Stupid Hamster Takes 8th Graders to HOOTERS!

Image via WikipediaAs a parent.......wtf?

As me in 8th grade.......YES!

Pa. 8th graders' field trip includes Hooters lunch

Wednesday - 6/1/2011, 9:56am ET

BERWICK, Pa. (AP) - For one group of central Pennsylvania eighth-graders, a recent field trip to Baltimore included lunch at Hooters _ a restaurant better known for its busty waitresses than its food.

The Berwick Middle School students were visiting the National Aquarium last week. Chaperones took them to various restaurants for lunch because the group of 100 was too large for a single place.

The Bloomsburg Press Enterprise reports Tuesday that one group of 15 to 20 students ended up at Hooters.

Superintendent Wayne Brookhart says that while he wishes the group's coed chaperones had chosen another restaurant, he has not received any complaints from parents.

Hooters spokesman Mike McNeil says the restaurant chain often hosts groups, including sports teams and church organizations with teens and younger children.

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If You Love Good Food, You're Going to Love Southern Living Off the Eaten Path

One of my many, many dreams for the near future is to have a Southern food counter or truck or restaurant.

Though I've never even been to the South, I am enamoured by the food, ingredients and people. I can think of nothing more comforting than shrimp n' grits, a muffaletta sandwich (a specialty of New Orleans), fried chicken, collard greens and cornbread.

So when I heard about the brand new, just released Southern Living Off the Eaten Path by Morgan Murphy, I knew it would have to find a place amongst my very carefully selected cookbooks.

It's the subtitle after the colon that really got me - Favourite Southern Dives and 150 Recipes That Made Them Famous - and the fact that award-winning travel writer Murphy drove 15,000 miles in his 1959 Cadillac last summer and picked 75 places to include.

It is so jam-packed with photos, recipes and backstory, that it's more of an intimate scrapbook or personalized tour of the South than a mere cookbook. If I could somehow manage it, I'd like to do what Murphy did, and visit every single one of these places in one fell swoop. Now that's what I call a vacation!

And what is so surprising is that the recipes are not your average "dive" dishes. Krazy Kat's in Delaware for instance offers Vanilla-Cognac Brined Pork Tenderloin with a Gingersnap Jus! You'd better believe that's joining my regular rotation of dinners. And Lobster and Brie Mac and Cheese from Cabana in Nashville and Red Wine-Braised Short Ribs from The Local in Virginia? Ooh la la. I think I just found my dinner party menu items. And I've got to make the  PCP Pie (Pineapple-Coconut-Pecan) from Ed & Kay's in Arkansas at the next do or potluck. Can you imagine the kinds of  hoots and hollers that will get?

Of course the book is teaming with the kind of comfort food dishes that are famous in the South - Hush Puppies, Crawfish Pie, Beignets, Shrimp and Crab Etoufee, Sweet Potato Casserole, Chicken-Fried Steak with Country Gravy, Southern Fried Catfish, Pecan Pie, Cornbread, Candied Yams, Chiles Rellenos, Buttermilk Biscuits  - and a heckuva lot more (My mouth filled with saliva as I wrote these. I'm heading into the kitchen to make some of these treasures as soon as I'm done here).

Go ahead and check out the preview here.

Thank you, Mr. Murphy, for bringing the South up here to me in the North via Southern Living Off the Beaten Path. I am so grateful to be surrounded by all of this great food  made by great folks from these great places. 

I hope you don't mind, I've gone ahead and doggeared the whole darn book.

The Essential Thomas Keller Boxed Set Is A Food-Lover's Dream

I just finished reading Knives at Dawn with the 4 food book clubs I run. It's about a cooking competition in Lyon and there was a lot about Thomas Keller in it.

I loved the book, but really enjoyed learning about the man behind such famous restaurants as The French Laundry, Per Se and Ad Hoc. To be devoted and driven like that is fascinating to me.

So I decided to see if I, a non-perfectionist who likes to improvise when cooking, could tackle such a feat as The Essential Thomas Keller - a boxed-set of 2 of Keller's eponymous cookbooks, The French Laundry and Ad Hoc At Home.

They come in such a beautiful case and are hefty, coffee-table style books with luscious photos. These are no ordinary cookbooks, let me tell you.  This is one helluva swank gift, if you ask me. One that your food-lover friends will no doubt actually use.

The French Laundry is Keller's fine dining restaurant, of which so much has been written, including his famous Salmon Cornets (which you can now make at home).  If you want more finesse in your cooking and kitchen, this is a great place to start.

