We Love To Hate -- Paula Deen

Maybe it's just me but watching Paula cook with all of that oil and buuuutter makes my stomach do flip-flops. Down home cooking with her 'boys', a dog in the kitchen, and more grease than you'll find on Brad Pitt's forehead, Y'all.

Paula Deen, with her silver tidal wave of hair and multiple diamond rings that she forgets to remove before every cooking program, has a charm that, for many that is reminiscent of hanging out in grandma's kitchen.



From a book review of The Lady & Sons Savannah Country Cookbook:
I love her warm, upbeat manner and I'm impressed with her Cinderella story which has been recounted by countless other reviewers. Her charm is found all through this title and its sequel and reading the stories behind the recipes is just as enlightening as the recipes themselves. Paula writes the way she speaks, and you can even hear her easy Savannah drawl as you read. The recipes are down-to-earth, mostly pretty simple, and decadently satisfying. Those doing Atkins or Weight Watchers need not apply here...we're talkin' SERIOUS cheese, butter, and cream (yep, the real stuff!).
In his enthusiastic introduction, John Berendt, author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, writes: "Authentic Southern food is not about pretension." Sure enough, this book doesn't put on any airs. A great many recipes unabashedly list prepared foods among the ingredients. As an appetizer, Garlic Cheese Spread includes an eight-ounce package of cream cheese and an eight-ounce jar of Cheez-Whiz. Shrimp or Lobster Bisque contains, in addition to seafood, a can each of condensed tomato soup and condensed mushroom soup. The restaurant's most popular dessert is Gooey Butter Cakes, which starts with a box of Duncan Hines yellow cake mix. Still, some of the recipes attain a high level of regional authenticity: Georgia Cracker Salad is made with crushed saltines, tomato, scallions, hard-boiled egg and mayonnaise; Southern Fried Chicken acquires its crispy coating with a batter of eggs and self-rising flour. Readers concerned about high fat content should skip this book.

From the time she was a young girl, Paula has suffered from agoraphobia. That may explain why it's tough to find any interviews with her. I did find her restaurant website which features, what else? A write-up of her brother Bubba's new oyster house, y'all. "Bubba and I are so excited about it. He's even letting me serve some of my home cooking there." Gee, what a swell guy that Bubba.

And don't forget, "And did I mention I have a new cookbook come out soon?" We'll be sure to look fer it, darlin'.

Chocoholic Stupor of a Different Sort

When I was a kid, chocolate was not one of my favorite sweets. Caramel, marshmallow and sugar plums: that's what my dreams were made of. I learned to really taste chocolate only a few years ago when I met my husband who was (and still is) one of the biggest chocolate fiends I've seen.

Since the way to a man's heart is through his stomach, of course it became my goal to learn how to handle chocolate. To bake with it, to melt it and roll it into truffles, to dip strawberries in it.

Three years ago I attempted my first truffles. I carefully followed the recipe for the gorgeous chocolate dipped beauties in the cookbook except, I didn't own a double boiler (still don't) so I improvised. Not with two cooking pots as I had seen my mother do a thousand times, no. I wanted to be stingy with the chocolate... hey, chocolate is expensive, right? My bright idea was to put a ceramic plate holding the chopped chocolate over a pot of boiling water. Can you guess what happened? I know you pastry chefs out there cringed, I heard you. The chocolate got runny, then it got hard, then it turned white as a sheet. In pastry circles we call that white stuff bloom. Bloom is what happens when the chocolate is heated incorrectly; the cocoa butter separates out from the cocoa solids and lays nicely on the top for the whole world to look at.

To avoid bloom and stay at a workable consistency, chocolate must be tempered (my mother always told me I had no temper... HA!). Tempering is holding the chocolate at a specific temperature for a specific amount of time. Kids, this should only be attempted by professionals, really. It took hearing this and tempting fate many times before I actually believed it.

So, now I believe it, now what? Do I convince my dear husband to fork out hundreds of dollars for a chocolate tempering machine? (I WISH!) Am I banished from baking with, truffling or dipping with chocolate? No, not quite. You see, there are chocolate tricks (not the kind found in Baltimore City). Tricks that professional chocolatiers don't want the average Jo to know about and rightly so. Let's face it, if You can make truffles any old time then Godiva and Chocolate Garden are out of business.

When I started at my current job I saw some of the other cake decorators doing amazing things with chocolate. Things I didn't think were possible, certainly not by me. Here were ladies dipping strawberries, drizzling chocolate on cakes with abandon, drenching full cakes in liquid chocolate and writing on cakes with chocolate in a bag!

