Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

Love this--you are spot-on about black food coloring--ew. The only thing more vile than a bunch of retirement celebrants black-gumming a cupcake is a preschooler doing the same.
"Look Mommy, we can play Bubonic Plague!"--sick, even by our household standards, so dark chocolate is the panacea for ALL once again.

Iris's logic seems very clear on cat-butts.

You COULD bypass the food-coloring issue & put a spin on cupcakes by going savory...my 5 and 2 year-old helped come up with these Turkey Meatloaf & Sweet Potato Puree Spiders (also in cupcake pans):

http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/dining/bal-fo.halloween29oct29,0,7915253.story

That sounds awfully healthy, but I can assure you we went straight back to the candy bowl.

Thanks for these ideas!--we'll make some cats (both ends).

PS: I love that salted licorice too. I once had a German brewery heiress in my Kindergarten class and ended up eating all of the forlorn Halloween party candy. Now I'm an addict.

I love that Newman's Own was an unintentional, but hugely successful and positive thing.
The work he did with children is simply awe-inspiring.
As are "Fig Newmans"--one of the most delicious cookies you can get in a package.

Cafe Au Layette....

When my sister and I were, ahem...having "tummy troubles" (preview of universal female issues to come), my mother always made us cafe au lait--heavy on the steamed milk--to speed things along. I know, the milk sounds counterintuitive, but a little hot caffeine is simply a wonder drug.
I have no problems with giving my own toddlers the same concoction--in fact, I'd vastly prefer it to the post-sugar, hot chocolate milk meltdown.

Sure, if we were at Buzz, I'd let them give the babycino a whirl--as long as their pinkies stayed DOWN.

Really interested to see what kinds of responses you get!

Good for that little girl. Bourdain is just being Bourdain, perpetuating Bourdain DNA--he's a glorious snob, not an elitist. He is my favorite kind: Everyman's Snob...which is to say that he is not pretentious, and he doesn't have any "moral" quibbles with food. In fact, he WOULD eat a chicken nugget, and let his daughter eat one too--if it actually tasted good.
An recent conversation overheard between my daughter (4) and a friend/chef's son (5):

She: I love chives. Very chivey. You know, if you pet them they really grow.

He: What about basil?

She: Eh [skeptical]....I've tried it. It's pretty bitter and strong, though.

He: Ah!...but have you tried the purple basil?

The same child that debates the merits of herbal varieties is also a sucker for that Vanilla Organic Milk box at Starbuck's (twelve days worth of sugar).
Am I an elitist for one and negligent for the other as a parent!? Is she a noble little locavore-in-the-making when she enjoys a mascarpone fritatta made with an egg she plucked from a chicken-hind at our friend's organic farm, but not when she enjoys the same darn omelette ingredients when they come from...who knows where?
You can make yourself crazy as a parent.
I think there's a responisibility for exposure there, for (gasp! the dreaded elitist-sounding) modeling. You just expose them to everything that's good, that tastes good, that you can afford. Good gravy! Imagine the stuff Bourdain has access to!
I would hope that kid is eating better than well.

Completely charming the pants off even the stoutest anthropomorphic food hater!...is it his jaunty little angle?

And wait--does this male eggplant have HIPS?

My kids found a strawberry that looked exactly like Gerard Depardieu recently. Cyrano de Strawberry:

http://happyhoarfrost.blogspot.com/2008/07/on-restraint-final-strawberry.html

An improvement over Nixon, but no one ate him either.

Produce's reputation has really benefited from the digital camera. Or maybe it's a plot to get us to sympathize too closely and eat more meat.

Something in a big pan, I agree. I have a Texas sheet cake recipe somewhere that is a cross between a brownie and a cake which is good. Or a bar cookie.
As a big picnic-er, my favorite piece of equipment for transporting desserts is a disposable or trusty old metal pan tucked inside of one of those Hot/Cold bags you can get at the grocery store. It's not glamorous, it doesn't look like 50's picnic with linens and milk glass to be sure--but...
Desserts really hold up in there!