The recipes here are things that I would make for dinner parties or if I was trying on a new technique. After all, White Truffle Oil-Infused Custards with Black Truffle Ragout and Lobster Consomme on Gelee, while triumphant-sounding,  is beyond my usual budget and time allowance for a work week dinner. However, you will learn a ton just reading the book - there's the mushroom lady, the restaurant itself and a ton of new things to try in your own kitchen such as vegetable cuts, cooking lobster, blanching and straining.

Ad Hoc is Keller's "casual family-style" restaurant that serves a single menu every day and the cookbook is most definitely the more approachable of the two. I like his list of tools to have in the kitchen, how to cut a chicken into 8 and 10 pieces and his simpler recipes such as Sauteed Chicken Breasts with Tarragon, Meatballs with Pappardelle. There are lots of helpful hints along the way here too - the only protein you do not let rest, why you should buy whole fish versus fillets and what kind of dish to serve salad in.

There is much to learn from both of these books. Work your way up from one to the other. Refine your methods and ingredients.

You will be a better cook for it.

Buy The Essential Thomas Keller now.

Create Beautiful, Memorable Meals with Heart of the Artichoke

You probably know David Tanis one of two ways:

- by his critically-acclaimed book A Platter of Figs and Other Recipes

- as the chef at Chez Panisse for over 25 years

His new book, Heart of the Artichoke and Other Kitchen Journeys, takes you through the seasons in a very personal way. David gives you not just superb recipes, but the stories behind them. He also gives you help along the way - the squid lesson alone is invaluable.

There is much to love about this cookbook:

- For one, it is uncluttered. It has beautiful photos and lots of white space, so it is easy to read (and follow) the recipes within.    

- Secondly, his chapter on Rituals what many of us want in food writing - personal moments and stories that we'll remember and share with friends - except perhaps the tripe!  

- And as someone who loves to throw dinner parties, I have to thank David for creating wonderfully rich, yet simple seasonal menus that allow me to cook a fabulous meal without having to spend 85 hours pouring over cookbooks, my recipe binders and scrolling online trying to assemble a chic dinner for friends. 

- There are recipes for small, medium and large groups, so you can cook to the number of people, without having to quadruple recipes (that never works) or do hard math (how could you have forgotten how to add fractions at this young age?).

- You can actually make the stuff here. It's not the highfalutin dishes of a world-renowned celebrity chef, but down to earth plates that you can absolutely make. Even things that I would have considered hard to make like Italian Spice Cake and Flat-Roasted Chicken with Rosemary are easy here (p.s.I have 4 recipes for flat-roasted chicken and never has it been as easy as just removing the breastbone and pushing down on the breastbone. This is life-changing!).

Get the book and finally pull it together every night. You can, thanks to Heart of the Artichoke.

Which menu will you make tonight - Cooking for Tomorrow Today (terrine, duck confit, salad, homemade bread and spiced pears) or Dead-of-Winter Dinner from the Supermarket (salad, steak, potato gratin, broiled pineapple)?

Mmm...

Need a Gift for the Foodie in Your Life? Eat Me: The Journal From Chronicle Books is Perfect!

Do you take pictures of what you're cooking and/or eating and then post them?

Do you flip through cooking magazines and cookbooks looking for new ideas for dinner?

Is your idea of a fun night out going out to restaurant?

Do you consider shopping for ingredients fun?

Or do you know someone that does?

Then you'll want to get your hands on the incredibly awesome Eat Me: The Journal from Chronicle Books.

Answer questions about your favourite childhood foods, take note of memorable meals, record family recipes, write down your own faves and explore your guilty pleasures in these fun and colourful easy-to-fill-out boxes.

Of course one of my favourite - and most used sections is the Restaurant Diary pages. I love the detail here:

- Date

- Dining Companions

- Restaurant Name

- Cuisine

- Address and Phone 

- Hours and Closed on (Brilliant feature!)

- Delivery & Delivery Free

- Overall Star Rating circle 1-5

- Price Range circle $ - $$$$

- Must-Order Items

- What to Avoid

- Comments

There are fun sections to fill out: food books that you're reading, dining disasters, rated cheap eats, a desserts section (oh my!), a cookbook wish list (you can photocopy the pages and give out to friends and family at holiday gift-giving time), food websites and blogs to follow, tracking your wine, favourite cocktail recipes and a kitchen wish list.

The lists of suggestions are fantastic too - 50 Cocktails Not be Be Missed, Checklist of the 100 foods you must try before you die, The top 10 pieces of cookware every kitchen needs and The top 10 tools every kitchen needs.

The fun modern-retro cover has a plastic cover, so whether you're reviewing a new resto or trying out a new recipe, you can keep it clean with a simple wipe.

There are few "foodie" gifts out there that I think food-lovers and cooks will actually use.

This is most definitely one of the one that will have food stains and wine rings on its pages.

But it now.