It’s dinner hour at The Big Traveling Potluck. I head straight for the kitchen. Three of the ladies behind The Potluck—Erika, Pam, and Sharon—garnish the succulent smoked lamb and pull the vegetable skewers out of the oven.
Tina, a strong Finnish woman and host of the night’s events, hands me two spoons and a silver tray piled high with lamb and lollipops of vegetables. “Let’s go,” she says.
I’ve attended more than my share of food blogging events over the past five years. I’m a veteran of icy cold air conditioned conference rooms, Power Point presentations about stats and SEO, and hallways filled with anxious participants who fear being irrelevant. I’m no stranger to food conference agendas, food vendor giveaway frenzies, the anxious shaking of hands, and camera/gear/gadget/logo/design/fashion/friend envy.
But at the Big Summer Potluck–a third annual gathering for new and veteran food writers, photographers, and recipe developers put on by my good friend Maggy (Three Many Cooks), her mother Pam, and the lovely Erika (Ivory Hut)–everything is different. The focus is on small and intimate. The food is simple and made by people you know (or will know) over the course of the weekend. Speakers like Joy (Joy the Baker, Molly O’Neil (Cook n’ Scribble, and myself shared about what matters most in our hearts. Great food making demos from Marissa (Food in Jars) & Max Hansen offered attendees insights into invaluable techniques for canning and curing they can use at home.
Rather than focusing on technology or new frontiers of financial success, the retreat’s themes were on sharing, vulnerability, honest work, and mindfulness. The location itself–at Silver Buttons Farm and the Anderson’s secluded home in the Pennsylvania woods–invited frank discussion and forging of friendships.
Thanks to the masterful work of the team behind The Big Summer Potluck, attendees felt safe enough to get honest. We opened up about the things that scared us and mattered to us most. We got still. We put away our cameras, stowed our iPhones, and spent time listening to each other, rather than running off to the next thing. We shared personal issues and realized we weren’t all alone.
When your day starts, what’s the first thing you do after you wash up and have that first cup of coffee? Do you turn on the computer to check in with the world via Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, your favorite blogs, your go-to online news source, or sites like Tastespotting and Tasty Kitchen? Do you wade through the slosh pile of emails, follow up on your blog’s comments, and check your website’s stats? Do you send out a Twitter message after you’ve photographed your breakfast and posted it on Instagram?
Let’s face it, we’re drowning in information before our day even really starts.
Somewhere after all that social media and networking, we also need to find time to have a life, be with our family, exercise, and maybe even pet the dog. But in order for us to make wise decisions, experience joy, and create something significant in our lives an on our blogs, we have to be truly present in the moment. But how can we appreciate or perceive anything now, when the endless chatter of information overload has taken over the space in our day that was once dedicated to quiet contemplation, creativity, and real human interactions?
Technology and new media is an important part of our modern world, but the necessity for downtime remains. It’s in the silence–the moments between moments–that real life happens. Great ideas, life changing meals, and brilliant solutions are discovered within a pregnant pause, a forced break, or a little get away. It is in the stillness–quiet places like the shower, at the top of a mountain, in the middle of a field, or at the edge of the ocean–that inspiration comes. Inspiration comes when we’re not paying attention or gripping down on some problem we’re trying to figure out.
But who has time to slow down, take creativity breaks, unplug from the internet, or even meditate? How can we inspire others if we can not give ourselves the gift of time and space to be inspired?
Later today, I’ll be joining eighty technologically savvy and warm-hearted people at this year’s Big Summer Potluck in Bucks County, PA. This small gathering of food writers, photographers, and bloggers are taking the weekend off to recharge batteries, meet internet friends, and spark the creativity that fuels us to continue creating great content.
My husband and I are flying three thousand miles across country with the effervescent Gaby Dalkin (What’s Gaby Cooking) so we can take part in this year’s Big Summer Potluck in Bucks County, PA. This small, close-knit group will be gathering at Silver Buttons Farm in Carversville, PA for a weekend of lavish meals, honest conversations, cooking sessions, and inspiring talks with people like Joy Wilson (Joy the Baker), Maggy Keet (Three Many Cooks), Pam Anderson (Author of the Cook Without a Book series) and myself.
