk, strings removed, cut into 1/2-inch pieces (about 1/2 cup) 1 medium onion, diced (about 1 cup) 1 garlic clove, minced 1 1/2 pounds (about 2 cups) butternut squash, peeled and seeded, fleshcut into 3/4-inch cubes 1 cup canned diced tomatoes, drained (optional) 4 cups low-sodium canned beef broth 4 thin slices sandwich bread 1 cup canned great northern white beans, rinsed and drained Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a medium pot over medium heat until hot but not smoking. Add celery; cook, stirring, for 2 minutes. Add onion and garlic; saute, stirring occasionally, until softened, 5 to 7 minutes. Stir in squash and tomatoes; cook until liquid has evaporated, about 5 minutes. Add broth; bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium-low; simmer until squash is tender, 18 to 20 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat oven to 350 degrees. Use a leaf-shape cutter to cutleaves from bread (Martha is freaking ridiculous, just toast and butter it); arrange on a baking sheet. Brush with remaining tablespoon oil; bake until just golden, about 10 minutes. Add beans to pot, and cook until they are warmed through, about 2 to 4 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. If you want to thicken this soup, I would recommend using corn starch with cold water and adding it while the soup is simmering. If you want to throw in turkey, like Maria did, I would throw it in with the squash if it's already been cooked and just before the veggies if uncooked. Or, if it's not boneless, you could throw it in with water and do up some old-fashioned turkey broth. I think the tomatoes are totally skippable on this recipe. So-so canned to tomatoes would add an acidity that won't pair well with the savory squash.

Amaretto Biscotti

Here we have maybe the best thing I've ever made. At least the best baked good I've ever made. I've even managed to convert Megan and Eric to biscotti-lovers. I know people are offput by how dangerously hard biscotti often is. I always liked it, but that's because I'm a dunker--cookies, doughtnuts, biscotti. This recipe, however, was perfect. Crunchy but not a tooth-breaker. The almonds added another layer of texture, and you could just barely detect a hint of the amaretto liqueur that I added. The recipe was taken from January's Gourmet. I only changed one thing--I replaced the brandy with amaretto because that's what I had and, hello, amaretto. When I worked at Crane Coffee, my favorite drink was an amaretto latte. Amaretto Biscotti: 1 cup sugar 1 stick unsalted butter, melted 3 tablespoons amaretto liqueur 2 teaspoons almond extract 1 teaspoon vanilla extract 1 cup toasted almonds, coarsely chopped (I used my food processor, see the above photo to see the size of the almonds pieces) 3 large eggs 2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspooon salt To toast almonds, heat oven or toaster oven to 350 and bake for 10-15 minutes. Shuffle the almonds around once or twice. Let them cool for a minute or two before you chop them. Leave oven at 350.
In a large mixing bowl, stir together melted butter, sugar, liqueur and extracts. Stir in eggs and almonds. I mixed manually here. Biscotti more like bread than like cookies or cakes, so you don't really want to overwork the batter/dough with an electric mixer. It's OK if you're consistency is a bit lumpy. Stir in the flour, baking powder and salt.
Divide the dough in half and arrange into to 3"x15" loaves on an ungreased baking sheet. Bake in the oven at 350 for 30 minutes until golden. Remove and let cool. Slice loaves into 1-inch pieces and place back on baking sheet, cut side down. Bake for 20-25 minutes until biscotti are lightly toasted.

Wild Mushroom Soup

Inspiration for this soup came from 101 Cookbooks. You know how crazy I get at the sight of mushrooms. Click on the 101 Cookbooks link above to see her much more fantastically photographed version of the above soup.) I made some tweaks to the recipe, and I think it turned out pretty delicious. Wild Mushroom Soup: 1/2 cup dry oyster shrooms (any combination of shrooms will work here, just be sure that at least some are dry) 3 cups water 1 tablespoon butter 1 leek stalk, coarsely chopped 2 small yellow potatoes, chopped 2 cloves garlic, chopped 1 cup cremini shrooms, coarsely chopped salt and pepper to taste 1 teaspoon dried rosemary parmasan cheese Soak dried mushrooms in a large pot with hot water for 15 minutes. Set aside. Heat butter in a skillet on stovetop and saute leeks and potatoes for about 5 minutes. Add salt and pepper. (Next time I would use onion or shallots as they have a stronger flavor). Toss in the mushrooms and garlic and saute for a few minutes--you don't want the garlic to burn here, we just want the mushrooms to soak up some of the flavor of the butter and onions. Add the sauteed vegetables to the pot of soaking mushrooms. Add 2 more cups of water and bring mixture to a boil. Add rosemary and loads more salt and pepper. Simmer for 10 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Serve with parmasan cheese sprinkled on top.

