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Don’t forget that if you’re at GoogaMooga this weekend you can skip the Yeah Yeah Yeahs concert. You can forget about the Flaming Lips. What you need to go to is my literary wrestling match on Saturday, May 18 @ 3:45. I’ll be in the literary fancy pants tent called Cafe GoogaMooga and my husband and I will be presenting The Dirt Candy Food Porn-u-copia. Clothing will be optional! (Get your tickets to GoogaMooga here)

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Also, on Sunday, May 19 @ 2:15pm the Dirt Candy cookbook artist, Ryan Dunlavey, will be playing Food Pictionary with the audience and the able assistance of cartoonist Lucy Knisley also in the Cafe GoogaMooga.

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I can’t stop doing the Food Film Festival! It’s like some strange addiction, a compulsion I can’t resist. Now they’re doing it in Charleston, SC from May 10 – 11 and, helplessly, I’m going down there again. The fact that I’ve got family in Charleston helps enable my addiction, but I need to face facts and admit I have a problem.

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On Friday, May 10 I’ll be doing the food for the VIP party before Edible Adventure 007. Then there’ll be a screening of the Dirt Candy Productions epic, “Vegetables: Friend or Foe?” (Mostly foe.) And during the Edible Adventure screening I’ll be serving one of my dishes, too. I’ll also be selling and signing Dirt Candy cookbooks. If you enter the discount code CANDY10 you can get 10% off your tickets.

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In case you missed it, here’s the Dirt Candy Cookbook trailer, to give you a taste of the cinematic skills of Dirt Candy Studios.

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I know. This is a problem. But I can’t stop myself.

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Get your tickets here!

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You know why everyone’s excited about GoogaMooga? I mean, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs will be playing and so will The Flaming Lips and The Darkness but whatever, right? There’ll be food from Gwynnett Street, M. Wells, and Pok Pok. *le sigh* What’s really exciting? Dirt Candy is going to be doing a literary event! That’s right, at 3:45 on Saturday, May 18 I’m having the Dirt Candy Food Porn-u-Copia!

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Like this only really different.

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What’s it going to be like? Here’s the write-up I sent them:

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No one combines food and writing into a more tragic combination than Dirt Candy. Chef Amanda Cohen and writer Grady Hendrix will be talking about cooking, sex, food porn, lady chefs, and where they all intersect. Featuring horrifying readings, data analysis of who eats what in 50 Shades of Grey, an explanation of why America’s obsession with food shows is linked to the falling American birth rate, and what people are really talking about when they talk about bacon, it’s a fast and furious assault on both food writing and your defenseless brain.

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The two of us are still putting it together, but it’s going to be very weird, at the very least. If you buy a ticket to the event you can have a fun day in Brooklyn, eat a lot, drink a lot, then wander in and see our 40 minutes of chaos and vegetables and food porn.

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Get your tickets here!

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This is not a joke: tomorrow is the first day of my favorite time of year, Solo Diner’s Week! From April 2 – 6, Dirt Candy is celebrating folks who like to eat out with their favorite person in the world: themselves.

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This biggest bummer about eating alone is that you never get to order enough food. I always like to try a bunch of different things when I eat out, so I try to go with a lot of people so I can pick off their plates, but when you’re dining alone you don’t have this option. So for this week only I’m doing a prix fixe for solo diners:

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- $48 gets you -

- a mini-order of hush puppies
- a choice of any of the four appetizers
- a choice of any two entrees (each entree will be a mini-version of itself)
- a choice of desserts
- coffee or tea
- a half-glass of wine
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So come on down. Bring a book, bring a stuffed animal, or just bring a mirror and gaze at your own reflection longingly while you eat. Because this week it’s all about you, Solo Diners.

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Before I let 3 weeks elapse like I’ve done in the past, I just wanted to say a few words about what has come to be known as the Rumble in Rhinebeck. I have friends (Ed & Janet) who live up near the blue cashew kitchen pharmacy in Rhinebeck, NY and they put us in touch with Sean Nutley who runs the place. He invited us to come up and sign books, and I was all for it, but when I found out it was happening on Superbowl Sunday I got a little nervous. I shouldn’t have worried.

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blue cashew, from the street.

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I brought up a bunch of Portobello Mousse, and Sean was selling cookbooks, and within 90 minutes the food was all gone and the cookbooks were sold out. Maybe it’s because I don’t get out of the city enough but I had thought that maybe being in a small town outside New York might make it hard to attract folks who were interested in Dirt Candy. Nope. One couple came to celebrate their anniversary, others drove over an hour to get there, and even after we ran out of stock I wound up with a list of books people bought and needed to have shipped to them.

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The Dirt Candy window display!

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Then we went to a fondue party in a Tudor survivalist compound where everyone lived in thatched huts, wore neck ruffs, and was stockpiling cheese.

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“Ain’t no party like a Tudor party…”

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So thank you blue cashew, for being incredibly cute and awesome. (Note: I know that everyone calls things in small towns in upstate New York “cute” but when I say “cute” I really mean “for having a store where I want to buy everything”). And  thank you Sean and Ed and Janet for making this a great event, and thank you JT for all the fondue and neck ruffs.

