Let's be honest.
Dining at the James Beard house is a fantasy of mine. It's one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences that sends my heart pitter-pattering. Followed closely by a terrifying thought, "What would I wear???" Someday, if the sun and moon are in alignment, I'll find a seat at the table.
Until then....
Fortunately for us, the James Beard Foundation is taking their show on the road! And they're coming to Seattle Thursday, May 14th.
Cooking high atop the Seattle skyline, overlooking jaw-dropping Puget Sound will be my old client, Chef Ethan Stowell. Yes, that would be the same Chef who was named one Food & Wine's "Top 1o New Chefs in America" and a two-time nominee for the James Beard Award. (Fingers crossed...maybe he'll win on Monday.)
Ethan will be cooking at the uber swank Columbia Tower Club with their Executive Chef James Hassell. For one night only, this private club will play host to the James Beard Foundation. And with sponsors including Wine & Spirits magazine, Certified Angus Beef, and Hudson Valley Foie Gras....rest assured...this will be a night to remember!
Dining at the James Beard house is a fantasy of mine. It's one of those once-in-a-lifetime experiences that sends my heart pitter-pattering. Followed closely by a terrifying thought, "What would I wear???" Someday, if the sun and moon are in alignment, I'll find a seat at the table.
Until then....
Fortunately for us, the James Beard Foundation is taking their show on the road! And they're coming to Seattle Thursday, May 14th.
Cooking high atop the Seattle skyline, overlooking jaw-dropping Puget Sound will be my old client, Chef Ethan Stowell. Yes, that would be the same Chef who was named one Food & Wine's "Top 1o New Chefs in America" and a two-time nominee for the James Beard Award. (Fingers crossed...maybe he'll win on Monday.)
Ethan will be cooking at the uber swank Columbia Tower Club with their Executive Chef James Hassell. For one night only, this private club will play host to the James Beard Foundation. And with sponsors including Wine & Spirits magazine, Certified Angus Beef, and Hudson Valley Foie Gras....rest assured...this will be a night to remember!
Highlights of the evening will include:
- An elegant reception, featuring unique hors d’oeuvres creations served with a complementary wine selection
- An innovative, one-of-a-kind multi-course dinner
- Wine pairings presented with each course
- Exclusive interactions with and access to the award-winning chefs
- Ability to see behind the scenes and experience the preparation of the courses
There are two ways to jump in on the fun:
To order tickets ($175 + tax and tip), contact Jeff Black at 720-201-1853 or jeff@innercirclecompanies.com.
OR.....
Drop me a line.
Yep! I've got TWO TICKETS available....gratis. (Hint: Tipping is nice...)
Here's how you can lay your hands on these tickets:
In the spirit of this post, leave me a comment...addressing the question: What does food mean to you?
Over the past few months, I've learned people approach their love of food from a number of different directions. Whether you lean towards ethnic food from the home country, molecular gastronomy with a twist of Americana, bon bons and brioche, or a beast over an open flame....
What is it about food that moves you...and what does that mean to you?
You've got until Wednesday May 5th to tell me all about it!
***
Note: If you're headed to Seattle for the International Food Blogger Conference, I hope you noticed this dinner is the night before the IFBC. You could....come to town a day early, dine & drink lavishly, and take time to enjoy the city before the conference kick in.
Sounds lovely, doesn't it?
To order tickets ($175 + tax and tip), contact Jeff Black at 720-201-1853 or jeff@innercirclecompanies.com.
OR.....
Drop me a line.
Yep! I've got TWO TICKETS available....gratis. (Hint: Tipping is nice...)
Here's how you can lay your hands on these tickets:
In the spirit of this post, leave me a comment...addressing the question: What does food mean to you?
Over the past few months, I've learned people approach their love of food from a number of different directions. Whether you lean towards ethnic food from the home country, molecular gastronomy with a twist of Americana, bon bons and brioche, or a beast over an open flame....
What is it about food that moves you...and what does that mean to you?
You've got until Wednesday May 5th to tell me all about it!