Macaroons Are Overrated

The other night, I did the cliche food blogger thing: I made French macaroons. I've seen loads of pictures of them, and they look so cute. (Google-image them here). Seriously, every food blogger has got this cookie up their sleeve, as if that makes them legit. But it's totally not worth the effort.

And in fact, it took a bit of effort (at least more than your basic chocolate chip cookies). The macroon is sort of meringy, so whipped egg whites, which I (of course) messed up the first go-around and ended up with a soupy mess that look a lot like Pepto Bimol. I tried again and coaxed out some nice, fluffy white peaks. I decided to dye them pink, because I think it looks the cutest and thought it would go nicely with my lemon icing.

According to David Lebowitz's instructions, I filled my piping bag (aka giant Ziploc) using this glass as an assistant. And piped what turned into a runny liquid onto my baking sheet (Can you see the specs of almond flour in the batter? Appears to look tasty, but we all know looks can be deceiving). I was pessimistic, but one tray came out of the oven looking like macaroons. The other tray somehow got burnt and stuck unforgivingly to the baking sheet.

Megan suggested crushing them (see below). We both decided that the macaroon crumbs would be a great ice cream topping. There's this mother-daughter pair that sells cake crumbs at a downtown farmer's market in the summer to go on ice cream. They pass out samples. It's a good idea. But also a huge rip off. They sell these plastic containers of crumbs for like $5 a pop. I bet they use the boxed cake mixes. Unfortunately, we only got about two tablespoons of crunchy, macaroon crumbs.

I Heart Sushi

This is "Cali Cruncholific." It's a tempura-fried cali roll topped with tuna and sweet unagi sauce. Let me say right now: I did not make these. Travis, "senior media developer" at Home & Away (so says the masthead), is an amateur sushi artiste. He sent me these photos yesterday, inducing a deadly sushi craving (one that will be satisfied today at noon). I think I may have even started drooling. It's funny, sushi ends up being the thing I eat the most when I'm out. Maybe because I can't make it at home--though Travis swears it's not as hard as it looks. Travis doesn't have a Web site for me to link to, so I'm connecting you to his wife's home page--she's a massage therapist who specializes in ashiatsu foot massages. At the bottom is a quick guide to all the "legit" sushi joints in Omaha (Whole Foods and Bakers don't count). Above is tempura cream cheese jalepenos with tuna and sweet chili sauce. You will notice as you scroll that Travis likes his sushi with a kick. Yellowtail sashimi with jalapenos, cilantro and srirachi sauce. Wasabi stinger variation: tempura shrimp and crab on the inside and yellowtail on the outside with wasabi cream and sriracha sauce. Another colorful wasabi stinger variation with jalapenos and peppercinos on the outside with wasabi cream and sriracha sauce. Veggie roll wrapped in soy paper instead of seaweed with cucumber and avocado. Veggie roll with cucumber, (surprise) jalapeno, avocado and topped with wasabi cream.

Blue Sushi Sake Grill has three outposts. This place is super trendy, and their happy hour specials always have a wait. I believe one of the owners was once an interior designer. And the sushi is pretty good--I would say top three in town.

Hiro is located on 132 and Maple but will be opening an outpost in the Old Market this spring. This is every sushi snob's favorite (for good reason).

Matsu Sushi was the first sushi bar downtown (it's on 10th and Farnam). It's good but doesn't have the reputation of Hiro or Sushi Japan.

Sakura Bana, formerly Sushi Ichibon, is pretty traditional--it's the only place I've been served a warm cloth. They have a good central location in Uptown.

Sushi Japan Yakinuku Boy is my personal favorite, though Hiro is right up there. Sushi Japan is really quiet, and their actual bar seems to be pretty popular.

