Super Mega Tuesday is finally here and we couldn't be more excited. More than twenty states will cast their votes for both parties' presidential nominees. It seems not unlikely that the Republican contest could be effectively over by night's end and the outcome of today's races will certainly bring the Obama-Clinton matchup one giant step closer to its end. No matter what candidate you support, it's a very exciting day and what better way to enjoy it than a big themed dinner? Since it's election day, we've gone with a red, white, and blue meal.

Appetizer: We're awfully fond of tomato soup in winter, since it's wonderfully hearty and rib-sticking. We especially like this Giada De Laurentiis version, since it incorporates both starchy cannellini beans and the lightening influence of lemon. Pair it with a glass of Hitachino Red Rice Ale.

Main Course: We've had a version of this macaroni and cheese with prosciutto and taleggio at Panino'teca in New York once and we've been craving it ever since. The richness can be almost over the top, so cut it with a bottle of Blue Moon.

Dessert: It's a damn shame that blueberries aren't in season right now, as blueberry pie is undisputedly the king of blue desserts, but we certainly see no reason that you couldn't dye the frosting of these delicious vanilla cupcakes a nice robin's egg blue. At this point, we recommend throwing caution to the winds, and preparing a cocktail with blue curacao. Perhaps a Prince of Wales?

[Photo: Boston Mamas]

Yesterday, we discussed some options if you're interested in going out and about for the Super Bowl. If you're a homebody like us, however, perhaps you'd rather stay in and host a Super Bowl party in the comfort of your own home. For some reason, Super Bowl food is governed by certain inalienable laws: it needs to be mostly savory (a little dessert is fine, but you can't go overboard!), spicy is generally better than not, and even for snobs like us, comfort food is the order of the day. (Our one concession to food snobbery at a Super Bowl party is putting out nice hard salami instead of pepperoni.) Below, some modest suggestions for a possible menu. Go Pats!

•We generally don't necessarily trust Paula Deen, who we once watched make a salad that involved both mayonnaise and marshmallows, but we think she's probably a reliable source on an occasion like the Super Bowl. These hogs in a sleeping bag are basically pigs in a blanket, except they're even more awesome because they feature kielbasas instead of hot dogs. Amazing.
•Buffalo wings are great and all, but it's the Super Bowl, you know? Up the ante with Jamaican jerk chicken wings, hot enough for the biggest spice aficionado. Make sure to have plenty of beer on hand to wash it down with.
•You know what's awesome? Nachos. You know what else? Mac and cheese. Are the two good together? Who knows! We'd sure be willing to try it out, though.
•Although a Super Bowl feast should be mostly savory, one would be remiss not to include any sweet stuff. These triple-chocolate fudge brownies are damn near perfect. We'd advise turning them into brownie sundaes.

Hogs in a Sleeping Bag [Food Network]
Jamaican Jerk Chicken Wings [Epicurious]
Nacho Macaroni & Cheese [Epicurious]
Triple-Chocolate Fudge Brownies [Epicurious]

Today, Florida is holding its presidential primary. Well, sort of. While both parties are holding primaries, only the Republican one actually counts, delegate-wise. Furthermore, since Florida has early balloting, many of the votes have already been cast. Whatever! We're still excited to see how things shake out. Will Obama continue his momentum? (Not tonight, because older Americans love Hillary!) Will Giuliani's campaign finally take off? (No, because he has a terrible strategy!) As we did for Michigan and Nevada before their primaries, we'd like to do a rundown of some Floridian-inspired food. When we hear the word "Florida", we automatically think "orange", so we've created an orange-based meal for you to enjoy while you watch CNN tonight. Note: we totally won't judge you if you flip back and forth between the results and American Idol.

Salad: We are notoriously terrible at motivating ourself to eat a salad, so any salad that wants to make its way into our tummy needs to have a lot of interest. We adore the flavor profile of this arugula and mint salad with oil-cured black olives, oranges, and ricotta salata. Each bite contains the perfect balance of salty and sweet.

