Thanks for the memories Florida!

Hey there! Well, it's my last night in Florida on what is my first ever cooking demo tour. Take a look out my window at a pretty bridge in Jacksonville, FL ...
What a pretty vision out my hotel window. Florida's been great! I ate at Bern's Steakhouse, saw several gators in the swamps on the ride from Sarasota to Boca Raton and I had 3 slices of key lime pie from 3 different hotels! If only I could stay longer, but I'm headed to the Peachtree State in the morning for the final day of the tour. I can't wait to catch the flight and cook up some dinner for the class there! If you've signed up, send a comment so I can look for you in the class!

Here's a pic from Boca Raton, FL on Sunday night ...
That's Michele and Aprons' Chef Graham after the class. Thanks for sending the picture Michele! I had so much fun chatting after class was over and Graham, thanks for the mise en place and everything else!!

Then I headed up to Jacksonville Monday and decided I finally needed to get some crowd shots, here's the whole class ...
I had to take two pictures to fit everyone in ...
A special thanks to "Miss Perfect". Her and her girls had me laughing the whole night between recipes and after class. Also thanks to the entire chef staff in Jacksonville, you guys were great and I appreciate the smiles on a Monday!!

Ok, well it's on to Georgia in the morning! I still have a bit of work to do before I go to sleep. I've found when magazines can't track you down on the phone, they ask for an email interview, so I have two of those to finish tonight for Ladies Home Journal and First for Women Magazine. Hope you catch the articles when they get published. Speaking of, I did an interview a couple of months ago for Essence Magazine and provided some recipes, so look for that on stands soon as well.

Ok, Georgia you're on my mind :-) ... see you soon!!!

Publix Tour-tastic

Tour-tastic ... tour+fantastic :-) ...

I'm in the middle of my mini tour of Publix Aprons locations in Florida and I end up in Georgia. Yesterday I hung out in Tampa and Sarasota and in a few minutes I'm making the trip to Boca Raton for a class tonight! I'm having fun and imagine I'm enjoying a teeny trip that is a window into what bands must go through when on the road. I'm in and out of town before I get to even enjoy it! I'm doing my best though ...

I went to Bern's Steakhouse in Tampa. In a great little piece of foodie fortune, I met the owner David Laxer at the Sobe Food and Wine Festvial. He stopped by my booth at the Burger Bash with his wife and invited me to his restaurant if I were ever in town. I immediately said I'd be in town in just a few days! I say foodie fortune because just that morning I was looking at my weeks ahead on the road thinking ... "Where am I going to eat?". So, for David to walk in and pass me his biz card and say come on by ... well, I felt it was foodie fortune. After making my rsvp and asking around about the place I was told the food was great, but the real treat was making it to the dessert room ... so here's my yummy dessert ...

Yes, I ordered two. One was a peanut butter pie surrounded by and Oreo crust and the other was a yummy coffee ice cream that has to be the smoothest ever.

That was Friday night, Saturday morning I hung out in Tampa and Shelisa from Big2Beautiful came by and took some pics ...




Then, I headed down to Sarasota and hung out, I didn't get any pictures, but before I left I wanted to get a picture of me and the logo just for the memories so that's the pic at the top of this post.

I'm headed to Boca Raton now! If you are coming to the class tonight, I can't wait to meet ya! Come hungry!!

Get Closer To Your Food @ Publix w/ Viva Towels and Me!

Hey there! I just wanted to give you a list of dates and locations to catch me in the next few days if you are in Florida or Georgia. I'm in Tampa now getting ready for the start tomorrow of a series of cooking classes I'm teaching with Publix and their popular Aprons classes. Here's a list with hyperlinks ...

Saturday, March 6

Tampa, FL

Publix at Shoppes of Citrus Park @ 11am

Saturday, March 6

Sarasota, FL

Publix at University Walk @ 630pm

Sunday, March 7

Boca Raton, FL

Publix at Polo Club Shoppes @ 630pm

Monday, March 8

Jacksonville, FL

Publix at San Jose Boulevard @ 630pm

Tuesday, March 9

Alpharetta, GA

Publix at Alpharetta Commons @ 7pm

Click the links for directions and addresses. Click here for a list of all dates and online ticketing. Only a few of the dates have tickets left. See you there!!!

Don't forget Best Thing I Ever Ate tonight at 10pm on Food Network!

