I’ve been working on a blog project. Since I ‘m having someone work on a new design for my blog, he’s told me there is bad code in a lot of my posts. You can’t see it, but it would wreak havoc once I have a new design template. With my present design I also had numerous font issues – those of you who emailed me long ago about how my blog was hard to read – I hope you’re okay with it now. He fixed that for me first off, before he even started designing something new. But meanwhile, I needed to go into every single, solitary post I’d ever written (whew) and look at the html and remove all kinds of code crap. That project took at least 100+ hours of work. I didn’t do it all in one fell swoop, but over about 3 months. Hopefully they’re all fixed now, as of this week. Because I have lots of links in my posts, I couldn’t just use a total clean-all-html program (I have one of those, called ecleaner), because I would have had to re-enter all those links (to websites like Amazon, Penzey’s, and to recipes on my own blog too). Better (safer) to just find and delete the bad code.

So, in the process, I re-read a lot of old posts, and realized that there were still a bunch of posts (back when I had a fractured foot and wasn’t cooking or taking pictures of anything) without any photos. Or posts with internet photos instead. Not good! 

Chicken Bamako was one of them, and I’m now glad to have a real photo of this great chicken dish. I’m going to refer you to the original post for Chicken Bamako, for the recipe – now with this new photo above.

But I did make a couple of little changes to the recipe. Basically here’s what you do to  make these: I use boneless chicken breasts, marinate them for about 2+ hours only in lemon juice, then roll them lightly in olive oil, then in the herb mixture (actually it’s a LOT of herbs) and generously sprinkle the inside (the inner part of the roll) with a new purchase from Penzey’s, their Brady Street Cheese Sprinkle (a very fine powdered mixture of cheese and herbs). The rolls are covered in a half a piece of bacon and baked. I bake them for just 25 minutes – a shorter period of time than the recipe indicated, because one of the biggest problems with this dish is that it can go from perfectly cooked to overcooked in no time flat.

So, if you’re needing something different, and your family enjoys herbs, then have at this one. The herbs, although numerous, don’t overshadow the chicken. Serve with a side of pasta and a green veg. This is not a recipe for the feint-of-heart, though, you’ve gotta like herbs!
A year ago: Peas with Pancetta

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There are these things that go around the blog world now and then – called a meme. A blogger starts one and tags it to others. Usually it’s a list of questions and the person is supposed to answer them, then pass the torch on to other bloggers. Nobody’s ever sent me a meme, thank goodness, as I don’t know that I’m all that good at it, or that I even want to do them. But I was reading David Liebovitz’s list of 25+ random things. He didn’t stop at 25, but at 89. Whew. I’ll be lucky to get close to 25, I think. He talked about lots of different subjects, most of them NOT about food, but about him, the person, his character, his politics, his likes and dislikes. If you aren’t a follower of David Liebovitz, the list might not be as interesting as it was to me, having read his blog for a couple of years. He actually thinks he’s not a very interesting person, and wonders why people contact him, want to meet him, etc.

But, composing a list of random things? Well, maybe I can do this one. Here goes:

1. I don’t actually like to cook every meal, every day, day in and day out. My hubby fixes breakfast, although at the moment we’re on a new breakfast menu, so I really do all the work at other times of the week, he just kind of puts it on plates and does a minor amount of cooking to get it there. And we go out to eat about 1-2 times a week for lunch, and at least once a week for dinner.

2. I miss having a dog. But we’re not sure we want the commitment of having one again.

3. I don’t like organ meat. Except pâté.

4. I’m actually quite good with computers. But then I get confounded with some simple problem now and then. I have to sit quietly and think it through – using logical reasoning – to figure it out. Sometimes I’m not successful. I’ve never had any real computer training . . . just picked it up by doing and reading. I did all the computer training for the staff at the ad agency I co-owned, and did all the network administration.

5. I am an only child.

6. Basically I’m a very shy person. Walking into a room full of strangers, where I’m supposed to interact with them, is very intimidating. Unless I’ve been asked to speak to the group about something that I know or understand well. Isn’t that funny? I can do public speaking, no problem.

7. I detest filing, and my home office shows it. That’s why you’ve never seen a picture of it!

8. I’m really, really lucky – my husband enjoys grocery shopping and doing dishes!

9. I don’t really enjoy working out (I do it, but I’m saying it’s not fun), which is why I’m always battling calories in versus calories out. And losing the battle.

