I don’t know if you remember back in August, when I told you I had had had the luck to work with Matthew Mead on his special holiday bookazine? Well, in exciting news the magazine is now available on newsstands, or in a special extended edition with more content directly from Holiday With Matthew Mead.

The magazine is full of tips and projects on holiday entertaining, decorating and cooking from a handful of talented bloggers and lifestyle gurus. All of the stories are shot beautifully by Matthew, style guru himself.

The cookie recipes I baked include:
Brown Butter Blackberry Financiers
Dulce de Leche Rice Krispy Treats
Iced Ginger Cookies
Cardamom Black Pepper Trees with Juniper Berry Glaze
Caramel Five Spice Snails
Cranberry Florentines
Chocolate Peppermint Tiffin
and of course, my favorite Bourbon Balls!

For a video preview of the full content of the magazine, please see the video posted on My Facebook Page

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2011. | Permalink |
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I’ve been crazy busy folks.Thought I’d drop in today to let you know of a few more places you can find me!

On the Web:

I was asked by Stefanie of the FABULOUS home blog Brooklyn Limestone to write a guest post on some of our home projects. Check out my post to see how we took our library from the pink room of doom to our favorite room in the house!

In print:

I was lucky enough to partner up with the amazing Matthew Mead for a feature on Christmas cookies in his upcoming magazine Holiday with Matthew Mead, which will be available on newstands in late October. I baked up a storm, and Matthew made my cookies look absolutely beautiful. He couldn’t be any nicer, either.

Check out the print edition of the LA Times food section tomorrow, August 4th, for a photograph! The associated recipe is available on latimes.com and of course, on Savour-Fare.com!

In Person:

I’ll be attending Blogher 2011 in San Diego this weekend. I really hope to use my time there to meet up with people and make connections, so if you will be attending as well, please let me know! I’d love to meet you!

In your Inbox:

Finally, I’m launching a monthly newsletter for Savour-Fare.com. It will clue you into everything you’ve missed on the blog, as well as provide original recipes! If you’d like to receive the newsletter, just enter your email address in the side bar. I promise, no spam. Unless I figure out how to make it taste delicious in a dish!

And as always, you can find me Twitter, Facebook, and right here on Savour-Fare.com!

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2011. | Permalink |
Post tags: media

My dog died yesterday.

I can’t believe I’m writing this. It’s like my life is a country song. Natalie was a rescue dog, and she’s been part of our family for seven years. We got her the year after we were married, when we lived in New York, and when we moved to LA a year and a half later she made the cross country trip with aplomb. She thought chicken was pretty much the best thing in the world, but wouldn’t turn up her nose at romaine lettuce, strawberries, or pretty much anything edible that wasn’t dog food. She had the softest fur I’ve ever felt, and I loved her a lot. She was old, and I knew our time was limited, but it pretty much sucked to come home and find my dog dead. I mean, not like losing your parent sucks, but not really a good time. She was a very loving little dog.

I don’t want this blog to turn into the fifth act of a Shakespearean tragedy, but I do feel a bit as if I’m walking around with a big, metaphysical “Kick Me” sign on my back. So that’s it. I think I’ve lost my mojo, kids. It’s hard to write about pie when bad things keep happening. I need some space to breathe.

So I’ve made a couple of decisions.

One, I’m giving myself a month away from the blog to try to find my happy place again. To regain my equilibrium, which has been sorely tested this winter. Please don’t remove me from your feed reader — I do promise I will be back. If a month isn’t enough, I’ll come back to let you know.

Two, I think this blog is going to look different when I do come back. I’ll still write about food and cooking, as the kitchen often is my happy place, but I don’t want to limit myself. I’m going to shut down Savour Home (I know, most of you are saying, “Savour WHAT?”), roll those posts into this blog (maybe I’ll schedule them to post while I’m out finding myself) and write in one place going forward. I hope you’ll enjoy reading about my teacups as much as my teacakes.

