Don’t just live well—live better than practically everybody else

There’s no shortage of people ready to tell you how to be a better you. Teachers, bosses, spouses, parents, grandparents, little sisters, big brothers… even cousins you see maybe once a year. But few can do it as succinctly, entertainingly and spot on accurately as Clifton Kelly.

As co-host of TLC’s What Not to Wear, Kelly routinely transforms fashion disasters into well-groomed, confident success stories. But looks can only take you so far. To help transform just about every other aspect of your life, he gives us the unapologetically confidently titled Freakin’ Fabulous: How to Dress, Speak, Behave, Eat, Drink, Entertain, Decorate, and Generally Be Better than Everyone Else.

And in about 250 pages, he delivers on all the promises the title makes. Freakin’ Fabulous is the really helpful older sibling or worldly wise aunt telling you what to do with your napkin in a restaurant [place it in your lap as soon as you’ve been seated]; all those little grammatical quandaries you slept through in school [like who vs. whom, fewer vs. less and lay vs. lie]; and that fashionably late only applies to cocktail parties.

Only Kelly is much more entertaining than your sibling or aunt. Continue reading “Don’t just live well—live better than practically everybody else” →

What Julia Child taught us and why we could use a few more Julias today

The utterly charming movie Julie & Julia reminds us why Julia Child was so important. And Michael Pollan says that today’s food television doesn’t actually teach us to cook.

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Okay, show of hands. How many of you out there saw Julie & Julia opening weekend? We did. It was wonderful, even from the third row far right seats that were the best we could do in the crowded theater. And this was for a summer movie without car crashes, explosions or superheroes!

The crowd was spectacularly diverse, men and women, older and younger couples—even a group of teen girls sitting next to us—all thoroughly wrapped up in the intertwined stories. It’s not a film for kids, though. Julie & Julia earns its PG-13 rating with its occasionally frank celebration of love and life.

It is this celebration of life that is at the very core of Julia Child’s being. In her memoir My Life in France, she remembers her first meal there, a lunch of oysters and sole meunière in Rouen: “It was the most exciting meal of my life.” That meal—and the passion it instilled in her for French cuisine—changed how she thought about food and, ultimately, how America cooked. Continue reading “What Julia Child taught us and why we could use a few more Julias today” →

Terry, Marion and Julia: Julia Child’s kitchen and other culinary treasures in Washington, DC

“America’s Attic” displays Julia Child’s entire kitchen and the dimestore lunch counter that served to further the civil rights movement; stellar food in a museum cafeteria [seriously] and our best flea market find—the fojol bros. of Merlindia.

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Julia Child quite literally bookended our trip to Washington, DC. last weekend. On the flight out, Marion was reading Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously. And when we were preparing to board our flight home, I realized the book I was reading was in our checked bag. Fortunately, we found a copy of Julia’s My Life in France in an airport bookstore.

This double dose of Julia Child was perhaps less than coincidental. For one thing, the soon to be released film “Julie & Julia” has caused a resurgence of interest in the beloved American icon, and publishers and bookstores are only too happy to oblige.

But something else had Julia back on our radar. In planning our weekend trip, we had created a carefully edited list of must sees based on time constraints and sheer stamina. Our primary focuses would be Lincoln and art, as much of both as we could possibly take in. Entire Smithsonian museums were jettisoned from the list. The National Museum of Natural History, for instance [wonderful, but we’ve done that], and the National Air & Space Museum [um, no]. The National Museum of American History, as wonderful as it is [the Star-Spangled Banner, Dorothy’s ruby slippers from “The Wizard of Oz”], almost joined the reject pile. Then we read that it now houses Julia Child’s kitchen. Suddenly, we had a pilgrimage to make. Continue reading “Terry, Marion and Julia: Julia Child’s kitchen and other culinary treasures in Washington, DC” →

Healthy eating with your iPhone, grilling tips for the 4th and all the Blue Kitchen that’s fit to print

A Blue Kitchen round-up: Look and Taste launches an iPhone app for healthy eating, award-winning grill master Neil Strawder shares his secrets and a Blue Kitchen recipe is featured in the Chicago Sun-Times. How cool is that?

look-taste-iphone-app Okay, a Luddite confession here. My cell phone is a phone. It makes calls, takes messages and, when absolutely necessary, sends text messages. No camera, no Internet connection and certainly no “apps” [as in applications—the kids are crazy for them].

