Gale's April 2009 Blog Entry

Events I Did

This was another busy month, full of good food and fun events. Rick Tramonto and I did a cooking demo one evening at our restaurant, Tru, for a group having a private function one night. He did a service of fluke and I did chocolate truffle stuffed chocolate lollipops with 24 karat gold dust. Both dishes were things the guests would experience during the meal there at some point so I think it gave them a deeper level of enjoyment.

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Gale's October 2008 Blog Entry

At the beginning of the month was my brother’s birthday and we had a celebration for him at Gabe’s in Highwood, a bar he plays blues guitar at and leads a jam there every Tuesday night with his pianist wife Joan. I made chocolate chip cookies sandwiched with peanut butter filling and root beer floats (of course). The cookies disappeared so I guess they were good. I don’t think I even got to eat one.

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Gale's May 2008 Blog Entry

I was a celebrity judge for the popular Bravo TV series TOP CHEF, the reality show where young chefs compete for the title of Top Chef, with one being eliminated each week. My episode was number 9 and titled “Wedding Wars” where the 8 chefs still remaining broke into 2 teams to cook the food for an actual wedding of 125 people, including the wedding cake. One team was cooking to the bride’s taste (southern comfort foods) and one to the groom’s taste (Italian), so each team had to produce a wedding cake and I was there to be the expert on that. We ate through all the dishes at the wedding reception and then tasted both cakes and then went back to the Top Chef kitchens to discuss and decide who was to be sent home. I got home at 4:00 AM so long day of shooting, but it was a fun day of working and hanging out with the other judges, Padma Lakshmi the host, chef Tom Colicchio from Craft and Gail Simmons from Food and Wine magazine. Check out the web site to watch the episode and see a Q and A I did about the filming experience.

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Gale's September 2007 Blog Entry

September was a full month when it came to culinary activities. It started with a culinary event to benefit the Green City Market in Chicago. It was held at Bill Kurtis and Donna La Pietra’s country estate, like usual, which has acres and acres of magnificent garden’s and a beautiful stately home. Wendi, Kathy, and Lorel helped out at my table and we served Chocolate Budino’s with Pear Compote. The pears were from Peter Klein’s farm, Seedlings, in Michigan. I brought my husband and the girls so they could frolic around the grounds, even though it was a pretty buggy hot, night. But we had fun sampling all the other chefs dishes, chatting up guests, smiling for the camera and swatting mosquitoes. The garden’s highlights were the trellis of cherry tomatoes, the raspberry bushes ready for picking, their heirloom apple orchard, and the English Walled Garden with it’s fragrant hedgerow of boxwood bushes.

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Summer 2007

I thought you might want to hear some of the culinary highlights of my 2007 summer, or maybe you were part of them! My garden gave us the usual rhubarb, tomatoes and herbs, though not a great crop this year, I think, because of the rain. It was too dry and then too wet so stuff grew funky and sparse this year. But Gio and I did have a good foraged crop of ramps this year from our woods and more restaurants than last year (I have 5 now) to sell them too.

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