What America Eats
Monday, September 14, 2009 at 11:13AM 
Casseroles. That's what America eats, y'all. Lots and lots of casseroles.
How do I know this? Well, last week I did the food styling for a really fun video shoot for MyRecipes.com. MyRecipes is the online database for all of the recipes for Cooking Light, Health, Real Simple, All You, Southern Living, Sunset and various other magazines in the Time, Inc. family. It's a terrific site that is incredibly invaluable in finding recipes, planning meals, etc.
Soooo, the people at MyRecipes got together with Gary Vaynerchuck, internet sensation and owner of the Wine Library. {Aside: Gary is something of a phenom. If you've never heard of him, check out some of his videos on Wine Library TV - he can tell you what wine pairs best with cereal! During last week's shoot The New York Times profiled him in a feature piece in their food section.} The goal was to shoot 16 videos with Gary featuring the 16 most-requested weeknight recipes paired with affordable "weeknight" wines.
I drove down to NYC last Monday night and stayed with sweet Nicki who was incredibly gracious and accommodating. I told her the basics of what I was in town for: food styling for a video shoot, that I would need to use her kitchen while I was in town and that I'd leave her with lots of groceries and leftovers. When eight crates of groceries from Fresh Direct arrived in her apartment, I thought she might have a heart attack. "Where are we going to put all of this food?!" she asked. "We'll make it work," I reassured her.
And we did make it work. I prepped and packed up most everything in her tiny kitchen. Then I put it all in the car and drove out to Milburn, NJ for the shoot. I was originally told we'd be shooting at the home of Rich, Digital and New Media Guru at Time, Inc. Rich had just bought a house in Milburn but hadn't yet moved in, so in theory, it sounded like a great idea. New kitchen, lots of space to spread out and cook and shoot.
King Ranch Chicken - the #1 recipe
Alas, things did not go as planned. I showed up at 7:30am on Tuesday to a house in the midst of a gut-renovation. The kitchen was covered in dust and THERE WAS NO OVEN/STOVE! From the looks of things, there probably wasn't any running water, either, but I didn't get a chance to check. Before Anne Cain, editor at MyRecipes and a fellow Birmingham gal, and I could lose our minds, Rich came up with a plan B. We hopped back into the car and drove a few streets over to his brother's house. Keep in mind it's 7:45am. On the first day of school. And Rich's brother has three school-aged children. Oh dear!
Thankfully, Rich's brother's family is incredibly laid back and didn't think twice about a gang of people descending on their kitchen with no advanced warning on the worst possible morning of the week. Kids were packing up their backpacks, lacing up new shoes, having semi-meltdowns (one was starting her first day of kindergarten) all while I was rushing to finish Champion Chicken Parmesan and All American Chili. Chaos ruled.
Champion Chicken Parmesan
We made a snap decision to do the actual filming at the Wine Library and schlepped the food a few blocks over to the store. Thank God for microwaves and toaster ovens! I now feel that the toaster oven is one of the greatest kitchen inventions in recent history (I didn't grow up with one, but now I'm a huge fan). We shot the first half of the recipes on Tuesday. I went back to Nicki's apartment and collapsed.
The remainder of the shoot took place on Thursday and went off without a hitch. Time, Inc.'s Catherine Oddenino and I zipped through the filming and even had some time left over to browse the wines and do some wine shopping of our own. Incidentally, Catherine wears many hats: in addition to working in the digital/new media world of Time, Inc., she's also a yoga instructor, blogger and she's working on her first book! She's a gem of a gal and her blog A Gluten Free Guide is a fun read!
All in all, it was a really fun and fascinating week. I met lots of new friends, cooked lots of new recipes and shared lots of great laughs. You can't ask for better! I'll be sure to let you know when the weeknight wines/weeknight dinners videos go live so you can check them out for yourself.
Behind the Scenes
And about those top requested recipes of all time... I can attest that all of these worked beautifully and were a HUGE hit with the staff at the Wine Library who were gracious enough to take care of the leftovers. For your cooking enjoyment, here they are:
Chicken and Broccoli Casserole
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Reader Comments (1)
What a great write up! It was so wonderful to meet you. I am so impressed with the magic you were able to work to make everything look so tasty. Beef Stroganoff is not an easy one!