Entree: Linguine with clams is a standard and yummy dish in this part of the country, but after a while, it can get to be the slightest bit dull. Spice things up with a recipe that adds a tomato-fennel sauce with more than a hint of orange. The best part? The whole thing comes together rather quickly.

Dessert: All we're interested in these days are cupcakes. These sunken chocolate-orange cupcakes sound like an absolutely perfect blend of a cupcake and a flourless chocolate cake: two of our very favorite things.

Arugula and Mint Salad with Oil-Cured Black Olives, Oranges, and Ricotta Salata [Epicurious]
Linguine and Clams with Tomato-Fennel Salsa [Epicurious]
Sunken Chocolate-Orange Cupcakes [Epicurious]

[Photo: OrlandoFun]

We're loving Cookus Interruptus, the video site from organic cookbook author Cynthia Lair, even though we're pretty sure it's targeted at non-meat-eaters. Cynthia is pretty charming and the whole enterprise has a good sense of humor. In the segment below, Cynthia teaches us how to cook quinoa, and we learn (several years too late) that it's totally not pronounced "kwin-oh-a." Oops.

Cookus Interruptus [Official Site]

Want to know our dirtiest secret (or at least the dirtiest secret we're going to put on a website)? We weren't actually born in Boston. We were born (gasp!) in the Midwest. To be more precise, we were born in the suburbs of Detroit where we lived until we were about two years old. We don't remember anything from the days before we were a Bostonian, but both our parents grew up in Michigan and our grandparents still live there and you know what? It's sort of nice there, albeit somehow even colder than it is in Boston. Today, of course, Michigan will be holding its presidential primary. In tribute, we thought we'd try to track down one of the state's native foods: the Coney Island hot dog.

The Coney Island dog is somewhat misleadingly named as it is a treat rarely available outside of Michigan. According to Wikipedia, the Coney Island dog is so named because hot dogs were invented in Coney Island. Fair enough, but that doesn't explain why Michiganders have given the name to a type of dog that is definitely not available in Brooklyn. The Coney Island dog is a beef hot dog topped with chili, diced yellow onion, and plain yellow mustard. It is extraordinarily messy to eat, inarguably gluttonous, and rather delicious.

In Michigan, it's hard to drive a mile without passing several restaurants with Coney Island in the name, but the dogs are extremely difficult to find on the East Coast. The closest approximation of a Coney Island dog we've found in the Boston area is from Spike's Junkyard Dogs: order a Sinatra dog and ask for it to be topped with onions, mustard, and their chili. If you'd rather try to cook yours at home, we recommend using this recipe rather than the inferior Sandra Lee version. Go ahead! Rock out with a Coney Island dog while you watch tonight's election results on CNN. Your tummy will thank us tonight (although maybe not tomorrow morning).

Coney Island Hot Dog [Wikipedia]
Spike's Junkyard Dogs [MenuPages]
Spike's Junkyard Dogs [Official Site]
Joanie's Coney Island Hot Dog Sauce [All Recipes]
Coney Island Chili Dogs [Food Network]

It's the new year and now that it's January 2 and you're (hopefully!) no longer hungover, it's time to get down to those resolutions. We're betting that if you overindulged a bit over the past few weeks (and really, who didn't?), one of your biggest priorities for 2008 is to eat healthier foods. If you (like us) are still feeling the financial burn of holiday shopping, these healthier foods might have to come from your very own kitchen. Never fear! We're here with a full day of easy and delicious meals that will make you feel totally virtuous.

Breakfast: We're absolutely addicted to these blueberry and banana muffins. The ripe bananas make them incredibly moist and the two fruits combine for an excellent flavor. They're so good, in fact, that we must warn you: they aren't actually healthy if you eat the whole batch in one sitting.