10. Once upon a time I lived in Washington D.C. and worked as a clerk/secretary at the Department of Agriculture. Very boring. I had the choice of two jobs – that one, or another that made more money, but the requirement was that I would have to cut the heads off of a whole lot of lab mice (with special mice-decapitating scissors) every day, pouring the blood into a vial, in prep for the mouse and its blood to be tested for various things. No way could I do that. Fortunately I moved about 8 months later.

11. I’m fed up with politicians. Period. I really don’t care which party they belong to, I think most of them are corrupt. Their definitions of honesty, morality and ethics differ from mine.

12. I rarely read the newspaper anymore. Too depressing, period. Nobody writes any good news anymore. Besides, I don’t really trust that the news is accurate, anyway. We get a newspaper every day (my husband reads it, and I do occasionally). On Sundays I read the travel section and Parade. Sometimes the arts and entertainment section. That’s it. I do, however, listen to the radio (news and news/talk) when I’m out driving, so I do get news and commentary that way.

13. I don’t eat much fish anymore unless it’s wild caught. I’m very concerned about what we, as consumers, are doing to the natural order of things because we crave and clamor for all kinds of fish, all year around, everywhere. Therefore, fish producers scramble to raise more and more, using questionable feeding practices and confined pens (here I’m talking about salmon and shellfish mostly). Same thing goes for beef, pork and chicken. I’m buying more and more organically grown meat, too.

14. I never have enough hours in the day to do the things I want to do.

15. I have a luv-affair with my Tivo. I record (not in any particular order) The Closer, Dog Whisperer, Little People, Big World, Barefoot Contessa, CBS’s Sunday Morning (a basic “good news” program), Oprah, Nova, Masterpiece Theater Classics, Steven Raichlen’s Primal Grill, among other things. Also Meerkat Manor, but it’s not “on” at the moment.

16. When I go to sleep at night I plug into my ipod, which has a bunch of (radio) podcasts on it, everything from book reviews, high tech talk shows, to a few food programs too. I usually fall asleep within 10-15 minutes and the ipod shuts off by itself when the program is finished. This morning at the gym I listened to a speech about Andrew Jackson (from a new book about him).

17. I don’t text message. But I do have a cell phone which gets used mostly when I’m away from home. We have a multi-level home, and we have 6 cordless phones in different places in the house. And we have 3 televisions (actually 4, but we never watch the one in the bedroom). I have two computers and my husband has one which he rarely uses.

18. I wish I could write a novel. But my mind just can’t wrap itself around creating a fictitious story.

19. Some years ago I started an investment club, and have learned a whole LOT of stuff as a result of that, but I’m very disenchanted with what’s going on in corporate American business these days (those companies that are public ones) and the things they hide. Makes me wonder whether there are any companies out there running ethical businesses. Business ethics seem to be a thing of the past. Makes me question whether we as individual investors should really entrust companies with our money. Their track records of late haven’t been very good.

20. Celebrities should never be revered as knowing more than any other average joe. Why do celebrities think they know more about politics or politicians than I do? And why do so many of us ordinary people give them credence – mostly we’re far too gullible or star-struck.

21. I have zero credit card debt. (I have credit cards -two of them – but they get paid off each month in full.) And I think what the credit card companies out there have done to encourage people, young and old, with good credit and bad, from all walks of life, to spend up to unrealistic credit limits, is just criminal. Equally criminal are the individuals who have run up the bills and now think they shouldn’t have to pay it back. We, the steady payers, end up paying for those lenders’ bad judgment and the individual greed. Same thing goes for shoplifters – it angers me so much that we, as shoppers, end up paying more for products because stores don’t catch or don’t prosecute shoplifters.

22. I don’t believe in global warming. I came to that conclusion after reading Michael Crichton’s book State of Fear. Although it’s a fictional story, the subject has to do with global warming and the statistics and tables in the book are convincing, and factual.

23. I don’t believe I have ever re-read a book. Except the Bible. And I own hundreds of books (that I’ve read) that collect dust, but I like to look at them. I now own a Kindle (an electronic book reader device) and am trying to buy all works of fiction on it. Cookbooks? Nope. I want to see them in an actual book.

24. When I went to college, I decided to get a degree in Business (a B.B.A – Bachelor’s in Business Administration)). It was mostly a male-dominated arena then, but I was honored to receive an award as Student of the Year in my graduating year from the School of Business. I still have the plaque for it. I went to a small college, California Western University (no longer in existence), in San Diego. Oh, and I graduated from college in 3 years. Most semesters I took 21 units. And I worked part time too.