I look forward to sharing about the topic of mindfulness and how we can apply ancient and modern techniques to accessing the internal wisdom needed to create beauty in the world. Tune into what’s going on via Twitter feed @TheBigPotluck or the hashtag #BSP3.
I look forward to seeing good friends and making new ones!
“You know what I can’t stand?” a food writer recently said over dinner. “How many people feel the need to say they’re honored and humbled whenever they write about all the great things that happen to them.”
The table of creative types groaned and rolled their eyes in agreement. I sat in stunned silence. What’s so wrong about the words honored and humbled?
Another friend added, “I understand if you’ve got lots of great things going on in your life. But don’t waste our time with honored and humbled when a simple thank you would suffice.” Conversation faded to the background. My mind spun. What about these two words could be so offensive?
The more I thought about it, I realized what my friends were really saying wasn’t that the words honored and humbled are bad. Not at all. What they were complaining about was how those words had become trite. But why had so many people (even people like me) used “honored and humbled” so much? Those questions got me thinking about what might really be going on.
What’s the big deal?
It seems that whenever the words honored and humbled appear online, they tend to be followed by a brief announcement of some personal success. If you’ve ever followed @humblebrag on Twitter, you’ll see my friends aren’t alone in noticing a trend in how people communicate good news online. Some people honestly mean what they say, while others use words like honored, humbled to subjugate a self-congratulatory agenda. Unfortunately, for those who use this phrase often, the predictability of the combination of words has become so clichéd, honored and humbled hold no truth within them any more.
The struggle between balancing core values and a public persona has many of us bloggers scrambling for words that will protect our sense of identity. But the thing is, no matter how humble we may be, the instant transfer of important and mundane details of our daily lives to hundreds, thousands, or millions of followers on Twitter automatically qualifies us as social media show offs. No matter what words we use to try to ease our discomfort in our situation, the truth of the matter remains, our relationship with social media has many of us experiencing an identity crisis.
Going on a summer vacation isn’t a unique concept. But a group of food bloggers vacationing together? It’s a somewhat unusual idea, considering how our friendships all began.
We started as strangers with a common bond. We got to know each other over website pages. We forged friendships over Twitter and the occasional get together. Press trips and conferences followed. But rare are the times when we food professionals come together without an conference or PR event to motivate long periods of time together. Unfamiliar are moments that aren’t devoted to networking, talking technology, and sharing food stories.
We’ve perfected the art of eating together. But a vacation?
The plan was simple. A small group of food blogging friends–Matt Armendariz, Adam Pearson, Maggy Keet, and Gaby Dalkin–would gather together at a retro-house in Palm Springs for a mini-vacation. There would be no agenda and no to-do list. We would be without PR wranglers and our time together would be devoid of “break out sessions”. The only objective was to spend time together and relax by the pool.
Later, I would find out there would be wigs. But more on that later.
#PSSalon
I’ve spent my entire artistic career quietly dreaming of a day when I would be invited to sit at a table with great thinkers, writers, artists and confidantes. I never could find my fellows in the performing world. I failed to locate true collaborators in film school. Was my dreamy ideal of a 17th century salon–a place where great thinkers and artists would come together to inspire, critique, and develop their craft–a pipe dream?
Truth be told, it wasn’t until I joined the food blogging community almost four years ago, that I began to experience a modern academy. How we food bloggers influence, encourage, and drive each other to achieve great things through our online work and social media maneuvering is something to behold. It is exactly what I had been yearning for all these years.
It wasn’t until I took my place at that gaping-holed dining room table in Palm Springs with the likes of Matt Armendariz, award winning photographer and designer; Adam Pearson, a professional food stylist; Gaby Dalkin, a personal chef, driven business woman, and online personality; Maggy Keet, a writer, visionary, and co-founder of the non-profit Bloggers without Borders–that I realized that the hashtag #PSSalon was a true representation of what was happening. We didn’t push. We didn’t schedule. We just let things happen. We coaxed each other to investigate our motives and our professional opinions. We explored hard topics, engaged in witty banter, and artistic criticism.