Lunch: We have such good intentions about eating salads for lunch but when it comes right down to eat, roughage is never what we want at noon. Enter endive. It's tasty and it's just about the easiest thing in the world to prepare. This orange and endive salad has way more flavor than that boring green salad you thought you had to eat for lunch if you wanted to be healthy.

Dinner: In the winter, we need a hot, hearty dinner. Nothing else will suffice. We're in love with this eggplant cannelloni recipe (although we usually omit the orange juice). The eggplant is so filling that we promise you won't miss the pasta, and that's coming from someone who eats pasta at least once a day. It's just that awesome.

Healthy Blueberry and Banana Muffins [Epicurious]
Quick Orange and Endive Salad [The Skinny]
Eggplant Cannelloni [Epicurious]

[Photo: Beginner Triathlete]

The weather outside is frightful and we're not just saying that for the reference. The snow is already coming down in Boston and, as we all know, it's only going to get worse. Forecasts are currently calling for 6-10 inches which means one thing (hopefully): snow day!!!! Even though it's been years since we've sat in front of the television chanting "Come on, Boston Public Schools, come on, Boston Public Schools" and cheering when we saw something between Blackstone Regional Vocational Technical Academy and Boxboro Public Schools, we're still a sucker for hoping that we won't have to go to work or can at least work from our couch in our jammies. The most important part of a snow day is, of course, having plenty of hearty and delicious meals. With that in mind, we've created a meal plan for your tomorrow. If you hurry, you can still stock up on fixings at the grocery store!

Breakfast: Universal Hub is justly famous for their French Toast Alert System. We do love a good plate of french toast on a chilly morning (we're especially fond of this recipe), but we would suggest an alternative: scones. Specifically, oatmeal currant scones. They make a perfect breakfast and later, they'll pair equally well with a giant mug of tea to create a perfect midafternoon snack.

Lunch: Nothing says perfect snow day like soup and, for our money, the world's best winter soup is potato leek soup. Little could be more satisfying after a long morning of shoveling and, best of all, it takes very little time to make. Perfect!

Dinner: Now that the shoveling is all done, you can focus on the important stuff: catching up on your daytime television and dinner. Stews are great for snow days because they slowly fill the house with an inviting smell but require very little actual work. Keep it classic with beef bourguignon. It'll make for a festive Friday night dinner, and you can easily freeze the leftovers to use during the next Nor'easter.

French Toast Alert System [Universal Hub]
Double-Cinnamon French Toast [Epicurious]
Oatmeal Currant Scones [Epicurious]
Potato Leek Soup [Epicurious]
Beef Bourguignon [Epicurious]

We love the internet. Not only has it provided us with a job and an apartment, but it helps us learn about things we might not encounter in everyday life, things that make our life better, things like bacon chocolate chip cookies with a maple cinnamon glaze. Yes, one enterprising blogger took it upon herself to add the world's greatest meat to the universe's best cookie and the results look delightful. The blogger, who goes by the name of Muffin (may we suggest bacon muffins for her next adventure?), made her diabolical creations by adding bacon bits to a standard cookie dough and then topping the cookies with a simple powdered sugar glaze and a piece of beautiful, crisp bacon. We never once expected to say these words, but Vosges Chocolate, you have been trumped.

Here's what we're wondering: if these bacon cookies are delicious, what other baked goods could take an infusion of bacon? We're suddenly very tempted to create an Elvis brownie. We envision adding bacon bits to a standard brownie mix and then topping the mixture with a peanut butter glaze and more bacon. We are seriously excited about these brownies and might try to make them very soon.

What about you? Do you have any good bacon dessert ideas?

Experiments in Deliciousness: Bacon Chocolate Chip Cookies with Maple Cinnamon Glaze [Never Bashful with Butter]
Mo's Bacon Bar [Vosges Chocolates]

Fruitcakes have a bad reputation. They seem to be the punchline to every Christmas joke. (True story: in high school we were in the now-defunct Faneuil Hall Christmas Chorus where we sang a song called "Grandma's Killer Fruitcake", which was just as awful as you might imagine.) We've actually never had an American fruitcake, but we bristle at the suggestion that fruitcake is a subpar food item. Why? Because we love stollen.

