Although I couldn’t attend this past weekend’s Maker Faire, with its inaugural section dedicated to food, I did have a chance to learn a few new tricks for the kitchen.

It’s not a recent phenomenon for cooks to hack their utensils and ingredients—Homo “Handy Man” habilis figured out that meat on the stick thing, Mongol horsemen multitasked by salting and tenderizing and cooking their meat under their saddles, and my mom catches plump frogs with her pasta colander—but the DIY movement has inspired a whole new generation to explore simple, cheap, ingenious ways to accomplish everyday tasks.

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Black Tartarian Cherries: “Copyright 1910 – Edward M. Mitchell, San Francisco”

In celebration of National Postcard Week, which spans the first week in May in the US and UK, be sure to send out a few notes to your favorite folks. An actual piece of personal mail, let alone hand-written thoughts for someone you know and love, is the closest thing to a hug you can share long-distance.

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Tomorrow afternoon I’ll be moderating a panel discussion at the San Francisco Asian Art Museum’s Taste of Asia. Kevin Blum from The City Dish, Marcia Gagliardi from tablehopper.com, Nish Nadaraja from Yelp, and Pim Techamuanvivit from Chez Pim will share their insights on how online communities have changed the landscape of the restaurant world.

It should be an interesting conversation, as yours truly comes from traditional media (those fuddy-duddy, dead-tree newspapers, magazines, and books) and is always struck speechless by the museum’s sexualized marketing of Asia and usually prefers a nice, simple, home-cooked dinner to most restaurant meals. And yes, has her own blog.

Culinary Seminars:
Saturday, April 26, 2008
1:00 - 2:00 pm
Asian Art Museum
200 Larkin Street, San Francisco, California
$25, includes admission to all exhibits. For more information, call 415-581-3788.

This Friday, April 25, is ANZAC Day. Short for Australian and New Zealand Army Corp, it’s a day of remembrance for the 8,000 soldiers who died during the Battle of Gallipoli in World War I. Still young in their nationhood, Australia and New Zealand sent soldiers to join the Allied forces, who were landing on the Turkish peninsula in order to clear a sea route to supply the Russian army. Although the Allies had to retreat and although Gallipoli is remembered more for its mistakes than its accomplishments, the founding spirit of Australia and New Zealand rose from the image of the returning ANZAC soldiers: heroic, tough, irreverent and worthy of national pride freed from colonial superiority.

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I’m not sure my neural pathways for good ice cream and the future of agriculture have ever sparked simultaneously before, but a recent posting sure caught my attention. If you happen to know someone who recently received their Ph.D. in entomology, you can point them, too, toward Haagen-Dazs’ recently established fellowship in honey bee biology at the University of California, Davis. For those who need more hands-on training, be sure to check out the advanced workshop later this month on queen bee insemination.

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Breaking two cardinal rules in my kitchen—versatility and real-world functionality—my favorite new toy is silly, beautiful, and fun. It can only do one thing: make cookies in the shape of an obscure cut of lamb. A while back, while checking out the display cases at the excellent little butcher shop, Avendano’s, my friends spotted a batch of hand-crafted, limited-edition, copper cookie cutters. For some reason, they thought of me.

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