Palm Springs Salon became a 2011 version of the 1920’s Algonquin Table.
A great trip lingers with you long after you return home. A successful vacation is one where memories are unpacked long after the suitcase is emptied and the laundry is done. For me, the best journeys are the ones that get inside my heart and rearranging things.
It’s been more than a week since I came back from Louisiana and I’m starting to realize that my trip reorganized a few things in my life while I was away: I’ve got new beautiful friendships to foster and a whole new set of cravings to grapple with.
Since my return to LA, my imagination whirls over gems of stories of the Louisiana food world. My daily routine is peppered with flavored memories of diners, ice cream shops, a water-side bar where the locals cook up craw fish outside under a tent, and the all-night beignet restaurant littered with empty plates covered in powdered sugar.
Food isn’t just a meal in New Orleans, it’s a way of life.
Of all the states I’ve visited, I have never been to any other American city where its inhabitants are so closely aware of their cultural history and culinary traditions.
New Orleans is a mélange of spicy cultures (French Canadian, Spanish, Africans, English, German, Italians, and Native American) that has created a uniquely colorful people with strong ties to family, food traditions and a shared heritage. I was charmed by the stone-lined sidewalks, Creole townhouses with iron-worked balconies, and hotels like the French Quarter’s Bourbon Orleans Hotel that have marketing materials that tout ghoulish history more than amenities. Brass bands paraded through the streets as second-liners [see glossary, below] danced a two step and waved handkerchiefs over their heads in celebration of marriage.
New Orleans after a rain storm
Always, the locals repeated this constant refrain: indulge in the city’s most famous dishes and forget about the caloric aftermath.
Regulars at Camillia Grill
The food tour
For almost one full week, the food blogging tour of Louisiana was given unlimited access to culinary professionals and abundant samples of the state’s culinary bounty. Luckily for our bellies, our itinerary of eating started slow. But as the days went on we managed to shock even ourselves–professional eaters that we are–by the sheer amount of food we were able to consume.
On our first night in the city, Blake Killian, the man behind BlakeMakes, summoned us to our first dinner at Bistro Maison de Ville. Bow-tied waiters served a multi-course dinner dedicated to the theme of showcasing the best of Louisiana seafood. Course after course, we marveled at the freshness of the seafood and the firm texture of the perfectly cooked shrimp.
Camillia Grill
Camellia Grill’s exterior signage
The following morning I joined a small, ambitious group of professional eaters (Chichi Wang, Maggy Keet, and Daniel Delany) to sneak in an extra meal before our first official eating excursion of the day. Daniel lead us to Camillia Grill, an all-day favorite with the locals since 1946. We ordered a few classics, including a show-stopping stack of pecan-studded pancakes. I don’t often shorten my words here at Food Woolf, but OMG.
Pecan pancake with maple syrup
After polishing off a Manhattan Omelet (corned beef hash, cheddar cheese and potato stuffed eggs) and pecan pancakes, we staggered through the oppressive heat with swaying bellies. We gathered together under the watchful eye of Blake for a festival celebrating Creole Tomatoes, Cajun Zydeco music, and Louisiana Seafood.
“When you think of all the news you’ve seen about Louisiana, what images flash through your mind?” asked Mike Voisin, a seventh-generation Louisiana oysterman. Voisin, the CEO of Motivatit Oysters, paced around the air-conditioned conference room as he spoke to his visiting guests.
An assortment of bloggers and food writers from across the States–hand-picked to observe Louisiana’s seafood industries and partake in the state’s diverse food culture–sat around the conference room table conjuring up images: submerged homes, flood-stranded dogs, desperate men and women on rooftops waving white sheets for help, oil-slicked wildlife, and tar-soaked birds.
“We are not what the perception of what the media has made us,” Voisin said. Despite the fact that almost one hundred percent of the state’s fisheries are open and functioning and have passed national and state testing for health and safety, much of the seafood buying public fear the Gulf-state’s products aren’t safe to eat. According to Voisin, the unprecedented attention of the media has given Louisiana’s seafood industry a bad reputation.
“It’s kind of hard to get that image of an oil slicked pelican out of your mind when you’ve seen it a million times, isn’t it?” Voisin said. “Louisiana has a branding problem…We have shrimp, crabs, and oysters but what we don’t have are people willing to buy.”
