Road trips seem very American to me. So it seems like a great way to spend the Independence Day Holiday! A road trip seems especially luxe in a 35ft Georgie Boy Pursuit R.V. that sleeps 8, with  2 televions, wet bar and full kitchen!

I am on just such a road trip as we speak (err, I mean type).

But this road trip in an R.V. is making it way through the wine country of Sonoma and Napa. I think our road trip food needs to be geographically appropriate. Corn Dogs and cotton candy have their place, just not on my plate.

Still we are in a recreational vehicle. It has a kitchen (of sorts). I am expected to pitch in on the kitchen duties. In fact on this first day of travel I am in charge of hors d’oeuvres. R.V. hors d’oeuvres! I like the sound of that…

But not only am I in an unfamiliar kitchen. But I am in an unfamiliar kitchen moving along CA1 at 60 mph. So there is a lot of room for kitchen disaster.

We are leaving tomorrow (well by the time you read this it will be today...) for 4 days in Sonoma in an R.V.  You read that right…Recreational Vehicle. It’s a first for Sup!

This is my last chance to make a nice meal at home for a few days. So I want to make something kind of special.

Now, special need not mean fancy. In fact special can be downright rustic. And I think rustic is a great way to describe this pork dish.

It’s a Pancetta-Wrapped Roast Pork Loin Chop. I am going to roast it with some whole cipollini onions.

Now pork is quite easily my favorite meat. It’s lean and flavorful. And if you resist the urge to overcook it is juicy and succulent too.

But in fact because pork is so lean, it's easy to overcook. Besides, somewhere in America’s cultural background Americans were led to believe that pork must be cooked through. Hogwash. Pork should be served pink.

Which is what makes this method such a great way to cook pork. Brining the chop and wrapping it in pancetta not only adds additional spice and sweet porky flavor, but it also helps you keep from overcooking the meat.

Especially if you use an instant read thermometer and take the meat out of the oven, just shy of 140 degrees F... Oh and let it rest. It’s important.

Sometimes I look at this blog I call SippitySup as a monster that needs constant feeding. And by feeding I mean choosing, writing and cooking recipes. Imagining and producing all sorts of witty commentary. Taking “TasteGawker” worthy photos, and responding in an intelligent manner to all the thoughtful and much appreciated comments from all of you.

So, just like my favorite musical “Little Shop of Horrors”,  I can imagine losing all sense of right and wrong just keeping up with the need to feed and care for my little “monster” Sup!.

Because just like the musical I sometimes allow my “monster” to convince and cajole me into believing that he will grow big and strong. In the process bringing me the promise of unimaginable rewards, luxuries, and glamour! Everything I have ever wanted, including world domination. IF ONLY I WOULD FEED IT ONE MORE TIME!

It's summertime. Which is the equivilant of fig stealing season. Err, well I mean fig foraging season. And I love fig foraging. There are 8 or 10 trees in my neighborhood. That's a lot of figs! So today I have a video of my favorite way to use up all that countraband booty that is starting to accumulate in my kitchen. I talking about fig jam. Please watch my fig jam video by clicking here or on any of the images. Or view my fig jam recipe here.

In order to properly pay tribute to the fig, you may learn more information today than you presume you will ever need! That’s because (as I like to say...) I think useless information is very useful. It comes in handy at dinner parties, business lunches, a trip to the grocery store, the dog park, and even the dentist's office. Anywhere you have an audience that thinks it might be rude to interrupt you. So take notes.

The fig is an ancient fruit (but you knew that, any decent fig lover worth his weight in jam knows that). The fig is mentioned all over the bible (ditto). It certainly was present in the Garden of Eden (double ditto), as certified by the fact that its leaves have ruined way too many otherwise sexy Renaissance works of art.

Today is Monday. I am sure all the TomatoManiacs out there are good and ready for another of the TomatoMania contest winners. You may view the other TomatoMania winners here.

So never fear! 5 Star Foodie is here. I am making her recipe for Candied Tomatoes with Basil Cookies and Honey Greek Yogurt.

I am not going to lie to you. This recipe sort of scared me. I mean Natasha at 5 Star is a very creative cook, with a lot more experience in the kitchen than I have. She has traveled extensively and finds great inspiration for her cooking among some of the great restaurants of the world.

I knew I would love the super buttery basil cookie. In fact I have been anxiously awaiting the day to make this little cookie. That is not where my anxities stemmed.