SoBe it! 2010 - Final Shots II

Hey there! Well, it's taken me a bit to post the final shots from the SoBe Food and Wine festival because I took a few extra days in Miami to relax. I ate out, hibernated in my room a bit and went out to clubs with friends. If you are in Miami, Club Louis at the Gansevoort South is perfect on a Tuesday night for a good party! I went out with some friends and didn't even get to sleep before my 7AM flight. That's good for chef/restaurateur Donatella Arpaia, because I sat next to her on my flight home and slept the whole way. If I weren't so tired, I may have talked her ear off or at least gushed to tell her how proud I am as a business woman. I did get a chance to edit it down to just a few minutes while we landed. Turns out she watches Cooking for Real and she's very, very nice! I'm not saying it because she watches though, you can just tell from chatting with some people that it's all about the passion and not the ego of the whole thing. She's such a hard worker and has great things on the horizon. Nice to get a seat next to her and spread some smiles. Now I'm home and back to work! Tomorrow, I leave for a quick tour of Publix grocery stores in Florida and Georgia for some cooking classes I'm hosting. Yep, right back to Florida and I can't wait! Gonna see if I can get people Cooking for Real on the road! In the meantime, here are the rest of my pics ...

Back stage in the green room for the cooking demonstrations I caught a show being taped for Food Network. Can you guess which one??
I know you see Pat Neely in the background, but the crew is there to tape Ace of Cakes! Looks like they'll have an episode following the team to the festival and watching what happens when they take the stage for the cooking demonstration. After they cleared out and went on stage, look who got off stage and made their first stop the green room to relax ...
That's actually my first time chatting with Paula Deen! We've met very briefly, but she is always so busy and surrounded by friends and family that it's hard to chat. She is just as sweet as you can imagine though and after I told her about specific shows of hers I loved and how I can be brought to tears just by her tearing up over food ... she invited me on her show! I immediately said yes and I look forward to pulling all the loose ends together now that I'm home. If you would have told me a few years ago Paula would ask me to be on the her show, I would've exploded lol. It's neat to me that she comes on right before me on Saturdays too. A great lead-in as the TV people say! I just totally respect her path in life and it wasn't an easy path to where she is now, I'm happy all her efforts payed off. Ok, then I went back out to the fairway area and chatted it up with some more people at the Viva Towels Booth ...

The camera man behind me is shooting video for an internal Food Network video they'll use to showcase at the cable network up fronts. Ever hear of those? More on that later ... back to Miami! You can tell by looking at the different outfits in the pictures that it wasn't super warm down on South Beach, but it wasn't cold either. A very nice middle ground around the mid-70s all weekend was perfect for sipping wine. Last year it was about 20 degrees warmer and there were surely more people stumbling out than walking out. Heat just magnifies everything. Take a look at the tents on Saturday ...
I have to tell ya, it seems impossible to power through all of the vendors in one day and because of that many people bought tickets for the entire weekend. Wanna know the price of that?? Check Jacob's blog ... the saving grace for the ticket prices is the charity attached. Young culinary students get grants for school in exchange for working at the events. Pretty cool and each student I spoke with was super excited to not only get the grant, but to work side by side with people in an industry they plan to join. Here's someone I worked with side by side before I got on Food Network ...
Back then I was a radio DJ that catered for music industry even and he was ... well, Emeril Lagasse! Nuff said! He gave me my start here on Food Network when I cooked with him on Emeril Live back in 05 and every time I get to give him a hug ... I take it. He has a new cooking show on the way he told me about and I can't wait to see it. After I said hi to him, I let him get back to work. He was signing cookbooks and taking pictures for what seems like forever. I made that the last stop for the day and headed back to my hotel. Just as I was walking up to my room I caught a store in the lobby I didn't remember seeing last year. I think I'd remember seeing these huuuuuuuuge cupcakes. Or are they mini cakes???!!!
Well, it's not all about cupcakes ... the place is called SoBe Scoops and I tasted the purple flavor in the top right. It was raspberry chocolate and then I tried the cookies and cream, the peanut butter and then settled on not ice cream, but a 100 Grand bar, a Kit Kat and a bag of Poppycock popcorn - Pecan lovers.
Here's store manager Gianna and coworker Ebonique. Thanks for letting me sample waaaay too much ice cream ladies!

Here's a wide shot of the store ...
Colorful and inviting, eh? They've only been open a few months and I think it's a smart store for a hotel lobby. I always need a sweet note at the end of a meal and how many Key Lime pie slices can you eat? :-) Well, I could actually eat many so that's a bad example, but you feel me. Ok .... that was Saturday.