The uniquely difficult challenge facing the Louisiana seafood industry is exactly why Louisiana Seafood Promotions and Marketing Board decided they needed to reach out to consumers in a revolutionary way–through food.
An Invitation to see the real Louisiana
When it comes to news headlines, a couple of things sell really well: natural disasters, tragic loss of life, celebrity gossip, hero stories, and adorable animals. When one single news event touches all these aspects with one soaring narrative, it’s a media goldmine.
Blame it on the perfect storm of natural disasters that’s befallen Louisiana over the past seven years, but the state has certainly been the source of a lot of headline news. With Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and Deep Water Horizon’s oil spill in April of 2010, international media teams swooped into the coastal state to document the disasters. Stories of tragedy, redemption, faith, hope, celebrity interest, and distress were easy to find in this Creole/Cajun state.
Thanks to a huge influx of money to the state of Louisiana, much progress has been made in just one year since the oil spill. Houses and businesses have been rebuilt, fisheries and rice fields are producing again, and tourism is improving (According to the tourism board, the state earned 5.3 billion dollars in tourism last year). Yet despite the positive changes and commitment to becoming a strong and successful state, Louisiana’s seafood industry is struggling.
Seeing a problem, Louisiana’s Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board did some research and quickly realized the general public couldn’t get over the horrifying images of the past so easily. So, in order to change perceptions about the seafood and motivate people to start buying Louisiana seafood again, they began devising a different sort of plan to get the word out.
Rather than coming up with slick slogans, cunning advertising, or a give away contest, the Seafood Board decided to call upon a handful of trusted voices in the food world to come and experience Louisiana from a culinary and cultural point of view. Who better to get the word out about a food crisis than a bunch of hungry and inquisitive food bloggers?
Bloggers (Amateur Gourmet, Serious Eats, Family Fresh Cooking, and Three Many Cooks) observe the day’s blue crab catch.
I’m a film school grad, but you wouldn’t know it from reading this site. You’ve never read any drafts of my screenplays, I don’t rant about movies, and you’ve certainly never seen any short films. But the times they are a changing, my friends.
Don’t worry. I’m not looking to change the way I do things around here, but when I realized I could shoot and edit great photos and even make a short film with my iPhone, I started to re-think my Luddite ways. Why not take advantage of all this new-fangled technology that’s at my finger tips (literally). I can not and will not slip into default mode of being a slow adopter of new technology. No sir!
So taking a cue from all my tech-savvy food blogging buddies, I join the world of amateur video. And it’s about time.
Now before you spend the two plus minutes watching my humble video post, I should mention that the subject of this short is about a five day trip to New Orleans I just got back from. Thanks to the generosity of Louisiana Seafood Board, I was flown to Louisiana (along with a handful of this country’s top food bloggers) for a tour of New Orleans’ culinary scene and Louisiana’s fisheries and seafood processing plants. The excursion was designed to show us (and give us tastes of) all the great seafood that Louisiana has to offer.
It was an incredible trip that has my mind spinning, stomach extended, and photo library brimming with so many incredible photos I’ve been struggling to figure out where to begin. So rather than start off with an extra long essay on the subject of Louisiana seafood, I thought I’d start you off with a brief visual teaser of what’s to come.
So without any further ado, I present to you my first iPhone short film.
Food Blog Masters trip to New Orleans
*Full Disclosure: My trip was furnished by the Louisiana Seafood Board. I was not paid to supply any opinions or material on the behalf of the organization or the state of Louisiana.
Sometimes you have to drop off the radar, invest in yourself, and find inspiration to go deeper in your work and life. Maybe that means taking a class, reading a book, studying with a mentor, or attending a conference where you can be surrounded by all sorts of great teachings and insights. Food Blog Camp, a small gathering of some of the food blogging community’s most inspiring leaders, is all of those things in one gorgeous, entertaining, and tropical locale.
