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Wednesday, November 28, 2007
Do you like to warm up with a nice seasonal drink?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
This week, we feature stories on drinking custard (sort of a lighter version of eggnog) and hot holiday drinks. Do you have a favorite homemade seasonal drink, or do you just grab a carton of something from the grocery store and add your own “improvements”? We’d like to know.
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Not So Crazy for Korean
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
As a foodie, and certainly as a dining critic, I get the impression from the gasps of horror I’ve gotten whenever the subject comes up that I’m not supposed to disdain any type of cuisine. I’m supposed to like everything, from chicken livers to chole.
Uh oh. Guess it’s time for true confessions: I’m not fond of chicken livers and if I never eat uni again I don’t think I’d suffer for it. Beyond bibimbap and tofu soup (and an occasional serving of galbi), I’m not too hip on Korean dishes — there is something at once intrinsically sweet and sour about many Korean dishes, and it rubs against my taste buds the wrong way. Still, I must eat Korean food without this judgment and seek it out wherever it may be.
Atlanta has a plethora of great Korean restaurants. My favorite is So Kong Dong on Buford Highway. Where do you go when you’re looking for a fix of sundubu?
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How do you pick a mail-order food gift?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Mail-order food companies have been sending packages to the newspaper for weeks now, with samples of their holiday goodies. It’s big business for them. Consumers increased the number of food gifts they bought by almost 50 percent between 2004 and 2006 according to one marketing research firm, with annual sales near $16 billion.
Getting a positive review in the many newspapers, magazines and web sites that offer holiday food guides can boost sales. So we’ve been opening boxes filled with truffles and candied nuts, organic pears and flavored popcorn, and peppermint in many forms, from bonbons to bark. And endless boxes and bars of chocolate.
After a while, many of them start to blur. A lot of them just aren’t worth the calories; they’re made with mediocre ingredients that can’t be disguised even with the most festive holiday wrapping. So it was a refreshing change to try Enstrom Candies’ Peppermint Cookie Bark. (And really, peppermint bark — not something I usually think of as worth indulging in, not like, say, the Michael Recchiuti fleur de sel caramels that colleague John Kessler writes about in his roundup of high-end mail order goodies.)
The Enstrom’s bark was sweet with a hint of salt, made with a combination of dark and white chocolate and chocolate cookie pieces. It’s fabulous candy, pretty to look at with its layers of chocolate and peppermint, and prettily packaged. If you order before Dec. 1, you get free shipping if you enter PRFS as the source/discount code when ordering. At $18.95 for one pound, it’s not the cheapest peppermint bark out there, but it’s the best we’ve tried this year.
Do you send food gifts? What’s your favorite? How do you decide what to send — is it based on what you like to eat?
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