March Madness was tough! Thank you all for reading. Here’s a recap in case you missed anything, and stay tuned for a Friday Link Love and new posts next week.

My quest for farm-to-table cooking comes to a screeching halt when I’m faced with unshelled macadamia nuts, which I tried to crack with a hammer and a towel. My neighbors think I’m nuts.

• A cheesecake for sugar freaks and perfectionists: One heck of a cheesecake, with more frill and decoration than a 6-year-old’s Easter Sunday dress.

Green velvet cupcakes from the Layer Cake Bakery in Irvine, Calif., make me wish that St. Patrick’s Day would come more than just once a year.
Kitchen voyeurism: You can tell a lot about a chef just by peering into his kitchen.
Easy recipes for Croque Madame and Croque Monsieur, published in my Food 101 column in The Orange County Register.
Link love, brought to you by Gumduck. Also other collections of interesting links here, here and here.
A perfect day at Taylor’s Refresher, with a perfect burger to match.
Learning how to make Okonomiyaki with my friend Mark, who spent a few years in Japan perfecting his methods (while teaching English).

• Some thoughts on a new study that claims eating red meat is bad for your health — “deadly” according to one news outlet.
• Syllable and Sustenance: A relationship I’ve imagined between the Vietnamese language and its food.
• The Scharffen Berger plant in Berkeley, Calif., closes.
• A first visit to Pizzeria Ortica, David Myers’ new pizza place in Costa Mesa, Calif.

A quick recipe for roasted potatoes with rosemary and olive oil.
Dining at the Ramos House Cafe, in a picture-perfect, historical California setting.

Flying Food: Tales of a kid who sends her food airborne in hopes of fooling her mother into thinking she ate them. (Reader comments on this post are super-hilarious.)

On April 30, the Cook’s Library will close its doors after 20 years of being the go-to spot in Southern California for cookbooks and culinary literature.
Some notes on the Roquefort tariff, plus some weird food laws that still exist today.
The seven steps you need to perform to ensure an excellent dim sum meal.
And finally, 30 restaurants in one go at the L.A. Weekly’s Gold Standard.

– Cynthia Furey

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 1st, 2009 at 4:35 pm and is filed under At the table. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.