25. My very first job out of college was in a Personnel Dept. (now they’re called Human Resources Depts.) of a San Diego department store chain, as a trainer. Mostly I gave 2-day seminars on how to be a salesperson, and how to use the (now) antiquated cash register.

26. I really enjoy classical music. I took piano lessons from age 7-14. Then from 14-16 I took lessons on a huge church pipe organ, taught by a very aesthetic music professor at a private boy’s school in Newport, Rhode Island, where my parents and I lived for that 2-year period. My favorite composers? Bach, Strauss, Tchaikovsky, Prokofiev, Mahler. And for about 10 years my DH, Dave, and I sang in our 100+ voice church choir. He sings tenor and I sing 2nd alto. We are not singing in the choir at the moment, but want to return to it at some point.

27. I’m a practicing, believing Christian. And in case you didn’t know, prayer absolutely WORKS.

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One lone biscuit left when I arrived . . . maybe I’ll even get my DH, Dave, to post something about today’s recipe. He declared the other day, that when his Bible study guys were to come this past week, HE wanted to bake something. He gave me this kind of cheeky grin – like “give me something easy to make, okay?” So, I scrounged around my repertoire of recipes and spied this one. Terrifically easy. It came from an old newspaper clipping (Orange County Register, our local paper), and the article was written by Nancy Byal, of Better Homes & Gardens.

We don’t eat refrigerated biscuits much (they likely have trans fats in them, but I didn’t check). But they certainly do make for some easy cooking. I only have one other recipe I’ve posted here on my blog for such biscuits, the lemony Herbed Biscuit Ring, which is actually delicious, in case you’re interested.

But this needed to be a sweet type dish. It is, but not overly so. Dave found a new refrigerated biscuit product at the market – a Pillsbury crescent biscuit – so by phone I told him that would work, I thought.

I set out all the ingredients for him, and he and I read through the recipe the night before. As I came downstairs the next morning and popped my head into our dining room where the guys were gathered around the table I asked, “So, how did he do?” Well, there were a bunch of wild comments – all teasing ones. It sounds like all went well. I ate the last one, pictured above, and thought it tasted really good, considering it’s mostly a refrigerated biscuit! Here’s what Dave had to say about it:

For my Thursday morning Bible study, I decided that I’d show off and “bake” for the guys. Carolyn readily agreed [indeed, I was delighted]. With her great instructions, but not with her in the kitchen at 6:30 in the morning, I proceeded to put together this dish without telling the guys, and they all went nuts. They ate all but one. I was a total success. They said it tasted like pineapple upside down cake. Some of the guys who don’t cook are now worried about their status in the group – like peer baking pressure. . . . .  from Dave T

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A year ago: Irish Soda Bread

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Oh yum. Yes. Ever so good. I didn’t have the ingredients on hand to make the full Calabacitasrecipe that we luv so much (I lacked the poblano/pasilla chiles, fresh corn and zucchini). But I DID have yellow crookneck squash, frozen corn and cilantro, so I created a quick and easy southwestern style calabacitas.

A bit of onion was sauteed, then the squash was added, along with some salt, pepper, some Chilean seasoning called Merken Mapuche Spice, a bit of ground cumin, then corn was added, and a tad of fat-free half and half. At the very end I sprinkled in the chopped cilantro.

The MerkenChile/Mapuche Spice was something I picked up recently at an upscale market. Had never seen it, so therefore I had to try it. According to the label, it’s unique to the Mapuche indigenous people of Central and Southern Chile. The bottle is actually a spice combo: powder derived from the cacho de cabra chile peppers (also called goat’s horn), coriander seeds, cumin and salt. The story of how they make this unique spice is delightful – the Mapuche  are rural people in Chile, and every cook has her/his own combination for merken (sounds like curry powder in India). A small business has sprung up in cooperation with the Catholic Church in Chile to help these indigenous people distribute their organic products. If you’re interested, it’s imported through the Chilean Gourmet. They don’t yet have any recipes at their website, but I’ll keep checking back for them in the future. (They also sell honey and olive oil in case you’re interested!) The photograph of the bottle is from their website.

The merken, though, is fairly spicy, so this Chilean chile pepper must be some hot stuff! But I like it, so I leave it out near my stovetop so I can sprinkle it on other things if I’m so inclined.

