Moose Stew

John McCain has rocked foodies all over by selecting Sarah Palin as his running mate. What’s rocking foodies is that her favorite meal is Moose Stew!

So just what is this Moose Stew?

Moose Stew

Feeds 6-8

2 - 2 1/2 lb Moose meat, cut into 1-inch cubes
2 tb shortening
1/4 ts black pepper
1/2 ts Paprika
1 Bay leaf
1 ts Salt
2 cans condensed beef broth (10-1/2 ounces each)
1 cup dry red wine
1 Onion; diced

12-15 sm whole white onions
3-4 carrots; chopped
10 sm potatoes; peeled
2 tb butter
2 tb flour

You’ll need at least a 2-3 gallon pot to handle this volume of stew.

Saute cubes of moose meat in shortening until browned on all sides. Throw in the pepper, paprika, bay leaf, salt, beef broth, red wine, onion, and carrots. Cover and simmer for 2 hours or until the meat is tender. Add the whole onions and peeled potatoes; cover again and simmer for an additional 15-20  minutes, or until the vegetables become slightly tender. Mix the butter and flour into a paste and drop this into the stew pot. Continue to cook, stirring the stew, until the moose stew bubbles and thickens up. Serve with rice or other sides of you liking.

There you have it. Oh wait… the local store does not have any moose meat. Where’s the beef!?

I found one source to buy moose meat online here: Moose Meat

If that doesn’t work out for you then I’m afraid you’re going to have to strike up a friendship with some of Sarah Palin’s fans up in Alaska and hopefully they’ll be willing to ship you some! Or you could always do a lil’ hunting for your own.

The Dream Omelette

Not sure how I came to watch this video because it didn’t strike me as particularly exciting, but tomorrow being a work-from-home day watching a video about a dreamy omelet seemed like a good idea.

What I thought was a dreamy tasting omelet was actually an omelet this chef concocted while having a dream! Now I’ve had plenty of dreams, but the ones that are remotely similar to his wildly imaginative dream were a result of sleeping past 10 am or the morning after consuming too many adult beverages!

It’s a funny short video and worth a watch. One thing that stuck out worse then a sore thumb was the blurb at the end of the news story about staying tuned in to the news station to learn how to turn your autistic child into a tax deduction! Jeepers! I didn’t catch where this news station was located, but I’m pretty sure it was in the twilight zone!!

Noras Restaurant

Like so many other successful entrepreneurs Nora Pouillon found her passion matched up well with an under-served niche in the marketplace. That niche being the organic cuisine niche.

These days Nora Pouillon is considered a true pioneer and champion of organic cuisine. Nora came from to the US from Austria in the late 1960s and she was struck by the amount of processed and chemical-laden foods Americans were eating. That’s when she began her search for seasonal and organic food and her crusade for healthier living. That’s when her idea to open a restaurant that served organic cuisine began to germinate. This was back in the 1970’s mind you.

Throwing caution aside and letting her passion drive the decision making process Nora opened her Restaurant Nora, way back in 1979. She was immediately recognized for her ability to create not only healthy but also delicious organic dishes. Twenty years later, Nora’s restaurant became the first certified organic restaurant in the nation. Only three other restaurants have since achieved this goal!

For more information about Nora’s Restaurant visit her Website at: Noras.

Nora’s passion extends well beyond her restaurant. Her passion and energy have resulted in many accomplishments and contributions to her cause. Here are some examples:

• Nora was instrumental in creating the organic certification standards for restaurants that guarantee at least 95% of all food served originates from certified organic sources.
• In the early 1990s, Nora launched the farmer/chef connection by introducing the farmers of the Tuscarora Organic Growers Coop (TOG), to other local chefs helping to ensure their farms’ economic viability.
• She also initiated the very first producer-only farmer’s markets in the nation’s capital, now known as Fresh Farm Markets which has grown to include eight active markets.
• While serving as a board member of Women Chefs and Restaurateurs, Nora established an organic internship program and still receives five interns each year at Restaurant Nora.
• She is the author of Cooking with Nora, a seasonal menu cookbook, which was a finalist for the Julia Child Cookbook Award.
• Nora presently sits on the board of directors for several organizations including the Amazon Conservation Team, the Environmental Film Festival, Fresh Farm Markets, Earth Day Network and Wholesome Wave.
• Nora also plays an advisory role to the Center for Mind Body Medicine’s “Food as Medicine” program, and Rachel’s Network.
• The Washington Post named Nora one of the dozen “Power Chefs” in the city.
• Over the years, she has received numerous awards from the International Association of Culinary Professionals, the Organic Trade Association, New Hope Natural Media, the American Horticultural Society, Campaign for Better Health, and others.

