As told by Jon Stewart

Congrats Dave!

Here is Dave’s recipe for y’all to enjoy:

Nothing beats Mom’s zucchini bread, especially at this time of year when zucchini is overflowing!

ZUCCHINI BREAD

3 eggs
1 c. oil
2 c. sugar
2 tsp. vanilla
2 c. unpeeled zucchini, shredded (I squeeze out excess water)
1 8-oz. can crushed pineapple, drained
1 c. chopped nuts (optional) (I don’t use)
3 cups flour
2 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. salt
3/4 tsp nutmeg

Beat eggs, oil, sugar, and vanilla until thick. Stir in dry ingredients. Fold in drained pineapple and zucchini. Mix well.
Pour into 2 greased 9×5″ bakeware. Bake in 350 degree oven for 1 hour or until wooden toothpick comes out clean.

****Dave shoot me an email so I can get this juice out to ya:) Cheers!*****

Disclaimer:

To win this giveaway a recipe/or favorite dish must have been a part of your comment. Sorry Nic! I am sure we will share many bottles of vino together in the future:)

The Chef & his cover @ Whole Foods

Remember how we were celebrating last week?  Well this is why…

The Chef was honored with the title of Best New Restaurant for this month’s Northern Ohio Live.  He also received honors in 5 other categories: Best Pizza, Best Bar, Best Appetizer, Best Chef, Best Late Night Dining.

I am so so so so so so so proud of him. I just went to Borders and bought them out with tears streaming down my face.  Shit I’ve got tears streaming down my face right now.

He is such an amazing man.  Everything he does, his 15 hour days, his time away from us, it’s all worth it when something like this comes out.  He deserves every bit of it.  He works hard, he makes amazing food, he’s passionate, and he cares so much about the industry and the chefs in our fantastic culinary scene in the Cleve.  I absolutely adore him.

I am still recovering from this and I just haven’t had any time, energy, or brain juice to post this week.   But…if you feel like hanging out live & in person I will be rocking out tonight @ Bar Cento for the Female Rockers Rock & Roll Wine Project.  So come out and see your favorite WIDOW!!!

For you visual enjoyment:

My Catcher man in all his T ball glory

The Chef somehow finds time to coach

Celebrating something I can’t yet speak of…..

I jumped on the corporate bandwagon and bought myself an iPhone.  I had been waiting to get a new phone since my contract with the Devil ended last winter.  I just wasn’t sure what to get and who to go with.  But that all changed when word of the 3g was released.  My buddy Kyle had the first one and was convinced that I needed the phone so I could live blog, keep the chef’s schedule, and have Internet access at ALL times.

I am now a zombie.  I check my email on my phone when my computer is 2′ away.  It’s hella silly but I freaking love it.  I don’t even care that big brother has access to my location at ALL times.  The first time I realized this was when my phone asked me if I wanted to mark down the location of a picture I was taking.  I had no idea wtf that meant so I said yes and soon enough the exact address of my location was displayed.  Scary.  The feds got their eye on all of us now.

But besides the whole invasion of privacy thing the iPhone has really helped me out.  Granted I still have no idea how to blog from it but….the map application can really help a girl out when she’s lost in East Cleveland.  It’s a tricky place that eastside.

Lou may be a sickie but she still knows how to hang like one of the boys

Monday night brought out the bigwigs in the Cleveland culinary scene for the Slow Foods Bastille Day Celebration. We had chefs, an iron chef, the coolest kids ever, and a very nice jackass:

My Chef, Matt Harlan, Rocco Whalen, & Steve Schimoler

Steve Schimoler & Mike Symon (Mike, sorry about the pic, it was the only one and I couldn’t not include you:)

The Widow Family in all our golden glory.

Randoms + Ryan Dunn (of Jackass fame & fortune)

The food was on point and super yum and the entire event raised tons of cashola for the upcoming Terra Madre Conference in Turin, Italy.

Roasted Kid Goat w/ bacon & quail egg

Coppa

Events like the one on Monday should happen WAY more frequently in Cleveland. Getting all the cefs together in support of something shows such a camaraderie in a very important industry. Believing in each other as equals instead of competition is so important in this little city of ours. Cheers to you boys (& girls)!!

BTW

And to top a great event off, we celebrated the only way you can on Bastille Day!

w/ the Green Fairy!!!!!

AND IF YOU ARE FEELING XTRA LUCKY THERE ARE STILL RAFFLE TIX AVAILABLE TO WIN SOME BAD ASS PRIZES:

• Trip for two to Turin, Italy for the Slow Food Salone del Gusto
• Cooking class with the Iron Chef himself, Mr. Michael Symon
• Dinner cooked by the Terra Madre Chefs (including my man)
• & More!!!

Email hotcookLG@roadrunner.com for more info or to buy some tix!!!!!

I think that the Cleveland Plain Dealer forgot that human beings need to eat for survival. For the most part shoes & celebrity gossip do not give our bodies enough nutrients to make it past day three.

For some reason, I am sure gas prices will be blamed, the city’s newspaper has decided to combine the Style section with the Taste section. To make matters worse they have decided to suck even more than they did before. I have been thinking about this for a long while and I was never going to voice my opinion about it because I felt there was a conflict of interest. But when you review a fucking Dairy Queen I no longer am going to consider you a respectable source. So the glove’s are off.

I had never read ANY food section before the chef & I got back together.  He introduced my to this and I was forever hooked.  I even follow on Twitter.  When I came back to Cleveland the chef would buy a PD (cause I would never subscribe to the blatant propaganda and fear mongering) and a New York Times (cause I can’t afford to subscribe).  The differences in the two food sections shocked me.

I continued to read Taste section in the PD, well skim it really, and would focus on the Times for the real food stuff.  Articles about people cutting out the middleman & buying pieces of farms,  restaurant reviews about actual restaurants, and the classification of wines (a favortie of the chef) inspire and educated me on a weekly basis.

The PD became less and less relevant every week.  Articles about Bryers ice cream and reviews of Houlihan’s continued to turn me off until I completely stopped reading. 

I want to read it I really do. I want to support the local paper but I want the local paper to support me too.

I wish the PD to follow in the spirit of other food sections and keep it simple.  Have a formula and follow it every week.  For example, this could be our weekly food section.  Every week one of the following could appear:

• Restaurant Review (NON CHAIN), promote ALL areas, there are tons and mom & pop restaurants that are REALLY good throughout Northeast Ohio.
• Farm focus, as I recall there are some farms in Ohio?
• Weekly event Calender- There are MORE than enough culinary related events in this city to print a weekly calender.  You just have to look for them.  Or sign up for google alerts.  It does it all for you.
• Wine & Spirit Focus (real wine & spirits, not a story on Franzia’s new shapped box).
• Recipe from a LOCAL CHEF!!!!!  Not a book that the PD has had on a shelf for the past 20 years.  A chef!!!  A Chef!!!!  Promote your own!  Promote ALL of your own!!  There so many awesome fucking chefs in this city and one of them should be featured each week.

As long as the PD continues to promote chains, print forum rumors as fact, and publish blogger reviews as actual stories, the Taste section will suck.  And I guess I just have to come to terms with that fact. Or start my own goddamn newspaper.

Which I may very well do.