Welcome to the new home of Stuart Reb Donald’s Wannabe TV Chef Blog.  The old blog is still live and can be accessed by clicking HERE as well as being listed in Mi Amigeauxs (blogroll) to the right.  All of the old articles are still there while I go about moving them over here.  In fact I’m going to launch a new category WannabeTVchef Classics to make the old articles easier to find here.  Rather than trying to move them in alphabetical order I’m going to move them according to popularity instead.

This new site and custom look are the result of lots of hard work and sleepless nights.  I want to take this time to thank the fine people at AllWebCo.com for their patience and help in making this transition.  I have been using AllWebCo for over a decade.  While other web hosting companies have come in a haze of publicity and gone in a blaze of obscurity AllWebCo has remained rock solid and courteous.  I highly recommend them for any hosting, custom template or domain registration needs you may have.  It is no understatement that I could not have this shiny new site without their help.

And without further adieu I welcome you to the new Wannabe TV Chef Blog!

This is the latest installment in a continuing series that documents my personal quest to become the host of my own cooking show. Since this is a relatively new “career,” there are no vocational programs or community college courses to prepare me for it. From what I have seen, the two most important elements in securing such a position are passion for food and plain old dumb luck. Born with a passion for food, I set out to make my own luck.

An alternative title for this post might have been Ace of Cakes vs Iron Chef as Cheflebrity Duff Goldman takes on fellow FN colleague Michael Symon.  This makes the second week in a row that Food Network employees have squared off against each other in Kitchen Stadium.

Many fans may not know that Duff is not just an Ace of Cakes, but a chef as well having studied at the Culinary Institute of America’s Napa Valley campus.  He even did a little time working the line at The French Laundry owned by the man many consider the best chef in the world, Thomas Keller.

However, Chef Duff’s tenure in Yountville was hardly a cakewalk.  Goldman famously abandoned his station in the middle of a rush only to return later begging for forgiveness.  Duff has also worked for Todd English at his DC restaurant Olives before returning home to Baltimore to open Charm City Cakes.

This is not Goldman’s first competition on the Food Network.  He has appeared on Food Network Challenge multiple times both as a contestant and a judge for various cake challenges.  Goldman vs Symon premieres Feb 06, 2010 at 10:00 PM ET/PT.  Rumor has it one of Duff’s signature power tools makes an appearance.

Yesterday (Feb. 4, 2010) the commissary at NBC’s 30 Rockafeller Center in New York produced a special menu to celebrate Black History Month. The menu has come under some fire and I have absolutely no idea why.

Musician Questlove of the Legendary Roots Crew (the house band for NBC’s Late Night with Jimmy Fallon) took a pic of the menu board and posted it to his Twitter account with the caption, “Hmm HR?”  A few hours later the menu was changed to a grilled chicken Po ‘Boy.

Ridiculous!

The purpose of Black History Month, as I understand it, is to celebrate the contributions of the African-American community to American society.  It is the oldest and longest official ethnic observance in the nation having started in the 1920’s as Negro History Week.

During the now month-long remembrance we are reminded of the scientific contributions of Booker T. Washington and George Washington Carver.  We revel in the musical genius of everyone from Louis Armstrong to Chuck Berry to Kathleen Battle.  We lose ourselves in the poetic prose of Langston Hughes and Maya Angelou.  And most importantly we memorialize those who gave so much to earn equality for African-Americans, people like W.E.B. DuBois, Frederick Douglas and Martin Luther King Jr.

It has long been my insistence that the crux of American Cuisine (the food that defines our nation) hails from the Deep South.  The legacy of Southern cooking is the foundation of American food.  The African-American community, more than any other, is responsible for shaping the recipes that define our national palate.  Fried chicken, greens, cornbread, black-eyed peas, etc. are examples of the spirit of a people who made the most out of what little they were given.  And we are all richer for their creativity.

We have set aside the month of February to celebrate the academic and artistic contributions of the African-American community.  So why is celebrating their gastronomic accomplishments considered racist?  Absurd.  If we are to follow this same line of thinking then every Hip Hop rhyme, every blood transfusion and every Moonwalk is also racist.

I do not blame Questlove for this pointless controversy.  Even he realized the menu was no big deal Twitting, “i think i need a twitter break. i done started something. and now i must put out fire.”  The menu was chosen by Chef Leslie Calhoun, an African-American, and is a menu she has been working to get put on the rotation specifically for Black History Month because she feels these are recipes everyone enjoys.

This is the latest installment in a continuing series that documents my personal quest to become the host of my own cooking show. Since this is a relatively new “career,” there are no vocational programs or community college courses to prepare me for it. From what I have seen, the two most important elements in securing such a position are passion for food and plain old dumb luck. Born with a passion for food, I set out to make my own luck.