Stollen, for the uninitiated, is a German fruitcake. It consists of a dough filled with nuts, raisins, and candied citrus peels and a topping of confectioner's sugar. Contrary to popular opinion, it is not filled with all manner of dried fruits (cherries have no place in your stollen!) nor should marzipan be involved. When made correctly, it is delicious: moist and sweet, but not saccharine. For our money, there's nothing in the world nicer than a cup of milky tea and a piece of toasted stollen spread with sweet butter. Unfortunately, stollen can be difficult to find. When we were small, our grandmother (who was German) used to bring us back a stollen from Dresden, widely regarded as the stollen capital of the world. When we had to start finding our own stollen, however, we realized that it is very tricky to find a stollen of reasonable quality in the United States. So what's a stollen-loving Bostonian to do?

We would strongly recommend not making your own. Our grandmother, who, mind you, once cooked an authentic Mandarin dinner for thirty Chinese diplomats, rejected stollen-making because it's "too much of a pain in the tuchus." Baking stollen is labor-intensive and messy. If you are bound and determined to make your own, however, we must insist that you not follow this Food Network recipe. The inside of a stollen should look like the picture at this post's left, not some multicolored monstrosity! This recipe seems like a better bet.

If you prefer to buy your stollen, you have four major options in the Hub. The easiest is probably Whole Foods, which makes its own stollen in almond and rum varieties and sells them for $9.99 each. We don't know that we trust mass-produced stollen, but that sure does seem like a convenient option. Cardullo's has several varieties of stollen at prices from $7-40. Finally, both Formaggio Kitchen and Clear Flour Bread make their own stollen, although neither will be available for at least another week. If you're really serious about stollen, however, the best (and, tragically, most expensive) thing to do is to order it from a Dresden bakery. We absolutely promise that it'll be worth it.

[Photo: Rene Schwietzke]

We know. You totally didn't listen to us and you made a turkey. Sigh. It's okay. Everyone does it. Not only did you make a turkey, however, but you made way too much turkey. Everyone in your household has been eating turkey sandwiches like they're going out of style, but there are still, somehow, endless leftovers. Because we're getting into a holiday-inspired giving mood, here are some thoughts on what to make now that sandwiches have gotten dull.

•Even we are down with turkey when it's used as a topping for nachos! We'd recommend adding some guacamole to the recipe, but other than that, it sounds like the perfect accompaniment for a night spent watching The Hills.
•You know what makes everything better? Cheddar cheese. This turkey potpie with a cheddar crust will probably be just the thing with a nice bottle of stout. Mmmm, just like being in a cozy pub.
•Screw this December 22 nonsense. After Thanksgiving, it's totally wintertime. And what's better in winter than soup? This Italian turkey soup is packed with turkey and hearty veggies and boasts a heavy dose of ravioli to boot. So satisfying on a cold night!
•Even if you are more of a turkey enthusiast than are we, you can't deny that pork makes turkey even tastier. This recipe for spicy turkey paella marries smoked sausage with turkey. The result is delightfully savory.

Turkey Nachos [Epicurious]
Turkey Potpie with Cheddar Biscuit Crust [Epicurious]
Italian Turkey Soup [Epicurious]
Spicy Turkey Paella [Epicurious]

[Photo: Sugar Mountain Farm]

Blogston Proper is your thrice-weekly roundup of Hub-related food writing from all over the Internet. We read the blogs so you don't have to. But you should anyway, just to be nice.