Todd and Diane, David Lebovitz, Elise Bauer, Matt Armendariz
For the third year in a row, attendees of the Food Blog Camp are given immediate access to some of the food blogging world’s most talented stars–Matt Armendariz (Matt Bites), Elise Bauer (Simply Recipes), Jaden Hair (Steamy Kitchen), David Lebovitz (David Lebovitz), Adam Pearson (Adam C. Pearson) and Diane Cu and Todd Porter (White on Rice).
This year’s Food Blog Camp event was held in the luxurious Grand Velas Riviera Maya resort in Cancun, Mexico. Infinity pools, gorgeous vistas, heaping bowls full of guacamole, an endless supply of fresh juices, jungle wildlife, and luxury suites (so large I could have moved my entire apartment inside), created an otherworldly feeling that transported imaginations to uncharted places and happy tastebuds. As in past years, the location of the event was key in giving attendees a break in routine so that they could make room for innovative thinking.
Gaby Dalkin (What’s Gaby Cooking)
If you are longing for inspiration to bring your blog or website to the next level, I suggest you follow a few of the following lessons and insights from the Food Blog Camp panelists.
Everyone has their own way of seeing the world. No one perspective of a moment in time is more true than another. Where and how we stand defines the perspective we have. Some of us feel comfortable in the corner, far away from the swarm. Others love to be in the center of activity, drumming up the energy of the event. Some of us are in bodies that are strong, frail, tall, short, thin, or wide. We are fearful, fearless, energetic, slow, curious, and apathetic. All these differences make us who we are and how we see things.
The soup of reality is what makes living in the world so damn fascinating. We’re all in it together, but we all add something different to the pot.
I think that’s why I love reading wrap up posts of food blogging events so much. It doesn’t matter if I was there, center stage, or watching from the side lines, I get so much from reading and seeing the differing perspectives.
I scan the photos and think—I didn’t see that! Ooh, I remember seeing this happen!—and read the words—How come I didn’t taste that!I wish I had a moment so affecting—and find a well of knowledge I didn’t know I was missing, filled up.
How I come to these conferences is constantly changing. Sometimes I have high expectations, other times I walk in anticipating nothing. Either way, I’m always surprised by what I discover—be it in the form of a new acquaintance or experience—regardless if it’s a positive or negative.
With just one day separating me from my life changing week of training at ZingTrain in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and my trip to FoodBuzz in San Francisco, I didn’t have much room for day dreaming about what would happen once I arrived.
As I boarded the plane to SF with my LA friend Jen (of Devour the World), I began organizing my thoughts for the trip. Though I wasn’t sure what to expect, I did know I was excited to be part of a food writing panel. Even more, I was looking forward to sharing a quiet moment in time with a handful of foodbloggers, to see what we could create with words. Continue reading “A Writer’s Perspective on Food Buzz 2010”
My raison d’être of becoming a blogger almost three years ago was simple: I needed a place to tell stories about food and what I knew about the restaurant business. My blog wasn’t created to change the world. It was built to describe it.
Because my goal for this website wasn’t to become The World’s Most Popular Food Blogger, or make millions off of advertising, there have been a lots of things I don’t do. I don’t use a computer program to tell me how to search engine optimize my posts for key words. I don’t write about topics I think will gain me advertisers’ dollars or corporate clients. I don’t go to blogging dinners just to get free meals. What I do is write. I write about things that fascinate me and make me want to learn more. I celebrate the underdogs. I enjoy the company of passionate people. I participate in this blogging world in order to participate in a virtual salon on food and expression.
I do, however, come from a background of acting and doing improvisational comedy. My training in saying YES to every challenge I’m faced with makes it very hard to to ignore the voice I have inside me that demands I do things that are well beyond my comfort zone. This internal voice—the quiet champion’s whisper that said it was a good idea to quit my job as a screenwriter and take up blogging—often asks me to do things that scare the hell out of me. Things like auditioning for food shows,speak at conferences, network with big time food bloggers, go after big dreams, and enter myself into food blogging competitions, like Project Food Blog.
In choosing to enter the Project Food Blog competition—an ten week competition to see who would be the Next Food Blogging Star and something that I’ve been writing about for the past month—I decided to take a chance on myself because it would push me to be the best I could be under unusual circumstances. I knew the competition would be a difficult and full of impossible deadlines, odd tests of skill, trials of character, and tests of stamina. I learned there was a certain amount of campaigning involved, and while I tried to ignore the feeling of competing in a popularity contest—I enjoyed discovering the voices of other food lovers and writers.