The next day, I started the same ... at the Viva Booth. Only this time I met the winner of the Viva sweepstakes! Take a look!
That's Randy and his wife. they both entered to win and Randy was the lucky one. They got a year's supply of Viva Towels and a trip down to the festival to hang out. I actually met them Friday night at the Bubbles&Q party so by time we took this picture ...we were old friends :-). I kept telling everyone they were the winners because don't you always wonder IF there are winners of those things?? We had a good time chatting and hanging out. Right after we took this we both had to head back to the hotel so we hopped in golf carts and sped off. Randy and his wife were headed home and I was checking into another hotel to lengthen my stay in Miami. My first order of biz was a quick birthday hello to one of the reader's of this blog ...
That's Heather, aka "Dolphinfanhq" on blog comments. I put the call out for bloggers that wanted to meet up while I was in town and she replied, so we met and hung out for a few minutes before I headed off to a meeting. I also met "reyna" that Sunday night at Guy's party. What a nice surprise that was!! The weekend was almost over and I hadn't really hung out with my bloggin buddy Jacob so I invited him over for a Monday brunch on my patio along with a couple other friends. Here he is right before he headed off for the airport ...
We're smiling cuz we made it through the weekend with out a hitch and we are full. Just look at my plate ...
Well, that's it! All my stuff to share from the weekend! Catch me tomorrow night on Best Thing I Ever Ate - Guilty Pleasures @10 pm ET. I won't ruin it, but mine is from New Orleans ... home of the guilty pleasure if you ask me :-).

SoBe it! 2010 - Final Shots ...

Hey there! Well, I took a day off blogging only because things got to be so busy I couldn't handle it, so I'm what I call Putt-Putt-in' along :-) ...

To make things easier on the both of us, I'm still going to try to keep it short and to the point ...

Did I tell you I rep Brooklyn!!!???? Well, I do and the most asked question of the weekend was where I live or where I'm from. I like the second question because I get to talk about moving around growing up as an Army Brat. I wear the badge on my sleeve proudly and like to talk about it because there's plenty of bad that came with that good and I'm happy I adjusted to it.

That's me on the way to the Grand Tasting tent Saturday to meet and greet foodies in the Viva tent. I mentioned in the previous post that I forgot to take a picture of the set up because I was just having too much fun so ...

There it is ... my office on the beach for four days. See that woman's plate? That's from Paula Deen's tent! It's was fried fish that smelled sooooo good with a side salad. I was in a good neighborhood to have her next door, eh?! After I hung out at my tent ... I again made the mad dash to the Grand Tasting area so I could get a look at what was to offer and have a bite to eat. I stopped many places, but I grazed like a cow here ...

They were making teeny quesadilla discs and then what I was really into were the plantain chips. They were perfectly salty, crisp and they sliced them lengthwise so they were long and some were flat and a few fried curled up. So, it was a nice texture thing. It was from a place called ...

Right next to us Paula Deen was on stage, so I stopped in and watched for a minute...

After catching Paula and her hubby make the crowd roar with laughter I ran into the couple I call "The Cosby's 2010" ...

Just minutes after we took this picture they went on to a packed house!

Recognize this funny guy below?

Well, besides being a funny guy, he's also what appears to be a great chef ... I say that only because I watched him, but have never had his food. That being said, what I saw ... looked delicious. He's Fabio from Top Chef season 5. I thought he was really nice in person and I figured it would be that way from watching the show, but you never know. Nice guy. Ok, more pics later ....

SoBe it! 2010 - Burger Bash!

Hi there! This will be less verbose, but hopefully an exercise in quality not quantity :-). I got to Miami yesterday to enjoy my second visit to the SoBe Wine and Food Festival. I've been a bit busy in the last few days and have stuff to share, but this is more pressing ... so without further drivel ...

Look at Bobby Flay reppin his burger! We were on the same flight headed down and were both just happy to make it out of NYC before the snow hit. When we landed I got plenty of pictures of what the snow did at home while in flight ... it looks bad. But never mind that ... look at Bobby!

He already looks sun-kissed doesn't he? His burgers were Crunchified (meaning they had chips on them ... and that's his word, not mine. I'd throw a "tm" on it, but I can't find the symbol on my computer lol). He also had a yummy BBQ sauce on it and coleslaw. When he gave me a preview on the flight, I knew it'd be my first burger at Burger Bash ... I also felt Spike Mendelsohn's winning days may be over. Spike's won two years in a row ... I tasted his burger last night. It was gooood, but even better was his cotton candy shake ....
I had two! You push the cotton candy down and the best way I can explain the texture is ... do you ever get an iced coffee or an iced tea? Ever have too much sugar in the bottom and enjoy sipping that layer with your straw and crunching? Well, that's how it was for the cotton candy shake, but even better was the texture of the shake, it was soooo smooth. Go Spike! He didn't win though ... Iron Chef Michael Symon brought it home for the team! Sorry, no pictures of that burger because most of the night I was hangin' out with Viva Towels! Here's my booth where I gave out not burgers, but my Baklava Cups.
That's Rebecca with me. She's a student at FIU and if you didn't know the festival is a charity event, so at the end of working here she gets a grant for school. Pretty neat. A few minutes after I met Rebecca, I met her dean and promptly try to barter for straight A's in exchange for some baklava and Viva Towels. Every one was just total smiles last night. Here's my Memphis family ...

