Stories

After seeing their amazing performance of “Devil Went Down to Georgia” at the Country Music Awards my wife and I became hooked on the Zac Brown Band – a group we had never heard of before that moment. Seeing talented musicians who love what they do and have a huge appreciation of all music genre’s is refreshing in this age of studio wizardry and lip sync’d concerts. A quick YouTube search of the band found many videos of them mixing classic tunes with songs from their debut album, "The Foundation", and it converted me into a full-fledged fan club maniac. My wife and I had stopped going to concerts many years ago unless a friend was performing, but this band was different and I jumped at the chance to see them in person – even if it meant a 100 mile drive to Santa Barbara. Getting the opportunity to “Eat and Greet” with the band before the show sealed the deal.

A unique take on the pre-show meet and greet, they look at it as a way to treat their fans as family and sit down to dinner before they hit the stage. In that vein they ask guests to defer autograph or photo requests. (You wouldn’t sit down to dinner with your uncle and ask him to sign the napkin.) All the musicians want to do is mingle, talk music, and share stories.

A few lines in a recent “Quick Takes” column at Inside Higher Ed were enough to make me put down the faux-croissant I’d just purchased at my school’s café and seek out the full story in The Boston Globe: the most popular class at Harvard right now is “Science of the Physical Universe 27.”

It has another name as well—“Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Soft Matter Science”—and it “uses the culinary arts as a way to explore phases of matter, electrostatics, and other scientific concepts” (Devra First, “Harvard Uses Top Chefs to Spice Up Science,” Nov. 2, 2010). One interesting fact about this course is that it isn’t your mother’s or your home ec class: it has a guest list of top chefs. Another interesting fact is that 700 students tried to sign up for the fall semester’s offering.

Seven hundred! That’s the total enrollment at some small formerly-known-as-liberal-arts-colleges. I began to think about the potential here: Why stop at physics? Why not use food to teach film and literature? Perhaps this is just what the flailing liberal arts need.

Thanks to Sony Pictures, I saw a special preview screening of "Julie & Julia." The screenplay for the film was adapted from two books: My Life in France, Julia Child's autobiography, co-written with her grand-nephew Alex Prud'homme, and Julie and Julia by Julie Powell. One book recounts (among other things) how Mastering The Art of French Cooking came to be, and the other is how one woman cooked every single recipe in it, in the space of a year. I also got to see a presentation with a past Top Chef contestant, the author Julie Powell and one of the primary supporting actors Chris Messina, but the most intriguing person I met associated with the film was the culinary consultant, Susan Spungen. She and an assistant managed to prepare and cook every single dish in the movie as well as prep the cooking scenes. 

Susan Spungen is a cook, food stylist, editor and cookbook author. She worked as food editor for Martha Stewart Living magazine for over 10 years, was a restaurant pastry chef and went to art school early in her career. She is a stylist with the soul of a cook.

I'll admit it, even though I find most of the recipes atrocious, I am fascinated by the Pillsbury Bake-Off. Every two years the contest is held with much fanfare and prizes, including a million dollar grand prize. The judges are generally food editors and choose recipes based on taste, appearance, creativity and consumer appeal, but because the recipes use packaged "convenience" foods, they often end up sounding bizarre. Samosa Taquitos with Apricot Chutney Sauce, anyone? Or Huevos Rancheros Pizza?

The Ungarnished Truth: A Cooking Contest Memoir "A Woman, A Chicken Dinner, A Million Dollars" is out now in paperback and I devoured the book in two sittings. Bake-off grand prize winner and author Ellie Matthews is smart, funny and very engaging. Her story gives an almost unbelievable level of detail on her road to the win. But even if she never won anything, you would want to read about this quirky and down to earth woman (who shocked everyone by not jumping up and down or screaming when she won).