On my latest visit to my local corner store for a junk food fix, I walked out with this: pumpkin chips and a German candy bar loaded with cornflakes.

Both of these items I had never had, and both were a total score! The chips were light and crispy (almost like astronaut food) and not greasy. The candy bar was sweet and crunchy—a great alternative for those who love the all-American Krunch bar. If you happen upon these yourself, I highly recommend you give them a try.

I love “gourmet junk food!” It not only makes me feel less guilty about eating chips and a candy bar for a snack, but also is an endless surprise to see what cool new foodstuffs are being made!

At the end of a recent dinner of sushi, these tiny packages of Japanese bubble gum were presented with my bill. So cute and so delicious! Surprisingly, the bubble gum tasted just like fresh honeydew melon and Valencia oranges! Now I need to find a Japanese candy shop, so I can find more flavors!

…Was me, of course!

My deviled eggs were made with a classically seasoned filling that included mayonnaise, chopped shallot, Dijon mustard, Worcestershire sauce and hot sauce.  Joe’s recipe had some similar ingredients but were further embellished with Kalamata olives and boiled shrimp.  Both were really great, said our judges, but at the end of the picnic, my plate of eggs had less on it.  Thus, I am naming myself the winner!  (However, Joe insists that I cheated because at the last minute I used one of his ingredients—Worcestershire sauce.  But, may I remind him, I didn’t follow a recipe and used only my years of deviled egg eating as my guide, whereas he followed one to a T…)

So, now that Emeril has teamed up with Martha, I feel it necessary to tell y’all just how much I love using her cookbooks and reading Martha Stewart Living. Her cooking expertise has been a guide for me throughout my entire career, and when I am stuck on a way to make a recipe just right, it is not uncommon for me to reference her version for a point in the right direction.

With that, I’d like to share one of her recipes for a pickled vegetable salad, called “Vegetables Escabeche,” that I have used time and time again. It is a perfect side dish for a barbeque (the acid in the pickling liquid ease the bite of spicy sauces); of course, it’s delicious; but best of all, it’s easy (just a bit of knife work, really)! However, your guests will think you slaved away and are headed down the path of culinary enlightenment…

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The microplane, a well-known tool by many professional chefs, is a great way to make zesting and grating an absolute breeze. I love using it for grating hard cheese, citrus zest and garlic. Give it a try and I’m sure you will never resort to your box grater again. (And if you are as clumsy as I am with a box grater, you’ll avoid grating your knuckles too!)

This classic non-alcoholic drink made of ginger ale and grenadine syrup was always my favorite way to feel “all grow up” when I was a child. But now, as an adult, I’ve found another version of the drink for a more mature audience…

Pama, a pomegranate liqueur, is a fantastic alcohol-based substitute for the grenadine. Simply add about a shot of Pama to a highball glass filled with ice and top off with ginger ale. To spruce it up, sugar the rim of the glass first and garnish it with a slice of fresh lime. It’s a perfect summer cocktail, and would certainly fancy up your Fourth of July festivities.

…In Spain, that is.

While living in Madrid, I frequented many tapas bars where it is customary to eat bite-sized portions of a variety of foods while sipping small glasses of local beer called cañas.  While snacking away, it is also common to throw your paper napkins on the floor.  As an American, where this is far from normal, I thought the place I was eating was headed for a health department closing.  How wrong I was.

To the Spanish, the mounds of napkins, toothpicks and straws on the floor are a sign of just the opposite.  They don’t signify that the restaurant is a bad place to eat, but instead, that it is a great place to eat.  And depending on the amount of discards on the floor, will tell you just how good it is.  If there is good-sized mess, they probably have some really great food and drink prices, whereas if the place is spotless, it probably is subpar and hasn’t seen customers all night.

It seems the trend in fine-dining these days is to combine less-than-typical flavor combinations.  Take, for example, how savory ingredients (like bacon) are not that uncommonly found on the dessert menu at a handful of New York City restaurants.  But, tell me, what explains these combinations?

Just the other day, I heard about a guy who ate bagels with ketchup for breakfast at his office desk.  And, not long after, I heard about another person mixing beer and sprite.  Is this just junk food gone terribly wrong, or maybe yet another wave of progressive palate exploration…?  I’m too scared to try them for myself to see!

This Fourth of July my boyfriend and I are going to have a deviled egg recipe contest!

We were invited to a friend’s barbeque and while figuring out what to bring, we both agreed on deviled egg.  However, we did not decide on the recipe.  His recipe is some fancy, schmancy version that calls for shrimp; mine, on the other hand, is a good old-fashioned version that calls for lots of Hellmann’s mayonnaise and mustard.

Once we make them, I’ll post both recipes for you to decide which is best….

Many people associate eggplant with sauces like tomato Parmesan.  However, Japanese eggplant, which is a smaller variety of the typically large vegetable, lends itself well to the intense flavors of Japanese cuisine. Its flavor is very similar to the larger variety–mild and neutral; but I rarely see it used at Japanese restaurants.  Although, just last week I saw eggplant on the menu at my neighborhood Japanese restaurant, so of course, I had to order it!

The dish was comprised of five perfectly roasted Japanese eggplant slices that were drizzled with a salty - sweet miso glaze. The soft pieces of eggplant whose subtle flavor was not lost under the caramelized topping of slightly charred miso glaze, was topped with a fancy little flower carved from a carrot. The result was great!