Today New York Times writer Manny Fernandez wrote about the 99-cent pizza craze that has been spreading across Manhattan.  But, he isn’t the first one to note cheap, $1 and under food.  About a year ago, I did a round up for Serious Eats that included pork buns, noodles, and sticks of meat from Flushing, Queens’ Chinatown; $1 falafel sandwiches; cheap sushi; and 39 cents an ounce frozen yogurt.  Josh Bernstein has also been rounding up cheap eats by neighborhood for Metromix.  He recently stumbled on the Hell’s Kitchen area and talked about the same pizza Fernandez did in his article.

What’s up with this craze?  Is 99-cent pizza worth it?  Adam Kuban of Slice didn’t say in his cheap pizza battle last year, but he also didn’t say he really liked either pie.  Some things I think work well as $1 items, like ices on the street in the summer, hot dogs, and French fries.  But overall, I would rather pay $2 for a really good slice, then bother with a kind of gross one for less.

I don’t know when sushi shaped like cats, or cats eating cute pieces of sushi became a popular image, but I am glad it did. What could be cuter then a salmon roll with a smiling cartoon cathead on it? Or a game where you play a round blue feline who eats sushi? Either way, sushi and cats, what a perfect combo.

One thing you should know, I think Starbucks is brilliant.  Well, more I think the people behind the brand are brilliant.  Not only have they made coffee into a luxury and necessary item, but they have trained us to ask for it by funny names like caramel macchiato, or crave a skinny vanilla latte, or even worse, use a benign size system.  Tall?  What does that mean?  I worked in a cafe for over 5 years and nothing was more annoying then someone asking for a grande macchiato when really they meant a medium (I think) latte.

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Last night I had the pleasure of attending a party at the Brazilian Consulate in honor of Leticia Moreinos Schwartz’s new cookbook, The Brazilian Kitchen.  The small room was packed with Schwartz’s family, friends, publisher, and other food-oriented people mulling about the makeshift bar and sipping fresh made Cabana sponsored caipirinhas.  As we downed the dangerously delicious cocktails, plates of finger food created from recipes in Schwartz’s book made the rounds.  From delicate puffs of hot cheese bread (page 16), to the heavy and fried beef croquettes (page 23) and black-eyed pea fritters (page 31), and to the rich caipirinha flavored bonbons (page 166), the samplings of the evening barely brushed the contents of her book.

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I love Rick’s Picks, especially their Smokra‘, a delightfully spicy, paprika spiked pickled okra.  But what, pray tell, do you do with the wonderful brine leftover after you finish these addictive beauties?  The other day I was faced with such a conundrum, I didn’t want to throw it out, but saving it, really?  Well my answer was right on the jar: use as a meat marinate.  Yum.

So, I stopped by Whole Foods and bought a thick cut pork chop ($6.30) from the meat counter and brought it home.  There, I cut the piece of meat into six large chunks and plopped them into the jar.  Nothing could have been easier.  I let the pork sit for a couple days before I cooked it up in a frying pan.  No oil, no spice, just some heat to cook the meat.  After it browned in the juices on medium heat, I drained it and added some quartered Brussels sprouts.  That’s it, an easy, no mess meal.  When the meat was done, the spice of the brine shone through with a peppery tang.  Because it had sat in the marinate for so long, the pork was super moist.  Next time, I might try to put two pork chops in the jar and share, but I guess that means I need a new jar of Smokra’…oh darn.

Yesterday I hit up Greenlight Bookstore in Fort Greene to hear Louisa Shafia talk about her book, Lucid Food: Cooking for an Eco-Conscious Life.  Well, let’s be a little more candid, I mainly went to try the food she whipped up from recipes in this stunning cookbook.  On the table, she had a briny, crisp red cabbage, apple, and dulse salad (page 86),  a fluffy, fresh tortilla Espanola (page 36), and the bittersweet, flourless chocolate cake with prune puree and hazelnuts (page 65).  Um, yum?!  Each hor’dourves sized bite had a unique, refreshing flavor, but the best part, Shafia had gotten all her ingredients from the Fort Greene Farmer’s Market.

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The other day I got a postcard in the mail from the now defunct Gourmet Magazine (RIP) informing me that they would be making up the end of my subscription with the inferior Bon Appétit rag.  No, they didn’t call BA inferior, but it is.  This sparked my anger at Conde Nast for their ridiculous decision to end Gourmet after almost 70 years of quality food reporting.  Here was this great food publication, highly respectable, really well done, and now?  Nothing.  Just gone because Conde Nast didn’t want to wait for the recession to end.  So what if newsstand sales were down 25 percent this year?  Give it a chance to bounce back!  There are tons of food publications out there, but Gourmet was the crème de la crème.

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Possibly one of the most amazing people I have met, chef Anne Apparu has been in the culinary world since she can remember.  Her parents ran a restaurant and her overall sense of flavors and spices really give her a gift at whipping things together.

“With a dead baby pig in her arms, Anne Apparu receives news that her good friend and former brother-in-law Dash Snow, has died. But instead of breaking down, Apparu has a meal to cook. So she gathers her ingredients from various local sources like East Village Cheese, the coop on 7th Street and Essex Street Market, and heads home to her loft apartment and well-stocked kitchen in the East Village.

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Cupcakes Take the Cake's Nichelle Stephens and Rachel Kramer Bussel. Cakes by Nora Vetter of Nibbles by Nora

I did these photos of some food world records by the World Record Appreciation Society at Crash Mansion for Time Out New York last month.  They came out pretty cool.

Check out the slide show here.

As I was combing through The Onion online, I came across a list of junk food they compiled. Given that it is The Onion, I at first thought it was hoax.  But no, their “Criterion Collection of junk food: 19 snacks and sodas we wish were still on the market” is true.  Of them, I only know Hershey’s Cookies and Cream chocolate bar.  The rest are from the 70s to mid 80s.  There are even some Youtube videos of old commercials!

Can’t really think of any snack I really miss.  When I was younger I had a hankering for MoonPies, but I am pretty sure I have seen them off and on.  What other junk food staples are missed?