Significant Change

So the Fern Bar Chain offers me a job. I am to be the Kitchen Manager at their flagship store in the Mobile market. Perfect. The Kitchen Manager’s duties parallel the duties of an executive sous chef. This is a tremendous break. Although I am not exactly a fan of this particular chain, the money is good and opportunity is great.

By mid July of 2005, I have moved to a corporate apartment in Crestview, FL. Of the locations where I could train, this is the most convenient being only 100 miles from my home. Crestview is part of the Florida Panhandle that was stuck by Hurricane Ivan the summer before. The scars are still evident. The week before I report another tropical storm hits the area and I am greeted by $3.00 gas prices at a time when the national average is $1.79.

The town of Crestview is nothing special, a spot in the road on your way to some place more interesting. It is peculiar in one very big way. It appears that no one in this burg of some 14,000 people ever cooks. The Fern Bar is always busy as are the other restaurants in town. If I ever need to spend time alone all I have to do is go to the grocery store for I am the only one who buys fresh produce, meats, and breads. Everyone else is on the frozen food aisle.

Training goes well but on the first day I am informed that my assignment has changed and I will be transfered to Ocean Springs, MS when I am done with training and there I am to be the Bar Manager. Huh? Oh, well, Ocean Springs is only 45 minutes from Mobile and sure I will have to move but the location is nice. I find an apartment on the beach and begin making plans to relocate.

During week three of training I am informed that my assignment has changed again and I will heading back to Mobile when I am done, but to the “troubled” store, not the flagship. I am to be the Service Manager. What the hey? Before all is said and done my assignment will change locations five times in three different states only to end up at the store I originally applied for, but as the Service Manager not the Kitchen Manager. Corporations.

During the second month of my training Hurricane Katrina hits. I am safe and sound 100 miles east of the affected area while my friends and family are stranded without power, jobs, or gas. I am filled with remorse as I watch the news. New Orleans, a city that I love dearly, is flooded with water and hoodlums. The Mississippi Gulf Coast (the hardest hit area of Katrina) is utterly destroyed – CNN choppers record the memories of my early college years as they lie crushed and torn. My home town of Mobile is also hit, but as has been the case with the last five tropical maelstroms to hit the Gulf Coast in the past 14 months, it is back on its feet in just a few days. Still I am racked with guilt over my relative comfort while friends and family battle 95 degree weather without electricity or running water. I cannot wait for training to be over so that I can get home and help people out.

Part of my 10 week training with the Fern Bar is to visit the franchise headquarters in Lincoln, NE. A charming city that is the very embodiment of middle America. Talk about great steaks! I think I had some form of flame cooked beef carcass every day I was in town. During the week long seminar, I find myself slightly troubled by the words that the folks at the corporate office use, specifically they never refer to the restaurants as restaurants – they are all concepts.

Finally I return home to my storm ravaged hometown and begin work at the Fern Bar proper. Two days in and the promises made about employment are already being broken. The other managers are glad to see me because they have gone weeks without days off that did not include 140 mph winds. My addition to the staff means that they are now only one person shy of the required number of managers needed to run efficiently.

Each week working conditions become more stressful and the corporation turns a deaf ear to our needs. It is now that I found out how bad the company is that I have been employed by. Managers are leaving in droves from all of the area “concepts” for better jobs. Somehow several recruiting firms have gotten a hold of our cell phone numbers and are calling each of the managers three or four times a day with job offers. At one point the three store region, which is supposed to have a grand total of 14 managers and a regional director, is down to eight managers and no director. It is at this time that I, too, head for greener pastures.

The Bikini Chef, Susan Irby, has just published another $7 a Meal cookbook.  The $7 a Meal Healthy Cookbook (Adams Media) features over 300 nutritious, healthy recipes that you and your family will love.  Irby is a cheflebrity who has cooked with the likes of Todd English and Robert Irvine and for the likes of Patrick Swayze, Baby Face Edmonds and Katey Segal.  In this 332 page guide she teaches you how to cook like a celebrity chef without blowing your budget or your diet.

Irby starts the reader off with two very informative chapters on the basic elements of good nutrition and living a healthy lifestyle.  Topics she is well versed in since she has cooking Bikini Cuisine since she was a child.  What is Bikini Cuisine? According to the chef-author-TV star it is “figure-flattering flavors.”

After the two instructional chapters, Irby then embarks on the 13 recipe filled chapters.  She starts off with breakfast (the most important meal of the day) then rolls through appetizers, salads, soups, entrées featuring proteins that fly, walk and swim.  There are chapters for vegetarians, on sandwiches and even desserts.  No stone is left uncovered.  Each recipe is broken down with a chart that details prep time, cook time, total cost, calories, fat, protein, cholesterol and sodium content.