I'm still taping!

Hey there! I'm still taping episodes of Cooking for Real in NYC's Chelsea Market and it looks like we'll wrap on Thursday. We start with one show on the first day to get our or -- my :-) sea legs back, then move on to two shows a day. With the snow day from last week, all we had to do was add an extra day of shooting . No biggie for me, I enjoy cooking and eating and if not at work, I'd be doing the same at home!

Sometimes during our lunch break a writer or camera crew from the press comes by for a chat and interview that usually eats up half of lunch. I don't mind because it means we're getting the word out about the show and since I've begun, the amount of lunch time interviews has increased. That makes me feel really good about the progress of the show and how people are receiving it. Anyway, today is the first day I've had a free lunch, so I thought I'd spend part of it with you. :-)

Here are some flicks ... I call this "Taters 'Cross America" teeheehee ...
See Hawaii? The bowl represents the Great Lakes and I ran out of potatoes and space so, Alaska, my bad ... you are there in my heart :-). I made this during a break between acts as my culinary team, producer and director discussed when, where and how to bring the potatoes into the show. Are they already sliced? Are they in the pan? Do I slice them during the act? Do I begin slicing them at the end of the act? Plenty of questions. The cool thing is this show at the beginning of the day didn't even include fingerling potatoes. It was an addition after we removed one of my cupcake recipes because I'd just filmed a cupcake episode last week. We didn't catch the redundancy of the dishes in the planning stages, but as soon as we did, I made a menu change on the fly. Now instead of chicken and cupcakes, it's chicken and fingerlings.

Here's a look at the workspace just in front of my set for the culinary team.
That's our culinary intern Ali on the far left of the table (actually the center of the pic), then Sarah on the true left and Jenna. If you've caught any of the posts tagged with "the crew", you'll recognize the last two. Each run of shows I meet a new intern and sometimes if I tape close within a few months, I see the same intern working. I always wonder how they are moving on after their time here, but I gotta tell you if you are a culinary student looking for some great hands-on experience ... I'd look into interning here. They get so much real time work and it's not just chopping and prepping or getting someone coffee.

Alright, this last pic is the answer to some of the questions I get about what I eat when I'm taping shows. Sometimes I take work home and eat that for dinner, but when I can't I always look for something easy to make. In my grocery store just last week I saw a new product stocked. It was seasoned meat in a vacuum-sealed pouch and it was called "Carne Enchilada", but under that heading it said "seasoned pork". I chuckled a bit because I've always correlated the word "carne" with beef, not pork. Misnomer or not, I thought I'd buy it and see what it was. Well, it was pork. Very well seasoned and cut into strips. I thought, this is an easy prep! Last night I poured it into a dish, chopped up a jalapeno, red onion, some tomatoes and garlic to cook it with and added some stock for moisture after I snapped this flick. Here it is before the oven ...
It came out bubbly and ready for a warmed tortilla with a lil lettuce and tomato. I wolfed it down and got in bed to make notes for today's shows. Can't wait to make something out of it for leftovers .. maybe just a tostada or something. So, hope that answers the question about what I do at the end of a long day cooking. Answer: I go home to cook some more!

Hope you are having a great week so far. It's still snowing in NYC and I love it!