But Salty, how is that possible? It’s not even over! (Plus, we all seem to remember you getting eliminated- did you finally lick the brown acid off the spherified slice of encapsulated pie?) I know, I know, but really, it’s true- winner winner chicken dinner right here over in my little single-wide slice of cyberspace- how about you? Are you a winner too?

Here’s the thing. Project Food Blog, hosted by Foodbuzz, was/is a contentious contest that generated a shitstorm of blog posts, tweets, really bad videos, controversy, burns, costumes (and more costumes), sleeplessness, memories, blood and tears. Does the blogosphere really need one more highfalutin hussy dropping her lil’ dime bag in the mix (that’s my ill-conceived slang for do y’all want to hear my .02)? I can hear the resounding shouts of yes, yes, please Salty, lay it on me baby, tell me exactly what you think, oh Stiletto Ninja of the Chartreuse Night!!!

Stiletto Ninja

Ok, ok, enough with the accolades (winners get accolades, you know?) and stop throwing your pudding panties and crotchless cupcakes at me- I’ll tell you what I think. And I’ll do it in a way I couldn’t throughout the duration of the contest, because, you know, I highly censored myself when I was making foie gras powder look like crack cocaine seeing as how I didn’t want to offend any potential voters. But now, now that I’ve transcended Project Food Blog and licked my loser pile of thermo-reversible jelly up off the floor to discover that I am, in fact, still me, I can call it as I see it, F-bombs, thinly-veiled innuendo and all.

Foie Gras "cocaine"

And the main thing I want to say is that neener neener neener, I FUCKING WON! But guess what? At the end of the day, EVERY SINGLE ONE OF US WHO ENTERED THIS CONTEST WITH ANY VERACITY WON! We are all fucking winners! And I don’t mean this like the stupid “my kid is an honor student at Slacker Academy this quarter” winners, either, because I’m definitely more part of the “my kid beat up your honor student” contingency.  Yes, kids, in this contest, many Childs were Left Behind, but guess what (I’m looking at you, Laura Bush)- THAT’S OK! One person may take the cake, but we can all chug the champagne and play strip poker til the wee hours, so suck it up, bitches, give yourself a gold star and humor me.

From Alice Eats Wonderland Entry

Let’s peer, for a moment, through the looking glass, and count the ways we won. How many of us made new friends? Show of hands here please… I can honestly say I made friendships I will keep for the rest of my life. I wouldn’t trade that for all the gold neckclocks in Flavor Flav’s collection. How many of us were introduced to blogs we previously didn’t know existed but now deeply admire? How many of us are plotting cities to visit based on said new friends and blogger crushes, and how many of those awesome people are actually coming to see us? How many bottles of limoncello were personally sent to us by hyper-talented other participants in the contest (ok, maybe just me!)?

photo credit: http://devourtheworld.blogspot.com/

This section of the ranting essay is all about HUMAN CONNECTIONS. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again- at the end of the day, at the end of our lives, what do you think really matters? Whether Foodbuzz put on some blogging contest back in 2010 or whether you’re gazing into the eyes of the people you love, holding their hands, reaffirming those human connections that compose the most profound moments of your life? If the blogging contest in any way had something to do with you encountering someone who touched your life irrevocably, shouldn’t you offer up a hallelujah or a hell yeah to Foodbuzz and say- thanks, guys, thanks for being my wing man so I could properly stalk Foodwoolf and get her to reveal her mad genius to me!?

Why else are we winners? Because we were inspired to be better. We thought harder, wrote purtier, created crazier, promoted wisely-er, and cooked some damn fine food in the process. We traveled to foreign lands, we splayed our souls for the world to see, we edited, we videoed, and we challenged ourselves to perform at our personal bests. Undeniably, Project Food Blog will inspire a generation of well-crafted bloggers. Many of us now realize there is a social and moral responsibility behind our words and have attempted to reconcile that with writing about food.

Personally, Project Food Blog helped distill the convoluted freneticiscms of my disjoined thought processes into something resembling cohesion. I realized that I need structure and I like assignments. I realized food and words are my medium through which to make a big ol’ stiletto stamp on the world and I’m now on a singularly-focused mission to do just that. I want people to think about what they shove into their Strawberry Chapstick-rimmed gobs whether it’s hempseed granola and two teaspoonfuls of Yoplait or a solitary pizza flower. Project Food Blog helped me come to that realization so, you guessed it, I’m a winner yet again!