Sushi Yama is in LaVista. I have only eaten there once, and we got soggy edamame. The sushi was OK.

There are other restaurants that serve sushi that don't necessarily specialize in it: Kona and Urban Wine would be two notables.

Tart Cherry Pie

My mom once brought cherry pie to a church post-Thanksgiving-service pies-only potluck. If there was a competition, she would have won because (well, it was the best) the pastor loved that pie so much he referenced it in a sermon. No that didn't happen, but he did freaking love it. I'm pretty sure my mom is going straight to heaven.

It's the pie crust that is perfect. Most people buy pie crusts at the grocer because they think it's too much work. I admit to having difficulty with pastry crust in the past. Mom uses Martha's easy pie crust recipe, except that she uses the food processor instead of a pastry blender. The real key to good pie crust (as I've very recently discovered) is cold cold cold (cold water, cold butter, cold, put it back in the fridge if you have to), do not overwork the flour when you're kneading and use plenty of flour only when you're rolling out the dough. Check out this blog if you need more explicit instructions.

This pie was made with fresh cherries--not the canned kind. Although, it's important to note that the famed, getting-into-heaven-early pie was made with canned, so people will still love it even if it's not completely homemade. The McKains gave my sister the cherries a while back for consulting with them on how to remodel their house (apparently all she told them was that what they wanted would be expensive).

The recipe for the filling of this pie is from Better Homes and Gardens. To be concise, I'm printing it below.

Cherry Pie Filling and Topping:
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
2 tablespoons quick-cooking tapioca (buy the small ones, the big ones take longer to dissolve)
5 cups tart red cherries (not Bing and not Renier)
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 cup flour
2 tablespoons brown sugar
tablespoons butter
6 ounces slivered almonds

Place cherries, sugar and tapioca in a bowl, add almond extract and stir until cherries are coated. Let set for 10 to 15 minutes until the mixture forms a syrup, stirring occasionally. Make your pie crust in the meantime. Transfer cherry mixture to a crust lined pie-serving dish thing (what are those called?).

For filling, in a small bowl stir together flour and brown sugar. Add butter sliced into tablespoons and cut into flour mixture with a pastry blender until crumbly. Add slivered almonds and stir. Sprinkle topping onto pie. Cover pie with aluminum foil and bake on 375 for 25 minutes. Remove foil and cook for another 25 to 35 minutes, until the top is golden.

Salmon with Aioli and Leeks

You could say it is a New Year's resolution of mine to cook more French food and less Italian. And now that I think of it, why? Italian food is quite delicious, and I pretty much know what I'm doing. I'm familiar with the ingredients and techniques, yet there is still so much I haven't cooked, so many territories yet to be discovered, enjoyed and documented. And I'm so much less likely to biff things up. But that would be so boring--delicious, but boring. I got a couple French cookbooks for Christmas, and I wasted no time jumping into a braised lentils recipe one dark and lonely night a couple weeks ago. But then friends called and I was out eating Creole rice with them mid-preparation. As a result (or maybe because of some other fluke), the lentil were heinous and inedible. Well, I did eat them, but I didn't enjoy it. And then I tried to bring the leftovers to work and the smell solicited dry heaves.

But instead of giving up, I went straight for the gold, the quintessential French accoutrement: aioli. Made of garlic and olive oil, what's not to like about the sauce? Well, there's a thickening process for one thing, and that always makes me nervous (unnecessarily in this case, and now I'm fascinated with emulsifying). And raw egg yolks, hmm, fishy. I'm no chef, but I'm pretty sure the lemon juice and vinegar cook the eggs. Truly, this recipe was surprisingly easy, not very messy and pretty quick.

I even got to use my garlic mincer last night. The mincer may have been the kitchen accessory that spawned my interest in cooking. Before then I thought the only garlic available was in a powder or salt. What's not fun about squeezing the guts out of a pungent clove?

But when I got to the part of the recipe that said "1 1/2 cups olive oil," I balked. "WTF? We're in an economic crisis here, I am not pouring five dollars worth of oil into aioli." It turned out I didn't even have that much oil.

