food events

It seems that quite a few people have been trying out the kasutera/castella recipe recently, and running into problems. Castella is not an easy cake. So, since it's Easter, I thought I'd haul this out of the archives attic. These little 'rich tea cakes' are much easier to make, and while they have an entirely different texture they are really quite delicious. I hope you'll give them a try! The fondant is not too hard if you can get a hold of the glycerin, but alternatively you could use store bought Easter themed cake decorations. Originally published in March 2005, as part of the late lamented Is My Blog Burning food blog event.

[Update:] Menu For Hope has been extended to December 31st!

Menu For Hope is an annual fundraising event, now in its 5th year, contributed to by food bloggers around the world. Last year, nearly US $100,000.00 was raised for the United Nations World Food Programme, to benefit the school lunch programme in Lesotho, Africa.

Menu For Hope's creator and head organizer is Pim of Chez Pim, and this year's regional Europe host is Sara of Ms. Adventures In Italy.

I'm happy to announce that Just Hungry is once again offering raffle prizes for Menu For Hope V. This year, we have two!

This is the very last day you can donate to Menu For Hope! And a nice bonus - take a look at the beautiful poem about Lesotho <a href="http://sotho.blogsome.com/2007/02/08/my-country-my-home/'>here by Rethabile. (Yes, if you also read Just Bento you're getting this in double...but it's a poem worth visiting more than once!)

Just Bento and Just Hungry (which is mostly me anyway) are taking a few days off to take care of a ton of offline duties. (Thank you for your nice emails...we're hanging in around here.)

We decided not to get a tree this year, so the only Christmas decoration of sorts we have up is this wallhanging/advent calendar, that I finally finished last week.

In this day and age when things I have made or worked on exist only in digital form, it's really grounding and satisfying to create something that has a physical form and presence, that I can touch and hold. That includes food too. There's nothing better than the warm feeling you get when your friends and family's faces light up when you present them with delicious food that you made with your own hands. Especially around the holidays.

Happy Holidays everyone!

Just Hungry is happy to announce that once again, we're donating a prize for Menu For Hope, now in its 4th year. Menu for Hope is an annual charity event contributed to by food bloggers around the world. It was instigated by Pim of Chez Pim, and this year's regional European host is Fanny of foodbeam.

Menu For Hope IV will benefit the United National World Food Programme; this year's donations have been earmarked for the school lunch programme in Lesotho, Africa.

And what is Just Hungry donating? Just Think Chocolate...

The sister site to Just Hungry got discovered by several sites overnight (while I was not at the computer, as always happens in such cases) and the traffic went up about 100 x, mainly thanks to it being on the del.icio.us popular page for a while. I haven't even 'officially' launched it in my mind, since I am occasionally breaking it by fiddling with the engine (Drupal, for the technically inclined) in the background, but it's very gratifying to know that people are interested in the subject. I think it must be timely.

Natalia has the roundup for Food Destinations #5 up on her blog now - go and check it out!

For Food Destinations No. 5, the theme of which is "Where Everybody Knows Your Name", our first inclination was to pick a restaurant we go to often. But while we have some favorites, we don't really go to any one restaurant more than once or twice a month on average, since we like variety when eating out. On the other hand, there are a couple of food stores that we shop in almost every day, where they truly know our names. One of our favorite haunts is our very typically Swiss local farm shop in the suburbs of Zürich.

Food Destinations is back for round 5! This time it's hosted by Natalia of From Our Kitchen, and the theme is Where Everybody Knows Your Name. <a href="Details are here! The deadline is March 18th.