A crazy September

They say that timing is everything in life.  So why am I starting this blog just when I am going to be out of town for a month.  Insane! 

Woody Allen says that 80% of life is showing up. And I have to show up at multiple venues this month.

First venue is Copia, the center for Wine Food and the Arts in Napa. On Sunday September 6 I am demoing three lunch items that will be paired  with wines. I move on to the Culinary Institute of America in St  Helena for a  three day retreat where I teach salads and vegetable dishes to chefs from chain restaurants in the hope of inspiring them to put more vegetables on their meat and potato laden menus. 

I am home with just enough time to unpack and repack.  I then fly to Traverse City, Michigan, for The Epicurean Classic. This event promotes cook books and I have a new book, Mediterranean Fresh.  So I will be there doing a cooking demo and then making and serving food for 600 ravenous guests so they can sample bites of my farro salad and bean puree with cumin on pita bread, recipes from, Mediterranean Fresh and buying lots of books. ( Ever the optimist.)

I come home to unpack and repack.  I then fly to New York for a meeting of the Beard Awards commitee. Our job is to select a theme for next year’s Beard Awards ceremony and suggest chefs to cook at the May  4th extravaganza. This year our theme, Artisanal America was very well received. Inspiring in fact.  We will have to be very creative and think very hard to come up with one that is even better… or as good.  I then fly to New Orleans for the annual Women Chefs and Restaurateurs conference, in the midst of this insane hurricane season. If the weather holds, I fly safely home home for two days.

I then unpack and repack. There is a theme here.

Then  it is back to the CIA for the Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Lives, a joint venture with Harvard Medical School and the Culinary Institute of America. I will be cooking healthy and yummy bean and grain dishes and running a couple of taste workshops with Chef Suvir Saran. But the high point of this conference will be doing a cooking demo with my grandson, Adam, a budding chef.  We are going to show what fun it is to cook with children, especially if they are your beloved family, and how to teach children about good healthy food (by cooking it.)  If they make it they will eat it.

After the Healthy Kitchens conference ends, I stay up at the CIA for a few more days to do some teaching using new whole grain flours from Con Agra Foods, making pasta, and blintzes, two of my favorite foods. And hanging  out with my friend Mark Furstenberg, a great bread baker from Washington DC.  

I go home to unpack and repack .  Then from October 5 to 7 I drive back to the CIA for the US Potato Board. More cooking, more teaching.

So maybe it was nuts to start this blog and not be able to keep current.  My intentions are good.  But I do not have a lap-top to keep on blogging. I am lugging knives and chef coats instead.  And frankly I’ll be too busy to evaluate and report on what is happening until I get home and have time to think. 

So be patient with me. I probably will not be doing many additions to this site until October.  Sorry to be a tease, to start a blog and then vanish for a month, but that is show business. When I come back I may have lots of tales to tell.