What Lies Beneath

Hey!

So I know I still want to post some pictures from the latest Cooking for Real taping, but I had to share this...

Foodies are great people! Just a week ago a show aired where I made my Interstate Chili. I based the recipe on all the great flavors from Texas and Detroit chili and talked about it's origins on the show. Well, if you didn't catch it I talked about a neighborhood spot that I frequented when I lived in Detroit and how great it was to get it sent in the mail when I moved to NYC. Well, it only took a few hours, but email started coming in to my website from Detroiters and others that have since moved from Detroit, but still enjoy the chili ... via National Coney Island's website! I am an idiot!!! For years I tried to figure out how to get this chili without having to find someone there to buy it, freeze it, then mail it. For some silly reason I never even thought to do an internet search.

So now, just a week after pining for chili on television, life imitates art and I got a Coney Kit care package from the great city of Detroit! Beneath the Detroit hat and cool National Coney Island hoodie, are hot dog buns, hot dogs, mustard, chopped onions and the reason for the seasoning ... CHILI! Thanks to everyone for the heads up, what a great community of foodies. And just in time for game day!!!

If you need some help doing stuff for the game tomorrow, here are some links to some of my recipes that may fit into your trough for tomorrow. :-) These are all easy and most of them, if you have the typical pantry and fridge, are easy to prep without a major addition to your shopping list.

Interstate Chili

Wings 3 Ways

My Hot Chicken Wings - Emeril Live! style :-)

Caribbean Chicken Wings

Cider-Brined Fried Chicken

No Fuss Peel & Eat Shrimp

Cerveza Battered Fish Tacos with Quick-Pickled Onion & Cucumber

Curry Pork Burgers with Spicy Ketchup

Tequila Sunrise Sangria

My Hard Lemonade

Orange Sugar Fried Donut Holes

Blueberry Peach Cobbler

Party Popcorn

Have fun tomorrow and hope you enjoy the game!!!

BTW and Didja Know ...

BTW

I did a podcast interview with Vicky and Jen, two cool chicks with a radio gig. You can catch our chat on their blog. We talk about Cooking for Real, my beginnings at Food Network and all kinds of food stuff. It's a long one, 38 minutes long!!! Sorry, I talk way too much :-), but if you have an interest in some inside stuff it's a good listen, these chicks are great interviewers and as a former interviewer I really had fun being on the other side of some pros. Alright, so check it out and check their site!

and

Didja Know ...

I just wrapped taping 13 more episodes of Cooking for Real? I'll throw up some flicks soon and finally hope to get my tail in gear and get you some words from our on-set graphic artist that makes a label at the drop of a lime. :-) Don't forget new episodes premiere Saturdays at noon est., like this week's First Down, Ten to Feed ... just in time for gameday!

Where's the Beef?

Right here!

I shot a new episode of Cooking for Real Monday and took home some work. :-) This is some boneless beef eye round that I give a crazy herb crust in a future show. One of the FAQs I get is, where does the food go? Well, some goes to the production for use in photos for the FN's website and within the show as well. Then, some gets devoured by the crew and some comes home with me. It's pretty cool because sometimes I get home and I'm too beat to cook, so I eat the spoils of the day. Not bad. Food Network also teams up locally with City Harvest, a company that rescues food from local restaurants and food businesses then redistributes them to outreaches and centers for hungry mouths in the 5 boroughs of NYC.

Speaking of, the same day I brought the beef home from work I did an interview with Spike Mendelsohn for something he's doing for Food Network. Name sound familiar? Think Top Chef. He is working on a show and right before he came by the set, he spent the day working with City Harvest. I'll let you know when that show with Spike runs so you can catch it. He was pretty funny and actually has been doing great since his appearance on Top Chef. He has a restaurant in D.C. and looks like another one is on the way.

Alright, well I just wanted to stop in. Don't forget to catch URS, Sunday nights at 9PM eastern. Then, immediately after the show check the FN Dish Blog for the viewing party! I host with special guests every week and it's also a good recap if you want to relive it without waiting for the rerun :-).

On the Wings of Love ...

"On the wings of love, only the two of us together flying hiiiiiiiigh" - Jeffrey Osborne, On the Wings of Love

Ok, this is the perfect example of how music and food can intersect if you love the two. Tomorrow's newest episode of Cooking for Real is titled Wings 3.0 and I just found out from checking the schedule, so I thought I'd post about it. As I begin to type -- the song that pops into my head is Jeffrey's song above, the chorus really ... I mean ... we have the "wings" in there, the "love" in there ... just guess my version would be "All the wings I love, only the four of us together flying hiiiiiigh!!!", to account for the 3 types of wings and myself flying away to Wingland. What? Never heard of Wingland?!? Most of us have a Wingland ... it's that area of the house where you sit on a couch and watch guys throw a football. That's Wingland. It's where they were invented. Ok, well I'm pushing it there ... wings started in Buffalo, NY at the Anchor Bar. :-)

With the biggest Wingland Day on the way, this is the perfect time to look into some new ideas if you want to switch things up this year and get into change. -- EXCEPT FOR CHANGING THE WINNERS THAAAA GIIIAAANTS!!! ahem ... I have 3 flavors for tomorrow's show and I don't stop at the wings ... I do something green (not celery) and something blue (not blue cheese dressing). Works out neat because this weekend's game albeit not the biiiiiiiiig Wingland Day, for many the battle begins between the green Eagles and the blue GIANTS. I've got the bases covered by accident. :-) So, maybe this weekend give em a test run before the big-un.

