James Beard Nominees Announced

picture courtesy The James Beard Foundation

Yesterday the James Beard Foundation announced its Nominees. For those of you who don't know, this is like the Oscars for the food world. Here's a quick run down of the local chefs/restaurants nominated.

Stephen Starr was nominated for Outstanding Restaurateur. He has about 10 restaurants in the Philadelphia area, in addition to some in Atlantic City and New York City. (Check out Pod if you're in the area - it's excellent!)

Tom Colicchio was nominated as Outstanding Chef for craft restaurant in New York City.

Bibou in Philadelphia was nominated for Best New Restaurant.

Nominated for Outstanding Wine and Spirits Professional were Garret Oliver and Paul Greico, for Brooklyn Brewery and Hearth, respectively. (Both located in NYC)

Vetri in Philadelphia was nominated for Best Service.

The nominees for Best Chef - Midatlantic included two chef's from Philly - Jeff Michaud (Osteria) and Michael Solomonov (Zahav).

And finally, I also need to give a shout out to the nominees for best food blog -Grub Street NY, Serious Eats, and Hunter, Angler, Gardener, Cook

To see all the nominees, click here.

NJ Diner Tour to Benefit our Food Banks

So I heard about something pretty cool going on next weekend in NJ. The Kindred Souls, a band based out of NJ, is doing a diner tour. Yes, you read it right, a diner tour. Here's the idea: The weekend of March 19, the band will start visiting a diner in each county of NJ. They'll play a set, and ask everyone dining to donate $1 per table, and have the diner match that, with $1 per check. All proceeds will go to the NJ Federation of Food Banks. The band plans to hit one diner in each of NJ's 21 counties. I'm exhausted just thinking about it and I didn't even strum a guitar!

So if you're going to be in NJ that weekend, check out the schedule and pop into one of our state's great diners for a bite to eat and to donate! If they reach their goal, it will mean 21,000 pounds of food for the Food Bank.

Thanks to John and Lisa Are Eating in South Jersey for the heads up on this!

Cookies falling flat??

Since it's that time of year when baking goes into high gear, I thought I'd share the following article on baking. I have a lot of trouble when it comes to baking and it helped me understand the importance of one simple (or so it seems) ingredient: butter.

Butter Holds the Secret to Cookies That Sing

Thanks to the hubby for passing it on!

How to Freeze a Wedding Cake

On Saturday my fiance and I got married, so I guess that makes me a "Mrs." now. We leave for the honeymoon tomorrow, so I won't be posting for two weeks. I'll make sure I take plenty of pictures of all the food we eat in Venice, Paris and Rome so I can post them when I get back.

Before we go, we're going to freeze our cake, so I dug up these directions on the internet:

How to Freeze a Wedding Cake

I hope it works, though I don't have extremely high hopes. I haven't heard many rave reviews on year-old wedding cake!!

One Can Only Hope....

Bakeries specializing in Cupcakes coming to a town near you!

I love cupcakes! Every Sunday the Shoprite by my house has a cupcake buffet featuring all different varieties including: snickers, strawberry, m&m, peanut butter, butterfinger. A cupcake is like a perfect little snack, in the perfect portion - not too big, not too small.