International Home + Housewares Show 2010: Six great ideas for the kitchen

If you want to see what’s new—and what’s coming—for the kitchen, the International Home + Housewares Show is the place to do it. Every spring, the world’s largest audience of home goods and housewares professionals—more than 60,000 in all—descends upon Chicago’s McCormick Place. Marion and I elbowed our way through the crowds, looking for interesting new tools, gadgets and ideas for home cooks. Here’s what we found.

1. Hot Pot, BODUM Inc.

Perhaps best known for their beautifully practical coffee presses, BODUM brings plenty of functional style to the rest of the kitchen too. These HOT POTS go from the stovetop to the table, from the oven to the fridge. They’re made of heat-resistant borosilicate glass, with flexible silicone lids that can act as both a trivet and pot holder.

You can use HOT POTS in the microwave too. The food-grade silicone lids Continue reading “International Home + Housewares Show 2010: Six great ideas for the kitchen” →

Stuff we like: Sweet Margy Gourmet English Toffee

Artisanal gourmet toffee, produced in small batches in Chicago’s Uptown neighborhood, delivers sublime flavor and gives your teeth a break.

I wish I could say it was love at first bite with toffee and me. It wasn’t. When I was nine or so, a neighbor girl’s mom took her and me to a movie and snuck in candy bars to avoid movie theater prices. At the time, Hershey’s milk chocolate was my speed. Maybe with almonds, if I was being really adventurous. What I was handed after the lights dimmed was a Heath Bar. In the darkened theater, I thought it said Health Bar, not a promising start. And it was little. Still, chocolate was involved, so I soldiered on, even though I was less than impressed.

But when I later fell for toffee, I fell hard. Even though it threatened to break my teeth with every bite. Even though, failing that, it stuck to my teeth like crazy. There was just something so buttery good and, well, grown up about toffee that I put up with its cruel dental ways.

So imagine my delight when we recently discovered Sweet Margy Gourmet English Toffee. This is toffee at a whole different level. Continue reading “Stuff we like: Sweet Margy Gourmet English Toffee” →

Logan Square Kitchen serves up fixes for the Chicago locavore sweet tooth

I‘m often kvetching about the lack of food trucks in Chicago, thanks to draconian local health regulations. Well, last weekend Logan Square Kitchen reminded me of the wealth of delicious locally produced foods—and the wealth of local culinary talent—with a pre-Valentine’s Day Pastry Market.

Logan Square Kitchen is itself an outcome of an increased interest in local, artisanal foods. Created by longtime Logan Square residents Zina and Nick Murray, it houses a shared-use commercial, two-galley kitchen that chefs, pastry chefs and entrepreneurs armed with secret family recipes can rent to produce their creations. Unlike home kitchens, it is up to health department code, so users of the space can legally market their wares.

The front half of Logan Square Kitchen is an event space. And that’s where we found a number of delights last Saturday, all locally produced. Continue reading “Logan Square Kitchen serves up fixes for the Chicago locavore sweet tooth” →

Two new food blogs worth bookmarking

Two very different new food blogs have caught my eye recently, for very different reasons.

That’s not lettuce is written very much the way its creator Melissa Yen thinks about food: Constantly and from every angle. Our too infrequent conversations may occasionally veer away from food, but they always hurry back. Buying it, growing it, making it [at home or for paying customers], enjoying it [in restaurants or at the tables of friends and family]…

A former owner of the much missed Vella Cafe here in Chicago, Melissa’s first food job in a long line of them was in her aunt’s restaurant when she was eleven. She’s also been involved in the Logan Square Farmers Market. So when she says that thing that all food bloggers say, “I am someone who is absolutely passionate about food,” I think she has a little more history to back up those words than some of us do—certainly than I do. Continue reading “Two new food blogs worth bookmarking” →

“86 Hunger” with top Chicago chefs, winery turns garbage into great taste

Six Chicago chefs—including Rick Bayless—are teaming with with the Greater Chicago Food Depository to take hunger off the menu. You can join them. San Francisco’s tough composting laws are actually helping restaurants and winemakers.

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The restaurant business is full of colorful terms. You only have to watch Hell’s Kitchen to hear some of the more colorful ones. Well, or hang around in my kitchen when things start to go wrong. But to “86” something lets the entire kitchen and restaurant staff know that a menu item is no longer available.

86-hunger-sm The Greater Chicago Food Depository wants to 86 Hunger: Take Hunger Off the Menu. To do it, they’re teaming up with six Chicago restaurants for a series of dinners in intimate settings, now through November 18. The series of dinners is being launched in a year when 35 percent more Chicagoans are turning to the Food Depository and its network of pantries, soup kitchens and shelters. Funds raised will benefit the Food Depository, which serves 500,000 men, women and children in Cook County every year.

Chef Rick Bayless kicks things off with a VIP event at his Frontera Grill on Wednesday, October 21. Dinner includes a visit to his home garden and a live cooking demonstration in the restaurant’s test kitchen. Continue reading ““86 Hunger” with top Chicago chefs, winery turns garbage into great taste” →

September is Hunger Action Month

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The figures are staggering. According to Feeding America, one in eight Americans struggle with hunger. That’s more than 38 million people facing hunger every day, just in the United States.

But there are hopeful figures too. Feeding America is a network of 205 food banks around the country. Together, as Feeding America’s website reports, they provide “low-income individuals and families with the fuel to survive and even thrive. As the nation’s leading domestic hunger-relief charity, network members supply food to more than 25 million Americans each year, including 9 million children and 3 million seniors. Serving the entire United States, more than 200 member food banks support 63,000 agencies that address hunger in all of its forms.”

