One Thousand Appetizers Served

Here's an interesting milestone: since the inception of this weblog in July 2003, I have posted a whopping 1,000 "Appetizers," the daily links to food stories, recipes, and ephemera on your right (archived here). I'm not sure whether this is an achievement to take pride in, or a measure of an obsessive interest in food that has no limits! Let's take a positive view and go with the former interpretation. After all, the Appetizers must go on!

With this landmark accomplishment in The Food Section history, I thought I would take a look back at some memorable links past. Below is a sampling of notable Appetizers from the last 15 months -- one link for each month since the birth of this site.

September 2004
· How To: Twinkie sushi.

August 2004
· Technique: Picklenet, "the guide to all things pickle and pickling."

July 2004
· Food Art: Founded in 1998, the First Viennese Vegetable Orchestra performs music played on vegetable-based instruments, including the "cuke-o-phon" and the "radish-marimba," as well as the occasional kitchen utensil. What happens to the vegetables post-performance? "The instruments are subsequently made into a soup so that the audience can then enjoy them a second time," notes the orchestra's official Web site.

June 2004
· Etichettando, "The first and only Italian web site on all collecting sides of the fruit labels."

May 2004
· The Nippy, and other lore from J. Lyons & Co.

April 2004
· "The First Annual Bread of Affliction Smackdown."

March 2004
· A chronology of chain restaurant history.

February 2004
· Thomas Jefferson's pasta machine.

January 2004
· Gossip: Novelist Jay McInerney rumored to succeed William Grimes as Times restaurant critic.

December 2003
· A rebuke against food porn.

November 2003
· Mapping the French kitchen.

October 2003
· Wine Lexicon: From "Accessible" to "Zingy."

September 2003
· Stranger Than Fiction: TV cook Rachael Ray poses for lad mag.

August 2003
· Blackout recipes.

July 2003
· Airline meals, through the ages.