Hey there! Hope you had a great time grilling over the weekend! I prepped my 4th of July spread early yesterday and then headed into the city for a rehearsal with The Today Show culinary team and producers. Then this morning, I got up while my neighbors were still partying from last night and headed into the city for a little party of my own. Today was all about kabobs and keeping the grill dusted off for the summer. Here's the team I worked with today;
That's Amy Robach, Lester Holt and Peter Alexander. If you read about my last visit to The Today Show, you'll remember I forgot to tell Lester I love watching another show he hosts, Dateline on ID, but this time I made sure to give him some love and I think it caught him off guard. He was surprised and appreciative. Pretty nice guy with such a rich history in news. Cool to be able to meet him, I'm a news junkie and often when moving from state to state all I worried about was how good the local paper would be as well as the local newscast. Great to be in a city with great local and national news hosts. Ok, here's the spread ...
I made my Lamb Kabobs with Tzatziki Sauce, my Chicken Skewers with Peanut Sauce and my BBQ Bacon Shrimp on skewers. Kabob madness! Here's a little behind the scenes information; the producers pick what I will make instead of me pitching to them a menu. I thought it was pretty cool they looked over all my recipes and found a theme with kabobs. I also had my Red Cabbage Slaw and Celebration Trifle on deck. The trifle is going into an upcoming Cooking for Real show when I tape soon, so the recipe isn't available on FoodNetwork.com just yet, but check The Today Show's recipe page and they are all there. Here I am powering through my three kabobs so I can get to dessert!
And here's the video if you missed it ...Thennnnn, I was too excited to have my second bump-in with a Major League Eater in just a few days! That's Joey Chestnut, 2010 winner of Nathan's Hot Dog Eating Contest. He ate 54 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes and that's not even his record. He's won 4 years in a row and last year he ate 68, the year before that, 59 dogs and buns and in 2007 he first won by eating 66 in 10 minutes. Pretty serious eating! I caught a piece on him over the weekend on CBS and found out he has a regular 9-5 as a construction engineer, but his eating gig pays him about 250k a year! I told him of my run-in with Badlands Booker the other day on Coney Island and he said they were good friends, neat to have buddies on the eating circuit. I bet only they can truly understand the ups and downs of the business. Here I am hoisting his championship belt above my head ...
I've always wanted to do that and he was kind enough to let me move the belt from it's perch and give a victory yell lol. Cool guy and I think next year I'm going to brave the heat, crowds and madness and watch the event in person instead of on ESPN. Ok, I'm back taping episodes of Next Food Network Star - After Party tomorrow. If anything happens I can talk about without getting sued by my employer, you know I will :-). Take care!!!
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