Step into a restaurant kitchen in the early morning hours and you will find a machine of dull silver and aluminum-can grey. Its moving parts are meat slicers, oven doors, dish washing machines, and flesh and blood. Men and women, fresh from their beds, stand shoulder to shoulder in the uniform of pressed whites. Hidden are the rock tee shirts, tattoos, and scars from sharp knives. Bandannas and skullcaps conceal the full glory of a multi-color Mohawk, spaghetti curls, and the zig-zagging of a buzz cut.
The light is bright and the polished steel hurts tired eyes. In the kitchen, there are few words exchanged. Covered paper coffee cups and Mexican sweet breads sit untouched. The slicing of onions, the trimming of vegetables, the deboning of fish, and the stirring of stockpots require mindfulness and patience. Every motion is a working meditation. Everything in its place is the unspoken mantra of the kitchen.
Before customers arrive, the world inside the kitchen is deep-forest quiet. Then comes the axe to that serenity, with the rat-a-tat-tat sound of the ticket printer spitting out an arms length of orders. Despite exhaustion from early morning prep time, a busy service gives the kitchen staff a boost of energy that allows them to push through.
Maybe this is a culinary preamble you’re used to hearing. But what if I told you the kitchen I describe is in the corner diner you go to when you don’t want to dress up, or at a culinary school you’ve never read about, or a restaurant that’s never been photographed by a very-famous-photographer?
Is a chef not a chef, even if you don’t recognize them? Why can’t we celebrate the prep-cook? Food bloggers may be champions of ingredients, farmers, cooking techniques, specialty food makers and celebrity chefs—but what about remembering the underdogs for their humility and hard work and commitment to making our daily food?
A huge and humble thank you to my new and returning readers for voting me through to this fourth round of Project Food Blog, a multi-round blog competition to see who will earn the title of food blogging star and $10,000. Thousands of men and women entered the competition, and now there are just a hundred. I am honored to be one of the remaining blogs. Thanks for reading and for your continued support. If you enjoy this post, please vote for me to make it to the next round!
Finding community at food blogging conference--Kim (Cook IT Allergy Free) and Tia (Glugle Gluten-Free)
When you become a food blogger, it’s a solitary art form. In the beginning there’s just you and the Big Idea. Perhaps the spark to tell your story and share ideas is so strong it only takes a few short moments to publish that first post. Or maybe it takes a painful cluster of days, weeks, or months to thrash through the inspiration and recipes and just get your blog going. All the while, the process of creating The Next Great Blog makes you realize that there are many, many obstacles you must face in order to continue your blogging journey. You must find time. You must have a voice. You must have a certain style. You must become a student of What Bloggers Do. You need to get out of isolation.
This is how you come to the decision to pony up some hard earned cash and sign up for a food blogging conference.
And besides, there are words to learn like SEO, blogging platform, hosting, DSLR, blog network, point and shoot, categorizing, tagging of posts, photography, lighting, lenses, and even something called food styling. You’ve already spent hours on the subject, but can only get so far on your own. Maybe there’s a partner, a loved one, a friend, a kid, or a fish-in-a-fishbowl who witnesses your process. Perhaps these trusted folk (or fish) even offer help when you fall into a deep pond of uncertainty and technical difficulties. Perhaps there is no one. Regardless, as you struggle to define what it is your blog is, you start to realize you can’t do this blogging thing alone. You need qualified help. You need inspiration. You need mentoring. You need some food blogging friends.
One of the fastest ways to find answers, shore up weak spots, and find community is to go to a food blogging conference. Granted, going to a conference isn’t cheap–between conference tickets, transportation (airfare, gas money), lodging, and other associated costs the entire event can cost you hundreds if not thousands of dollars–but if you know how to make the most of your time you can push the value of every dollar.