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What is a piglet and what is Dirt Candy doing to it?

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“And lo, there came four piglets, and the the fourth was
a pale piglet and its name was Death.”

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Read the rest of this entry »

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Back by popular demand, Solo Diner’s Week returns. Originally, Solo Diner’s Week was my alternative version of Valentine’s Day, and this is what I wrote at the time:

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“February marks the month of my least favorite holiday of all time: Valentine’s Day. So fraught with expectations, so impossible to get right, so burdened with Meaning and Importance that it winds up feeling more like a grueling chore than a celebration of love. I don’t celebrate it myself, and working in restaurants has made me like it even less. There’s nothing wrong with people going out for dinner on Valentine’s Day, and I love the fact that people choose to come to Dirt Candy to celebrate a day that means a lot to them, but every Valentine’s Day I bust my butt to make sure that everyone’s meal goes flawlessly and yet diner expectations are so high (“This is the most important meal of our lives!” I was once told) that I feel like I fail just as many times as I succeed.”

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That first Solo Diner’s Week was a huge success – I think I had at least 10 or so solo diners every night, which was fantastic. There’s been a huge demand to do it again, but unfortunately by the time I got around to deciding to do it, Dirt Candy was already booked up for the week of Valentine’s Day 2013. So this year, Solo Diner’s Week will take place from April 1 to April 6. During that week, if you’re dining solo I want you to know that not only are you welcome at Dirt Candy, you’re appreciated. The problem with eating alone is that you don’t get to try enough of the menu, so from April 1 to April 6 I’m doing a prix fixe for solo diners only:

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- $48 gets you -

- a mini-order of hush puppies

- a choice of any of the four appetizers

- a choice of any two entrees (each entree will be a mini-version of itself)

- a choice of desserts

- coffee and tea

- a half-glass of wine

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So make your reservations now, and come on down and have a great dinner with everyone’s favorite person: yourself. Bring a book, bring your iPad, bring your imaginary childhood friends, or just enter a Zen state of solo dining, but don’t bring another human being. They’re just going to tell you a long boring story about work that you have to pretend to be interested in anyways.

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“Oh thank god! No laughing at bad jokes, feigning interest in
boring stories, or listening to ridiculous theories
I don’t actually understand
or even care about. I can finally dine in peace!”

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The Super Bowl starts this Sunday, February 3 at 6:30pm but you’ll probably have your Frito Pies and Mile-Long Subs all ready to go by noon. So what do you do to kill the time between putting the last slice of Olive Loaf on your Mega-Sandwich and the Super Bowl starting? If you’re in Rhinebeck, consider your problem solved! Come on out to blue cashew kitchen pharmacy between 2pm and 5pm and get your cookbook signed, listen to my vague and elusive answers to your specific questions, and eat some free Portobello Mousse.

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Full details are here!

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Why is Dirt Candy going to Rhinebeck? Why not! But also, to make money. And to touch hearts, educate people about the wonders of vegetables, engage in a creative dialogue with the men and women who make America great, and to make money. But why Rhinebeck? Is it because I want to go antiquing afterwards? No! It is because Rhinebeck is the home of bluecashew Kitchen Pharmacy which, believe it or not, is a major stop on the cookbook circuit. Ted Allen has done events there, the Frankies Sputino guys have done events there, Zak Pelaccio has been there…at some point everyone goes to bluecashew. It’s like heaven and we’re like dogs, and as you all know:

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So, on Sunday, February 3 @ 2pm Dirt Candy will be doing a signing at bluecashew. Here are all the details and, to be honest, I’m terrified no one will show up. So I’m going to be serving Portobello Mousse, too, because food attracts people. So if you’re in the area, and you’re hungry, and you want something to read, come on down. I’ll do my best to make sure you have fun!

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FULL DETAILS

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Do you know what reeks of authenticity? America’s Test Kitchen. Seriously, Chris Kimball‘s TV show and his magazine, Cook’s Illustrated, are my platonic ideals of what more food magazines and TV should be: scientific, informative, and straight-up focused on the facts, not catch phrases or flashy editing. So last year, when Chris Kimball made a reservation at Dirt Candy it was all I could do not to fling confetti at him every few minutes and blow a horn when he sat down.

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Even their logo is seriously not putting up with any nonsense.

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Even better was the fact that he tweeted about how much he liked his meal. Even way better was the fact that I got a call a couple of weeks later asking me to be on the show. There may be more popular food shows, there may be flashier food shows, there may be food shows where people ride around in more cars and stop at more Umbrian inns and dine on more local produce, but there are no shows that are smarter, more serious, or more committed to really looking at how cooking works. Except for maybe once when I was swarmed by baby pandas and hugged for an incredibly long time, taping an episode of America’s Test Kitchen was the highlight of my young life.

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That’s not me, but that’s what it felt like.

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Dirt Candy has already been on America’s Test Kitchen radio, but now the TV episode is coming up on Sunday, January 27th. It’s Season 13, episode 4, called “Simple and Satisfying Vegetable Mains” and you should check your local listings if you want to watch it and see what a girl who is trying very hard not to jump up and down and clap her hands looks like.

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They are so hardcore! I wanted them to like me so badly!

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