This space has been quiet for the past couple of months, and we’ve neglected to explain why. The short answer is that we’ve had a really busy summer.

My book about the pluot was published last week by Bloomsbury and is now available at bookstores everywhere. In The Perfect Fruit: Good Breeding, Bad Seeds and the Hunt for the Elusive Pluot, I tell the backstory of the pluot and its creator, Floyd Zaiger.

In its review of the book, Publisher’s Weekly wrote that “Brantley’s engaging mixture of agronomy, reportage and food porn… goes down easy.” For more information about the book, you can visit chipbrantley.com, follow me on Twitter, or check out Bloomsbury’s page on The Perfect Fruit. To keep track of upcoming readings and author events, please join The Perfect Fruit (the book) group.

One more personal note, Elizabeth, Angus and I moved to Alabama in June, and we’re slowly getting settled to life at the edge of the subtropics. Elizabeth and I grew up in Birmingham, and while we miss our life in MA, we’ve loved being closer to our families and reconnecting with old friends. Birmingham is also one of the best food towns out there. Come visit us and we’ll prove it.

In Cookthink news, we’re excited to announce that we’ve recently partnered with Weather.com on a syndication deal. We’ll share more details on that closer to the end of the summer, but be sure to check out the re-design at Weather.com–they’re adding a lot of interesting features.

One thing we’d love to see: Al Roker talking more about the impact of weather on our food cravings. As anyone who’s read Cookthink for a little while knows, that topic is one of Brys’s obsessions. In fact, he’s been busy this summer researching and writing a cookbook about the influence of weather and climate on cooking. (Right now, he’s studying the food of a certain humid coastal plain.) Look for updates from him later this summer.

More news soon. Stay cool in August.

Congratulations to Jennifer McLagan, whose Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, With Recipes, won the James Beard media award for cookbook of the year.

You can find recipes from that book — including homemade country-style butter and duck confit — on Cookthink.com.

With news that the world may or may not be on the verge of a swine flu pandemic, Bloomberg is reporting that the World Health Organization is dropping the colloquial term for the H1N1 virus, due in part to objections from the pork industry. The World Organization for Animal Health called Egypt’s decision yesterday to slaughter every pig in the nation “inappropriate” and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack confessed to eating pork twice in the last 24 hours as part of an effort to demonstrate that the combination human/avian/swine flu is not a food-borne illness and has not at this point been found in any actual swine.

So has the news affected your cooking or your appetite this week? Is it business as usual in your kitchen or does the thought of bacon give you pause?

To mark Obama’s 100 days in office, we’re making this bold, complex and nutritious One Hundred Almond Curry with chicken from Niloufer Ichaporia King’s My Bombay Kitchen.

It’s week two of Apartment Therapy’s second annual Kitchen Cure and I’m already behind. The Cure is AT’s six-week flurry of posts, reader tips, and assignments designed to help get your kitchen in shape in time for summer.

Last year, we moved right at the beginning of spring, and so our new kitchen had that undefiled orderliness that we were foolish enough to think would last: jellies all together, pots nested, spices labeled in square containers and arranged not alphabetically but in geographical clusters, according to the region of the world where they’re most used.

A year later, the whole room is a mess. We did a big fridge purge at the end of fall, but the winter took its toll. The freezer’s overstuffed, one crisper has the tell-tale shriveled green onions, and we regularly ransack the utensil drawers for the can opener. We’re due for a major top-to-bottom clean, and the Cure gives us some support.

The first week was dedicated to cleaning out the fridge and pantry, so we’ve got some catching up to do. Luckily, there are plenty of great tips to get us started. As an inveterate saver of old jars, I was especially excited to see all the solid user tips on how to get the labels off and what to do with the clean jars.

Want to do the Cure? Start by signing up.

Related: The Kitchen Cure Discussion Board (Apartment Therapy)

The Obama Foodorama blog bills itself as “a daily diary of the Obama foodscape, one bipartisan byte at a time.” If you’re looking for food news related to President Obama, including recipes from the White House kitchen, reports on the First Family’s vegetable garden and links to stories about how politics affects what ends up on our plates, it’s all here.

You might want to let that steaming mug cool down before taking your first sip of morning caffeine. In the latest news about drinking and throat cancer, the British Medical Journal published a study by Iranian researchers warning that drinking piping hot tea increases the risk of developing esophageal cancer.

[Via BBC News]

UPDATE: Congratulations, Andy and Dave, for winning the IACP Award in Food Reference & Technical category for The Science of Good Food!

It’s been a month of great news for some of our contributors and friends.

James Beard Foundation Awards The nominees for the James Beard Foundation Awards were announced this week. In the Book Awards, Cookthink’s Sunday Dinners columnist Andrew Schloss and co-author David Joachim were nominated in the Reference & Scholarship category for their book The Science of Good Food. And in the Single Subject category, Jennifer McLagan was nominated for Fat: An Appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, With Recipes.

In the JBF Journalism Awards, Joe Yonan and all our pals at the Washington Post were nominated for best Newspaper Food Section. The section’s Tom Sietsema, meanwhile, was nominated for two writing awards. (Speaking of the WaPo food section, all you Kim O’Donnel fans probably know that the paper recently cut back on its chats, among them Kim’s weekly What’s Cooking?. We’re happy to report that Kim has found a new home for the chat at Culinate. Look for her new “Table Talk” to start on Thursday, April 9 at 1PM ET.)

Finally, in the Restaurant Awards, we were excited but not surprised to see Birmingham’s Highland’s Bar & Grill nominated (again) for the Outstanding Restaurant Award. Congratulations to Frank, Pardis, and everyone in the Highland’s/Bottega family.

IACP Awards Finalists At the International Association of Culinary Professionals conference next weekend, the IACP will announce the winners of its 2009 awards. In the Cookbook Awards, Andy and Dave are finalists in the Food Reference & Technical category for The Science of Good Food. Jennifer McLagan is also a finalist in the Single Subject category for Fat. And, in the American Cookbook category, Virginia Willis is a finalist for Bon Appétit, Y’All. (Some Virginia-related news: She’ll be in western Mass on May 7 to team up with Deborah Snow and the Blue Heron for a Food Bank of Western Massachusetts fundraiser. More details on that soon.)

Finally, among all the excellent writers who have been singled out as finalists for Bert Greene Awards is Jess Thomson. Her piece on nettles, originally published in Leite’s Culinaria, is a finalist in the essay category. Way to go, Jess!

If your cheeks go red when you drink, it may signal that alcohol consumption will increase your risk of esophageal cancer, according to a new study.

Last week, the New York Times reported on the positive return of sugar on labels as a healthier, age-old alternative to high-fructose corn syrup. “Per capita, American adults ate about 44 pounds of sugar in 2007, compared with about 40 pounds of high-fructose corn syrup,” says the article. Used in moderation, natural sugar doesn’t have to rot your teeth or make you fat. And since not all sugars are created equal, we’ve assembled a cheat sheet for some of the most common types used in the kitchen, from granulated white to cane, raw, Demerara and more: Meet the sugars.