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Hosted by Margaret McSweeney
Margaret McSweeney in her kitchen each week for some Kitchen Chat®. You’ll not only hear great cooking tips from chefs but you’ll also learn the recipe for a great life with experts at Margaret’s table. Savor all that your day has to offer with the inspiration and insight from Kitchen Chat.® Everything always happens in the kitchen!
You are cordially invited to visit me in my new kitchen at www.kitchenchat.info for delicious recipes and delightful kitchen chats. I hope to see you soon. Savor the day! Margaret
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As we await the beautiful produce that will soon be arriving at our Farmer’s Markets, I thought it would be a good time to celebrate Spring with this encore piece featuring Alice Waters. Always remember to take a moment and Savor the Day!
Chef Alice Waters is a counterculture culinary hero who has helped pioneer the farm to table movement in the United States at her iconic restaurant Chez Panisse. At age four, she won a costume contest dressed as “Queen of the Garden” that featured produce from her parents’ Victory Garden. This win was just a mere glimpse into her future as an award winning chef, cookbook author, philanthropist, activist and advocate for sustainability and freshly grown produce.
Recently, Chef Alice Waters graciously greeted me at her Chez Panisse office in Berkeley. A lovely glass teapot sat atop the small round table. She had filled the teapot with her favorite recipe from the garden — fresh mint with hot water. We sipped and chatted about her latest book Coming to My Senses: The Making of A Counterculture Cook. She shared stories and lessons from her edible education including life changing moments in France when she discovered the incomparable tastes of the farmers markets, including les fraises des bois (strawberries from the woods). Chef Alice Waters brought back the literal and figurative seeds that would become the harvest of a delicious revolution. The actual seeds she planted in her backyard at Berkeley were the ingredients of a Mesclun Salad originating in Provence, France. Almost every dish at Chez Panisse has a little salad. Chef Waters explains, “A salad punctuates something that is rich and brings balance to the plate.”
Her favorite quotes include: “The destiny of nations depends upon the manner in which they were fed” Brillat-Savarin and “We are what we eat.” Chef Alice Waters explains that “When you eat fast food, you eat the values of the fast-food culture – that farming and cooking are drudgery. Food is something precious and should not be wasted.” Her passion for sharing this lesson with others, especially children, became the impetus of The Edible Schoolyard Project. Chef Waters emphasizes a key tenet to an edible education: “Don’t ever compromise the idea of sustainability. That’s the bottomline.”
Here are three tips from Chef Alice Waters for the home chef:
Here is a link to her latest book: Coming to My Senses: The Making of A Counterculture Cook
Savor the day!
As host of Kitchen Chat® on Webtalkradio.net, Margaret McSweeney believes that you’re never too old to learn something new – even how to cook. Margaret, a middle-aged mom, lives in the Chicago suburbs with her husband, David and their two teenage daughters. She is a former vice president in corporate finance at a New York City bank, a published author and an internet radio show host.
After earning a Master’s Degree in International Business, Margaret moved to Manhattan where she worked near Wall Street for seven years. She found true love in the Big Apple and married David. After the birth of their oldest daughter in New York City, the new family moved to the Chicago suburbs where their second daughter was born over a year later.
People always say that you ultimately end up doing what you loved to do in third grade. For Margaret, that included writing and talking. For several years, she wrote a neighborhood column for Daily Herald, the largest paper in the Chicago suburbs. She is a published author of three inspirational books with two more scheduled for release in 2011 and 2012. In addition, she writes freelance articles for the ezine www.makeitbetter.net With an appetite to taste the fullness of life, Margaret dishes on topics with guests about food, family, fitness and finances on her internet radio show, Kitchen Chat.
Margaret has a heart for charity and serves on the Leadership Advisory Board for WINGS (Women in Need Growing Stronger). All proceeds from the Pearl Girls™ book goes in full to help fund a safe house in the Chicago suburbs for WINGS and to build wells for school children in Uganda through Hands of Hope www.handsofhopeonline.org