What I don’t know is how they use this spice in their cuisine, other than as a sprinkle on just about everything (kind of like we use pepper, I think). Perhaps my use of it in a squash and corn concoction would meet with their approval!

Our son-in-law, Todd, is visiting for a week, and I thought he might just lick this vegetable dish right out of the frying pan it was made in, he liked it that much. It was easy. Really easy, especially if you have frozen corn on hand. I suppose you could even use canned corn, but I wouldn’t recommend it. But make it you should, if you enjoy these kinds of flavors . . .
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A year ago: Mustard & Herb Chicken

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Instead of individual chicken pieces, I decided to bake a whole roast chicken. With a hefty 6-pounder in hand (organic), I quickly scanned to-try recipes for a different method. I rarely turn to it, but I found a recipe in the book 365 More Ways to Cook Chicken. The recipe is a French style (really only the sauce), but it suggested baking it at 400 for 30 minutes, then reducing the temp for another hour or so. I did crank up the oven to 400, and reduced it after 30 minutes, but I used convection-bake on my oven, and it was done in about 45 more minutes of baking. If you have a meat probe, use it. I didn’t insert it to begin with, so only tested an instant-read one at the end – the breast meat registered 185. Perfect. The thigh is a better judge of done-ness, and it should come out at 180.

Meanwhile I made the quickly-assembled sauce. We had some home-grown tangelos (half orange, half tangerine) so used them as the cavity filler, and the juice and rind for the sauce. I sort of followed the recipe for flavors, but added some frozen orange juice concentrate to the mixture. Took about 10 minutes to make. That, along with some fresh asparagus and a leek/turnip puree and we had dinner. The chicken was perfectly cooked – ever-so juicy, and the sauce was tangy and tasty. I liked it all and will likely make it again. It wasn’t all that great left over. Don’t know why, but it wasn’t. Something happened to the sauce – it lacked flavor and zip the second time around. But first time through it was fine.
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A year ago: Borscht with Andouille Sausage

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If I hadn’t put a title in there you’d likely not even know what that lump of green stuff IS! Right? Not very attractive in the photo. I think it would be best using this as a bed for something, rather than a side veggie sitting there, green and all. Or else I should have garnished it with some Italian parsley. Or something. Anything. But the taste is what it’s all about, and this DID have good flavor.

I must admit, I’ve never given much thought to turnips. I haven’t particularly liked them, cut up and served like potatoes. I think my mother would occasionally serve them with a Sunday roast. Kind of dried and shriveled. And, they have . . . uhm . . . a kind of bitter taste. And from what I read about them, once turnips get to be mature, they do develop some bitter flavors. But then, I read that turnips have a low glycemic index. They’re only like a half a carb – I think I read that a turnip has less than 10 grams of carbs. So I wondered if I could eat turnips as a sort of carb, like as a mashed potato kind of carb. But I only had two small ones. Hence I prowled in the vegetable drawer and had leeks.

Next step was glancing at some turnip recipes. I turned to Deborah Madison’s tome, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, and there was a puree recipe. I decided not to follow it closely, but at least used it for preparation advice.

First I cut up the leeks and washed them. Then combined them with water and the turnip chunks and simmered them until the turnips were tender. I pulsed the batch with a bit of chicken broth (very little since the puree was thin enough as it was) and a tiny splash of milk, then some butter, and that was it. Very easy, really. Healthy as long as you don’t count the butter. Ha. Anyway, it was delicious. Really, really good. The leeks did become the predominant flavor, and I hardly knew there were turnips in this. I don’t know if that was the idea or not. In any case, I liked it and would make it again. Next time I’d drain the hot veggies for a minute or two to remove more of the fluid before whizzing up in the food processor.
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Seems like there are just a hundred ways to make butternut squash soup. I’ve posted a few – my roasted butternut squash soup (the most complicated of all of my butternut soups, but probably the best tasting too) – and my next favorite, zippy butternut squash soup with jalapeno and ginger. Then there’s another one, roasted butternut squash soup with pancetta and sage too. All of those are made with oven roasting and/or on the stovetop. All the soups are do-able, but I thought hmmm, maybe I could use my new slow cooker and make the jalapeno and ginger one even easier than it already was.

