Calling All Chefs

We have a winner in our grilled desserts recipe contest: Cheryl Bryant of Winter Park, Fl. Her banana and Nutella napoleon will be a featured item for the next few weeks at Willow, a restaurant in Arlington, Va.

Thanks to all who submitted! We had plenty of interesting/creative/innovative/strange/wonderful entries. A pastry chef named Susan Lindeborg sifted through all of them and picked her favorite three. She passed those on to our panel of judges: NPR food essayist Bonny Wolf, NPR correspondent Daniel Zwerdling, and Kate Jansen, owner and pastry chef at Willow. They gathered around the grill at Bonny's house to prepare and taste all three.

They had a little trouble with a recipe for grilled ice cream. But try it out and let us know if you can get it to work. You can find all three recipes here.

And if you missed the chance to participate this time around, don't worry about it: we're doing it again! This time around, we're looking for the perfect pizza. What sauce? Deep dish or thin crust? And what about those toppings? Pepperoni, pineapple, asparagus... pickled pig's feet? What makes the best pizza pie? You can submit your recipes here.

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Protest Songs

Gemma Watters, Production Assistant

My teenage crush, rock God Bon Jovi and guitarist Richie Sambora have teamed up with Andy Madadian, known to some as the Prince of Persian Pop, to record a song for the people of Iran who are protesting the results of their presidential election. The musicians wanted to spread a message of peace and solidarity, so they have recorded a cover of Ben E. King's classic, Stand by Me.

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Pictures From Afghanistan's Helmand River Valley

NPR's Graham Smith is in the Helmand River valley of south-central Afghanistan. It's now day three of the U.S.-led offensive there. Smith accompanied the 2/8 Marine Battalion (that's 2nd Battalion, 8th Marines) as it moved into the village of Sorhodoz. He filed a report for today's show, and he also sent along these pictures of Fox Company.

Captain John Sun meets with elders in the village of Sorhodez, Helmand Province. On the right is the village's religious leader, Mullah Zae Nudin. Graham Smith/NPR

 

Members of Fox Company take positions in a field as they move towards Sorhodoz.Graham Smith/NPR

 

More photos after the jump.

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July 4, 2009

Faces Of The Los Angeles Farmers Market

Charla Bear, Weekend Edition

Scott Simon and I recently took a trip to the Los Angeles Farmers Market as it celebrates its 75th anniversary. On the show today you'll hear about a group of guys -- and the occasional woman -- who meet there every weekday for a leisurely breakfast. They started the tradition 25 years ago.

Tourists often flock to this market in hopes of spotting a celebrity sorting through the cucumbers or weighing the tomatoes. But our interns, Patrick De Oliveira and Brent Baughman, have put together a slideshow of some of the market's less famous characters.

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July 4, 2009

Another View From Iran

Davar Iran Ardalan, Senior Producer

In early June, the State Department instructed U.S. embassies to invite Iranian diplomats to July 4th festivities around the world. But after the violent crackdown on Iranian protestors, the so-called "hotdog diplomacy" is off the table and the invitations have been withdrawn.

The international press was thrown out of Tehran after the election, and government leaders have been refusing interviews. But this week, we were able to reach Marzieh Hashemi in Tehran. She reports for Iran's English-language Press TV, and supports President Ahmadinejad. She was born in New Orleans and says that she moved to Iran last year. She believes that much of the world has a distorted view of popular opinion in Iran. Below is a partial transcript of the interview. A shorter version airs on Weekend Edition today.

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Your Questions on the Economy

Marilyn Geewax, Contributing Senior Editor

Each Sunday, I try to bring listeners a bit of news about the economy -- and explain how it might affect average Americans. Now I thought I'd ask YOU to tell me what YOU'D like to hear us discuss, whether it's economic fallout or personal finance tips. Just post your suggestions right here!

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Scott Simon on YouTube Reporters' Center

Thomas Pierce, Weekend Edition

The folks over at YouTube asked Scott to contribute a video to their new initiative, the Reporters' Center. The idea is to help aspiring journalists with their work out in the field. Scott shares a few thoughts on how to tell a good story:

It's also worth nothing that the Weekend Edition YouTube channel is merging with the overall NPR channel. We're creating playlists of both Scott's videos and Liane's videos.

Remember the time Daniel Schorr gave Liane Hansen a few pointers about tweeting? Or how about the time Naturally 7 dropped by the studio and demonstrated all the instruments they could imitate vocally? Or when Scott tried to find coffee in Second Life? Now you can relive every moment -- all in one place.

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Poetry From Iran, One Tweet at a Time

Davar Ardalan, Weekend Edition

Persians are known for their poetry. So it is not surprising that as recent dramatic events have unfolded in Iran, so many Iranians who have been alerting the world have written poetically -- even in their tweets. Meet 26-year-old Parham Baghestani. I reached Baghestani in the fabled Iranian city of Isfahan, where he lives.

His tweets range from the mundane to the spiritual, and offer a window into the psyche and everyday life of an Iranian.

"My love has gone underground," he writes, "The taste of night is nothing but awareness."

We've translated more of his tweets. Read them here.

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Remembering Chappy Hardy, "The Man from H.U.N.G.E.R."

Sarah Beyer Kelly, Weekend Edition

Chappy Hardy, filmmaker and New Orleans man-about-town, died this week at the age of 63. Listeners may remember him from a series of interviews he did with Weekend Edition host Scott Simon in 2005 about his culinary tour of the East Coast's best and most affordable dining places. He liked to call himself, "The Man from H.U.N.G.E.R." -- that's "Helping Uninhibited Nibblers Get Exact Results" -- as he roamed from Alabama to New York and back. He leaves behind one son, Zephyr Hardy, who is a cameraman for ESPN.

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Rough Cut: Andy Richter on Letterman's Palin Joke

Scott Simon visited Andy Richter at his office in Universal City recently. When the two sat down, Scott asked Andy for his take on why David Letterman told the now controversial joke about Sarah Palin's daughter and Yankee third baseman Alex Rodriguez. If you missed Letterman's monologue, listen to it here:

And here's Andy's response:

What do you think? Does the "comedy math" add up? Let us know. And listen to the full conversation between Scott and Andy Richter on Saturday, June 27 on Weekend Edition, or online at NPR.org.

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