If you want to see what I’ve been ogling, feel free to Check me out on Pinterest.

In the meantime, I’ll see you in April. Hopefully, the winter of my discontent will be over and spring will have sprung.

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2011. | Permalink |
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First, some exciting news. Foodista and Andrews McMeel Publishing have just released the Foodista Best of Food Blogs Cookbook, and Savour Fare is one of the featured contributors. To celebrate the release, Foodista is hosting a contest – if you buy the book on Amazon between 10 and 11 am PDT on November 3 and send your purchase confirmation to Foodista, you will be entered into a drawing to win a bunch of great prizes, including an Amazon gift card. Details of the Foodista contest can be found here.

Second, now that Halloween is out of the way, thoughts of cooks turn to Thanksgiving. If you’re planning your holiday menu early, look through the recipes tagged Thanksgiving for great ideas on side dishes, alternative main courses, cocktails, desserts, and even The Best Roast Turkey. I’ll also be posting some great Thanksgiving ideas in the next few weeks, so watch this space. I’ll also be posting some recipes for great homemade food gifts, some of which need advance timing.

It’s my favorite time of year — can you tell?

Finally, I know the word is still verboten to many of you, but Christmas is coming before you know it. If you want to make a traditional Fruitcake (and you should want to make it — really!) you want to start thinking about it now so it has plenty of time to cure in liquor before Christmas.

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2010. | Permalink |
Post tags: holiday, Housekeeping, Thanksgiving

The Nuni has been quite complimentary lately, perhaps working under the theory that flattery will get you everywhere. She rarely turns off the charm – her father is greeted at the end of a long day with “Nice shirt, Dad!” and I can’t get dressed without a running commentary from “Those are pretty earrings mama” to “I LOVE those shoes! Those are my FAVORITE shoes. They are SO shiny.” Of course, sometimes she takes it a bit far, like when she said, right in the middle of Trader Joe’s, “I like your boobs, mom.” The compliment that really makes my heart go pitterpat, though, is when, after eating something I’ve made, she turns to me, face serious, and says “You’re a really good cooker, mom.”

I am a good cooker. I work long hours in my day job, I commute an hour each way, I clean my house, converse with my husband, read to my daughter, and I still manage to get a home cooked meal on the table for dinner six nights out of seven. It’s not always something fancy — sometimes it’s as simple as a quick casserole or an omelet. Do I always feel like cooking dinner at the end of a long day? No. But to me, there is value in providing a home cooked meal. It is healthier for my family’s bodies and our bank account. It teaches my daughter creativity and self-reliance. Cooking is a fundamental human activity, and it makes me feel connected to generations of people all over the world. But most of all, I cook for the joy of feeding people I love. Food can provide memories and comfort and sustenance. It can be surprising, and eye opening. And it can give people, in the memorable words of Shauna James Ahern at IFBC, “joy in the belly.” And it is tremendously satisfying to be able to provide that.

And that is why I write this blog. I don’t have a gimmick, or a niche. I’m not cooking my way through a cookbook, or writing about some exotic aspect of my life. I am just an ordinary person who likes to feed people. I write about the food I’m cooking, the recipes I make, because I want to share them with you. I’m under no illusion that it will bring me fame or fortune. No Hollywood Producer is going to come knocking on my door, eager to make a movie of Confessions of an Urban/Suburban Mom with a Garlic Addiction (though if I’m wrong, email me — I have some great casting ideas!) I write about food and cooking so that I can give you joy in the belly, and the tools to create it for yourself. “You” began as my friends and family who live far away, and became people I never met, people I’ve only met because I write the blog, and you, you who are reading this right now. I try to become the friend who passes on her recipes, who gives you advice in the kitchen, who gives you that extra bit of confidence and savoir-faire you need to get in the kitchen. When I’m writing a post, and taking pictures of the food I’ve made, I’m cooking for you, and I hope you can take the inspiration and knowledge from this blog to cook for the people you love, to find joy in the kitchen.