These ladies showed me how easy it was to simply pour the chocolate nuggets out of the box, pop the disposable cup into the microwave and zap! it was ready.

Not possible. Not possible. Not possible my brain said.

It looks like real chocolate... my eyes told my brain.

It tastes like real chocolate... my tongue told my brain.

My hands agree, this is not the chocolate that ended in fiasco so many times before. This chocolate is pre-tempered (kinda like me in a napping state). How is this possible? I have no idea. Where can you get this chocolate? Ahhh... there's a question worthy of many hours of searching our dear friend, Internet.

Pre-tempered chocolate is not indestructible, however. It will still bloom if heated too long or too quickly (though it's not as finicky as the regular stuff). The oddest thing about pre-t is, if it blooms one time, it can actually be salvaged by heating slowly and adding new, unmelted chocolate.

Just for the sake of argument, let's say I got cocky working with this beautiful pre-tempered chocolate found in my workplace. And let's pretend I decided to dip strawberries and truffles at home, with my regular old chocolate, forgetting all of the previous disasters. Would my chocolate miraculously behave simply because I have been working with melted chocolate for a year without many problems? Let's just say... the chocolate wasn't the only one losing its temper over the weekend.

I am more determined to conquer the chocolate animal now than I had been previously. If I get a few more big jobs before the end of the year, maybe I'll just get me one of those fancy schmancy tempering machines. In the meantime, I have to find someone who will sell pre-tempered chocolate in the United States! sheesh... Canadians. Belgians. You're all out to get me.

But guess what? MrG is a chocolate purist. No fruit, no nuts, no caramel, no luscious nugat... nothing to muddy up his milk chocolate experience. So, any chocolatting I do from here on is all for me... and my pride. And my waist. And my booty.

We Love To Hate -- Rachael Ray

Seems it's easy for many to hate Rachael Ray. But why? She's cute (I know I don't look that good at 37), she's sweet, she seems like a genuine person. The former high school cheerleader has followers on both sides of the fence. Her cutesy-pie catchphrases - sammies for sandwiches, stoups for soups that are as thick as stew - are so grating on certain people that they inspired a drinking game in which players take a sip when she uses one. If she creates a new and completely unnecessary abbreviation, they have to swallow the whole drink.
"This is awesome," she said as she looked over the list for the first time last week. "But man, people are going to get hammered." She told the New York Times.

I love the quotes found at Too Many Chefs:
I have to change the channel when Rachel Ray and her joker smile comes on the screen. I get so distracted by her annoying presence that I lose interest in her recipe and her show! Her fake laughs, wannabe cool lingo (i.e., e.v.o.o., yummo, the g.b.), and her hand and arms gestures for every syllable that comes out of her mouth, by emi
ninnyjane says, I also find her soooooooo damn annoying yet some sickness in me just won't let me change the channel.

chance disagrees, I love Rachael Ray! I don't care what anyone says-it's all jealousy-and she is just so fun to watch. The people that turn up their noses at her act as though they eat pansy a** gourmet meals off a silver platter each day.
Cord N Bloo expresses what many (men in particular) feel toward Rachael, I want to marinate her little rump roast and baste her tenderloins! What red blooded American guy would'nt love to throw her on the kitchen counter and ride her till she screams YUMMO!!!

In July, Becks and Posh asked us to Be Rachael Ray for A Day by showing off the best of our local dining on a budget of just US $40 a day. Despite tooth gnashing by some bloggers, the round-up seemed to turn out quite nicely with participants from all over the globe showing how they could dine, with or without the perky.


I was surprised to learn that 30 Minute Meals began as a cooking class in a grocery store where Rachael was a food buyer and store manager.

More from the New York Times: Next week, she will introduce her 11th book, "365: No Repeats," which takes the 30-minute concept and offers a different dish for each day of the year. "That was the stupidest idea I ever had," Ms. Ray said. "That many recipes nearly killed me."
Within a couple of weeks, she will start selling her own extra virgin olive oil, which she calls E.V.O.O. on her shows.

And the Times tells us Rachael is slated for a talk show next fall... ugh. There I must draw the line. Rachael is good at what she does but she should stick to food. Perhaps there will emerge a new drinking game surrounding the talk show. Remind me to invest in Smirnoff and Hazelden.



And by the way, thank you to the person who found my blog by googling "babe of the week". I needed that.

Happy Halloween!

Halloween is finally upon us. I have been working like a madwoman trying to get everything ready for the bewitching hour. There are last minute decorations to be placed in the yard today and one pumpkin left to carve of the dozen brought home from the pumpkin patch.