The truth is, my initial response to a candied tomato, roasted at a high heat, was, shall we say… measured.

Because of my initial trepidation about the tomato in this recipe, I strongly considered adapting this recipe to fit into my comfort zone.

I don’t know how to break this to Georgia, the supposed peach tree state. And to my friends in Bedford, NY that think New York peaches are “all that” – they are going to be devastated!

But California ranks first in the U.S. in the production of peaches, producing 71% of the total U.S. crop. We produce nearly 100% of the peaches destined for the can, and an impressive 50% of the fresh market peaches. These facts are facts. And from these facts we can deduce that California must grow some pretty damn good peaches. Case closed.

Peaches are at the very height of perfection right now in California, so I ran down the hill to the Hollywood Farmers Market and picked a peck of them for this week’s Market Matters post.

Yesterday I cleaned the kitchen. I don’t mean regular old sweep the floor, wash the dishes, and wipe down the counters cleaned.

I mean top to bottom, wash the walls, clean the exhaust vent, organize drawers, empty and scrub out the fridge, 4 hours of work kind of cleaning.

So I was prepared to say to Carl Cook and Betty Baker. “No Sup! for you” (ya’ know like Jerry Seinfeld)! Because, I was not about to make a mess; no kind of mess at all.

I hate admit it but I was enjoying imagining all of you pleading and begging for more. “Please Sup! I want some more” (ya’ know like Oliver Twist)!

But then I thought. “My goodness! Where did this streak of cruelty come from?” I like to think of myself as “happy and peppy and bursting with love” (ya’ know like Felix Unger)!  I mean would Lady Di withhold food from the starving?

But then again, I’m not Lady Di, and you are probably not starving. And this is of course, virtual food. Some might even say pretend food.

So I resolved to stick to my guns. “No Sup! for you (ya’ know yada yada yada…)!

But it did not work out that way, because today you get two recipes!

There are certain foods that define a region. This is a bit less true today than it was 40 years ago, but there are still a few foods so associated with a place that they help define it.

Beignets are an example. They belong so completely to New Orleans that I rarely even consider having one in my day-to-day life. But get me to New Orleans, and beignets will be one of the first stops I make.

Other examples are Philly cheese steaks and Boston clam chowder.

There are also regional differences between foods. In Pascagoula, Mississippi barbeque (the noun not the verb) is meat in a vinegary sauce. But not too far north in Memphis, Tennessee, people would roll their eyes at that. Because barbeque to them is smoked meat, with a dry spice rub.

There are other examples of this, and in this highly homogenized world we live in it’s fun to seek out the new, the different or the culinarily unique. And despite the chain restaurant syndrome, there still are a few “local” food traditions left in this world.

You know I have been a fan of StumbleUpon for several months. But like so many of these social networking tools I have come to find that I was not really taking advantage of all it has to offer. I want to pass along a few things I have learned in order to encourage you to use and benefit from the community building aspects of StumbleUpon.

In the food specific blogworld, sites like FoodGawker, Photograzing and TasteSpotting can indeed drive traffic to your blog. They are great at helping you build brand recognition, but their format actively discourages the reading of your material. So they really only service food-blog lovers, and only one type (albeit, a very important type) of food-blog lover.

Facebook is great for bragging rights and announcing new posts and reconnecting with your high-school BFF. But it can only go so far towards bringing you new readers. Which (for me) is what blogging is all about, readers!

Twitter is at least for “readers”. It is a lot of fun and can quickly make you a twitterstar, which will undoubtedly help your blog. But it is time consuming and a destination all its own for most of its users.

To me StumbleUpon is an amalgamation of all these social media outlets. It is great way for enhancing the image of your blog, it encourages cross-pollination of many types of blog lovers (not just foodies) and it’s unmatched in building an audience.

Welcome back to another TomatoMania Monday! Scott is here with the results of his Tomato Derby. In case you didn't know, the Derby was a race! A tomato race. He was out to see which varieties would fruit first. The original Tomato Derby post can be found here.  GREG

We Have A Winner!

The wait is over and yes, it’s officially tomato season!  Finally!
 
I turned green with envy recently reading about tomato festivals down south.  The season there is in full swing but cooler weather in the west has kept our season at bay for a couple weeks longer than expected.
 
The good news is that it looks to be a great season.  Our plants are loaded with fruit and just this weekend we picked Derby tomatoes!
 
