This week in Culinary Content, we feature Debonair Magazine's Food Blog Awards, an article arguing the modern merit of an ancient kitchen tool, and five delicious recipes, including: stuffed and fried squash blossoms, fried eggplant and goat-cheese sandwiches with tomato tarragon sauce, and three recipes that recreate the wares of New York City street vendors.

Recipes:

For recipes this week, I'm afraid I've strayed a little over the line into the unhealthy with fried and salty foods, but personally I am a believer in the occasional unhealthy treat, so long as such foods do not become the norm!

We try to keep fried foods to a minimum around here, but next time I get goat cheese I won't be able to resist trying this recipe for Eggplant and Goat-Cheese Sandwiches with Tomato Tarragon Sauce from the blog What Did You Eat? I'm a huge fan of eggplant parmesan, and this looks even tastier, if that's possible. Tarragon is a very interesting choice to spice this dish.

This recipe for stuffed and fried squash blossoms from the blog Married ...with Dinner looks delicious. The foodie police may come to take my membership badge away, but I actually had never heard of eating squash blossoms before. What a wonderful thing to do with some of the male blossoms that won't produce any fruit!

Bringing Street Vendors Home from Will Work for Food is both a plea for the plight of the New York City street vendors and an article with three very tasty looking recipes for food typically sold by street vendors. You will find recipes for Mexican corn on the cob - elote, New York style pretzels, and street vendor arepas.

Articles:

Debonair Magazine's Food Blog Awards have highlighted some of the best food blogs online with different categories for Best Recipe Blog, Most Entertaining Food Blog, Best Blogging Community, and more. They even get specific, such as Best Eco-Friendly Food Blog. Click through to check it out; you may find some interesting new pages to read regularly!

Nose to the grindstone: Every kitchen needs a mortar and pestle is Ashley Griffin's wonderful defense of the old-fashioned tool, and she is right: spices prepared with a mortar and pestle are worth the extra work. Just think of the vast difference between the powdered black pepper you can buy at the grocery store and the taste of freshly ground pepper direct from a pepper mill on your table. You can have similar improvements with all of your spices when you use a mortar and pestle.