***
Note: If you're headed to Seattle for the International Food Blogger Conference, I hope you noticed this dinner is the night before the IFBC. You could....come to town a day early, dine & drink lavishly, and take time to enjoy the city before the conference kick in.
Sounds lovely, doesn't it?
30 comments:
Food for me is an adventure. I love to experiment and try new things. :)
I have so many feelings surrounding food.
Food is a love my husband and I share. It helped us fall in love (over my first fried pickle experience at Peoples Pub). It's something we do together (eating of course, but also cooking).
Though it's also a mixed sort of bag for me. I've always been a very Type 1 personality, career driven, successful. Turning my life to food though, as I am endeavoring to do, feels odd. I have conflicted feelings about wanting to be successful in my technical career yet having baking apple tarts be almost zen for me.
As a woman, there are certain stereotypes I feel I'm perpetuating as a cook, especially if I end up being able to do this full time. Yet it really is my passion.
So for me, food is love, food is livelihood, and food is both self-expression and self-analysis.
I'm not sure I have figured out everything food is to me. So really, possibly above all, food is a journey.
Food has evolved its meaning for me throughout the years. As a child and a very poor and picky eater, the good ones lure me to eat and the bad ones kept me thin because I avoided them. In late teens and early twenties I lavished myself with good food but really just ate them for the sake of doing so. It was a status quo to wine and dine and be merry. As I got older, food has started to settle down, take its roots and grow on me in a different fashion. You see, up until a few years ago, I avoided the kitchen at all costs and did not want anything to do with food other than to eat it. That's until I met my fiance and we both discovered not only our love for food, but in making food we love and can share with our family and friends.
My journey with food is parallel to my journey with life. I guess you can say that before, I took food and life in a haphazard way. Later on, I learned to slow down, enjoy the moment, enjoy each bite, savoring each memory, the sight, the sound, the aroma, and the feelings food and life evoke.
I fell in love with food the same time I fell in love with life.
Food is the way I remind myself and my family that we belong to the earth and not vice versa.
Wow, lucky you! Would love to be your date! :)
Food for me is something that I struggle with on a daily basis. I love it so much, think about it constantly, but also feel somewhat guilty about enjoying it too much. I have always struggled with body image issues and I constantly try and strike the balance of loving food and feeling good about it.
I also have a close relationship with food because I have built a career around it being a personal chef. I make people's lives easier (by bringing them food) and open their eyes and stomachs to the joys of vegetarian eating. This is something that makes me very happy and brings me a lot of satisfaction.
I have two young boys who love to eat. They attach experiences and monuments to things that they have eaten - at ages 2 and 4! I love that about them, I love that they are so obviously my children in this regard. Looks like the food gene passed to them.
Have so much fun at this glorious event!
Food means love, it's the way my parents celebrated a success, mourned a loss or cured a wound. Not having children of my own yet, I do the same with friends. The best way to show someone you REALLY know them is to cook (or buy) a meal that is their favorite. A person's favorite food is a personal thing that brings enjoyment on so many levels.
To me, food it what brings everyone together. It's fun to get together for drinks but it's more fun to get together over food. If you have to have a hard talk, do it over food. If you're celebrating something, go out to a fancy dinner. It brings people together and that's what I like.
Well, perhaps with this it isn't so much about what food means to me, but what it means to US and how the us comes together to collectively celebrate, construct, and understand each other and the relationship between land and mouth. For this reason, the more diverse 'us' that comes to the table, the more rich the meal.
So, I think you know where I'm going with this one Traca.
Bringing 2 of the iLEAP Fellows would surely be for them tastes that they never imagined before. You remember the 'last meal' question from Wednesday, right? Who knows, if they attended this event, maybe they would have an answer!
Food is a way to show love! When you go to visit someone's home, often the first thing they ask is if you'd like something to eat. When you want to cheer someone up or show appreciation, you cook or bake something for them. When you cook a meal for someone you anxiously await their approval. When you receive food someone else has prepared you feel loved and cared for.
Wow girl, this is a good one!
For me, food is a language that speaks to me like poetry. It can be powerful, playful, assertive, sweet. It can make a bad day good when done well. We do eat to live, but it's so wonderful to live to eat as well.