Apple’s iPhone is a veritable playground for apps, as my iPhone-wielding colleagues are only too willing to demonstrate. Essentially, Apple created a certain number of apps, then told independent Web developers to go nuts. And nuts they went. Continue reading “Healthy eating with your iPhone, grilling tips for the 4th and all the Blue Kitchen that’s fit to print” →

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” →

Politics for dinner: A scary new documentary and a 26-year-old celebration of food and pride

Food, Inc. explores where the food we eat really comes from. And the 26th annual Garden Party kicks off Gay Pride Week in New York with celebrity chefs and Gourmet Editor-in-Chief Ruth Reichl.

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The documentary Food, Inc. opens June 12, and according to Miranda Purves in Elle magazine, it “will have you running from the supermarket for the hills, preferably ones dotted with grass-fed cows.” Let me start with a given here: Feeding the more than 300 million people who call the United States home is a monumental challenge. But as filmmaker Robert Kenner shows, the way America’s industrialized food system goes about it, with the acquiescence if not outright complicity of the federal government, threatens us all.

The issues are many and complex. The Food, Inc. official website spells them out. Factory farms raise animals under inhumane conditions, are dangerous for their workers, pollute surrounding communities, are unsafe to our food system and contribute significantly to global warming. Foodborne illnesses sicken an estimated 76 million Americans and kill an estimated 5,000 each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control Continue reading “Politics for dinner: A scary new documentary and a 26-year-old celebration of food and pride” →

“Don’t follow me—I’m lost too!” [Blue Kitchen is now on Twitter]

I have to be honest with you. When I first considered using Twitter, I thought “naaaah.” I really didn’t think there’d be anything I’d want to say in 140 characters or less. I mean, on some level, it’s kind of like vanity license plates to me—and there’s nothing I want to broadcast from my car bumper to the world at large in six or seven letters and numbers.

Then I read about Maureen Evans. In her Northern Ireland kitchen, she condenses entire recipes into 140-character tweets. Here’s a recent sample:

Frittata: fry shallot/T oil in iron pan. Lyr w c slice tom&zuke/s+p; +6beaten egg. Don’t stir9m@low; 20m@350F/175C. Flip to srv +parm&basil.

Part of the fun of Maureen’s tweets is imagining the challenges she faces reducing recipes to Twitter’s tight constraints while still making them complete and understandable. Part of the fun is deciphering her necessarily terse shorthand: cvr3m +4c radish leaves means cover for 3 minutes, then add 4 cups of radish leaves, for instance. Continue reading ““Don’t follow me—I’m lost too!” [Blue Kitchen is now on Twitter]” →

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” →

Five fresh reasons to check out my blogrolls

The Internet is filled with great information and just plain cool stuff. Here are five recent posts I found in my own back yard. Well, in the blogs and resources in my sidebars to the right. Take a look at these and explore others. Then share something cool you’ve found recently in the comments below.

1. Asparagus tips from Food Blogga

Susan over at San Diego-based Food Blogga writes that asparagus season in Southern California, which began in late February, is almost at an end. Excuse me a moment, Susan, while I call the wambulance. Just kidding, my friend, but since my neighborhood farmers market here in Chicago won’t even start until June, I have to admit to suffering from bouts of Southern California farmers market envy when I read you or Toni over at Daily Bread Journal.

What you’ll find in her May 10 Food Blogga post on asparagus—besides gorgeous photos like the one above and five delicious sounding recipes of her own and more by other bloggers—is boatloads of information on this wonderful, versatile vegetable. How to select it [including her views on the thin versus thick asparagus debate], how to store it, trim it and cook it—and why you should.

2. Closet Cooking does scallops with miso and maple syrup

The three ingredients in the name of the dish were all it took to rope me in. Scallops are always a great start—delicious, impressive and wonderfully easy to cook. The Japanese culinary mainstay miso [as Epicurious calls it] is infinitely versatile and beautifully subtle. Continue reading “Five fresh reasons to check out my blogrolls” →

Fighting injustice with coffee, combating cancer with food, part two

A Seattle-based coffee company will donate 100% of its May revenue, up to $1 million, to fight slavery, human trafficking and other forms of violent oppression. And the delicious results of Mele Cotte’s Cooking to Combat Cancer III.

Storyville Coffee gives it all away in May to fight slavery

For many of us, the word slavery conjures up the past, a dark chapter in America’s history. Unfortunately, for millions of people worldwide, it is a harsh daily reality.

“There are more slaves in the world today than at any other time in human history,” says Ryan Gamble, co-president of Storyville Coffee Company. “More than 27 million people are held in slavery, nearly 2 million of them children exploited in the global commercial sex trade each year.”

So this month, the Seattle-based Storyville is giving it all away—100% of its revenue for the entire month—to International Justice Mission, a human rights agency that works around the world to rescue victims of slavery, trafficking and other forms of violent oppression. Continue reading “Fighting injustice with coffee, combating cancer with food, part two” →