Pizza Flower

Here’s the thing. I made a promise. I said that if I won Project Food Blog I would wear a meat dress to accept my crown. Well, there will likely be no crown for me unless @bayareaglutton fashions one out of a sausage necklace and sends it my way, but because I’m counting my blessings and counting my naughtly little self among the winning faction, I still probably owe it to you to wear a meat dress, don’t I? Don’t get all excited and scroll down- THERE IS NO MEAT DRESS IN THIS POST. But, it’s coming. You, my especially-beloved, spectacular readers, will be subjected to the blinding vision of me in a meat dress forever documented on this here blog at SOME POINT (yes, I’m wishy washy) in the next few months. Now if anyone has any ideas on how to properly fasten prosciutto to slippery skin, send ‘em my way.

PS- In the real contest that’s still really going on and is not just manifest in the chicken scratches that come out of my ass- er, imagination, vote for NoRecipes- he’s the total package and deserves to be the actual winner. Maybe I can even convince him to wear a meat dress too.

Bolognara is a smash-up between two classic Italian pasta dishes- Bolognese and carbonara. I suppose I could also call it carbonese, but I like bolognara better- there is something less awkward about it. It’s about the most non-traditional thing ever, and I don’t want to get bludgeoned to death by stalwart supporters of the old world, but it’s really the perfect antidote to the typical holiday fare gracing our tables this season I couldn’t resist. Shhh, don’t tell your Italian nonna, k?

Here’s how it’s done: make Bolognese. Slave over it all day. Sweat. Curse. Accidentally slice your palm to the quick when you use an upside-down boning knife to shove filet down the meat grinder since you lost the little shover mallet tool. Glug half the bottle of wine you earmarked to slosh into the Bolognese sauce because you officially need it more than the sauce does, damn it! Use bacon instead of pancetta because you have homemade bacon and the pancetta from Whole Foods tastes like fat-laced cardboard.

Apologize again for bastardizing the recipe with bacon, but secretly know it’s a pretty good idea. Try not to let the butcher know you plan to grind up his precious veal and pig and cow tenderloins to use in a sauce- he will shake his head and think you’re a pretentious little snob even though you’re wearing rain boots that very nearly match his hip-waders. Shake your head and ponder why butchers and fishmongers sometimes wear hip-waders.

Make bucatini with your handy dandy pasta extruder and spill a quart of semolina all over the freshly-mopped kitchen floor. Deliberate whether to re-appropriate the semolina back into the pasta dough or to toss it. Toss it after toddler Bentley and evil Italian cat Sogno who says “ciao” instead of “meow” both decide scooting through it sounds like fun. Leave the pasta to dry, the sauce to simmer, and decide cleaning out the refrigerator would be a good idea. Start cleaning it out with the highest of hopes. Spy the wine refrigerator next to it.

Give in to the practical voice in your ear telling you cleaning out the wine fridge would be wise and somehow more necessary. Clean out the wine fridge. Explain to readers that in this instance “clean” means randomly remove bottles, open them, and start drinking them. Take Bentley for a walk and bring two sippy cups. One full of milk for him, the other full of something equally soothing for mommy’s nerves.

Have a eureka! moment while pondering how to make the best Bolognese you’ve ever eaten- ADD A RUNNY EGG! Attempt to explain this revelation while on said walk to a neighbor you forgot was vegan AND gluten-free.  Wither at the sheer look of disdain on her face as you remember too late that she won’t appreciate your homemade bacon, ground up tenderloin, or wheat-based pasta just like she didn’t appreciate the time you personally killed a dozen chickens recently.

Race home, toss some duck eggs into the Sous Vide Supreme, come up with a catchy name, and thoroughly impress willing dinner guests with the word bolognara and the dish itself when you plop a perfect egg on top of their bucatini Bolognese.

No giant feast is complete with some kind of contest, be it an attempt to float gummy bears in a river of Pabst or a quest to determine who can eat the most twinkie-weiner sandwiches in five minutes while whistling. On American Thanksgiving (a holiday you might’ve heard of but more likely you know about the holiday the day before entitled Wild Turkey Wednesday which involves drinking Wild Turkey shots until poker matches involving betting socks and Tablewater crackers ensue) I was mindful of the contest credo.

Contests are improved if they are labeled with the word “off” following the type of action to occur, such as a “bake-off,” a “dance-off,” or the ever-popular “jerk-off” which has participants all attempting to be the biggest jerk (sheesh, what did you think I meant!).

Knowing I needed an “off” to elevate my contest to a classier plane, I decided to call it the CranberryRelishSousVideVersusStovetop-Off. Catchy, isn’t it? If you weren’t able to ascertain by the moniker, the goal of the contest was to determine which cranberry sauce brings all the bees to their knees. And by “bees” I mean party guests and by “knees” I mean near-orgasmic state.