Just thought you'd appreciate the unofficial surveillance:
I was half-way kidding when I mused on the FN line of Lisa's aprons (Kohl's carries Bobby's stuff, right?) in that blog entry~ "Quick: how many people just Googled 'Lisa Garza aprons?'"--
but Feedburner lets you see how people get to your blog (other sites, Google searches, etc.), and there are SCADS of people out there Googling that very thing in the past 24 hours (inadvertently ending up at my entry because of that word combo).
In some capacity, Lisa will design and Adam will entertain. He needs an audience and she needs to NOT have an audience. I'm sure FN will find a way to parlay their skills. I know these are people and this was each's dream (and despite my woeful emotional attachment to it all), but they are both in-house resources now--and if the network is smart they will use whatever talents they have. Especially since they have to give some of their earnings back to FN over the next few years (which I heard, but do not know is true).

Wow, I really believe the only color that was considered here was green-and I am a realist.
We live in a world where being complicated is an indictment, and to be "simple" is divine.
Aaron was the least complicated of these contenders, and would require the least amount of "work" from a flawless marketing/branding standpoint. Aaron is self-confessedly simple--and he really IS simple (and I am not saying anything about his intelligence...)
In the end, he had to/will have to learn how to translate his Big Daddy personality to the audience, which simply will require less effort than Adam reeling in his self-destructive comedy-at-the-expense-of-our-tastebuds, or Lisa's eerie Vulcan insistance she is "beautifully basic" when she is really just happy making fussy-prissy-foo-foo food. Speculation on Adam's and Lisa's respective inabilities to change has been half the discourse of the judgements.
Aaron just stayed closest to his original self, and the judges rewarded that (being on some dark, psychological journey to the center of the soul kick)--whether that self is more interesting, skilled, or "deserving" is sort of irrelevant.
It all comes back to the culinary POV.

http://www.happyhoarfrost.blogspot.com/2008/07/tnfns-finale-your-zen-selfs-too-little.html

For Lisa (and Adam), keying into their Zen selves, getting "real"... happened a moment too cassoulate.

The Helmand (Afghan) is FANTASTIC in Baltimore. Inexpensive. Pop across the street to Charles Theater. Tapas Teatro is also right there--hopping, excellent.
I also agree about Paper Moon. It's a trip! That also puts you right next to the Baltimore Museum of Art and down the street from Charm City Bakery but you can't really just pop in on Duff and the madhouse).
Still love Sascha's as well.

Oh please do share your results--and recipe--with all of us!
Lemons off of someone's tree are like gold--I will be very curious to hear what you decide to do.
A fellow lemon lover...

What a difference a letter makes...
I once saw a reputable flood blogger suggest straining whole milk yogurt through "Organic Muslim" to make farmer's cheese...
Didn't take long for that to be changed to "muslin"--and I'm sure the honorary editor didn't get such a tasty-pasty care package!

Snap pea out of it, my friends!--Lisa can't change enough to make an appealing FN icon...but that doesn't mean she won't win.
Here is my pitiful cry into the wild: Please, please God, don't let it be Lisa. Yet, I suspect and fear it will be Lisa, solidifying my fears that success is almost never merit-based, but rests on a number of other random factors, including iconic hair, inflexibility, the snake-like female ability to cry on cue, and complete predictability.
I don't think she's "warmed up" at all--in fact I think she's just as inaccessible, out-of-touch and Vulcan-like as she was from the first.
I have a theory about all of this. She is the classic example of the failed redemption story none of us can get enough of but makes FANTASTIC media.
http://www.happyhoarfrost.blogspot.com/2008/07/next-food-network-starcan-lisa-change.html

As to her cooking chops--they're nice, but we all know they're not the main qualifier here. The only reason she is still standing is because FN needs her around to fascinate us.

True, I am bitter she is near Bobby Flay repeatedly, and I am not. If Captain Capsicum can't melt a girl's stoic exterior, what can?

I'm an Adam fan though, if I must.