To me food is what brings people together. Food is family. Some of my greatest memories of my mother was her Texas cooking. Fried Chicken, Fried Side Pork, Barbecue Sauce, Chili. At her service there were many adults who remembered coming to our house as children/teens, and how good the food was. My sister and I have often lamented that we just can't remember how mom made that dish.
Food is something everyone can enjoy and relate to. It brings us together with a common thread. It is the stuff of life!
When I cook for myself, food and cooking are meditation.
When I talk about food, it is an intellectual challenge, an opportunity for creativity and even social justice.
When I cook for others, it is an expression of friendship, love, or family - such as when my mother passes on one of her recipes to me.
Food is the best way to be a non conformist. You do what you want when you want. Breakfast at midnight? no Problem. Wake up wanting a steak or pizza? Go for it. Think of your favorite food memories and how many of them involve a time or place where you did something or were with someone that you usually wouldn't have been with. These are the greatest food moments I can think of. Allow me to reminisce: I was camping and boating on Apache Lake in Arizona one weekend with a group of friends. I had a catering business at the time so I brought all of the food and none of it was your standard camping fair. We pulled into "party cove" (not much of a party there was only one other boat there) to play on the beach and enjoy some meatball sandwiches with mediterranean pasta salad and a case of Chianti (there were 6 of us after all). One of my friends was trolling the beach and went up to where the people from the other boat had a fire going. While I prepared our lunch I noticed he had stayed and made himself comfortable with our new neighbors. I decided to go and investigate because I love meeting new people almost as much as trying new food. When I got their fire area I was surprised, no shocked, to see everyone there enjoying enormous alaskan king crab legs. Brian, our new firend, was a crab fisherman from Alaska and was passing through the area visiting relatives. He brought 40lbs of crab legs with them on their camping/boating trip. he was so sick of crab he practically forced me to sit down and grab some pliers. While enjoying the sweetness of the crab and the drool of warm melted butter down my chin I forgot that I was supposed to be preparing sandwiches for the rest of my friends. When I explained and excused myself I thought Brian was goign to have a heart attack. He yelled "You have meatball subs with you on the boat! I''ll give you as much crab as you want for one." Needless to say we combined our two parties and had crab and sandwiches and finished the case of Chianti. when it was time to go back to our respective campsites Brian gave us a bag of crablegs to take with us. The next morning as the sun rose and the mist over the lake started to dissapate we had crab and egg quesadillas for breakfast before breaking camp and returning home. This food memory will remain with me forever. We met wonderfully interesting people and we able to share an experience with them. Usually you hear about meeting great folks and stuffing yourself with crab at some swank restaurant or oceanside cafe, not at the lake.
I've many more stories of the unusual that involve food but will leave them for another time.
Traca, I'd say have a good time at your dinner but that would be a waste of words. I know you will.
Cheers!
Pete
Ooh! This is a juicy little contest!
Food is exploration. Food is learning about people and cultures. Food is about taking risks and trying something new. Food is memories and love.
My memories and travels are peppered with the tastes, textures and smells of the foods I've eaten.
Eating chicken feet, for the first time, at a sprawling Bay Area dim sum restaurant when I was 7. In Israel, I learned about my dad's homeland through a bursting-at-the-seems pita stuffed with falafel and dripping with tahini. Nibbling grilled cheese sandwiches, in bed, at midnight with a boyfriend who admitted he practiced making them for a week because he knew how much I loved them.
There will always be a new flavor to try, a new cuisine to taste, a new person to cook for, and a new restaurant to visit. Food is fluid, it's fun, it's always changing. It brings people together, sparks conversation and creativity. What's not to love?
Oh my God!!!! James Beard tickets?!?!? Really?!??
I'm a cook. A restaurant cook. Food is my life. For me it is also the experience of working with a team of talented people to create something magical and memorable that we couldn't do on our own.
And food brings people together in the kitchen, at the table, in a restaurant, on a website, for a festivals, for a wedding. Food not only sustains us but creates community.
