Cooking fish in the dishwasher with Bob Blumer

I was late for work today because the dishwasher repair guy showed up early. While trying to remain calm about a broken part on my beautiful if busted less-than-a-year-old Bosh dishwasher, I realized that this week is the 10 year anniversary of the start of the summer I spent interning at Salon Magazine in San Francisco. Back when I worked at Salon, it was called Salon1999.com. Having 1999 in the URL made the site feel futuristic at the same and there was some hairdresser in Texas who wouldn't sell them the Salon.com URL. Somewhere along the line they must have acquired the Salon.com link and ten years and four jobs later, I still work in Internet marketing.

The reason I bring this up on my food blog is that Bob Blumer wrote a weekly column for Salon called the Surreal Gourmet. Each we he had a new recipe, original drawing and copy about why he came up with the recipe and what he associated with it. Best of all, each recipe came with a secret tip, an adventurous way to expand the recipe and some (pre-iTunes) music to cook by.

I'm so thankful that Salon still has all of Bob Blumer's artwork and recipes still archived here. In some ways, what Bob started on Salon was a precursor to the food blogs of today.

I saw on his website that Bob has or had a show on the Food Network. I'll try to catch that. Has anyone else seen it? If you have, please post a comment below.

In the mean time, I'll be digging through his archive. The place where I lived in San Francisco had a disgusting kitchen and a big dog who lived there, so I never tried one of Bob's recipes, but I always loved the pictures. Now I'll have to try them out.

Here's a few highlights you shouldn't miss:
Spontaneous summer salad and an awesome centerpiece idea

Tips for grilling

Hummus to celebrate Ellen's Coming Out (totally 90s fun!)