The parameters were simple: use the exact same ingredients, but prepare them two different ways. I went classic in style, both because I didn’t want to add any offending flavors that might confuse the surely untrained palates of the random lot of revelers and because I wanted a basic litmus on which to expand in greater detail once a consensus was established.  The single decisive factor in the test is the method of cooking.

Alcohol doesn’t do well en sous vide because it doesn’t have anywhere to go/burn off in the sealed chamber, so sadly, no booze allowed in either batch of cranberries this year. As you probably surmised, I made up for the lack of port in the cranberry sauce by filling my own internal saucetank with it (via secret nips off the bottle all morning and afternoon in addition to my public wine consumption). The basic recipe for both sauces follows these findings if you care to exact a precision “off” of your own.

foreground to rear: sous vide, stovetop, placebo

No great scientific experiment is possible without the inclusion of a placebo of some sort, and folks, this was truly a “great scientific experiment.” Thus, I included in my taste test one honest-to-gelatinous can of Ocean Spray Cranberry Slop just to make sure to get an accurate reading from my unsuspecting test subjects (formerly known as friends before this “off” occurred and they demoted me to nerdy lab tech status).

I know you’re wishing I’d just shut up and present the findings, so, my *new friends* (I’m hosting a corndog-off at my house next week, btw, wanna come?) drumroll please…………………………………………………………………………..

Most guests (shockingly!) were able to ascertain the placebo sample right away and all but one stalwart of the Swansons Turkey Dinner Days dismissed it out of hand. The reviews came flying in fast and fervent on the real competitors, and they were initially mixed. The sous vide style retained more of the original form-factor of the fruits (both the cranberries and the clementines) whereas the stovetop method broke down the individual components into a more uniform sauce. Most preferred the texture of the sous vide because of this, but, like the great crunchy vs creamy peanut butter debate, this is likely a matter of personal taste.

Next we evaluated acidity, or, tartness as we called it ‘round the table. After a meandering discussion on who was the biggest tart at thanksgiving (guess who won?!) I extracted from people that the sous vide sauce was more tart. It may be because the sugars did not break down as fully as with the stovetop sauce. Reviews were mixed in terms of preference on acidity- half liked the tarty sauce better, half liked the sweet. If it weren’t a room full of gay men I would have made a correlation to that being the way they liked their women: either girl-next-door-sweet or tawdry like a Mad Men secretary.

The game changed when we introduced turkey to the milieu. Nearly everyone preferred the sous vide sauce with the turkey because the other sauce came across as cloying with the savory flavors. Remember- this is a sauce composed of the exact same ingredients, so I find this particular result quite intriguing.

The final judgment factor was viscosity. The stovetop berries were cooked just to the point of forming a cohesive sauce and much of the natural liquid present in the fruits had a chance to evaporate. This made for ideal viscosity, whereas the sous vide sauce had nowhere for the liquid to disappear (since it was entirely cooked in a bag) therefore they were slightly liqueous for most tasters.

The ultimate verdict is that the sous vide sauce is superior in taste and texture, and it pairs better with traditional Thanksgiving dishes, however the stovetop method killed it in viscosity. The simple fix to that would be to pull the bag from the water bath and dump the contents in a saucepan to reduce for just a few moments before service. Of course this would kind of employ both techniques, but not for long, and it’s what I will do in my house in the future.  Here’s the recipe I used- hope this great cranberry debate inspires you to perform a few strategic “off’s” of your own in the coming year.  xo, linda

Cranberry Sauce

Serves 8 as a side dish

• 2 c cranberries ( I used local & organic)
• ¾ c sugar
• 3 clementines, peeled and sectioned
• ½ tsp freshly-grated ginger
• Dash cinnamon
• Pinch salt

Methods:

Sous Vide: takes 2-3 hours inactive time

1. Heat the water bath to 185°F. Place all ingredients in a food-safe bag and seal. Cook in the water bath for 2-3 hours, depending how soft you like your fruit (I prefer 2 hours). Remove bag, open, and serve.

*at this point I would have poured the contents of the bag into a saucepan and reduced over medium heat on the stovetop for 3 minutes to thicken the sauce if I had it to do over.

Stovetop:  takes 25 minutes

1. Combine all ingredients in a saucepan along with 4 tbsp water. Bring to boil over low heat, place lid on saucepan, and continue to cook, stirring occasionally, until all the cranberries burst and the sauce is thick and syrupy, about 20 minutes.