The first of our early contenders to come through with ripe fruit is…STUPICE, the Czech heirloom!  We should change the name to “Old Reliable”. The plant doesn’t really look great, which is oddly different from last year, but we picked two this weekend and there are over 25 other fruits well formed and ready to ripen in the next few weeks.  Since they’re growing in containers they’re due a light fertilizing this week, so perhaps it will perk up as it delivers the rest of its crop.
 
The second to turn color is JENNY (pictured at top of post), the small orange hybrid.  (Greg, you’re growing this one too…picking yet?) The plant is tall, lanky and covered with fruit.  It’s officially a cherry but the fruit is slightly elongated and some are a little larger on the blossom end.  The taste?  Phenomenal.  Bright and sweet and so fresh.  We tasted one or two just as we picked them and enjoyed the flavor.  But the ones we brought in and left on the kitchen counter for three days? Amazing!

There were a lot of burgers on my plate this week. This is day 6...

We did a fairly classic Backyard B-B-Que with a bit of flair: a Horseradish Buffalo Burger. It seemed a good (fairly familiar) place to start my week long tribute to burgers.

That was followed up with a veggie option in the form of a meaty Portobello Mushroom Burger and all the fixin’s.

We took a world tour with Mini Lamb Burgers with Mango Salsa, and a Vietnamese influenced Lettuce-Wrapped Pork Burger.

My brother Sip! Got in on the action by sending me his recipe for a “Wine & Cheese” Burger that he paired with a great Australian red wine.

So today I want to mix it up yet again, with a Salmon Burger with Capers & Fried Lemon Slices.

You know me. I tend to be wordy.

I tend to go on and on telling you why I like something. Or what it means to me. Maybe I’ll feel the need to thoroughly explain every little detail in making a particular dish.

I can’t help it. It is just the way I am.

But today may be a bit different.

My brother Grant (Sip!) sent me one of his burger recipes to include in my weeklong (yearlong?) tribute the great American burger.

He is “Sip!” as you know, so he came up with a very cleverly named “Wine & Cheese” Burger. Which at first kinda irritated me. I mean I like to be the brother who is clever with words.

The reason it turns out this name is so clever is because it is a burger that really does pair up wine and cheese as ingredients. Red wine and blue cheese. One in a "jam" topping. The other "infused" in the meat.

He has taken his cleverness a step further and done another excellent wine pairing for this burger.

So I thought, "he went to so much trouble. The least I can do is make the damn burger".

So, I did. I think you’ll see why I have chosen to shut up and …eat!

The flavors of Viet Nam speak out loud and strong in this next burger. They were indeed the jumping off point for me in building this Asian influenced burger. You knew I had to do one, right?

After my love affair with the banh mi blossomed in San Francisco recently. I immediately began planning this burger. In fact it is where the whole idea of a week of burgers began. It was an excuse to make this burger. Hey! If Spud can do it with potatoes, then this is not such a far reach for Sup!

I used pork, which was an easy choice for me. I love pig in all forms. I also added several of the classic ingredients you find in banh mi. But that is where the similarities end.

While, I could have placed this burger onto a crunchy baguette, and called it a banh mi pork burger (and I thought about that). I decided to follow another Vietnamese food tradition and wrap this burger in a big lettuce leaf.

I also tucked in a salad-like mix of traditional banh mi toppings like: carrots, daikon, and cilantro. These were simply dressed with limejuice, fish-sauce, and coriander. I also used super hot Thai bird peppers (prik chi fa) instead of jalapeno because I had them handy.

Are burgers really worth a whole week of SippitySup’s time?

I mean, I know you love a good burger. They really are an iconic food. Which was my thesis when I announced a week devoted to burgers. If you missed my nostalgic tribute to the American style hamburger click here.

In the original post I made the argument that the sight of a burger sizzling on the grill was so very emblematic of the good old USA.

But in truth a classic American burger is nothing more than a seasoned meat patty. And seasoned meat patties appear in some form or another in the diet of nearly all the world's cultures.

Even the idea of cooking the meat outdoors is a “borrowed” method. There is some evidence that what has morphed into the “Back Yard Bar-B-Que" got its start a very long tome ago in Mongolia.

And on an international level, the choice of meat may vary. So might the seasonings. But the simple process of grinding, mixing, compressing and searing the juicy flavor into certain meats, herbs and spices has become universally beloved.