I looked up the ingredients and piled them into the slow cooker. Which means this is one of those recipes when you can throw it in the pot and forget it. No pre-cooking of anything. I didn’t saute the onions, or garlic. All I did was set it on high for about 2 hours, then at low for another 3-4 hours. Then I put everything in the blender, (in batches) along with just a bit of heavy cream and it was lick-the-bowl delicious. I didn’t add the brown sugar because it didn’t need it. I didn’t have creme fraiche which was called for in the original recipe, either, but otherwise the ingredients were very close to the first one. Quantities were a bit different. What makes this great is you can put everything into the crockpot and not have to bother with waiting for it to simmer. If you’re not going to be home, just do the normal thing – set on automatic (the older crockpots did that for you – my new one doesn’t) and it cooks for 2 hours at high, then switches to low until you turn it off.

Once the soup was smoothed out in the blender, I reheated it and served the soup with some toasted pecans on top. If you are going to make this, I’d recommend using my Peppered Pecans (my all-time favorite spicy nut) to garnish the soup. I happened to have had some leftover pecans from the Radicchio Salad I made a week or so ago which had a touch of cayenne in them. They were great on the soup. I particularly liked the texture change – the soup needs something to give it a different texture from the silky smooth consistency of the soup. Or, if you don’t want to be fancy, just toast some pecans in a nonstick skillet. The recipe made about 12 cups (2 cup servings), so I divided up the leftovers and put them in freezer bags (pictured) to go into my ongoing soup library.
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A year ago: Coconut Banana Bread

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Costco sells these already-sealed packages of chicken. Boneless thighs come with about 5 in a package. Boneless breasts usually have two small in each sealed pouch. Makes it so easy to count them, even defrost them in a bowl of water since they’re totally sealed up and can be submerged. I have these pouches stashed all over in the freezer, which makes it difficult sometimes to find them. But oh well, I did find a package of thighs and had just read this recipe.

Andrea’s Recipes is a blog I read regularly, and she mentioned in a recent post that there is a fairly significant Japanese population in Peru. Who knew? Hence, there are a number of different recipes that have been adopted by the general population as Peruvian. The addition of lime juice makes this grilled chicken different than the usual yakitori from Japan. Plus the use of cumin, paprika and oregano!

The chicken is marinated in this concoction (very low on the soy sauce scale). There is just a tiny splash of vegetable oil in the mixture. I made a half recipe for my batch of chicken thighs. We grilled ours, but there are directions for baking or grilling (both gas and charcoal). These were delish. Since I like cumin and oregano a lot, it married well with the other ingredients. And the soy sauce is a very minor player in the mixure of flavors. Just make sure you have sufficient time to marinate the chicken for at least 8 hours, or up to 24. And thanks to Andrea for her great recipe.
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A year ago: Shiitake-Crusted Chicken in Sauce

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Oh, was this ever wonderful! It was just a few days ago that I was reading Elise’s blog, Simply Recipes, and this dessert was front and center. With a similar picture to the one above. Doesn’t it look good enough that you’d like to reach right into your screen and cut yourself a slice? We haven’t had any desserts around here for a month, so it was fun to make something. And this was special.

In mine there is a mixture of apples and pears (the pears are the lighter colored pieces, and in between you can vaguely see apples – they absorbed more of the caramel, I guess). Elise made hers with only apples. I didn’t have but one apple, but I did have pears, so I made mine with a mixture. My one apple was a Granny Smith (not what Elise recommended), and the pears gave off a LOT of fluid, so my cake may be more juicy than hers. But it was delicious nevertheless. And cooked through, which was a concern Elise had with her dad’s previous versions of this cake made with Granny Smiths alone.

The recipe is just a tad different than some – the fruit is mixed with a caramel you make right in a skillet and you cook the fruit until it’s nearly done. Then you pour that into a high-sided cake pan that’s been lined with parchment paper and buttered. Then you make the cake batter which contains just a bit of cornmeal. I didn’t have ordinary cornmeal, but did have fine-ground polenta, so used that. There isn’t a lot of sugar in this entire cake (3/4 cup for everything). And there is just one cube of butter. It’s not difficult, either.

In reading some notes over at Elise’s blog about this recipe, some people had difficulty with the caramel – once they added the fruit it seized up, but after cooking longer, it released and all was well. I had no difficulty – I thought the pears had given off too much fluid, actually. And I didn’t cook the fruit as long as Elise indicated in her recipe. I also cut the fruit into 3 wedges for each quarter also (Elise did 2). Just notes to you if you try it too. One reader made hers in an iron skillet, so she saved dirtying up another pan to cook the fruit.