Judging by her success and how great she looks looks it would appear there’s a lot we can learn from her about eating healthy!

The Next Food Network Star

My wife and I got hooked on this dog gone show. We tivo’d and watched each of the last 7 or 8 episodes. Who would of thunk that a cooking related competition like this would be so damn interesting to watch?

At any rate, we watched the finale last night with popcorn in hand. (Fortunately we didn’t catch the news of who won beforehand caused by some screw up at the network that caused the winner to be leaked via their Website ahead of the show.) After watching each contestant bomb under pressure and the limelight and then viewing the final edited clips produced we were as torn as the judges surely were between the three finalists. It was a toss-up for us.

Although we like all three of the contestants and truly appreciate their dedication to food and their profession, we found all them a bit lacking as TV personalities coupled with the lack of an interesting theme for a show that would draw us to watch from time to time. Having said that we are very glad Aaron won the contest. We think his background can be parlayed into an interesting show if they get him out of the kitchen and interacting with peeps. Perhaps a show in Camden NJ and other rough patches of urban America where he can help inspire some folks to get into cooking some bold food!?

Some media snobs are choking on their brie covered triscuits because a hospital chef was chosen as the winner of this culinary competition…. We say Aaron is not a “hospital chef”! Aaron is a man that chose to become a professional chef earlier in his life. His path in life led him to become a hospital chef. Little doubt Aaron was doing what he had to do to feed his family and survive, all the while sticking to his dream!

Aaron proved once again that big bold dreams can come true.

Congratulations Aaron! Good luck with The Food Network! We’ll watch!!!

Here’s a short Food Network video (3:42) recapping the finale:

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Next Food Network Star Finale Recap

Benitos Hot Sauce

Benito’s hot sauce uses a recipe that ensures a fresh taste in every drop without the use of any preservatives, pesticides, or fertilizers.

The peppers are grown using only sunlight, water, and soil. During the off season, organic habaneros peppers are flown in from the American southwest. All sauces are made with care in small, easy to control, batches .

The sauce only uses fresh peppers in order to capture the essence of organic uniqueness. Benito’s hot sauce is always made with 100% Natural hot peppers. They also add onions, carrots, and lime juice to achieve the perfect balance of flavor. Their hot sauces are a bold addition to beef, fish, poultry, shrimp, tofu, eggs, and tortilla chips.

Visit their site for more information and ordering: Benito’s

Be sure to check out their Hot Sauce Facts page as well! Interesting!!

Cooking with Clive

Clive found boldfood.com on blogcatalog and requested to be a friend, which isn’t uncommon in and of itself, but after checking out his career, one of his videos (with a great tip!), and his Website, Cooking with Clive, I’m happy to pump up his site! Clive has been training to be a world-class chef since he was a young child. He’s made it, although he’s not as well known as many of the others.

Check out the short video I came across and visit his site to learn more about him and learn from his experience. Thanks Clive!

Clive even has his own book! Empty Bottle Moments

Iron Chef Japan

Starting May 5th Iron Chef Japan is back on the air after a very long hiatus. Now every weeknight at 11pm you can catch Chairman Kaga, the Iron Chefs, and a stream of hopeful challengers sweating it out on Fine Living Network.

I thought I’d give you a heads up about the premiere and share some vintage video clips. My favorite is probably the one where the challenger uses this crazy technique (fire, dry ice, and goggles….) to make gourmet pasta, but Morimoto hacking thru a massive sea bass comes in a close second…. Video is 1:50 long and worth a couple minutes.

