Gee whilikers!  April Fool's Day is right around the corner!  Today, as I was taking my morning walk around the neighborhood, my mind began to drift away into a fog of silly notions. Whistling under my breath as I walked along, I started to speculate as to what it would be like if some famous personalities from the past and the present day were Food bloggers! Hmmmmm.....

JACK KEROUAC

Based in Lowell, MA, Kerouac's blog, On The Table, won the 2006 Blogger's Choice Award in the socal activist food category. He blogs about current issues in the American food production system. Excerpt from most recent blog post: "The charging restless mute unvoiced bacon keening in a seizure of tarpaulin power."

GERTRUDE STEIN

Gertie's blog, Escargotsquad, originates from the Left Bank area of Paris where she maintains a pied-a-terre on the Rue de Cassoulet. A longtime favorite of food blog readers in Europe, her slightly eccentric blog posts feature colorful illustrations by her close friend, Pablo. Stein's college roomie, Alice B. Toklas, makes occasional guest posts whenever Gertie's out of town visiting a nearby Swiss health spa. Excerpt from most recent blog post: "A casserole is a casserole is a casserole is a casserole."

MAMIE EISENHOWER

Mamie writes her blog, Cooking With Mamie, out of a small farmhouse in Gettysburg, PA and enjoys posting recipes that involve fudge. She was a big hit at this year's BlogHer convention where she dazzled the crowd with a flaming hard boiled egg jello-mold! Excerpt from most recent blog post: "Every cook over fifty should stay in bed until noon."

GROUCHO MARX

Groucho, a retired comedian from the Catskills, posts his Animal Crackers blog from The Cherry Hill Senior Citizens Community Center in upstate New York. Amid rumors of a possible book deal with Random House, Groucho recently stated, "I did toy with the idea of doing a cookbook. I think a lot of people who hate literature but love fried eggs would buy it if the price was right." Excerpt from most recent blog post: "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana."

JIMI HENDRIX

Based in Seattle, Washington, Jimi writes what he calls "a cosmic soul food blog." The Hendrix blog, Neon Rainbow Barbecue, has received accolades from the mainstream press for its unique style which harkens back to the 1960's psychedelic era. Excerpt from most recent blog post: "Even souffles made of sand, fall into the sea, eventually."

MARK TWAIN

Twain, who collaborates on his Hannibal's Cannibals blog with his two young sons, Huck and Tom, is based out of Hannibal, Missouri and enjoys posting about the buccolic pleasures of Southern food. Excerpt from most recent blog post: "The confabulation of our gumbo had drawn many curious spectators in town, including our next door neighbor, Old Jim."

VLADIMIR LENIN

One of the first Russian bloggers to emerge on the nascent food blog scene, Vlad's blog, What Is To Be Cooked?, serves up Russian peasant recipes that are seasoned with socio-economic culinary commentary. Excerpt from most recent blog post: "Any cook should be able to run the country."

CHARLIE PARKER

Charlie's blog, Salt Peanuts, is located in the Greenwich Village area of New York city and focuses primarily on reviews of food purchased from street vendors. His unusual style of adding jazz lingo to his blog posts ("bloop bleep blahh! the pretzel cart at Columbus Circle is run by Julio and is quite the epicurean find!") can be disconcerting but he has many loyal readers. Every October, his good friend Charles Schultz guest blogs with some great pumpkin recipes. Excerpt from most recent blog post: "Flip flop floy! Susie's Empanadas in midtown are a stone joy!"

DAVE GROHL

Dave's blog, Grohl's Gruel, first appeared in 1994 and is the longest running breakfast food blog on the web.  Dave's most recent blog post covered the positive intricacies of preparing pancakes: “Usually after making a pancake, you imagine it to be your last, ... You just feel tapped out. However, for whatever reason, the pancakes I made this morning inspired me to keep going with this whole groovy batter laden vibe. It made me feel like we all still have good pancakes in us, that we're still capable of making good pancakes for years to come.”

MARCEL MARCEAU

Marceau, whose Silence For The Lamb Kebobs blog has been around since 1999, posts recipes that are not longer than 2 lines of text! This minimalist approach has held him in good stead as his list of readers has grown with each passing year. Most recent blog post: "..............!!!"
 