Thankfully I live in a community that doesn't freak out about Halloween making it akin to devil worship. Instead, it's a fun time for kids to dress up like Spiderman and load up on candy. Just like it was when I was a kid and that's the way I like it. My particular neighborhood also has a tradition of trick-or-treating for adults with adult beverages left in a cooler next to the kids candy bowl.

Last year our house was the biggest scare of the neighborhood. Hopefully the word will get around and that will draw a few more trick-or-treaters this year. I have one of those fancy fog machines and despite the fancy price tag it doesn't seem to be working properly after several attempts yesterday. I'm giving it one more chance today and hopefully it will come around and play nice. Last year MrG scared the costumes off some of the kids in the neighborhood with The Talking Skull. He put it beside the candy bowl and when the kids had taken their candy, the skull said, "Happy Halloween" with a result of much shrieking.

Searching for a last-minute costume idea that fits your foodie personality? Check out these sites.


spaghetti and meatballs

The beet is cute and clever but not sure other kids would know it. From Better Homes & Gardens Unfortunately, it looks like you have to pay for a full description and pattern.


Martha Stewarty tomato, pea pod, pumpkin

At work and at home I've been listening to non-stop Halloween music of all different sorts. I've made a few different Halloween CDs, some scary and some funny for different moods, but they usually get played back to back as they likely will for trick or treaters. The new The White Stripes album has 3 songs on it that pretty well scream Halloween: The Ghost, As Ugly As I Seem, and White Moon so The White Stripes have made it into the CD player a lot in the last few days as well.

I'd love to post photos of the decorated cupcakes, cakes, cookies and truffles I've made recently but dropping my digital camera a few weeks ago made this impossible. I took a few non-digital photos but I won't be able to post them until after processing. Such a pain.

Have a happy and safe Halloween!!

Food TV: We Love To Hate You

Food bloggers. We are a funny and fickle bunch aren't we? We have our food opinions and we love to show them to the world. That is what blogging is about, of course, showing the world (potentially) what one thinks of anything and everything imaginable so it is not surprising to find so many bloggers passionate about food and things relating to food.

I have been a fan of The Food Network for a long time. Much longer than I have been a fan of cooking and MUCH MUCH longer than I have been a professional pastry chef. I have seen chefs and shows come and go from the Food Network on a regular basis since I began seeing FN on cable more than (egads!) 15 years ago. Some memorable shows that I truly miss like Death By Chocolate with Marcel Desaulniers and How to Boil Water with various hosts (which I do still see pop up on the schedule occasionally) and some shows that I said "good riddance" to like: Malto Mario with guests who sat around and never said anything while Mario Batali hacked up tiny octopii to drown in cream sauce.

Prompted by a post at Too Many Chefs, I began thinking about all of the 'celebrity chefs' that have made their way into our conversations and thought I would just mention a few of them and see what sort of response I got from readers. I began to list those I felt should be mentioned and the list grew much larger than I anticipated and so, perhaps instead of making one abbreviated post I will make this an ongoing project.

You should expect to see (and I hope you will add your thoughts on) discussions about:
Emeril
Rachel Ray
Alton Brown
Jamie Oliver
Paula Deen
Tony Bourdain
Martha
Low Carb and Loving It
Semi-Homemade
Cook's Magazine (America's Test Kitchen)

If you have a chef you would like to see roasted uh... skewered erm... discussed, post a comment here and I will do some research so I can look like an informed dope instead of an uninformed one.


While not a Food Network personality (yet!), Julie Powell of the Julie/Julia Project is getting a lot of notice. I saw her mentioned at The Amateur Gourmet, Mona's Apple and via comments:
Something So Clever, Accidental Hedonist, and haverchuk to name a few.
Some of the comments I saw about Julie's book and new blog:
The main character in the story was constantly swearing or crying. The cleanliness of the kitchen was questionable, which was making me lose my appetite for the French food being prepared. The only eggs I want to read about in a book about cooking are the kind that come from hens. I really did not want to know that the main character was able to pay off her credit cards by selling her own eggs - twice!
There were good reviews of the book as well:
Powell is a talented writer, and her blog remains one of the better examples of that medium to this day. Her writing style --- confessional, self-deprecating, occasionally rambling --- is really well-suited to the blog space, which makes the book version of her story occasionally feel like it's veering off-center. When she's hard at work in the kitchen, her writing is sharp and self-assured --- but Powell strays off-track a few too many times into less central aspects of her life (and especially her friends' lives) that, frankly, aren't that interesting. One wishes she would keep her focus on the food --- but when she does concentrate on that, Powell is so good you're ready to forgive her the errant lapses (at least until they happen again.)
Well, the reviewer gave the book 3 out of 5 stars, anyway.