So I halved the recipe (the remainder of the oil is back in that bottle), and voila, still more aioli than I was able to use on the salmon. What I love about this as well is that there is so much room for improvisation on this recipe. I've seen aioli with all manner of herbs and spices. One of my favorite restaurants serves it with their sweet potato fries--a-maz-ing. The salmon recipe is a tweak from The French Market by Joanne Harris and Fran Ward--do yourself a favor and skip the braised puy lentil recipe--with aioli and leeks instead of straigh dijon mustard (leeks are a mild member of the onion family, no worries, that's a vegetable I've looked up before on Wikipedia).

Aioli: 4 cloves garlic, minced sea salt (or kosher) 2 egg yolks 3/4 teaspoon dijon mustard 2 teaspoons white wine vinegar (yeah, I used balsamic) 1 1/2 cup olive oil pepper Mince garlic cloves (or bash up with a pestel and mortar) and whisk with salt. Add egg yolks (if you save the whites you can make macaroons--I am kicking myself for letting them go down the drain), vinegar and dijon and whisk together until smooth. Slowly whisk in the oil. Add pepper and more salt to taste. Salmon with Aioli and Leeks: 2 salmon fillets 1 leek aioli olive oil salt and pepper Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place fillets on baking tray and sprinkle with olive oil, salt and pepper. Brush aioli generously onto the fillets. Dice leeks to make little disks (as seen in the photo above) and place on the fillets. Bake for 12 minutes or until the salmon is flaky.

Birthday Wishes

So Monday was my birthday. The day marking the monumental 25th birthday has come and gone with less pomp and circumstance than an ego-centric, attention-loving person such as myself would hope for in her wildest dreams. And thus begins what I have decided will be the best year of my life to date. Highlights: Emily made me a birthday cake (How freaking cute is she?! Fifteen-year-old following in her older sister's footsteps, improvising cake recipes and everything.) My other sister (Al) made me an ottoman. And not, as you may be imagining, a piece of wood nailed to some planks. It looks like it should be sold at Target, nay, Pottery Barn, on third thought, it is way too cool for all of those places. For dinner, we went out for Thai food at Thai Spice. Yum. Emily ordered phad thai--and liked it. She said while looking at the menu, "I don't like Chinese food." What?! Who doesn't like Americanized Chinese food? It's fried and loaded with sugar and salt. After we teased her for being too picky, I thought we were in trouble for sure. But she ate nearly half of the phad thai and left the remainder in my fridge.

Here's an almost really cute photo of me and Megan. Except for my wonky eye!!!! Which I totally deserve because just last night I was making fun of this girl-who-dated-this-boy-I-really-liked's eye while looking at her facebook profile. Karma.

Al and I both ordered green curry, which was good and spicy (but not this spicy). And while it was good and savory and everything great about green curry, it's still not Pee Lek's green curry. No one makes green curry like your adopted Thai mother.

You may be scrolling through these photos and thinking "Wow, it looks like Lainey and her sisters and roommate are having a splendid time." (We did). "But where are her parents?" Strange, where are those sires on such a momentus occasion? Did Lainey finally achieve her lifelong dream of becoming an orphan just like her childhood heroes Annie, Anne of Green Gables and Heidi? No. The padres skipped town on a "much needed" holiday to swoosh down ski slopes and purchase cowboy boots in Steamboat Springs, Colo. Before I am the recipient of an enormous guilt trip in a few hours (Does this post hit too close to home? Is it too soon?), let me digress.

My birthday is never fails to turn into a giant family drama, pitting me against my dear-and-loving mother with my sisters caught in the middle and my dad (the supposed) true cause of it all (not sure I believe that). Last year on my birthday we were in the car for 12 hours (granted it was on the way to go skiing in Colorado ... details). The year before that, hey, it was pretty good. The year before that--another 12-hour car ride. The year before that, January blizzard that shut down the entire city.

I, of course, never miss a chance to make these people feel bad about slighting me on the one day a year that we can universally acknowledge is all about me. But seriously, I get the shaft (except for those legendary birthday parties sledding at Mahoney State Park back in elementary school).

Now, I know that my birthday comes on the day that the holidays are officially over. Everybody is going back to school/work. It's cold out. We've all eaten more than we should, shopped more than we like and gone to more parties than is reasonable. Yet I reserve the right to be irritated that my padres left town on purpose (maybe), so they didn't have to celebrate. And weren't even nice about it.