Choosing a food blogging conference that works for you and your budget might not be an easy thing–there are plenty of factors like cost, location, and schedules to consider. But once you decide to surround yourself with like-minded people who also have the same passions as you, the world of blogging doesn’t feel so isolated and lonely. Thankfully with the explosive growth of the food industry as entertainment, there are plenty of opportunities to find a food blogging conference that fits your needs and budget. There are local events, luxury getaways, camps, festivals, and conferences (Foodbuzz, Food Blog Forum, and IACP) that bring together food bloggers for intensive training and networking.
Regardless of what form of food blogging gathering you pick–be it a one-day seminar or multi-day getaway–there are a few key things to keep in mind in order to make the most of your time there. For this week’s Project Food Blog Challenge, I offer you my step-by-step tutorial on how to getting the most out of a food blogging conference.
Sending a care package to kids can be fun and healthy
Not everyone has children of their own, but that doesn’t mean there can’t be plenty of great kids in your life. Nieces and nephews, best friends’ kids, and neighborhood rug rats can all be part of your life. Though I’m married, I don’t have children. But between my brother and my husband’s two brothers, I have four nieces and four nephews who own a nice chunk of real-estate in our hearts. The problem is, I live several thousand miles away from those beautiful eight kids. Sure, Skype is great for capturing the magic of face-to-face conversation, and photos keep me up to date on their newest growth spurt, but I’m the kind of aunt that wants to cook for her nieces and nephews.
Snapshot of some of my family from back east
That’s where care packages come in. Just because I live thousands of miles away doesn’t mean I can’t cook for your family. An old-fashioned care package gives my far-away family members a tangible treasure from my west-coast world. Ship a box of food and treasured objects to a loved one and—like our ancestors did before us—the beloved recipient gets a precious treasure to cherish and/or devour.
A care package is like magic: what was once with us is now with them.
My nieces say: “What’s in the box?”
Distance Cooking
Perhaps this is why I’m glad I was selected to be one of this month’s cooking for kids Foodbuzz 24×24–a sponsored event that brings together twenty-four food bloggers from around the world to write about a particular topic. I knew that my perspective on cooking for kids would be much, much different than a full time mom or grandparent.
As a full time professional and childless married person, the only option I have for baking for kids is when I put together care packages for friends and family. Since I’m a food person, putting together homemade treats for a care package is a great way for me to share my love of food and for my faraway family. Granted, I wish I had more time and money to hop a plane and go visit, but putting together a care package is a good alternative.
So if you are considering putting together your own care package for young friends or family, here are some things to think about:
Choose recipes for items that store well for a few days. This is especially important when shipping an item far distances.
Baked items like granola, fruit or nut bars, hearty cookies, and jellies are all great treats that will ship well if packaged well.
Choose baked items that don’t weigh a lot. Shipping heavy jars filled with goodies may look cute, but the more an item weighs the more it will cost to ship.
Having a night off from work is a luxury for most restaurant professionals. Since bars and restaurants earn most of their income after the sun goes down, most food industry employees keep vampire hours. We punch in after dusk, work when most people are relaxing (or sleeping), and are left to spend time with friends after the witching hour. I’d even venture to say that if you were to chart the hours of chefs, sommeliers, waiters and bartenders you’d think you were looking at Vampire Bill’s stats.
So when I got the exciting news that readers had voted me through to the third round of Project Food Blog*, I knew I didn’t have much time to prepare. Luckily, I’ve held plenty of impromptu dinner parties in my adult life, so I knew just what to do. I would throw a party where all my friends could get creative and eat some delicious Asian-inspired comfort food.
Party Tip: Throwing a great dinner party doesn’t have to mean spending hours and hours getting ready. Stay focused. Stick with a theme.
Make-Your-Own-Ramen Party
Since my dinner party would be held during after hours, I would need to serve dishes that were simple and straightforward, and would have to be easy enough to accommodate everyone’s post-restaurant/food writing schedules. I decided to offer two courses that would give guests a fresh new look on two of Asia’s most convenient comfort foods–Vietnamese spring rolls and instant ramen.
