A nifty giveaway!

You’re likely here because you enjoy food and cooking…so I thought I’d share a cool giveaway that you may be interested in.  My friend Kat is giving away a 20-piece Rubbermaid storage set, the one you see right here!

In these tough economic times, people are doing what they can to save money.  Some fitness-minded families are going so far as to buy they own home ellipticals and such, because it would be less expensive in the long run than gym memberships for everybody. Also, not having to drive to a gym saves gasoline.

But mostly, people are looking to save money on groceries.  That often means eating leftovers, often for lunch within the next day or two.  Well, food stay fresher longer in a Rubbermaid container, with its air-tight seal, than it would wrapped in foil or plastic wrap, or put into a plastic bag.  The Rubbermaid containers, of course, are reusable, whereas you have to throw all of those other things away.  Also, many Rubbermaid containers are safe to use in the microwave, so you can place leftovers in single-serving containers.  These can be taken to work and zapped in the break room microwave, or simply reheated at home for a quick meal.

Anyhoo, if you are interested in entering to win this particular 20-piece set, the only two qualifications are that you have a blog, and that you reside in the continental U.S.  As in, all of the states that are connected to each other.

The bare minimun that you need to do is leave a comment on the entry page about what you use such containers for the most (people do use these for stuff other than food).  But there are other things you can do to gain extra entries, especially if you use Twitter.

For complete details, please go and visit the entry page now.  You have until Sunday, May 31 to get your entries in, and a lucky winner will be drawn on June 1.

Good luck to all who enter!

Culinary school doth NOT make you a celebrity chef!

As some you you may know, I have had formal culinary training, and worked in the restaurant biz for a time.  So I have plenty of knowledge about the reality of this business.

I see ads on TV for various culinary schools, and too many of them try to make it look very glamorous…as in, go to our school, and you can be the next Emeril and have your own cooking show and a restaurant/merchandise empire.  So, many starry-eyed kids sign up, only to find that it really doesn’t work that way.

The restaurant business is HARD.  Very freakin’ hard.  Even if you get top grades in culinary school, and graduate at the top of your class, that doesn’t make you qualified for celebrity chef-dom.  Nope, far from it!  You still have to work your ass off for years before anyone even lets you run a kitchen, never mind give you a cooking show on PBS or the Food Network.

I went to Newbury College in Brookline, MA for my culinary training.  They are not one of the schools that advertise on daytime TV offering you false promises.  I found them to be very realistic as to what you can expect job-wise after graduation.  You are lucky if you get a job cooking on the line, which is hard, grueling work, and if you work had and are any good, you might eventually get to be a sous chef.  Only after many years of busting your hump will you ever get to really be a *chef*, as in , running your own kitchen.  Okay, so Emeril got to be executive chef of Commander’s Palace in New Orleans just four years after he graduated from Johnson & Wales in Providence, RI.  But this is the exception, not the rule.  And even with this prestigious job, he still had to work very long hours.

If you are thinking of going to culinary school, I urge you to first get a copy of Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain, and read it.  Twice.  I read this book years after I left the biz, and I had to nod my head many times over most of the stuff he talked about.  It’s a difficult, stressful job in a restaurant kitchen, and I can tell you from experience that many of my co-workers have had serious problems with alcohol and drugs.  I always liked to toss back some beers after work, but things never got as bad for me as they had for some people I worked with.  I haven’t kept up with most of them, but I would not be surprised if some of them ended up in drug rehab.

Don’t get me wrong, you can make a decent living at this…just realize that it’s hard work, you work all sorts of hours, most of your time is not your own, and you may hardly ever see your spouse/SO, kids, or pets if you have any.

I gave it all up when I married Mike, because it was just too much.  He makes enough money for the both of us, but still, I now have a happy little work-at-home gig that brings in some extra cash.  I’m happy to just be a home cook again, and write about it sometimes, right here on this blog.

Go to culinary school if you really want to, but please be sure that this is what you really want to do, and if so, do it with your eyes wide open!

Mike is out of the hospital

…and I’m getting life insurance quotes.  I know that he is the major breadwinner around here, but this whole ordeal has affected my health, too.  He will still have his job to get by should I kick the bucket before he does, but I should at least have some life insurance so that he can pay for my final expenses.

Not that they will be all that much.  I don’t want a fancy funeral.  I want to be cremated, and have my ashes scattered around the Nubble Lighthouse, in York Beach, Maine, where Mike and I got married.  He wants the same thing should he croak first.

So, all he’d have to worry about is paying for the cremation, plus renting a boat so he can go out into the ocean and scatter the ashes.  Still, it would be nice if I left behind money to pay for that!

Enough of this morbid talk!  Life goes on, and we’re finally getting ours back!

Sorry for the lack of updates here…

…but I haven’t been trying any new recipes and such lately.  If you have been reading my other blog, The Passionate Ailurophile, you know that Mike is in the hospital.

Things got more complicated than they had to be, due to the fact that I had to move him from one hospital to another.  This was due to neglectful care on the part of the first hospital.

We are seriouly considering taking legal action against the first hospital.  We just need to find the right attorney.  I mean, if you get into an accident while riding your Harley, you want to interview some good motorcycle accident attorneys. So, we’d be looking for a lawyer who specializes in medical malpractice law.

Anyhoo, Mike is doing much better now, and hopefully will be home early next week. And trust me, he will be HUNGRY!

So look for more new recipes and reviews soon!

Video Woes

Episode 2 of The Phood & Stuph Show…coming soon, I hope.  It’s been a while, but I finally videotaped it.  Now I just need to get it edited …

I filmed the new episode with my new Flip video camera.  The segments played back on the camera just fine.,  But when I went to edit and piece together the segments, something weird happened.  The video and sound tracks got screwed up, even to the point where I was literally talking over myself on the video!

Good thing I didn’t erase the video segments from the camera yet, I may need to re-upload them and start from scratch.  I’m not sure if the problem is with the camera itself, or something on my crap computer.  We shall see.

So I guess I could just sit here and talk about discount supplements or something like that, just to fill the space…but I won’t.

The video is about how to make fresh pasta, using a food processor and a hand-cranked pasta machine.  I had not made homemade pasta in eons, but I felt like doing so for a lasagna recipe.  After I video-ed the making of the actual pasta, I made the lasagna (no video of that), and it was very tasty.

But once I finally do get Pasta-Making 101 posted, I will try to follow it up with What To Do With This Fresh Pasta Now That You Have Made It.

Stay tuned…