I love food!
Hi Traca,
I can't get away for the dinner but wanted to put in my two cents on your topic, the other comments have been fascinating!
To me, food is where pure creativity meets the laboratory. When I was a kid every meal prep with my mom was a science lesson, how a roux works, how sugar molecules interact with butter and flour, why meat browns, why base and alkaloids work in baking. I spent time on the floor with the microscope looking at salt and sugar and soup on slidemounts! I was given free reign to create anything I wanted. Chocolate chip pancakes? Minty cake for St. Patty's day? Peanut butter and jelly ice cream? Anything was okay.
Then I learned to read recipes and discovered that cookbooks were like fantastic mystery novels! How was it going to end up? Why did they use certain spices and ingredients together? What didn't work, what tasted best for each season? We had no fear, making sugar egg dioramas for Easter, making our own frosting colors using color theory, catching and cooking our own food, it was such an adventure and completely without limits. Well, no lobster of course but hey, I had a single parent. I've learned to be extremely creative with chicken! LOL
As an adult, I realize I have a compulsive need to create. I knit, paint, needlepoint, craft, whittle, noodle on various instruments, and most importantly cook. Each dish I cook is like edible art; sometimes it's a Manet, sometimes a kindergarten finger paint but nonetheless it's my creative outlet. And with the help of my mom, many wonderful blogs (you know who you are!) and more cookbooks than I have room for I enjoy knowing why my cake browns in a certain way, why stews look and taste and have a different mouth feel depending upon the thickener (your blog about starches in ice cream was a revelation!) and why different cultures do what they do for their everyday and special occasion feasts, and how to enjoy the seasons and what is locally available.
It's a never ending fascinating process of creation/birth, sci fi and love. I'll never be bored! So this is what food means to me. Thanks for "listening"!
My parents were terrible cooks, my mom especially. Well, she wasn't exactly a terrible cook, she was just never organized enough to get the right combinations of things on the table. At school, lunch was provided, but on the days we went on field trips, we would have to bring our lunch. Like I said, my mom was not organized so once we didn't have bread so my mom used frozen french toast instead, which I remember was really delicious. We lived in Hawaii, and the big thing to do was to put a frozen can of guava juice in our lunches and by the noon it would be the perfect slush treat. Once, my mom didn't have any juice or any containers so she put some Koolaid in an old cottage cheese container. So in the bus that day we started opening our lunches and of course red Koolaid had spilled all over my lunch, soaking my sandwich and the frosted animal cookies. It was a soggy mess. The teacher jumped right in and offered part of her lunch, and other kids gave me bits and pieces of theirs.
Even though I was horrified, this is one of my favorite stories, because a lot of times food is a disaster that usually happens when you don't play by the rules and you end up with something altogether different from what you were hoping for, but it always ends up making you smile.
Food is my Center. Starting with my mom - her cajun weeks in Northwest Indiana and travels to Indian, Chinese, and other ethnic neighborhoods to 'stock-up' on spices - food is the center of our home, our conversations with friends and family, and the key consideration for any and all my time off. Food has been the way I've marked time - my favorite vacations, stories of smuggled spices in suitcases and contraband-sniffing dogs, meals meant to sooth sorrows or heal colds, celebrations starting days before planning meals or shopping at umpteen markets.
Food is the way I express myself, my love for my friends, make new friends, relax, and start nearly every conversation with my mom and sister.
Thanks for the opportunity to give this some thought.....I am sure it will spark more!
Food is social, expressive, art, and at times, humorous and fun.
When engulfed by travel to faraway lands, it is more. It is culture, tradition, and people so different than myself that it becomes more distinct than anything I've ever known.
Yet, what makes food most unique for me is it's ability to intertwine people from different backgrounds and corners of the world, all the while dancing between past and present memories.
Food is culture to me. Whenever I travel I observe new cultures in restaurants, in cafes and on the street--most often eating or drinking. This kind of social research exposes a lot of unique things about different cultures. Like for example, the italian people grab coffee standing up and talking to the other people at the bar or the barista. It's a ticket to the inner workings of culture to be able to participate.