Even more hopeful is that, on average, a single dollar donated to the network will provide three meals. So even a small donation can have a big impact. Continue reading “September is Hunger Action Month” →

The 30 worst foods in America, 4 ways to boost vegetable nutrition and one good burger

A Blue Kitchen round-up: Eat This Not That—30 appalling foods and appealing alternatives, four ways to get even more out of the produce we eat and a great find for when you just need a burger.

Eat This, Not That is a long-running, practical feature in Men’s Health and Women’s Health magazines. It’s also been a successful book series, the latest edition being Eat This Not That! The Best (& Worst!) Foods in America!: The No-Diet Weight Loss Solution.

Both the columns and the books provide real-world solutions to the food decisions and dilemmas we face every day. As noble as packing an apple, a yogurt and bean sprouts instead of grabbing a fast food burger may be, for instance, we’re more often faced with choices between mall food court options or places at an interstate exit. One in particular that I remember compared two McDonald’s Egg McMuffins and a bagel with two tablespoons of cream cheese [a modest schmear by most noshers’ standards]. The Egg McMuffins were healthier! Fewer calories, less fat, more protein… And that was two of them.

Marion came across The 30 Worst Foods in America at the Women’s Health website. Among the scariest findings on the list: A children’s lunch with the sugar equivalent of 10 jelly doughnuts, a pancake breakfast with 4-1/2 times your daily limit of trans fats Continue reading “The 30 worst foods in America, 4 ways to boost vegetable nutrition and one good burger” →

Weddings, anniversaries and food memories

Food plays a major role in one of life’s biggest celebratory events. What wedding food do you remember—either from your own wedding or one you’ve attended? Share your story in the comments below.

The night before our wedding anniversary last weekend, we ended up having dinner in a restaurant right next door to the one where we’d dined on the eve of our wedding. In fact, Red Rooster Wine Bar and Cafe, where we’d taken out-of-town friends on Friday, and its venerable sibling, Café Bernard [where we’d enjoyed a lovely, lively meal with family members and friends years before], share a kitchen and a chef/owner, Bernard LeCoq.

Marion and I discovered the wonderfully bohemian, wonderfully French Café Bernard when we were dating. It quickly became our go-to for romantic evenings out. So when Marion’s father asked us to choose a restaurant for dinner the night before our wedding, no other place even came to mind. I can’t remember a single thing we ate that night—the conversation and wine flowed quite freely—but it was a memorable, convivial evening.

To call our wedding small and informal is an understatement of heroic proportions. We were married in Chicago’s City Hall. Besides us and the judge, the entire wedding party consisted of Marion’s mother, father and sister, my mother, Marion’s best friend from junior high and his date. The flowers—a bouquet for Marion, corsages for the other women and boutonnieres for the men—came from our neighborhood florist.

Marion’s sister Lena was our wedding photographer. To make sure she got into at least one picture, we handed the camera to a passing police officer as we stood outside City Hall. The result was a beautiful shot of the brass plaque identifying the building as City Hall with a row of smiling faces along the photo’s bottom edge. Continue reading “Weddings, anniversaries and food memories” →

National Restaurant Association Show 2009: Artisanal, sourced and green are big trends

Some trends and random delights from the NRA’s annual industry mega-event.

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If you want to see where things are headed in the restaurant business, this is the place to do it. The National Restaurant Association’s annual show is the biggest of its kind, attracting a worldwide audience of more than 2,100 exhibitors and 70,000 attendees. According to the NRA, “restaurants are the nation’s largest private-sector employers, generating an annual economic impact of $1 trillion.” This is where these legions of industry professionals come to see what’s new—what they’ll be serving, how they’ll be cooking it, what they’ll be serving it on, even how they’ll clean up after.

In past years, it’s included such pre-packaged ersatz delights as jalapeño poppers and other fat bombs. And with good reason. On the way to the show, Marion mentioned something she’d read in The New York Times food section. In “In New York, the Taste of Victory,” an article on competitive cooking in New York, amateur chef Nick Suarez advised that a heavy hand with fat and salt was an asset. “If the audience is only getting one bite,” he said, “you have to pack as much flavor as you can into that bite.”

That approach to attracting the audience of potential buyers was deliciously in evidence as we sampled our way through the show at Chicago’s McCormick Place—plenty of salty, fatty treats to tempt us. But this year, there was something much more interesting going on. A few words normally heard in the hippest, healthiest, hautest new restaurants were echoing throughout the giant exhibition halls. Continue reading “National Restaurant Association Show 2009: Artisanal, sourced and green are big trends” →

140 small space solutions, a blogger meat and greet and a do-it-yourself ice cream store

A host of home furnishings and accessories for cramped quarters, hanging out in a swell steakhouse with fellow food bloggers and an ice cream/frozen yogurt/sorbet store that lets you design your own flavors.

Okay, show of hands. Who out there doesn’t have square footage issues? The clever welcome mat above, available at Manhattan’s Tiny Living, says it all for most of us. And it’s one of nearly 150 different items chosen for space-challenged homes and apartments in a recent New York magazine online Shop•A•Matic. There are collapsible measuring cups and nesting measuring bowls for the kitchen; all sorts of storage boxes, units and racks; stackable and foldable chairs…everything designed with a small footprint in mind. And honestly, not everything is strictly speaking a spacesaver—I mean, throw pillows and curtains? But it’s all charming. And while some shops featured are solely New York stores, others like Urban Outfitters, Crate & Barrel, CB2 and Anthropologie can be found elsewhere. There are plenty of online shopping opportunities too. Continue reading “140 small space solutions, a blogger meat and greet and a do-it-yourself ice cream store” →