Today I’ve made you chocolate chip cookies. If I could eat only one dessert for the rest of my life, it would be chocolate chip cookies. They were the first thing I remember making as a child, at my mother’s side, and they are what I make with the Nuni. Chocolate Chip Cookies are home, and childhood, and love, and joy in the kitchen. These are chocolate chip cookies the way they were meant to be – chewy, with crisp edges and the perfect balance of salt, sweet, and bitter chocolate. They stay chewy for days, if they last that long, and you’ll find yourself making them again and again. Like most Savour Fare recipes, these are easy and quick – they can be made in those few minutes you squeeze out between your other commitments. You can make them with your children, or for yourself. And know, as you make them, that they are made with love, and that you, too, are a really good cooker.

Recipe
Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies
1 stick salted butter
½ cup brown sugar
¼ cup white sugar
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons (5.5 ounces) all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
6 ounces semi sweet chocolate chips
Sea salt, for garnish

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. While the oven is preheating, melt your butter by putting it in a (metal) mixing bowl in the oven. Let the butter brown slightly (this takes about five minutes in my oven). (If you want to make the dough in advance, you can brown your butter in a saucepan on the stove. I just like to save dishes.)

Add brown sugar and white sugar to melted butter, and stir with a wooden spoon until the sugars are thoroughly soused and the butter is incorporated. Add the egg and vanilla, and mix until you can’t see any more streaks of egg yolk.
Add flour, soda and salt, and mix until all the ingredients are incorporated. Add chocolate chips, and stir until they’re evenly distributed throughout the batter. Stick the bowl in the refrigerator for at least 10 minutes, or until it’s firm enough to scoop.

On a large cookie sheet lined with parchment or a silpat, form the cookie dough into balls about 2 inches in diameter, or about the size of a large walnut. Sprinkle each ball of dough with just the merest sprinkle of sea salt (I use Maldon salt).
Bake for 9 minutes. The cookies may still be soft in the middle. Let them cool for 5 minutes on the cookie sheets, then transfer to a rack.

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2010. | Permalink |
Post tags: Chocolate Chip Cookies, Family, Nuni, Project Food Blog, Savour Fare

This past weekend, I traveled to Seattle to attend the International Food Bloggers’ Conference, 2010. I’m still mulling over the main takeaways I have from the weekend, which will come in a separate post, but I thought I’d share with you all some of the details of the event. I will say that while the schedule was jam packed, the content was generally excellent. I know that Foodista and Zephyr Adventures, the organizers of the event, will have several of the sessions available online at the conference website, and if you are interested in the whys and hows of food blogging, they are definitely worth watching. The sponsors listed on the site are also worth checking out. I was incredibly impressed with the commitment of all the sponsors to creating and producing amazing food and food related products. The sponsors were chosen well, and were a terrific fit for the conference attendees, all of whom care deeply about food, how it is produced, and where it comes from. What the website can’t provide is the amazing food we were offered and the amazing people in attendance. To every single person I spoke with this weekend, I want to say this: “I’m so glad we got to meet and talk at IFBC. I just wish we had had more time for conversation!” Food bloggers and food producers are quite an amazing group of people, and the passion in the room was palpable. Sadly, I was too busy talking to people to photograph them, but, true to my calling, I did make pictures of a lot of the food:

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Read the rest of International Food Bloggers’ Conference 2010 — What We Ate (605 words)

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2010. | Permalink |
Post tags: IFBC, Photo

So this weekend I went to camp. Those of you who know me will be unsurprised to find that camping and I don’t exactly mix well. I’m not as bad as my father, who defines “camping” as a suite at the Ahwahnee, but the history speaks for itself. Age 9: Girl Scout Camp for the weekend — got a 103 degree fever, couldn’t take part in any activities. Age 11: School Camping Trip, Catalina Island — strep throat. Age 13: School Camping Trip, Zion National Park — badly sprained ankle (I STILL have problems with that ankle). Age 16: School Camping Trip, Snake River, Utah — Broken Heart (fortunately, I’m over that one). I somehow conveniently forgot this fact when I was planning for a weekend in the mountains at Camp Blogaway. I was counting on a relaxing weekend in the mountains with a lot of quiet, a lot of birdsong, and some time for reflection.

