Forking Tasty

Butter Knife Cut Steak

I had some work in Minneapolis recently and after a long day the team decided on steaks for dinner. Murray’s is one of the more known steak houses as well as one of the last family owned in the twin cities. Our waitress was wonderful, she has been there 40 years and her husband who is the butcher has been there 35 years. That is a long time of delicious beef. The team and I indulged into a few appetizers before we ordered our steaks. Shrimp wrapped in bacon, escargot, and mac & cheese followed by caesar salads…

NOLA Po-Boy, Oh-Boy!

New orleans is a town filled with great people, great music, and even better food. It is such a great town to eat your way through. One of the more popular dishes to eat in New Orleans is the Po-Boy Sandwich. There are many po-boys to choose from along with many place to choose from to get your po-boy. The southerner and her family joined me at one of the more famous restaurants for po-boys at Mother’s.

A Deep Look At The Deep Dish Pizza

I knew Jay did a post on Chicago’s deep dish pizza but I didn’t realize jays post was at Lou Malnati’s Pizzeria. His post was called Pizzacake. I did my own take on my first Deep Dish Pizza while I was in Chicago recently. Jay and I have similar taste when it come’s to our pizza.   Sorry Chicago good but not the best!

Breakfast For Dinner

I’ve been traveling a lot….what a surprise, and when I got home my refrigorator was quite empty. So I decided to make some breakfast for dinner. I wanted to take it up a notch and make a hardy egg sandwich. I started off…

No Frills

When I was ten years old part of my weekly adventure was accompanying my mother to the food store. In 1984, on Long Island, the major supermarket was Pathmark. At the time, I had no idea I wanted to be a designer. I had no idea I would come to love great advertising and marketing because of the emotional reach it could have. I had no idea great design could subconciously change peoples behavior. What I did know is that I loved the NO FRILLS aisle. The NO FRILLS aisle amalgamated all supermarket items from canned spaghetti to laundry detergent into one simplistic, typographically genius, less-is-more designed, perfectly merchandised  row. At a time of “new and improved”, “extra-strength” and “free prize inside” package design the NO FRILLS aisle was way ahead of it’s time in both aesthetics as well as convenience. Think Apple Store and Muji. Years later, I now realize what I felt and my behavior in the NO FRILLS aisle were the catalyst for my entire career. In particular, my focus on the power of behavioral science in my designs, marketing and communication with consumers stems from this aha moment.

Sadly, the NO FRILLS aisle no longer exists. On a recent trip to Canada my Mother-in-Law took me to Loblaws, one of Canada’s largest supermarkets, for a special surprise…

Lobster 7 Ways

This story is all about the challenge to out do last years dinner. Before we get into that there are a few things I’ll quickly clear up so you’re up to speed. Italian Christmas Eve is traditionally referred to as “The Feast of the Seven Fishes”. To understand the history of this Italian tradition and its origins, read this. To understand the Anello’s bastardized version of this yearly feast, review this or this. Now that that’s out of the way let’s get to the meat of the post, or should I say “the crustacean”.

Taking the seven potential fish dishes and focusing them on one fish done seven ways was a formidable challenge. It was first proposed back in September by my Uncle Brian, the ring leader of Anello/Nardone over-indulgence. Taking the challenge under consideration he and I began swapping recipes to attempt a sort of coup de grace Christmas Eve feast. The jury is still out whether we succeeded. Never-the-less, the next page has all the dishes and stories from the front range (electric BTW) on what worked, broke, surprised and wowed…

Merry Christmas

I think our wine choices explains the general feel of all the men and woman in our house today. We hope you all are having a great, tasty, over-filling day.

Southern Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving I headed down south with the southerner. We hopped into the car and made the normally 7 hour trip to Yorktown VA, in 9 hours. Can not believe how many accidents were on the road. We got caught in every one of them. Lucky us!

Thanksgiving in Canada

I bet yesterday was a rough day back. I hope you all had as amazing and as restful a Thanksgiving weekend as I did. I clocked in with an average of 8.5 hours of sleep per night. That’s unheard of in this family. Well rested and well fed I share with you a few of the delicious, authentic, fresh and traditional goodie’s my amazing mother-in-law whipped up for our London, Ontario Thanksgiving weekend starting with the above channa masala.

To set the tone here’s a little video of…

Bullet to Bratwurst

Last week I had the unique opportunity to partake in an ancient ritual that in modern days has come under quite a lot of scrutiny. I’ll let the video speak for itself, mostly. I will say, I love meat. I think our industrial food chain is a disturbing mess but at the root, eating meat is a pleasure that I will not willingly give up. The recent advent of smaller farms providing better living conditions, feed and slaughter practices have thankfully given me an alternative to funding these disastrous factory farms and “processing” plants through my meat habit. I am conscious of where I by my meat from. How they were raised and how they were killed are just as important as what they taste like. In fact the two go hand in hand. That said it is very difficult to buy meat from these sources all the time. Not to mention expensive. I hope, over time, these smaller farms become the norm and the availability and usage increase to become the norm. The video above chronicles my very personal experience on the road to this goal. Enjoy.

If you are looking for more, my friend Liza does a great job telling a bovine story.