You can check them all out on the Fine Living Network YouTube channel: http://youtube.com/user/FineLivingVideos

My 13 Day Ukraine Journey Back in 1993

I was preparing to post information on a blog I just discovered that appeared to be really interesting. The blog, Bizarre Food by Andrew Zimmern, is a Travel Channel blog and Andrew covers the bizarre food aspect of traveling.

But, when I started to read his latest post, A Taste of Russia, which is about his recent trip to Russia and how it went from bad to worse, I had a flashback to my trip to Ukraine in February 1993…. The 2 week adventure was one I will never forget and I have a lot of bizarre stories to share, but I’ll try to focus on just the food portion of the experience to spare you the other gory details.

First, you have to think back to 1993 and remember that the Berlin Wall hadn’t fallen that much earlier. Ukraine was in a severe depression and it’s currency was plummeting daily. Nearly everyone was out of work and things were looking bleak. Why I was there in the first place is fodder for another day….

Arrival:

I arrived at Grand Hotel, the “special” hotel for tourists, late in the day and was exhausted so dinner was one of three protein bars I had thrown into my bag at the last minute before leaving the States. After dinner I took a bath in cold water because there were no showers and the #$%*! faucet had been reversed so the C was the hot water and the H was the cold. I know, I know…, but I did check both and nothing but cold came out for nearly half a minute.

Day 1:

Morning came abruptly when the 1960’s telephone rang and nearly caused my heart to stop altogether. It was the Ukrainian-American attorney I had gone there with calling to invite me to their room for breakfast. Breakfast turned out to be a small glass of beet juice and some beets sliced up and served on small plates. Now I know beets are good for you because my mom was a farmer’s daughter, but it’s not exactly what my stomach was growling for that morning.

After a long day meeting with some students at a local university I learned that the couple I had gone with (the lawyer and his wife who were on a mission to adopt a young Ukrainian child) were going to a dinner and that I was “unfortunately” not invited. By this time I had been introduced to my interpretor and she agreed to take me on a walk through Lvov (aka Lviv), the city we were in. After two hours of checking out all of the restaurants she thought might be open, but weren’t, she found a nightclub (at my request).

The nightclub consisted of a few tables around the edge of a concrete floored basement of a building with a long line of mostly males waiting for a beer. Starving for any liquid or food I chose to wait the 30 minutes for a beer and to my surprise I had but one choice of beer and the cost in US dollar equivalent was 2 cents. It was nasty tasting and one of the worst beers I’ve ever had, but it was better then nothing at all and besides it was affordable!

Afterwards I went back to my room and ate half of one of my last two protein bars and slept.

Day 2:

Breakfast on day two was unfortunately not much different then day 1. Only this day we had some bread to go with. It went a long way towards keeping me alive that day so no complaints.

After a long day of meeting with all sorts of characters from local politicians to local businessmen (including the head of the only automobile manufacturer in Ukraine) it was time to go back to the hotel and find out what was in store for the evening.

Apparently in Russia and Ukraine it’s custom to take visitors on long drives deep into the forest to enjoy some Russian vodka while singing and dancing around a campfire. Russian vodka is made from potatoes, right? Well then, I had potatoes for dinner on day two. Oddly I don’t recall much else from that night, but I do recall being happy to reach my hotel room in one piece.

Day 3

In dire need of some Alka Seltzer or some food I could sink my teeth into I was disheartened to see the beet juice and beets adorning my plate when I met up with my fellow American travelers.

Day 3 ended with my devouring the rest of Protein bar #2.

Day 4 - 7

On the 4th day we departed Lvov and headed South to Chernovtsy. While I was excited about idea of having something new on the daily menu in the new city, I wasn’t too thrilled hear why we were going what felt like 100 miles an hour during dusk in a small, shaking, Soviet style vehicle with 4 adults weighing it down. Seems we were passing through the area where “a lot of the weapons and explosives were being smuggled” into Bosnia during the height of the war back in 1993.

The rest of the stay in Chernovtsy was fabulous. Good food, good drink, relatives of my travel buddies, and good conversation.