Fish balls at Thai Town Market *insert giggle*
Keeping in mind the advice from chef friends–cook what you know—I purchased fresh ingredients at the local Asian market in Hollywood’s Thai Town. I kept my eyes open and my creativity sharp in order to find unique ingredients for my dinner party spread. I sought out complimenting items that could add texture and interesting flavors to Vietnamese hand-rolls (my take on a wrapper-less spring roll) and bowls of instant ramen. I grabbed fresh Thai basil, jalapeno, bean sprouts, pressed/fried tofu, Sriracha, and for fun, I took a chance and added to my cart a package labeled “fish balls” (a kind of rounded fish cake).
Party Tip: If you don’t live near an Asian market, you can find many great ingredients on line. You can even order an exoti assortment of ramen through RamenBox (a Los Angeles-based company that specializes in selling some of the world’s tastiest instant ramen noodles via the internet)
When you move to Los Angeles from small town USA, the culture shock is great. The weather, the cultural diversity, the dominance of the entertainment industry, and the abundance of revealing clothes is all quite astonishing. What’s more, if you want to know anything about food and are curious by nature, every day in Los Angeles can be an opportunity to move outside of your culinary comfort zone.
For this week’s Project Food Blog Challenge (more about that in a bit), the contestants were asked to create a classic dish from outside their comfort zone. What better dish to make than Jook, a rice porridge comfort food from a culinary culture I know very little about.
I first learned about Jook from Jonathan Gold, one of our city’s most famous culinary journalists (and the only winner of the Pulitzer for food writing). Gold is what you’d call L.A.’s poster boy for strip-mall ethnic food. His craft for sculpting words and ability to describe uncommon meals in the most mundane locations has created something of a culinary fad where LA food lovers seek out the most unusual, ethnic eats across the city in our city’s trashiest of locations.
All this is to explain how it came to be that this white girl from Massachusetts has been craving a Korean comfort food I’ve never even tasted before.
The first bite is the greatest
Rice porridge, or Jook in Korea, Congee in China, Okayu in Japan, is a popular comfort food throughout all of Asia. Known for its restorative powers for both the sick and the hung-over, the slow-cooked rice dish is a savory oatmeal that’s eaten for breakfast, a late night snack, or during the lean times. Jook is a creamy porridge that’s both comfort food and a kind of blank canvas for all sorts of great flavors and textures. Slow simmering short grain rice for several hours in water or chicken stock results in a creamy pap that is the perfect food delivery device for the flavors and textures of sesame oil, fish sauce, crunchy pickles, spicy condiments, herbs, meat, seafood, and even a fried egg.
Eating a dish for the first time on a very empty stomach is often the best way to imprint a taste in your memory. I’ll never forget that crusty French bread slathered with rich butter that time I was a starving student in Paris. Nor will I ever forget the flavor of Congee after a day of shopping at the Korean market and rushing around to be ready in time for this Project Food Blog Challenge.
But oh! The jook! It was just beautiful the way the soft fried egg oozed onto the porridge. Or how the sesame oil pooled onto my spoon with a drop of salty fish sauce, creating a fishy vinaigrette. And the salty crunch of the bacon and pungent hit of chopped scallion gave every bite a satisfying texture. The soft porridge is the kind of comfort food that–regardless of your cultural heritage–you immediately want to adopt once you’ve tasted it.
Hi, my name is Brooke and I’m a restaurant blogger. I’m not a Yelper, nor a restaurant reviewer, not a food-fanatic, or even an angry waiter on a rant. I’m a food writer and a restaurant professional with a strong point of view on what it is to work in the business of food.
For those of you just tuning in here at Food Woolf, this is a literary blog which offers a non-fiction account of a restaurant professional living life from inside of some of Los Angeles’ best restaurants.
Like a chef who produces food that she loves to eat for her customers, I work hard to create something beautiful here—first for myself and then for others. At Food Woolf, I want to give you something more than just a simple recipe and a fast paragraph.
I want to craft appetizing phrases—like ones I’ve discovered in the fine writing of M.F.K. Fisher and Michael Ruhlman—and delectable sentences you’d like to roll over your tongue a couple of times. I work hard to weed out unnecessary tirades and focus on the insightful behind-the-scenes moments that speak to bigger issues that affect diners. Sometimes, I even snap some photographs of great meals that make people want to dive through their computer screens and get eating.
