Why do YOU cook, Eric Gower?

Eric Gower's food excites me. His approach to cooking is creative and fresh. Like me, he loves to play with ingredients and find new and different ways to use them. Having lived in Japan, he often combines Western style techniques with Asian ingredients but also uses what's local. His passion for sharing techniques and great ingredients is infectious. He is the author of one of the most innovative cookbooks I own, The Breakaway Cook and he blogs at The Breakaway Cook . Tune in to the Mehta vs. Morimoto episode of Iron Chef America to see Eric as a judge. I probably eat out, on average, one meal a week. That means I'm cooking roughly 20 times per week, since I cook three meals a day most days. Why do I cook so much? Cooking for me is this ongoing practice of tweaks. Over the years I've tweaked my food to suit my own palate without a lot of regard for much, except what tastes great *to me.* Cooking, I think, is pure grit: if you do something three times a day, and keep a......

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General Mills Photography Studios

At General Mills they do all their own photography on site for packaging, editorial, everything. They have a labyrinth of prop rooms, a photo lab, multiple kitchens and areas set up for photography and post production. Walking into the photo area was a hallway with photos taken by various photographers using General Mills products, just for the fun of it. I kept thinking, the photos would make great cards. Actually General Mills thought so too and gave us each a box of cards made from these fabulous photos. Here were my favorites, can you identify the General Mills product in each one? Sorry these are photos of photos, so please excuse the poor quality. I could have spent hours in the prop room or rather, rooms. Imagine every single color, size and shape pan, plate, placemat and everything in between. In a word, staggering. A huge thanks to the photographers and food stylists who set up a shoot, walking us through all the steps, the lighting, the props and the styling. I pic......

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My visit to General Mills

Last week General Mills invited around 50 bloggers to come visit their corporate headquarters. I was a little wary. After all, I'm not a big consumer of packaged foods, but the lure of seeing the test kitchens and photo studio proved incentive enough, and I was in! The evening I arrived there was a welcome reception and dinner at the Mill City Museum . The museum has terrific interactive exhibits about the mill, and there was also lots of early advertising and packaging from Pillsbury and Gold Medal brands. I particularly liked seeing the ruins of the old factory and dramatic views from the observation deck, that really give you a feel for the history of the city and how important milling was. The next day bright and early,we headed to the test kitchens. They have 16 stations and test and develop 2000 recipes a year! Not all the test kitchen staff was present, but I was told they have about 15 employees. It was a dream kitchen, light and airy with huge glass windows looking ou......

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Barbecue Style Brisket

Summer is almost over, but it's not too late to plan one more backyard barbecue. This past weekend I had some friends over for a potluck at my folks place, and the main attraction was the beef. My father recently purchased a smoker in anticipation of trying some Snake River Farms beef I had been given as a sample. I first had Snake Rive Farms beef at The French Laundry and more recently tried their burgers, both were fantastic. Wagyu beef has a higher percentage of unsaturated fat, more than any other breed and American Snake River Farms beef is free of both added hormones and antibiotic residues. It's extremely tender and flavorful. Brisket is an economical cut of beef and I was curious to see if American raised Kobe beef would be superior to conventional beef or grassfed in terms of flavor as well. Oh my. Was it ever. I don't eat beef all that often, but this is really the most rich and luxurious beef you can buy. It's a great way to indulge and tastier than stea......

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