It's the Neely's crew!!! It's our 1 year anniversary lol, we first met and hung out last year at this very event and since then we've had so much fun together. That's Tony Jr., myself, Tony Neely (Pat's bro), Pat Neely and my girrrrrrl Gina. They are such great supporters and feel so much more like family than co-workers. They were on their way in to the Burger Bash and made time to stop by before going beef crazy. I took a quick walk outside the immediate area of my booth and ran into two crazy characters ...

That's John Besh and Aaron Sanchez ... two willlld and craazy guys! Totally showing my age with that SNL reference teeheehee. I just recently worked with Aaron Sanchez in right here in Miami on an upcoming episode of Chefs Vs. City. It airs soon and I'll give you a heads up when I get the air date. John Besh is just one of those chefs you like to run into ... never stuffy and always smiles. Then, I turned around and someone that I totally LOVE ... actually came by to tell me he watches Cooking for Real ...
That's Chef Pepin, he's has a product line and I've watched him on Univision and although I don't speak Spanish, I watch to learn the language and of course I'm going to watch when food is involved. Other than that ... I've just seen this happy chef around and I love a good smile. What a nice way to meet someone I watch, finding out that they watch too. Speaking of, do you remember me posting about my last visit here and running into a Pollo Tropical for the first time? Well, looks like they read the blog just like you and one of the executives came by to say hi last night at the Burger Bash. Very nice surprise ... you never know who's watching ... or reading. ;-) Ok, that's all I have today and I still ended up typing too much, eh? If you are in Miami, I'll be on NBC today from 11-12noon to showcase my Caribbean Chicken Wings I'm making for this weekend's crowds at the Grand Tasting tents. If you are here, please comment if you'd like to meet up for a drink this weekend! Until then, check out Aaron McCargo's tweets and Jacob's tweets if you want to keep up with what's going on down here!

Viva and Me

Hi there! First, I missed watching and telling you about the Down Home with the Neely's episode I taped. Thanks to the blog comments about it. I'll call the production company and see if I can get some rerun dates just in case you wanted to catch it ...

I wanted to share with you a neat little story about my first major endorsement. I haven't even caught the commercials yet, but I've had a few comments about them (thanks readers for the support). Well, if you've caught the commercial you know it's with Viva Towels. I alluded to the partnership a few posts ago when I had to get to bed early for a 'big shoot'. Now, just a couple of months later commercials are running and Food Network Magazine has the ads as well. Pretty fast, huh? And everything did happen pretty much in that fashion. I like to give you some background here so you are a bit more informed than the next, so here are the deets ...

First, I went to the Wine and Food Festival in South Beach Miami in January of this year, it's where I discovered Viva Towels. I was doing my cooking demo and kept pulling the paper towels provided on set to clean up and mostly to blot my face because it was soooooooo hot there. The first thing I noticed was how soft Viva was. Really, no joke. I'm talking baby soft. I kept saying to myself ... "where have these been when I'm shopping?" and "these must be foo foo and fancy priced or only available in kitchen stores or something". I really left the festival with many memories, but one thing I wanted to do was find those Viva Towels in Brooklyn! Funny thing is, the next time I went shopping I'd already told my guy about them and how I wanted to look out for them. We got to the grocery store and surprisingly, right next to the brands I used to buy, were the Viva Towels! Yep, they'd been there the whole time and I didn't even notice. I think eyes do this plenty in the grocery store, they focus on familiar brands and that's why I support grazing in the grocery store, to find new brands and products ... I just never advocated it in the paper-goods aisle. Anyway, I bought the Viva Towels and thought that was pretty much it, I knew where to look for the cushy-soft paper towels ... my kitchen life was enhanced.

Fast forward to a couple of months ago and I get the word that Viva wanted to chat with me about endorsing them and appearing in advertisements. This was cool news because I've had a few offers to work with companies, but turned most of them down because they just didn't fit me and I didn't want to just do something to do it. You've heard the term, all money isn't good money? I believe that and have often lost money just because I have a feeling it isn't for me. So, I was totally surprised when I got the offer and couldn't believe after saying many "no's" that I'd get to say "yes" to not only a brand I knew and liked, but one I felt I could speak about from a real place.