My one consolation: knowing that they would have had way more fun on vacation with me and my sisters because we are hilarious.

And here's a random photo of icing ...

Broccoli Raisin Salad

Broccoli and I have never got on very well. It was the vegetable that caused many a long night sitting at the dinner table after everyone else had finished. I can recall hiding the limp vegetable under my plate once--it was, of course, discovered. I even tried to slip some to our cocker spaniel--she didn't eat it.

Nowadays, it's another thing on my list that I've grown to enjoy--though I suspect my stomach disagrees. I'd say the conversion took place when I stopped eating any sort of frozen vegetable.

I've had this salad before at Christmas or Easter. I decided to make it for a pot luck at work. There are some folks at work trying to lose weight, and I figured this could be a nice alternative to all the fried chicken, meatballs, chips, dips and cookies that would be making up the majority of the buffet. I'm sure it would have been, had I remembered to take it out of the refrigerator that morning. I even made it using turkey bacon to boost the salads health factor--mistake. Turkey bacon is horrible. Never use it. It's suspiciously pink and turned out tough and flavorless.

Broccoli Raisin Salad: 1 head of broccoli 1/2 cup raisins 1-2 ounces bacon optional: sunflower seeds For dressing: 1/2 cup mayonnaise 2 tablespoons vinegar 1 tablespoon sugar pinch of salt and pepper Trim broccoli florets and place in bowl. Toss with raisins. Mix dressing ingredients in a separate bowl and toss with broccoli. Marinate overnight. Add crisp, fatty bacon.

Keys to a Good Party

I'll confess New Year's was the first football game I watched all season. That sort of thing doesn't stop me from getting into the game, however. It's a bit ridiculous. If everybody else wasn't screaming at various fumbles/sack/interceptions, I would be embarassed. Somehow, the Huskers were able to squeak out a win, apparently the first bowl win in a decade.

The real draw of this party was (of course) the food. Jim (the host) is a food broker--so he sells food to grocers, restaurants, convenience stores, etc. There's almost no point to bringing your food to a gathering with the McKains. For a summer concert featuring Three Dog Night and the Doobie Brothers a few years ago, the McKains brought beenie weenies (3 dogs) and white asparagus (the doobies).

We weren't classy enough for this cheese plate that included gorgonzola, two kinds of cheese I can't recall, pears and a "bad piece of cheddar."

Nobody was too classy for the soup: red beans and rice, chili and chicken noodle. My dad specifically instructed my mother to not leave without the recipe for the red beans and rice. (I'll see if can get it to you soon.)

But the winner of the party was the spinach artichoke dip (unfortunately, the photo didn't turn out). But trust me on this you must make this for the Super Bowl and/or any other occasion.

Spinach Artichoke Dip: Canned artichoke hearts Frozen spinach mayonaise sour cream
(updated) lemon juice garlic powder onion powder salt and pepper a lot of parmasan cheese As I mentioned previously, Jim works as a food broker, thus has access to bulk amounts of food. He's also a great cook. So his methodology was to throw all this together until it looked good. You should try to do the same. I don't think you're going to mess up with any of the listed ingredients.

Drain and coarsely chop the artichokes. Dethaw the spinach and squeeze out all the water you can. Mix together with the mayo, sour cream, garlic and onion powder and a bit of salt and pepper until you have a gooey consistency. Jim used slightly more mayo than sour cream. If you mix them a bit at a time, this should work out. Finally, you should add more grated parmasan cheese than you could ever imagine to be necessary until you come to a good, chunky consistency. Serve with tortilla chips or pita bread, hot or cold. To serve warm, heat in oven for 5 minutes on 350. Jim also recommended serving this with baked fish.

Omaha Blogroll

I suppose you could say that food bloggers are a dime a dozen. We're everywhere, posting, photographing, reviewing, cooking, not to mention eating. Here are a few Omaha-area food blogs you, dear readers, may be interested in checking out. Snekse over at Gastronomic Fight Club put a blogroll and RSS feed together so you can get them all in one place. All the blogs are a bit different, some post recipes, some post reviews, a "day in the life" and culinary news. See what you like and keep eating. Here's the feed. Check It Out geeks.rate(food) Omaha Critic Jamie's Kitchen What Greg Eats (almost forgot) Gastronomic Fight Club