Day 8

Back in Lvov again. Fortunately I knew had enough food in me to keep me alive until I returned home to the States so I wasn’t too concerned. Besides there were always the beets!

Dinner was 1/3rd of the last protein bar.

Day 9

By now the previously unappreciated beet-centric breakfast was becoming something I appreciated more than any American perhaps since the Great Depression. I was, gulp, enjoying the beet juice and beets.

On this day my interpretor took me to a deli of sorts and what I remember the most was how they had spread each item they had in the very long display case about 3 feet apart from one another in a weak attempt to make the case appear full of food. The other thing I remember was how disappointed I was that I couldn’t eat anything they sold! She explained that the bacteria in the food would cause me to get very ill and that I did not want to go into a Ukrainian hospital. She didn’t have to tell me that twice.

Finally before we left the “deli” I pleaded with her to find me something I could eat and while she didn’t find any safe food for me to eat she did spot some bottles of mineral water up on a top shelf near the paint-chipped ceiling. I bought the only 4 bottles they had available.

Back in the room I settled in and turned on the TV and watched the one channel that came in. Sadly, actually very sadly, the show was “90210″ in Russian! To this day I share that bizarre moment of catching 90210 in the middle of Ukraine during their version of our Great Depression. How hard must that show have made life for parents of teens who were undoubtedly glued to their TVs watching our American teens guzzling champagne by the pool with dozens of gorgeous people clad in bikinis and bathing suits.

Even worse then the horror of watching 90210 in Russian knowing full well that Russians and Ukrainians everywhere were cursing us for pumping that garbage into their children’s heads was the absolutely putrid, rotten-eggie smell of that dang “water” I had purchased moments earlier. It was every bit as bad as water-boarding torture! But, I ended up drinking every bottle before I left… so I guess it didn’t kill me. The rest of my protein bar helped it go down.

Day 10 - 12

Aside from being focused on counting down the hours I had left before I’d be air-lifted out of there to safety I only had two more foodie relevant experiences to share:

1) On the last morning I made the huge mistake of asking why it was so easy to get beets and beet juice, but couldn’t get our hands on anything else. When they explained that the only produce they could go in a large portion of Ukraine were beets because the Chernobyl nuclear accident had made it impossible to grow anything else I didn’t know quite what to say so I didn’t. Of course with all bad news you usually have some good so it was of some comfort to know that it was quite OK to eat the beets because the bacteria problem with the other food wasn’t an issue with the beets thanks to the radiation.   : /

2) At last we arrived in New York and when I saw the Coke machine it was love at first sight. I don’t think I’ve ever guzzled a Coke like I chugged that one. At last… America. Burgers. Fries.

All in all it was a fantastic experience that changed my life to a certain extent. For one, I appreciate good food more then ever. Of course, my definition of good has come to include nearly everything!

And the beet goes on….

New Foodie Links Page

Check out our new foodie links page with hundreds of links to the more popular foodie Websites online. Compiling the list took many hours and a lot of Web surfing. Hopefully you’ll spot some familiar stomping grounds and some new sites to stomp on over to as well.

If you have a foodie site and would like us to consider adding it we’ll require that your site has some traffic (per the Alexa toolbar) and that you add a link back to our site from somewhere on your’s.

As for the sites listed…, we were particularly amazed at how many forums there are for foodies of all flavors, as well as, the enormous number of blogs! It begs to question how anyone finds time to cook after all that blogging.

Foodie Links

Pebble Beach Food & Wine - Mar 27th to Mar 30th

The 1st annual Pebble Beach Food & Wine 4 day event is billed as the culinary event of a lifetime. With the investment that’s gone into making this premier luxury epicurean event involving over 50 award winning chefs plus 300 wineries it very well could be a once in a lifetime event for some.

Some of the top companies in the culinary trade are sponsors including Fortessa (leading tableware company), Kitchenaid, Valrhona (chocolate), and many other world class companies involved in the fine dining marketplace.

If you’re like me and only able to window shop this one check out their Website. After the event I hope to have some pics and video to provide. Should be the first of many annual Pebble Beach Food & Wine events.

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