We may not be in a recession yet, but you wouldn’t know that from the way we’re eating. According to Allrecipes, an online cooking community with over 35 million unique visitors annually, the economic downturn might just be causing Americans to cut back on food spending. Traffic to recipe pages using low-cost ingredients, such as ground beef and pasta, nearly doubled over the past three months. Searches for low cost vs. their high cost counterparts have increased significantly, 74% overall. For example, they noted ground beef had a relative increase of 24% when compared to steak.

Two recent cookbooks can help you make the most of your burger or your steak, regardless of your budget. Recipe of the Week Burgers 52 Easy Recipes for Year-Round Cooking is a fun little book with very creative recipes, for example week 6 is Curried Chicken Burgers with Chutney Mayonnaise and week 16 is Espresso Rubbed Burgers. There are Portobello Burgers, Lamb Burgers, Salmon Burgers and Turkey Burgers. While you may not actually wish to cook a burger a week, there are lots of great ideas for spicing up repertoire. You may never eat a plain old burger again.

The New Steak looks at often overlooked cuts such as skirt, flat iron, hangar and flank steak and discuses all kinds of meaty issues such as Kobe, Wagyu, organic beef and certified Black Angus. Author and blogger Cree LeFavour also pays lavish attention to the side dishes. This would no doubt please my sometimes vegetarian sister-in-law who thinks the sides are the best part of any steakhouse. Corn Griddle Cakes, Avocado Salad and Rum-Glazed Plantains are just a few of her unorthodox choices.

Recipes are divided into four chapters, American Steak, Bistro Steak, Latin Steak and Far East Steak. If you’re going to invest in good steak, make the most of it with recipes like Hangar Steak with French Feta, Salsa Verde, and Mint-Zucchini Pancakes or Caribbean Spice Paste-Rubbed Top Sirloin with Lime-Cilantro Crema and Red Beans and Rice. Recipes are incredibly detailed, giving instructions for both pan frying and grilling.

Cauliflower Mash

1 head cauliflower, about 2 pounds
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 teaspoon kosher salt

Chop off the stem of the cauliflower and break up the remaining florets. Put the cauliflower in a steam basket over water in a pot with a lid. Make sure you have water up to the basket. Bring it to a boil, and cook for 10 to 12 minutes , or until the cauliflower is tender. Drain and coarsely mash the florets with a potato masher before transferring the cooked cauliflower to a food processor. Add the butter and salt and blend until smooth, 1 to 2 minutes. Scrap the mash into a bowl and it’s ready to serve.

Reprinted from The New Steak Copyright © 20088 by Cree LeFavour, published by Tenspeed Press.

Curried Crab Cake Burgers
makes 4 burgers

12 ounces crabmeat, very coarsely shredded
1/2 cup panko
1/4 cup mayonnaise or whole milk yogurt
2 tablespoons chopped fresh cilantro leaves
1 tablespoon chopped fresh chives
1 1/2 teaspoons curry powder
1/4 cup all purpose flour
1 teaspoon kosher salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 lime, quartered

Place the crabmeat, panko, mayonnaise, cilantro, chive and curry powder in a medium sized bowl and using your hand, mix very gently to combine. Form into 4 patties, cover and refrigerate for at least 1 hour and up to 4 hours.

Place the flour and salt on a large plate. Dredge each patty in the flour mixture. Place a large skillet over medium-high heat and when it is hot, add the oil. Add the patties and cook until lightly browned, about 4 minutes on each side. Serve immediately with the lime wedges.

Reprinted from Recipe of the Week Burgers, Copyright © 2008 by Sally Sampson, published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

I’m having a really hard time writing about food this week. Frankly, I’ve lost my appetite. All my favorite foods turn to ashes in my mouth, and anything that does pass my gullet curdles with each additional reporting on the Virginia Tech massacre. With over thirty dead, it’s the deadliest shooting rampage in America, and I can’t, I won’t, ignore it.

Maybe I’m too emotional for my own good, but you know what? I’m a writer, I’m emotional, and while I can fake a lot of things — a smile, a falsetto, a fava bean puree — it’s a losing battle this week.

Therefore, I’m going to use this space not to revel in San Francisco’s bounty, which I can do every day of my life here, but to celebrate the great variety of victuals that come out of Virginia.

First, I want to quote Food History blogger, Gillian Polack:

Foodways and food history are about communities and individuals. They’re the story of people and the food people eat.

We all know that, in theory. In pratice what changes the life of a community and rips out its soul is not something that often gets discussed in food histories. Sometimes it does. The extreme stuff. One day I’ll talk about that, when I find courage.

One of our regular 451 bloggers lives in Blacksburg, VA. Today I think it’s important to stop and remember the people of that particular community.

Instead of reading about food today, I’d be grateful if you took a moment to stop and think about him and his friends, about the son of SF writer Michael Bishop, about everyone who was killed in the shooting at Virginia Tech. Remember that history is about people, and when we lose those people we lose a part of ourselves.

Click over to the Virginia Is for Lovers tourism site and sneak a taste of Virginia.

Initially, I was surprised to learn of wines flowing out of Virginia — specifically the Shenandoah Valley — but then I was lucky enough to suck down a wonderful Meritage from Valhalla Vineyards in Roanoke, Virginia. Maverick, on 17th street between Mission and Valencia, has this wine as well as another offering from the Shenandoah Valley.

With that wine, you could enjoy thick slices of Virginia’s famous Smithfield Ham and maybe even a handful of peanuts or some local cheeses. Both Meadow Creek Dairy and Everona Dairy are cranking out sumptuous artisanal cheeses that would do any cheese plate proud.

While the states of the Chesapeake Bay watershed are home to many sumptuous seafoods — shad, oysters, and flounder (there’s even a Flounder Capital of the World, claimed by the town of Wachapreague, Virginia) — the seafood I most associate with the area is blue crab.

My husband, who grew up in Virginia, has fond memories of crab feasts where he worked hard with mallet and blunt knife to scrape out every last scrap of pure white meat from Old Bay-drenched shells. As he tells it, your hands and fingers sustain tiny cuts from hungrily slaving over the sharp shells, and the sting you get from the spicy seasoning working its way into your tender skin is a sweet and necessary pain, as much a part of the blue crab experience as the crab itself.

I’ve never been able to whack my own pile of blue crabs in either Maryland or Virginia, but I was able to enjoy these Beautiful Swimmers in another luxurious way.

Just after we got engaged, my soon-to-be mother and father-in-law sent Mark and me off to a celebratory dinner at L’Auberge Chez François, an adorable and lovely Alsatian restaurant (or, more correctly, auberge), nestled in the rolling green countryside of Great Falls, Virginia. It was there that I crunched through an appetizer of soft shell crab, whose fresh season is all too short.

I apologize if I haven’t been able to cover all the foods and drinks that come out of Virginia, but I’m a novice where eating this state is concerned. I invite any transplanted or current Virginians to share any food memories, facts, anecdotes, or favorites they may have stored away in their heart cupboards.

In the meantime, take care of yourselves, each other and give the closest student, professor, teacher, or school administrator near you a hug.