Mike D + Roy Choi

Prior to his days covering the city's tastiest (and unhealthiest) lunches under $10, Los Angeles food blogger Zach Brooks of Midtown Lunch worked as a music programmer at Sirius Satellite Radio in New York. But when Brooks went bicoastal two years ago, he didn't give up his love for music but instead channeled it into a site called "Food Is the New Rock", which just launched its first "preview" podcast yesterday.

When the podcast officially launches next month, Brooks and co-host KCRW DJ Chuck P -- a figure who is something of a local legend among music geeks -- will host a special guest each week to discuss "the places where food and music intersect in pop culture." So what type of crowd is Brooks hoping to attract to the show? "We might talk to a musician about food, or a food person about music, or maybe just a random person who likes food and music," he says.

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R. Narins

If you're already a podcast listener, then you most likely know and love KCRW's Good Food and The Splendid Table, two of the best shows on the radio, ready for uploading at any time. In terms of food coverage, there's also NPR, Martha Stewart ... the list goes on. Those shows are great because they're professional, intelligent, thoughtfully researched and produced. Fantastic hosts help, too.

There are a lot of other, less well-known food podcasts out there as well. We listened to a lot of them and were amazed at the variety: Veganism, health consciousness, barbecue, baking -- you name it, there's a podcast for it. So we downloaded and compiled (and alphabetized) a list of five of our favorite food-related podcasts. Ear candy, if you will. Turn the page.

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Food Network

Duff Goldman (left) of Ace of Cakes

Duff Goldman, owner of Charm City Cakes (now in L.A.) and star of Food Network's Ace of Cakes, made a shocking admission on Saturday's episode of Good Food. The reality star told host Evan Kleiman: He hates fondant.

The man who built an empire on the stuff flat-out says, "I hate fondant. I don't like eating it." Apparently, neither should you. It's not meant to be eaten. It's meant to be peeled off the cake, according to Goldman.

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T. Nguyen

When it comes to tipping a server at a restaurant, do you: (a) always leave 20% of your bill, as that is the socially proper thing to do; (b) leave greater than the standard 20%, because you too are a server/barista/bartender/etc. and intimately know the pain of bad tippers; (c) leave nothing, as you do not believe in the practice; or (d) leave a tip that you think best captures, in monetary terms, the quality of service you received from your server?

Based on a recent segment on NPR's Planet Money, most people believe that tipping should, in theory, reward good service and punish bad and so choose (d); it is not uncommon for those who work in the service industry to choose (b) and tip generously, regardless of the quality of service they actually received; and apparently only Mr. Pink is ballsy enough to choose (c). As it turns out, Mr. Pink is the only honest one amongst us.

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Norman Rockwell

Once, an uncle, having consumed half his weight in Fetzer Chardonnay, switched to Sierra Nevada halfway through Thanksgiving dinner, and remarked, quite loudly, as he took an exploratory sip and jauntily contemplated the bottle: "This beer tastes like p***y."

Thanksgiving can be bad enough with family and friends, but they're at least easy to forgive for all the dumb stuff they say when they're full of stuffing and drink. What if a horde of strangers came over every year, crowded into your dining room, picked at your turkey, and clucked away?

Scott Macaulay knows how that feels. Twenty-five years ago, he placed an ad in the Melrose, Mass. newspaper offering to cook Thanksgiving dinner for twelve strangers. As NPR's Morning Edition reported last week, he is still cooking today. However, now there are nearly seven times as many guests. And because he's been doing it for two-and-a-half decades, quite a few are no longer strangers, but old friends. In the piece, Macaulay breaks down his hosting routine:

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The Great Fire of London. Khrushchev's visit to Cedar Rapids. The origin of computer viruses. Muhammad Ali's skirmishes with the U.S. military. The creation of the peace sign. No, these facts aren't from a Jeopardy! audition drill, but instead trivia you could be learning from the Dinner Party Download, the Los Angeles-based podcast that cares equally about serious food and about clever chitchat. It turns out that L.A. isn't just a one-food-themed-radio-show-town, after all.