We shot the commercials and the magazine advertisements on my Cooking for Real set over the course of 3 days. The first two days were in another building other than Chelsea Market, where I usually tape. They built only half of my set in that location and the cameras shot from a certain angle so you couldn't tell the set wasn't all there. Here are some pics ...
That's the set with Mark, my producer and if I know butts, I'm pretty sure that's Jim in conference with him about lighting, I think. It's technical stuff above my head lol.
This is the scene just in front of the set. If you look close you can see my "tag" or end of the script for the commercial. It's in the laptop screen on the table. I had an open and closing tag, but the middle was all just talk like on Cooking for Real. My granddaddy used to call me motor-mouth growing up and it's these times I'm happy I can talk forever about anything, no script needed. The massive black curtains on the left, top have reflectors on the other side for lighting purposes. That's Jenna looking at the camera, she's a culinary producer and you may have caught her in some previous posts, because she also works with me on Cooking for Real.
These are the food stylists working in a kitchen just to the side of the set. They are prepping my recipes for close ups and for me to use in the commercials as well. It was really hot on this set because the air conditioning made noise and had to be turned off to shoot. So, imagine cooking under pressure in a hot kitchen all day and every thing has to be camera ready. They worked hard. Here they are just 20 feet away from the kitchen, on set...
It still is pretty neat to me to write a recipe, have someone else make it and it tastes just like I made it. They made about 6-7 recipes that day in large quantities, hard work I appreciate. I'll give a link to the recipes at the end of this post. To the very left, slightly cut off is the still photographer.
Standing with me here is David White a wardrobe stylist that I'd only chatted with before the shoot around the hallways of the network. He works closely with my stylist on Cooking for Real and works with other hosts on Food Network. He filled in two of the 3 days for Marni, the stylist I use on my cooking show. David helped me in and out of 6 or so outfits that day and also managed to help me keep stains off every outfit. I'm a messy cooker.
That's Alberto and Marni with me at the final day of the shoot. We did this in the Chelsea Market studios. Pardon the hair clips I'm rockin', but we just wanted to capture a moment and keep it movin'. Alberto does my makeup and hair and Marni is the one that shops for my outfits and alters the ones that need it. I plan to interview them both for the blog in the future, if you are interested.

Never mind me in this photo, take a look at the logo for Viva. It's a printout that is then taped on the actual roll because the plastic creates reflections and lighting issues.
That's me just putting together some Viva coasters with some pinking shears. There are a few ways I suggest using the Viva Towels and one of them was to make cones out of them for french fries. For that we fried up some taters and got them ready for their close up ... problem was, they weren't as crispy and needed support. Take a look, can you see the food stylist's trick in the closeup of this coming picture???
Yep, broken skewers! Pushed carefully through each fry, they worked perfectly and held up to my homemade mayo. And a final shot at the first shoot ...
That's the photographer's assistant checking the images on his screen as we took pictures. Can you see the on-set kitchen in the distant left? Anyway, after shooting video I must've taken a jillion still pictures and thought it was an easy day of taking photos until I got home. My neck was tight and I realized it was due to all of the tiny head movements "up, down, now just to the left a bit" etc., that I took as direction the whole day. Nothing a little sleep wouldn't cure. After the shoots I just waited to be able to tell you. Now that the ads are running, can't hurt to give you some details, eh?

Well, that's it. My shoot with and story about Viva Towels. I want to give you some links that are useful ...

Viva Towels Website

Plenty of links to special deals, recipes and fun stuff.

Register to become a Viva Diva!
Viva Divas get recipes, coupons, chat with each other and enjoy some cool benefits, like having your own recipe appear in a Viva insert in Food Network Magazine!

Viva Recipes and Videos on Viva site
These are recipes I developed for Viva to promote getting closer to your food, meaning ... leave the utensils alone!

Fork-Free Foods on Food Network site
These are videos of me prepping the recipes, about 2 minutes each if you are browsing at work :-).

And if you buy on the stands or subscribe to Food Network Magazine, in the coming months I'll have an insert with recipes and tips provided by the Viva Divas, so sign up, you never know if you'll be published! Enjoy the day and tell a friend about Viva if you already use it. If you don't, look for it where you'd find paper towels, only thing is these aren't anything like papertowels, they are soft and cloth-like enough to remove makeup, wipe your nose without bruising and of course, use in the kitchen. :-)