Hope you like it ... and hey, it just popped in my head, just like last week's episode, this week a recipe was inspired from my trip to Hawaii for How'd That Get On My Plate. This time around it was the jars of honey I brought back from the trip. Lemme tell you, I was in honey heaven for weeks. I think I may have gone a little George Washington Carver on it and ended up with enough honey recipes for a while, but at least one of them made it into work and now, if you like wings ... this is a grrrreat sauce if you also happen to like honey.

Hope you like the show! It airs Saturday(tomorrow) Cooking for Real- Wings 3.0 @ 12PM est/11AM central, Food Network

Don't forget about the reruns Sunday morning at 1030AM ...

Have a great weekend and New Yorker's be safe in the snow this weekend ... if it comes :-).

Tour, Interrupted

Today, I was in the Food Network building taping another webisode of the FN Dish - Ultimate Recipe Showdown Viewing Party, what a mouth full :-). BTW, check the link for the video, they pop up online right after URS airs Sunday nights on Food Network. If I'm slow here on the links you can always find it on the FN Dish blog. Okay, so after I was done taping I decided to stop by and say hi to the editor's of Cooking for Real. They are still hard at work editing episodes I taped a couple of months ago. I've made it a regular stop as much as I can since I first discovered them working hard on the scraps I'd given them :-). So, imagine ... here I am walking down the hallway towards their editing room and I see the door to their room opened. I think to myself, that's weird because they usually have it closed and I creep really slow trying to hear which room has sound coming from it. My memory is so bad, every time I go, it looks brand new, can't remember a room number to save my life. So, I get closer and just as I get close enough to see in the room, I notice about 10 people all piled into it staring intently at the big TV screen. I actually stopped in my tracks fast because I was thinking I was going to walk into a room with just 2 people working away, but I was creeping :-) so close to the wall that I didn't see there was no room to enter until a step before I actually tried to. Anyway, the result? Just as I noticed people were watching me get edited on the screen, they all noticed me behind them almost walking into an already very tight room. It was a pretty funny moment, surreal. I was freeze-framed on the big screen in the middle of making a dish for an upcoming episode. Turns out the 15 or so people were all on a tour of Food Network and just as they were learning about how Cooking for Real gets whittled down to size, I pop up unannounced to say Happy New Year to the editors. So, not to interrupt ... I asked if I could sit in and they all said sure! LOL .... really this was such a neat moment, because as I sat down to watch this portion of the tour, I learned something myself and said the ahhs and the wows right along with the people on the tour. Editing is so neat, and although I know how to do it with audio, mixing visual with audio is pretty neat to me. Anyway, after the demo was done I asked them If I could take a picture for my blog and they said in unison, sure! Here we are slightly blurry ...


I didn't get any names except Jessica and there were families from Texas and Long Island. If you guys happen upon this post, what a neat thing to bump into you today! Hope you enjoyed the rest of the tour ... after you guys left the room we were joking that you guys probably thought me popping in was a plant or something with the new ticketed tour lol ... nope, just me saying hi to my peeps, but what a neat coincidence huh? Ellie Krieger was also in the Food Network kitchens today working on some web stuff, so I hear they ran into her as well while she was working and I met her when we were both getting ready for our separate shoots. She is a cool chick y'all. Cool chick. Any New Year's resolution types looking to get healthy, you gotta check her show. Alright, I start taping again real soon so stick around for some on-set flicks!

Yesterday and Tomorrow ...

Just thought I'd put up some flicks from yesterday's GMA visit and also remind you that tomorrow is a whole new episode of Cooking For Real. Here are the flicks ... episode details right after ..



This is my Sunny Money Salad ... fast, yummy and healthy! Yup, healthy! Well, if you don't add the bacon, but bacon isn't that bad is it? :-) 
And here's my take on Green Eggs and Ham ... The pesto is where it's at. I really like the way it tastes with the eggs, it isn't typical pesto, so give it a go if you are a pesto lover. 


Both of these recipes have already been featured on Food Network, so it was really nice to repeat them to another audience. See if people like ginger in their salad and walnuts in their pesto :-). 

Okay, at noon tomorrow (Saturday Jan 3rd) is a new episode of Cooking for Real called Far East Eats. Don't get it twisted, this isn't the Far East many think of first ... it's Hawaiian! I've been there a couple of times and boy, lemme tell you they know how to eat! Just this last year I re-visited the island to tape two episodes of How'd That Get On My Plate and had one great meal I knew I'd talk about for a long time. Who knew it would work it's way into a show? Really it was just that good, I came home and the first thing I wanted to do was work on getting those flavors into my kitchen. Now, just a few short months later, if you so choose, you can have the flavors in your kitchen too. :-) Sharing is caring teeheehee ... Ok, now, for all the native Hawaiians, if I get anything wrong or it isn't perfectly authentic, don't get mad ... this is truly a love letter to a great meal and I made some changes here and there so you won't have to slave in the kitchen too much. Hope you enjoy the show and the recipes! Saturday January 3, 2009 @ 12PM EST and then repeats Sunday at 10:30AM! Have a great 1st weekend of '09!