Instead, I woke up Saturday morning with headache, nausea and sleeplessness (classic symptoms of altitude sickness). I probably shouldn’t have been surprised. Clearly, even if I’m theoretically behind the idea of camping (and this was camping lite — electricity, hot showers, and bunk beds in heated cabins), my body rebels. And the mountains were quiet, and the birds were singing, but that was difficult to hear beyond the chatter of many, many food bloggers. And the weekend was jampacked with activities and friends, instead of quiet reflection. But like me and camping, I shouldn’t have been surprised — I’ve come to realize that blogging isn’t a solo occupation.

Thankfully, with the help of a lot of water and a lot of advil, I was still able to participate in the weekend’s activities and spend time with the group. We heard a host of great speakers, and I got to meet a host of terrific fellow food bloggers. When I started this blog, I didn’t know what I was in for. I wanted to share my recipes, inspire people to cook, maybe garner a little fame and a (very) little fortune along the way. But what I didn’t expect was the level of community I’d discover. And this weekend just reinforced that. Not only did I get to have great conversations with people who are starting to feel like old friends (including camp organizer Patti Londre of Worth the Whisk and my bunkmates Rachael of La Fuji Mama and Marla of Family Fresh Cooking), I got to meet people I’ve only known via the internet (the lovely Casey of Tastestopping and Vanessa of Chef Druck) and discover some new blogs and the bloggers behind them.

What I learned at Camp Blogaway, amidst the cake decorations and the camp food and the photography seminars and the s’mores, was that food, and food blogging as an extension, is a communal experience. We’re not alone in the kitchens, or sitting here behind a computer screen. We’re part of a larger group, sharing our experiences, and our recipes and our collective wisdom, and a lot of laughter.

It almost makes the camping worth while.

A special thanks to my sponsor, Ziplist.com for allowing me to attend Camp Blogaway!

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2010. | Permalink |
Post tags: blogging, campblogaway, conferences

One year ago today, I was sitting around with nothing to do, and so I started a food blog. OK, it didn’t exactly happen like that. If you’ve been reading along, you have probably realized by now that I have a life that’s rather full, what with my full time (not food-related) job, a wild monkey of a two year old running my household, and a husband to boot (though given his childcare and dishwashing contributions, I think the husband nets positive in the time calculations). But I still make the time to cook. It was my hope, when I started this blog, that I could give a little insight into how real people prepare their meals. Cooking good food, from scratch, can fit into a busy life. And I hope that in this past year this blog has inspired you — to cook when you otherwise might not have, to change up your routine, or to try something new.

This blog has certainly inspired me. It’s challenged me to figure out how recipes can be made more flavorful, more streamlined or more consistent. I’ve gone outside my comfort zone and discovered new foods. And I’ve been able to write down and record some of my family favorites.

So happy first birthday, Savour Fare!

Now let’s talk about a party.
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Read the rest of Strawberry Orange Cream Cake – Happy Birthday, Savour Fare! (955 words)

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2010. | Permalink |
Post tags: birthday, birthday cake, cake, strawberries

Top Seven Things I Learned About Food Blogging from Blogher Food, 2009

7) Read Your Manual.
Every photography session leader said this more than once. The point is that if you don’t know what your camera is capable of, how are you going to exploit it? I think there’s a larger blogging (and life) lesson here as well — know your tools. Know what they can do, what their limitations are, and how to make them do what you want. If you have more options at your disposal, you have greater control over the final product.