The verdicts: beautiful looking, and delicious tasting. The fine polenta cornmeal in the cake adds just a tiny bit of crunchy – it was wonderful. The cake is light. The fruit is not overly sweet, which I liked. My DH was in heaven both times he’s eaten it – and tells me it’s one of the best desserts I’ve made in a long time. Elise suggested serving this with vanilla ice cream. I didn’t have any, but had heavy cream so ours was served with whipped cream, an able substitute, I believe. I’ll be making this again. Yesiree. Thanks, Elise, for sharing this recipe.
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A year ago: Scott’s Broccoli Salad

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I have the itch to take a trip at the moment, but all things considered, the economy and all, the status of our investments that we live on, well, it’s not in the cards. So I live vicariously through the travel magazines I subscribe to. And in December’s Travel & Leisure they offered a list of  “BEST TRAVEL WEBSITES.” So many of them sounded good that I needed to go enter most of them into my bookmarks. But why not share them with you, too. Herewith:

Farecast.com – Predict the ideal moment to buy a ticket
yapta.com – get your money back if a fare drops (only if you have booked a fare directly through an airline)
delaycast.com – find on-time flights at 60 U.S. airports
seatguru.com – snag a seat with the best legroom (I’ve used this site for a couple of years)
insidetrip.com – increase your odds for hassle-free flight (trip quality)
aboutairportparking.com – prime parking at 500 international airports
kayak.com and sidestep.com – get best deals on flights and hotels (both companies now owned by kayak
wegolo.com – book low-fare carriers within Europe
traffic.com – avoid roadblocks in 100 U.S. cities
radio-locator.com – from your PDA or iphone punch in your ZIP and download a list of stations in the area where you are – 14,500 in U.S. and 6,000 international
opentable.com – make reservations here and abroad (8,500 restaurants) – I’ve used it even for local restaurants
seriouseats.com – stay current on the local food scene – an obsessive community of about a million foodies talk about restaurants, recipes, chefs, local markets
tripadvisor.com -reviews of hotels, restaurants, attractions plus 1.3 mil photos too (I’ve used this site for several years when blocking out a trip, mostly for hotel and restaurant reservations)
tvtrip.com – compare hotels in a destination (8,000 properties) via short videos
tripkick.com – pinpoint the best room in a hotel (450 hotels in U.S. only)
uptake.com – search U.S. hotels for theme (romantic, cheap, pet-friendly)
insidetrip.com – organizes flights by price and creates scores based on 12 “pain points” including likelihood of a delay, minimum legroom, etc.
travelpost.com – similar to tripadvisor – user-generated ratings and rankings of hotels, restaurants
urbanspoon.com– only if you have an iphone – provides restaurant recommendations in your neighborhood
ilingo.com – also only for the iphone – download hundreds of useful phrases in foreign languages
i-escape.com – boutique properties with about 1,000 reviews
unusualhotelsoftheworld.com – quirky hotels like igloo in Switzerland, castle in Australia, prison in Turkey, using a colorful interactive map
zicasso.com – custom trip plans (you receive a trip itinerary from a travel agent)
triporama.com – coordinate group travel – great for planning a group or family trip – everybody gets “on board” at the site to make to-do lists, chat, build itineraries
lastminute.com – package deals one week out
tripit.com – create no-fuss online itineraries which can be forwarded via email (includes car, hotel, flight, restuarants, maps, weather conditions and driving directions)
luxurylink.com – bid on over-the-top hotel stays and cruises
quintessentially.com – fulfill singular requests ($1,800 annual membership)
maps.google.com – overall directions (the best of all the competition)
viamichelin.com – driving directions, suggested routes for 61 countries, and in some cases it can be sent to your own GPS
hopstop.com – navigate major U.S. transit systems (bus, subway and taxi) in 6 major U.S. cities
flipkey.com – vacation rentals – 50,000+ listings with photos, maps, ratings and reviews
tripbase.com – destination ideas
luggageconcierge.com – ship your luggage in advance (6-10 days in advance of your trip)

And, the tried and true sites with some new options:
expedia.com – new fare alert tool downloads to your desktop, tracks flights for your desired destination and price range
orbitz.com – new price assurance policy – they monitor any flights you’ve booked up until the day of departure . . . if anyone books the same itinerary at a lower price, Orbitz will send you a cash refund
travelocity.com – new insider’s guide shows you how to find best deals on airfare, hotels, cruises and car rentals with flexible-date shopping and dateless hotel searches

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A  year ago: Chocolate Scones (oh yum, yes!)

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