She misses the whole point of blogging, to my mind - the act of sharing something important with other people. If I didn't want anyone to see or read my journal entries, I'd write them in Word or use one of those actual pencil-thingies to jot everything down, far away from the peering masses. But I *do* want to share, to dip my toe into the kitchens, the craft corners, the homes of other bloggers while laying mine a bit open as well. There's a sense of community, of shared experience, of simply getting to know other passionate people and watching along as they learn and discover. THAT's what brings me here, and what keeps me writing and photographing away on my own blog.
Sad she missed the very best part of blogging. Her loss, but all of our gain.
Nicely put, Kathy.

I admit that before today I don't recall hearing about Julie Powell and had never visited the Julie/Julia Project while it was in progress. I read her last entry written the day after Julia Childs' death and found it to be uninteresting except for the blast of cursing near the beginning. While I myself have moments when a $0nofab!tc# or a f*c& is effective in conveying a certain feeling, I don't think it should be relied upon as a writing tool. Julie obviously disagrees as her posts (and apparently her book) are reminiscent of a visit with one afflicted with Tourette Syndrome.


This Celebrity Chef Love/Hate discussion will continue. I welcome your comments. Agree or disagree or just mention a chef you feel is important.

A Little Whine, A Little Cheese, A Little Blogging, If You Please

You may roll your eyes, it's okay. Rhyming post titles are lame in the worst way but *I* am the worst way (or perhaps being German it is the wurst way).

The Whine:
I have been busy. I do enjoy the blogging experience but it takes time and I am prone to laziness on occasion. My blog's former description, "A procrastinator's view of blogdom" was perhaps more appropriate. I would like to say, I'll try to post more diligently but really, you do get what you pay for.

The Cheese:
I know you can't get enough cheese. And since my blog is The Power of Cheese, I should have a thoroughly cheesy post once in a blue moon.


Nothin' says lovin' like a message written in cheese from a can. Patrick's Cheese-o-matic can seems to have temporarily run out of the glorious orange goo but see the fun messages written by others.

Send a virtual cheese greeting from Cheese of the Month Club.
Or try this virtual cheese from the Tillamook, Oregon Cheese Factory.

In Wisconsin they don't allow you near the cheese... But in Vermont they don't seem to mind your tootsies wriggling through the whey.


Someone once gave me this book as a joke and I actually read it. Now they need a cartoon mouse to tell you how to deal with change? But, a site that lets you click a cheese for more info... well, who wouldn't love that?

Blessed are the cheesemakers, for even they are affected by the wrath of hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Cheese Market News tells us that, since as much as 70 percent of the North American supply of polyethylene and polypropylene resins used to make packaging for cheese, milk and other dairy products are manufactured along the Gulf Coast, recent hurricanes continue to spell big trouble for the dairy industry.
[A side note that has nothing to do with food other than your ability to cart it from the market, reduced availability of polypropylene will also affect the production and cost of new vehicles made in the US in the next couple of years. Interior door panels, dash boards and many bumpers as well as numerous clips and clamps that hold cars together (though most people never see or pay attention to these things) are manufactured using plastics including polypropylene. I know this tidbit of info because of my former life in a plastics factory. So, if you're in the market for a new vehicle, get it soon.]


So finally after a short break you have a post on your plate. What will you do with it now?
I'm being too weird aren't I? I believe I may need more sleep... or perhaps more coffee.

I recently broke my digital camera but MrG has endeavored to buy me a new one... isn't he a doll?

Check out the Halloween links on the sidebar.
Also not found on the Halloween sidebar but worth checking out: Martha's last minute costume ideas. Love the jelly fish!

Google Me

As said by Memoirs of a Married Mad Man:
Egregiously lifted from Views from the Back Row who pilfered it from Ago-go, who stole it from the lovely Kalani, who stole.....

Directions:Go to Google and click on the images link. Type in the following and post the first (or your favorite - I did first for each) picture the search engine finds.

- The name of the town where you grew up
- The name of the town where you live now
- Your name
- Your Grandmother’s name (pick one)
- Your favorite food
- Your favorite drink
- Your favorite song
- Your favorite smell


The town where I grew up

This is really a gorgeous picture of it. You see where the St. Croix meets the Mississippi River.

Where I live now

(In that cloud somewhere, I think.)

My name

I'm a Finnish Wolf? That's cool.

My nickname resulted in this



But my nickname actually comes from this
&


My Grandmother's name

I'm sure she'd be pleased (yeah, right!).

My favorite food



My favorite drink

I don't do whipped cream, but it looks pretty.

My favorite song

Boop boop be doop.

And finally.... my favorite smell



I promise to have original thoughts flowing again very soon. No, really!