Capital Cooking with Lauren DeSantis

Saturday, October 2, 2010

Tackle Box Coming to Cleveland Park

Tackle Box made an appearance at today's Cleveland Park Day. Expect the restaurant to open in Winter 2011 at 3407 Connecticut Ave. NW.

Vote now to help the Capital Area Food Bank Win $20,000

Personal Chef Molly Pisula of the United States Personal Chef Association (USPCA) is competing in the Sears Chef Challenge, along with two other Washington, D.C. chefs. A total of 12 chefs, in 4 different cities, are competing to make it to the semi-finals of the competition, which will be held in Chicago on October 21st. Each chef has chosen a food-related charity to sponsor, which will receive $5000 for a semi-final win, and a total of $20,000 for the ultimate winner. Chef Pisula's charity, the Capital Area Food Bank, distributes 26 million pounds of food annually to more than 383,000 people in the Washington area. Chef Pisula volunteers as a chef instructor with their Operation Frontline program, teaching nutrition, cooking, food safety, and food budgeting at community centers, schools, senior centers, and transitional housing. Videos of Chef Pisula and all of the other contestants are posted at www.searschefchallenge.com, where you can also vote once a day per email address until October 9th.

Friday, October 1, 2010

The Military Culinary Competition was a Huge Success!

The FOOD SERVICE SEMINAR (FSS) and MILITARY CULINARY COMPETITION (MCC) was a great success this past weekend (September 24th to the 25th 2010).

Not only were the chefs hard at work outside cooking up their best dishes, but us judges were working hard too inside feeding our bellies. We were STUFFED after tasting about 40 dishes by the end of the day. It is a tough job, but somebody's got to do it.

Round 1 started bright and early at 7:15 a.m. The judges were wondering why the mystery box couldn't have been bacon and eggs. We tasted food from 14 teams round-after-round scoring each dish. All of the tastings were blind so we didn't know which team made which dish.

Chef Teddy Folkman from Granville Moore’s and I had some fun in-between the rounds and enjoyed the beautiful day and the Fall Festival.

We stopped by to see our friend Perry Smith at DC-3 and got a first look at the mini-hot dogs.

Photos by Emily Clack

Photo by Emily Clack

Pork Barrel BBQ and the USO need your support! They are traveling to Fort Riley Army Base next Thursday, October 7th, to join Rod and Sheri Gray of the Pellet Envy BBQ Team, the reigning Kansas City Barbecue Society Team of the Year, to cook for the soldiers and families of Fort Riley, Kansas.

The USO facility at Fort Riley just opened in May and has already had their 10,000th visitor - it's an important place for our men and women in uniform and their families to relax while on base. Due to budget cuts, the Fort Riley USO facility had to scrap their plans to create an outdoor BBQ area for soldiers to gather and share a meal with their fellow soldiers.

Here's where you come in - we want to raise the money to fully fund the construction of the Fort Riley USO outdoor patio/BBQ area - but we need to raise $5,000 by Thursday, October 7th!

Pork Barrel BBQ is kicking in $1,000 and their amazing business partner from the ABC's and Mark Burnett's reality show Shark Tank, New York real estate mogul and author Barbara Corcoran has donated $1,000 - so we need they help today to get the rest of the way to our goal!

Here are two ways to help:

Donate $25 by clicking this link, or the image below - and 100 percent of your contribution will go to the USO to build the Fort Riley facility. For your generosity, we'll send you a FREE collectors edition Pork Barrel BBQ tin of All American Spice Rub.

Donate $100 or more by clicking this link or the image below - 100 percent of your contribution will go to the USO and we'll send you both a FREE collectors edition Pork Barrel BBQ tin of All American Spice Rub and a FREE Limited Edition Pork Barrel BBQ hat!

Want to donate more than $100? Please give Heath or Brett a call at (888) 4 PORK BARREL (476-7522) and they will process your donation and feature you on their Pork Barrel BBQ Blog.