Locally crafted, national in scope, and produced by Minnesota-based American Public Media, the Dinner Party Download launched in July of 2008 and ever since, co-producers and co-hosts Rico Gagliano and Brendan Francis Newnam have filled each show "with the awesome stuff we love." Food is the consistent thread and default topic.

The Dinner Party Download has been on an every-other-week schedule until today, when it officially goes weekly.

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Evan Kleiman is baking pies again. This might not seem like a particularly momentous announcement -- a chef baking pies -- were it not that Kleiman, chef-owner of Angeli Caffé, cookbook author and host of KCRW's radio show Good Food, baked pies every single day for months last year as part of her Pie-a-Day project on her KCRW blog. One would think she'd be pie-ed out, but such is not the case. In fact, she will restart her Pie-a-Day Project this Monday, June 14th, which will include not only daily posts of recipes, pictures and stories from Kleiman and guest chefs and bakers, but a weekly Piecast. The pie marathon will culminate, unsurprisingly, in the 2nd annual Good Food Pie Contest on Labor Day weekend. Count the days. That's a lot of pies.

"Hey, if it's summer, it's pie time for me," emailed Kleiman yesterday when we asked her if the pie obsession had in fact returned. "Also, since we're doing another pie contest at the end of the summer it will be good to whip everyone up into another pie frenzy. It's such an antidote to all the crazy stress that's floating around." Nothing like a good pie to counteract too much CNN, a nail-biting NBA finals, the start of the World Cup, and whatever else that's driving you a little crazy right now. Apple pie, perhaps, like this Best of Show prize-winning apple pie from Barbara Treves, the recipe for which can be found on Kleiman's blog. Time to start your ovens.

KCRW

Barbara Treves' Best in Show pie, 2009 contest

If you've been stuck in the car listening to public radio during the last few days, you're painfully aware that KPCC is currently conducting a pledge drive. You also know by now how much Tom Hanks likes public radio, as both he and his driver have done recurrent bits for the cause. Apparently not only is the actor a big fan of public radio, but he's also a big fan of pies. For after hearing his driver, Bo Stevenson, compare listening to stories on the radio to having a neighbor read a newspaper aloud while eating pie at a neighbor's house, Hanks promptly went over to Pie 'N Burger in Pasadena -- KPCC is broadcast from Pasadena -- and bought everybody at the station warm apple pies. Now, normally we do not really care about what celebrities do in their spare time (unless they're at Lakers games), but as we do care about both public radio and pies, we thought this was worth a mention. And those pies are really good too.

Your box of chocolates joke can go here _________. If you want to support public radio, you'll have to get in touch with them. Alternative free newspapers do not have pledge drives, at least not yet, but if anyone wants to bring pies into the office, please feel free.

Flickr/whitneyinchicago

apple pie

Zocalo Public Square

Evan Kleiman, Ruth Reichl, Jonathan Gold and Laurie Ochoa at the Skirball in January

You can now hear KCRW's Good Food host Evan Kleiman and LA Weekly's Pulitzer Prize-winning food writer Jonathan Gold on Friday afternoons. A condensed version of Gold's weekly restaurant profiles on Good Food will be played at 4:44 p.m. as part of All Things Considered. Rush hour never sounded so good. Check out the podcast here.

(This post has been updated since it was originally posted.)

This is all getting very amusing. Now that the schizoprenic mashup of @ruthbourdain is getting lots of airtime, the players themselves are joining the meta-conversation. Via YouTube, we now have Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert discussing Ruth Reichl's tweets and @ruthbourdain on Martha Stewart's Sirius Radio show. Listening to the two chefs read Reichl's tweets on air is hilarious. One thinks of William Shatner reciting Bashō. But not as hilarius as Reichl herself calling in to read her own latest tweet.

"So do you have any idea who Ruth Bourdain is?... I thought maybe it was you, Eric," says Reichl. "A woman would never say 'cloudy as fuck.'" "Probably not, but the way you say it, it sounds like Latin." Whoever you are, Ruth Bourdain, you have done us all a great service. Just, please God, let us not have a string of copy-cats. A series of derivative Twitter mashups of, say, @marthalagasse or @marioray is NOT a good idea.