•Worst recipe name ever! [Serious Eats]
•We can haz Oreo truffles? [the pink shoe diaries]
•Even Ed Levine thinks you shouldn't make turkey for Thanksgiving. [Ed Levine's New York Eats]

[Photo: Flickr: Elizabeth Thomsen]

We've been outspoken about our mixed feelings on Thanksgiving. We generally spend the holiday at the home of family friends who are excellent cooks, but really, with the exception of sweet potatoes, we're just not that into Thanksgiving food. We have a fantasy of having our own Thanksgiving next year with a menu full of exciting new foods and no turkey in sight. Until then, we'll settle for telling you what we would make (and thus, what you should make). Who knows? Maybe you'll get inspired. Send us pictures and if you make the lobster stew, feel free to messenger over a sample.

Salad: Our mother has many strengths as a cook, but salad making is not among them. Her salads are usually filled with boring vegetables (just lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, and tomatoes) and blue-cheese dressing, which we hear is very good, but personally cannot stand. We'd much prefer this shaved fennel and apple salad. You can't go wrong with fennel and it pairs so nicely with citric fruits.

Soup: We've actually never had soup at Thanksgiving, but it sure sounds nice! If you're staying in town for Turkey Day, why not try this chunky lobster stew from none other than Summer Shack's Jasper White? It's delicious and quite authentic, since the first Thanksgiving almost definitely had a whole lot of seafood involved.

Mains: We made these bacon-wrapped quail stuffed with goat cheese for our boyfriend's birthday and they were amazing. The bacon flavor permeates the entire bird and the goat cheese adds richness. If possible, we would eat it every day. If you must make a turkey, we recommend a bacon-roasted one. Moral of the story: you can't go wrong with bacon.

Sides: For whatever reason, sage is the king of Thanksgiving herbs. Delicata, meanwhile, is the queen of winter squashes, so it's no surprise that the two come together beautifully in a side of Delicata squash with rosemary, sage, and cider glaze. Stuffing is, of course, the best part of any Thanksgiving meal. We like this wild mushroom whole wheat stuffing from No. 9 Park's Barbara Lynch for its rustic heartiness.

Dessert: Let's all just admit it. Pumpkin pie is not anyone's favorite part of Thanksgiving. Spice things up with pumpkin cake with caramel-cream cheese frosting. The texture is much more pleasing and the flavors are out of this world.

[Photo: KateSpot]

It's the day after Halloween and the odds are that you currently have a lot of extra pumpkin and/or candy lying around your house. What to do with all these leftovers? Well, you could throw the pumpkin away and eat the candy while watching the E! True Hollywood Story, but that would be wasteful, unhealthful, and lame. Why not cook a delicious leftover feast instead? We've scoured the internet (okay, mostly Epicurious) for recipes for a great day-after-Halloween dinner. Just cut out the candle-besmirched part of your jack-o-lantern, and you're ready to go.

First Course: We're very intrigued by this warm pumpkin salad with polenta and candied pumpkin seeds. It looks awfully hearty and like it could pretty easily be an entree, but we think that small portions could keep at at the first course level. Candied pumpkin seeds are, truly, a delight and the dish contains arugula, which is, to our mind, the Reigning Monarch Of Leafy Greens.

Second Course: Oh man. Check out this pumpkin cannelloni with clams and sage brown butter! We used to be scared of cooking clams, but it turns out it's as simple as can be. Also, we're 99.9% sure that there are very few things in this world that can't be improved by being swathed in sage brown butter. All together, it's a very classic flavor profile and one we'd eat any time.

Dessert: These candy bar chocolate brownies sound so good (so good! so good!) and they're from Dave Lieberman, on whom we have a total crush. (Seriously, sometimes we just watch Good Deal and giggle moonily at the screen). The brownies sound super decadent and we want to eat about eighteen of them right this second.

Warm Pumpkin Salad with Polenta and Candied Pumpkin Seeds [Epicurious]
Pumpkin Cannelloni with Clams and Sage Brown Butter [Epicurious]
Candy Bar Chocolate Recipes [Food Network]
Dave Lieberman [Official Site]

[Photo: Flickr: K+K Kozloff]