Found this video from the food editor of the New Orleans Times-Picayune. I think she may over-emphasize the iron benefits of cooking in cast iron, however, if you've never owned a cast iron skillet and want to know the basics, this is about as concise as it gets.

I would say after a quality knife and a good cutting board, no starting cook should be without at least one cast iron skillet. I own several pieces, including cast iron corn stick pans and a cast iron grill pan that I use almost exclusively for salmon.

I also have a Lodge cast iron habachi that along with real wood charcoal, you'll never taste a better steak.

The Seattle Times recently touched on two spicy condiments that you may or not have heard of. I'd guess more people are familiar with Sriracha. It's a staple in a lot of Thai and Vietnamese restaurants, often right on the table, in place of ketchup. Speaking of which, I often skip ketchup with my french fries, but when I do use it, ninety-nine times out of a hundred it's mixed with Sriracha.

If anyone has had a spicy tuna roll at their local sushi place, often the spicy tuna is nothing more than the bits and scraps of the tuna not used for sashimi chopped up and mixed with Sriracha. When I saw that, a light bulb went off in my head and I decided to use it in my next tuna salad. My super quick go-to snack is now just canned tuna, Sriracha and a little mayo on multi-grain Saltines. I'm sure it could be expanded to have some cilantro and minced shallot, served over some mixed greens and topped with some crispy lo-mein noodles and crunchy wasabi peas for a fancy (yet still simple) lunch.

The aforementioned Seattle Times article includes a recipe for Sriracha Glazed Chicken Wings. I'm sure the recipe could be adapted to use boneless thighs, and served with julienne carrots and snow peas tossed with a little sesame oil and rice noodles for a quick and tasty dinner.

They also discuss the lesser known but equally tasty Middle Eastern condiment harissa, including a simple recipe for making your own. I've experimented with several recipes, and found a short cut was to use the ground chili paste you can find in most Asian markets. Toasting whole seeds and grinding them yourself will go a lot farther in flavor than soaking and processing your own chiles. Even if you do process your own chiles, you would be doing yourself a favor to toast and grind your cumin and coriander seeds yourself. An inexpensive coffee grinder works well for grinding your own spices. Also, if my memory serves me, many versions also contain caraway in addition to the cumin and coriander.

If your looking for how you might experiment with using harissa, a popular dish I had on one of my menus was harissa glazed baked salmon with a cous-cous, black olive and feta salad.

I found this adaptation of a the classic Southern dish by Sean Brock in the NY Times intriguing in its use of fennel and smoked breakfast sausage. It's definitely on my "must try" list.

Another interesting technique is the use of cream cheese in the grits. I can see the benefits. I personally fell into a method of cooking my hominy grits in straight cream, which eliminates the need for butter or cheese, as there is enough fat content in the cream to carry the flavors, as well as provide a rich, creamy texture. All too often, I've seen cooks use too much water, then try to flavor the grits with a ton of butter and cheap shredded cheddar, which once it cools a bit, becomes a gloppy mess. I'd argue there's probably less calories in just using cream vs all the butter and cheese I've seen added. Which is why I see the use of cream cheese as being a fair option. It's basically like folding reduced cream into the mixture at the end. Certainly worth testing out.

Read the full recipe for Shrimp and Grits with Roasted Tomato, Fennel, and Sausage from the NY Times. The accompanying article about the chef Sean Brock is worth a read as well.

I'd like to say I'm proud to restart this site, but after an embarrassingly long hiatus without any real excuse isn't necessarily something to be proud of. I can say that I think my new focus of going the route of an "old school" link log may help keep the momentum going until I can actually create original content myself. Until then, expect brief personal comments and highlights from the more interesting articles I find across the web.

The site I'm sure is still rough around the edges, but I've been toying with this long enough, time to get using. What's the old cliché, release early and often? If you see anything glaringly broken or have a suggestion, feel free to leave a comment.

I still haven't decided if I'm going to create a separate Twitter account, as it would basically be just a broadcast medium, which I'm against. I believe that "social media tools" should be well, "social". I simply don't have the time to engage another channel.

I'm really looking forward to seeing the film FoodInc.. Unfortunately, it's not planned to be shown in Tampa, but we'll have the option of going to Winter Park or Sarasota. I don't actually visit the theatre often, but in this case, I want to support something that I am extremely passionate about, and not wait for it to make it to DVD.

Though this site started out as simply a place for me to share dishes, I have bigger plans in the coming weeks (yeah, I know, you've heard that before), and one of them is to use this site as a forum to join the grassroots movements in pressuring our government to make some real change in our laws. It's high time that we as a country take back our dinner table away from the big agra-businesses and put them back into the hands of the farmers dedicated to producing healthy, sustainable products.