Food Notes

While this isn't about human food, it certainly pertains to feeding. Birds that is! We got a bird feeder for Christmas this year and put it up mid-January but didn't see a whole lot of activity (none actually) until now. Not only do we have chickadees picking away, but we also have two woodpeckers bamboozling around! They prefer to bang on trees, but I am still giving the feeder credit for their attendance.

In the last ten years premier chefs went from being the cretin in the back of a restaurant slaving away to the current status of rock stars. The recognition of their achievements and the execution of their dishes have cause foodies the world round to crave a peek or document their own experience at high end restaurants. The French Laundry reservations list is booked SIX MONTHS from the day. People have their phones call automatically all day hoping to get in, and most don't. You try that hard for a reservation, wait six months, then drop $300 a person, and it is easy to understand why some people try to record all they can about such a special occasion. I am certainly guilty of looking up photos that people have taken of their meals at restaurants I will never go to. It is a neat sneak peak into high end dining and I appreciate someone taking the time to do it. However, with all things people just take it too far.

Grant Achatz is the chef/owner of Alinea in Chicago and does amazingly complex interpretations of what we think of as food. His meals certainly push the "cooking is an art form" argument even though he doesn't advocate that himself. He just made the headlines again for his blog post concerning people disrupting restaurant functioning due to their zeal for documenting the meal/service/experience. People have been taking photos since his place opened a couple of years ago, but once again we took it too far.

Top Chef Masters premiers tonight on Bravo at 11 pm! I am not a huge fan of reality cooking shows, but this is my favorite. Tonight starts season two and hopefully it follows in the footsteps of last season. There was very little drama and a whole lot of sportsmanship between the master chefs. Instead of the usual Top Chef format of young wannabes, Masters involves current, high end, accomplished chefs that are playing for charity. It is pretty cool to watch what they come up with.

And to wrap it up for today here is a photo of an Alinea dish. I found this photo at http://www.divinecaroline.com



And you can see how a very cool lady is making Alinea dishes her way on the blog Alinea at Home (in my "blogs I read" section).

Toodles!