Chilefire.com.
Chilefire is the labor of tasty love of Bryce of Wyoming. It’s a food blog that offer up spice and everything nice: information about spices, recipes, restaurant reviews…even home brewing tips. To some, chiles may merely be something hot…to others a reason for a long sit on the “throne” a day later…but to Bryce spices are part of the joy not just of eating but of living. He writes, in part:
Cooking is one of my great pleasures. I enjoy nothing more than creating food that enlivens the palate, invokes strength of flavor, and speaks of refined textures and seductive and sensuous aromas. Spices, herbs and aromatics are to me like pigments to a painter – to be mixed in an endless variety of alchemical compounds, elixirs, and infusions.
But spices, herbs and aromatics go beyond the pleasures of the palate. Historically, in early trade, spices often took the place of currency, they have played important roles in the healing arts, adding properties to medicines, and enhance our seductive qualities, bringing scent to perfume.
The flavors brought by these botanicals also become synonymous with location – certain foods evoke immediate recognition of where they originate, and the mythologies and imagination we associate with with these faraway places. Spice has for much of history traveled where we as individuals could not, or have not. I have never been to Shanghai, but if I close my eyes I can vividly imagine salty caramelized roasted pork sticky with a sweet plum, soy and start anise, served from a street vendor surrounded by wafts of fragrant smoke. Cuisine is, in my mind, just as much a medium for expressing culture as is art, literature or music.
All blogs are NOT just political blogs, which can sometimes leave a bitter and rancid taste in your mouth (with the exception of TMV, of course, which leaves a sweet, wondrous perfect aftertaste..).
If you want a recipe, brewing info, or just to think about something delicious (spice) and not stomach-turning (politics), Take A Peek at the labor of love and incredible resource called Chilefire.com. Its great flavor will stay with you throughout the day. Take A Peek at Chilefire — and we know you’ll be taking a daily peek.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.