Food has been the medium my sweetheart has used to woe me (and me, him) as well as to care for me over the past 6 months of things best left unmentioned. When all he could do for me was to listen, hold me, and feed me. We've experienced eating to live, as well as living to eat.
Stephanie
can you change that to woo - we've had plenty of woe, but not from food!
Whoops! Entered my response to an earlier post. Here it is in the right place!
What does food mean to me?
This question really caught my attention. What does it really mean when I plan my next three meals before finishing the current one, or that over the years I’ve dedicated increasingly more of my energy and resources to food? Taking up the question helped me be more conscious of the roots of this relationship and its evolution over fifty years.
In the 50s
My early food years were simple, though I was aware that my family’s relationship to food was different than many of my friends: My mother cooked. Eating TV dinners and buying school lunches were common in my friends’ homes, and while I loved the variations on noodle casseroles that stretched my mother’s food budget, I nonetheless envied the kids who had 25 cents for a school lunch. On good days I could talk some them into trading their quarters for my brown bag lunch. Best if it was a spaghetti day, when the lunch ladies scooped out huge spoonfuls through the crusted cheese topping. But more memorable than that, I willingly committed my weekly allowance on mashed potatoes and turkey gravy day. This was the one lunch I couldn’t bear to miss. Most memorable dish: Homemade mashed potatoes.
In the 60s
I come from a family of Iowan women who cook. Beyond the casseroles and gourmet Jello salads, we ate beef stroganoff, leg of lamb, and fried chicken. My favorite meals were at my grandparents’ house, where breakfast during my visits meant eating all the bacon I wanted. I watched in surprise the first time I watched my grandmother liberally salt and pepper our cantaloupe wedges. We ate these alongside toast made from the bread she baked each week. There were cocktails at six (not for me), followed by grilled steaks on the chic covered patio. Back at home the fast food craze was just beginning. I started dating the year Taco Bell franchised in southern California. My boyfriend treated me to the five-items-for-a-dollar special after particularly good make-out sessions, standing behind the 76 Gas Station. Most memorable dish: Thin-sliced, homemade white bread, toasted and buttered.
In the 70s
Now I was away from home and it was my turn to cook. I loved the meatloaf recipe on the back of the dried Lipton onion soup mix—a tip from my roommate’s mother—and her chili Frito cheese casserole was an oh-so tasty second. And when I started dating a real adult, Sweetheart #2, I also moved up the restaurant food chain from Taco Bell to the Black Angus. But better yet were Sunday dinners with his Italian aunts. I fell in love with steaming pots of minestrone soup and platters of spaghetti piled high with polpettes, as well as the Italian sensibility that there couldn’t be too much food on the table. One Saturday morning I ditched my grocery cart in the Safeway produce section when I ran into Aunt Emmy and she invited me to make zucchini blossom soup, right that moment. Everything else we needed was in her cart and the blossoms were waiting. Under her tutelage I was becoming a real cook. That same year, in a fluke of luck, I entered a family recipe for cranberry pie in a contest and won! Most memorable dish: Zucchini blossom soup
In the 80s
I married, but not to the Italian. Sweetheart #3 was Japanese/Hawaiian/Native American, had lived abroad for five years, and loved to eat. His specialty was grilling salmon over an alder fire on the beach. Together we whittled down the cedar strips, dug pits in the rocks along the Tacoma shore, and tended the skewered fish opposite the direction of the smoke. Unlike the Italian, this guy loved getting out and eating out. We headed to Seattle most weekends, hitting House of Hong (my first chicken feet), Tai Tung, Il Terrazzo Carmine, Ayutthaya, and Il Bistro. Seduced by the vegetables and fruits at the Market, I bought the freshest arugula from Frank, and escarole and broccoli rabe from Pasqualina. And then along came the influential Settebello. We were there. Most memorable dish: Housemade pasta at Settebello.