CHARLES BUKOWSKI

Best known for his quirky attitudes about food and women, Bukowski's blog, Food Madness & Other Things, chronicles the comings and goings of his daily (turbulent) life. In 2001, the Detroit Free Press named Bukowski as "the food blogger most likely to end up doing time in prison for his mad rants and overall intolerance of the human race as a whole." Excerpt from most recent blog post: "Sure I burned the gawdamn green beans but Sheila knew it was about more than that as she sucked on her menthol cigarette in the dark bedroom. Tomorrow I will reclaim my soul by making pancakes...."

HARRY HOUDINI

The irrepressible Houdini has long been considered one of the top food bloggers in Europe where he posts food podcasts on a daily basis. His main claim to fame is to combine a visceral approach to food preparation along with an assortment of magic tricks which he performs on camera as he cooks. In 2005, there was an uproar in Paris when Houdini, attending a local food blogger convention, performed his famous Now You See It-- Now You Don't Mushroom Soufflé trick which caused more than one audience member to exclaim, "Zoot alors! He must have a midget dog under the table eating the food!"

NOSFERATU

Posting what is perhaps one of the longest running food blogs on the web, A Stockpot Of Horror, Elmer Nosferatu blogs about what he likes to call, "the dark mysteries of the kitchen as experienced by a lonely cook from Transylvania." Besides the blog, Nosferatu operates Sighisoara, a 43 seat restaurant located in the hamlet of Sibiu. Here's an excerpt from his recent post: "…and at that moment, as if by a miracle, the sauce no longer curdled, and the stifling shadow of tonight's menu vanished with the morning sun.”

OSCAR WILDE

Oscar's blog, The Ballad Of The Breading Jell-o, hails from London, England and features a humorous take on his main characer, Chef Henry Wooton, who cooks at a boys orphanage somewhere in the English countryside. Excerpt from a recent post: "The kitchen was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn. From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes,Chef Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flame-like as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid jade-faced painters of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ. It was time for bangers and eggs."

LARRY FINE

A retired chef/owner of Blatsky's (a world famous Jewish delicatessen located in Brooklyn, New York), Larry blogs about his past adventures at the stove, cooking with his two favorite employees, Chef Moe Howard and Chef Curly Howard. Recently, when he was interviewed on NPR radio, Fine declared that, "Personally, I thought that Curly was the greatest because he was a natural cook who had no formal training. Whatever he cooked, he made up on the spur of the moment. Sure, there were some bad days, like the time a customer found some sheet metal screws in his matzoh ball soup but what the heck..." Recent posts include Curly's Smashed Banana Pudding, How To Set Your Kitchen On Fire, Never Say Moe and Cheese It, The Cops!

THE DONNER PARTY

Written as a group blog project by some organic food pioneers who have been stranded in the wild hinterlands of Colorado for the past year, the What's Your Beef? blog features crisp writing and surrealistic photography. Excerpt from most recent blog post: "Last night we ate Sam Brown's left leg. This was an event tinged with sadness as Sam was once a champion clog dancer back home in Ohio... the meat, though, was relatively good and sweet. My wife, Martha, had seconds..."

W.C. FIELDS

Bill writes his blog, The Fatal Glass Of Beer, out of a one room apartment near the Santa Anita racetrack in California. His blog posts are renowned for their whimsical take on cooking with potent potables. Excerpt from most recent blog post: "Somebody left the cork out of my lunch."

IGGY POP

Iggy Pop who writes his Dumpster Dive Menu blog out of an abandoned building in the German city of Berlin, was recently described as "the most ridiculous food blogger in existence" by a reviewer in I Wouldn't Eat That If You Paid Me magazine.  Here's an excerpt from Iggy's most recent blog post: "...There was a time in my life when I felt I really needed to get out of this whole dumpster dive situation but I realized that I have a really good memory when it comes to the types of foodstuffs I love. The only thing missing from my life right now is finding a week-old grilled cheese peanut butter sandwich in a garbage can!"

FRANZ KAFKA

Kafka, a bohemian retired chef who lives in Prague, writes the wildly popular baking blog, Baking With Kafka, which typically features isolated protagonists trapped in a kitchen who are confronted by surrealistic predicaments.  Recently, Kafka switched the format of his blog from the written word to a cartoon strip.  Excerpt from his most recent post:

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