Spokane Food Blog

Books are one of the best gifts, they are great for people of all ages and interests.  If you have any travel or food lovers to buy for, you should check out the National Geographic coffee table style book titled, Food Journeys of a Lifetime: 500 Extraordinary Places to Eat Around the Globe. It is on sale for $22.00 on Amazon and I am sure you can find it at Auntie’s Bookstore – next to Sante. The book includes beautiful photos of the best food regions in the world.  Culinary traditions are explained and recipes are provided.

A few employees at Hooters in Brooklyn are suing the food establishment for the mandatory purchase of their $20 uniform and the costs for dry cleaning it.  I know state laws vary on whether or not employers have the right to make the employees pay for uniforms, but do you think it is right for employees to pay for work uniforms?

I had a few jobs that required uniforms.  One place provided all employees with one shirt with logo that needed to be worn during every shift.  They offered more shirts for sale for $5 each that we purchased direct from the vendor and not from the employer. Another job I had required a specific shirt, that the establishment provided and cleaned so we would grab a new one for each shift. However, we were required to purchase pants, these could be from any vendor as long as they were black. Employees were not reimbursed for this cost. Some of my cousins worked for a clothing company.  They were not required to wear a specific uniform, however they had to wear a full outfit purchased at their place of work.

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Another fun Spokane connection to Top Chef.

Nurse Kendra was one of twenty people in the USA to meet with Fabio from Top Chef Season 5 this past week. Kendra works as an RN for a Spokane Cystic Fibrosis (CF) clinic. She was flown to Minneapolis to participate in a conference on the disease. While in Minneapolis, Kendra was invited to watch Fabio demonstrate and provide tips for feeding children with Cystic Fibrosis.

You can help Kendra and others raise money to support fighting CF by watching out for the Spokane Great Strides walk that will take place at Gonzaga University, Jundt lawn at Jundt Art Museum on May 29, 2010 at 10:00 AM.

After last season’s, shall we say, diverse field of contestants, it came as a happy surprise to see a strong showing almost across the board from Top Chef season six’s competitors. And that former Luna-chef, Kevin Gillespie, is doing well makes this season even more interesting for many of us.

It’s nice to see Gillespie doing well in the show. After having dined at Luna during his tenure, it also comes as somewhat of a surprise, as I don’t have particularly fond memories of my meal there. Sufficient to say, his contributions to Top Chef looks to exceed my expectations. (Looks. Obviously I can’t taste it.)

With that said, here are my two favorite “cheftestants” thus far:

Kevin Gillespie! Hey, I will support a “local” boy, no matter how much he tries hide the fact he was a chef here. His contributions look inspired, too.

Jennifer Carroll! Other than the fact that she seems to be a very good cook, she has something most chefs on this show seems to be lacking: leadership skills. During the airforce episode, she definitely held the rest of the contestants together really well through guidance and thinking on her feet.

Top Chef is on Bravo, Wednesdays at 10pm.

And here is Kevin, from his Spokane days!

Mark, a Spokane, WA resident,  aka @route140 has been traveling the country meeting up with people and companies who use Twitter.  Check out his video entry of Steve @tykerman1 a farmer from “the middle of nowhere”, Nebraska.

We love ourselves some Three Sheets here at the ol’ SFB, and were all happy about last night’s season four premiere at the show’s new network, FLN.

For those not familiar with Three Sheets, it’s basically a travel show with emphasis on local drinking cultures. Hosted by comedian Zane Lamprey, the show is (subject matter taken into consideration) surprisingly PG and always funny.

Season four, now on FLN after MojoHD closed down, kicked off in New Zealand, and (thankfully) very little has changed from the previous seasons. The show is, all humor aside, informative — who knew there was so much to Kiwi whisky? — and there are plenty of interesting people and local drinking game to check out. And obviously Pleepleus is back.

Sixteen more episodes are coming up, Mondays at 10pm, so make sure you set your DVR. I believe it’s on Comcast channel 204.

Best drinking show ever. Ever!

The finale is on tomorrow, and here is the final ranking, lovingly put together by myself:

1. Stefan

There is no doubt Stefan is the one to beat. He has the creativity, he has the technique, and he is willing to step out of his comfort zone. In fact, the only thing that seems to stand in his way is his ego. It’s all well and nice he thinks he’s god’s gift to cooking and all, but when that lax attitude results in some elementary mistakes… Not good. Still, I fully expect Stefan to bring his A-game and take the it all home. Feel the power of The Stefaning!

2. Carla

Ouch… Well, I got this one wrong, predicting she’d be The Big Loser of the competition. And in my defense, she started out rather poorly. Then all of a sudden she woke up. Carla might be missing some of Stefan’s finesse (Stefan helped her shucking the oysters in the semis, which strangely enough wasn’t shown in the final cut) but has come up with some creative and technical dishes in the past few episodes. I have my doubts she’ll best Stefan, but, I have been wrong before.

3. Hosea

“Behind the scenes drama” aside… I just don’t find Hosea’s cooking overly inspiring. After some initial nerves, and initial in this case lasted more than 3/4 of the season, he seems to finally have gotten his technique down, but the dishes he serve up? Words like “dull” and “sea side resort” comes to mind. But hey, one could have said the same about season two’s Ilan, and we all know how that went.

As your favorite Spokane Food Blog is either sick/in Afghanistan/MIA, for today we will just redirect you to this site, via our eight favorite reader, Ryan. What’s the site about? Have a glance at this… Then weep…

About one year ago, New York City passed a law mandating calorie counts to be posted on menu items.  I have been to the city a few times since this law passed, and I hope WA follows this mandate.  From a nutrition stand point I wish all restaurants would post this information, but I am sure it would cost businesses a great deal of money to change menu boards and printed menus.

The full release about the calorie posing is as follows:

The New York City Board of Health voted unanimously to require all city chain restaurants to post calorie data on their menus. Chain restaurants already must make the calorie counts of their menu items publicly available, but beginning March 31 they will have to put the numbers on menu boards and menus. The change will affect restaurants with 15 or more outlets — roughly 10 percent of all city restaurants, according to a news release from the city’s health department.

More information right here.

Mr. and Mrs. Clause delivered a Jack LaLanne Power Juicer Deluxe to me this December.  I was so excited.  I love infomercial products (Miracle Blades, Magic Bullet, ShamWow, etc.) but rarely get to own such items.  I look forward to Bloomsday each year, not just so I can walk/run with ~30,000 other people but so I can go to the Bloomsday trade show. The trade show attracts all sorts of As Seen on TV vendors, and I get excited seeing the mini-infomercial productions come to life in Spokane.

Jack LaLanne, what a man.  His juicer is great, and it’s the perfect solution to slimy vegetables, a problem many face.

My New Year’s Day involved a lot of juicing.  Apples, oranges, cucumbers, spinach, carrots, pears, and cactus.  I do not recommend juicing cactus.  It gets quite slimy and gooey, but it does make a great prickly pear juice — if you like those.

The down side of the Jack LaLanne Power Juicer Deluxe is, of course, the size and weight of the machine.  Yet those are also the qualities that make it so great.  You really can put whole pears, apples, and oranges in the machine.  I woke up to a text message this morning notifying me Rosauers is having a big sale on oranges and all other produce today. (There are also rumors that Rosauers will set aside produce for people to juice and sell it extremely discounted.)

I guess that means fresh orange juice for breakfast and screwdrivers for dinner.

Spokane Food Blog are juicers…