In the 90s
I entered the new decade as a grad student in small town Indiana. Thank heavens the vibrant international population meant plenty of ethnic grocery stores and restaurants. I did my first co-op shopping and supplemented that at the seasonal farmer’s market, where I stretched my food budget with vibrant peppers and lettuce and tomatoes that grew like weeds. Back in Seattle, my favorite Brenner Brothers Bakery was no longer the only show in town. Grand Central Bakery changed the face of bread in Seattle and soon spawned others. On trips home I loaded up my suitcase with loaves of Como and bolo rolls. I extended the shopping to San Diego, my childhood home, where I bought Pete’s Italian sausage, or to Brooklyn, where I filled my bag with freshly cured bacon and wheat pie. And then one memorable day our pal Erik invited us to Vancouver to a hole-in-the wall eatery recently opened by Vikram Vij. Oh. My. Most memorable dish: Vij’s lamb popsicles in Fenugreek cream sauce.
In the 00s
The new millennium found me working in central Illinois. Sweetheart #4 (yeah, that’s another story for another time) and I connected with local foodies at a weekly wine tasting, and a core group of us soon started a Slow Food convivia, Prairieland Slow Foods. Our first project was a compilation of local producers, a project that connected us—producers and consumers—with one another. Imagine my amazement, as a person who loved pork, when we invited three small pork farmers to showcase their hams, and two of our group members could discern whose ham was whose! One Saturday morning I bought 20 pounds of meat and chicken from the Moore’s, whose offerings were limited, then afterward ran to Sears to buy a freezer to put it in. I revisited my former stomping grounds in Indiana, and there discovered the farmer’s market had quadrupled in size, as well as Judith Schad’s Capriole Farmstead Goat Cheeses. And then there was Food TV. These six food years reached a crescendo when our group held a school garden fundraiser with a US Slow Food founder, Alice Waters, and a month later hosted Deborah Madison, then on her Local Produce tour. Most memorable dish: Gnocchi with porcini foam made by a young chef at Timpone’s.
We have returned to Seattle, and like anyone who’s read this far (!), immersed in a burgeoning food culture.
So what does food mean to me, beyond the ever-present bread, potatoes, and pork in my story (who really knew!)? Valuing my food roots, and growing deeper ones with my friends and family? An appreciation for food in these communities that has nurtured my own? Closer connections to the amazing men and women who grow, raise—even forage—the food I consume? Finally, the incredible online communities, whose member postings are an integral part of my days? These capture the essence of what food means to me in 2009.
Moreover, this opportunity to reflect sets me up for the next decade. What I’m thinking right now comes mostly from Michael Pollen: Join my family and friends at the table … to pay more, eat less … to eat mostly plants … along with a little wine.
Food is a way to take pleasure in the routine. To make the ordinary extraordinary. For me, food goes beyond a means of sustenance. Food helps me discover the art of nature.
Trevor
http://iheartbrunch.com
(WOW these are great comments!)
Food is everything: It's life and love and the very smallest moment all wrapped up in a bit of bread and cheese or the most tender, beautiful bunch of chard from my guy at my farmers' market. It's the connection point, and the way I make sense of the world.
My friends and family are scattered all over the globe. I miss and miss and love and miss and so I cook. I fold rice and tomatoes into grape leaves for dolmades because I never got to know my grandfather; I bake scones because my great-grandmother grew up in Scotland; I send care packages just because. It's my way of showing love, and thinking-of.
Food is community in the very basic sense, enduring past any and all surface differences, and is something to which every person should have access. And so I feel very grateful for my easy access to it, and never take it for granted.
For me food is essential to everything in life. Friendship, relationships, and memories. The smell of burnt toast or the aroma of chocolate chip cookies straight out of the oven stirs an emotion good or bad. I love food.
Drat, did I miss the deadline? I even made my flight so that I'd arrive on time.
Food is life, family, and friends for me. It brings intimacy to any occasion.
Okay pepps! The contest is now closed, but if you're so inspired, please feel free to leave your thoughts.
I'm blown away by the comments on this topic and would love to hear from you....
Love, peace & bacon-
Traca
this post is really kind of great, imagine lengthy comments is posted here because of your topic. :)
-cathy young
http://femalemodelsphotos.blogspot.com/
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