6) Know Your Audience.
A blog by its very nature is open to anyone, but it pays to think about who might be reading yours. Look at the search terms that lead people to your site, and what makes them stay. Think about everyone who might be reading, and don’t condescend, or obfuscate. Break it down. This was illustrated perfectly at the conference. I really do appreciate the financial support of the sponsors, but there was definitely a disconnect between some of the sponsor products and the audience there. I sensed it when I saw Pillsbury demonstrating their EZ frosting in a can, and it hit me full in the face when lunch was the latest line of frozen pasta meals from Bertolli (unsuccessfully promoted by a very dashing Rocco DiSpirito). These products may be very good for what they are, but an audience of food bloggers means an audience of people who care enough about food to devote a great deal of time to seeking it out, cooking it, photographing it and writing about it, and who are more likely to decorate a wedding cake than use EZ Frosting, make their own pasta from scratch than ever eat the frozen stuff. (I’m not above shortcuts myself, but why on earth would I buy frozen precooked pasta when pasta is so easy to cook?) Like I said, I appreciate the financial support of the sponsors (and I buy Pillsbury flour and Bertolli fresh pasta), but the actual products they chose to promote were not a good fit with the audience.

5) Take Inspiration from What’s Around You
I really loved the visual presentation given by Matt Armendariz and Heidi Swanson because it got me thinking, instead of just giving me information. And one of the things that I really liked was the idea of creating a visual look book of photographs that inspire you. Jaden Hair continued this by saying instead of a busines plan she creates a visual goals board to keep her motivated. I think that we try so hard to stand out from the pack and make our mark that it’s hard to stop and remember that you can learn so much from what others are doing and find a lot of inspiration in a variety of ways. Listening to some of my favorite food bloggers speak, like Matt, Heidi and Jaden, but also David Lebovitz, Ree Drummond, Helen Dujardin and Elise Bauer made me realize just how much I have to learn but also how lucky I am to have such great models to inspire me.

4) Put Yourself Out There
In the Vocation Session 2 with Helen, Jaden and Amy Sherman, they emphasized over and over again how important it is to put yourself out there. Get out from behind the computer, go to events, meet people. Your blog may be your business card but what you’re really selling is yourself, your expertise, your personality and your talent. I tend towards shyness (unless I’ve had too much coffee or too much wine), but I took this advice to heart and really tried to go out and meet people this weekend. I introduced myself to bloggers I recognized, bloggers I didn’t recognize, an editor from a national publication. And response is nearly always positive. I didn’t have a SINGLE person look at me, give me a haughty smile, and then turn their back on me (isn’t that the fear when you introduce yourself to a stranger?). And the conference was so much more worthwhile as a result.

3) It’s all About the People
A message that came up again and again this weekend is that blogging is not just about content, it’s about community. Your blog doesn’t stand alone, it’s part of a larger community of like minded (and not so like minded) people who all care enough to participate. On a practical level this means read other blogs and comment on them, join Twitter and tweet and respond, do blogging events, and participate in the larger community. And after this weekend, I can tell you that the food blogging community (with only a couple of exceptions) is full of nice, smart, interesting, talented and funny people. They’re worth engaging.

2) Be Authentic
Another theme that came up again and again was be authentic. Write with your real voice. Tell your story. That’s the way to distinguish yourself. Because people are looking for recipes when they come to a food blog, but they’re also looking for a person. And if you’re not being authentic, you can’t keep it up. I think the whole Rocco DiSpirito episode threw this into high relief. Food bloggers can smell the BS. And I assume my readers can too.

And Finally:

1) Do it for love.

This weekend made me remember WHY I started the blog in the first place. Because I love food, and I love cooking and I wanted to share it with other people. Blogging isn’t going to make you rich (unless you’re dooce), or thin (unless you’re summer tomato), or famous (unless you’re Julie Powell). But it can make you happy. Just like chocolate.

© Kate for Savour Fare, 2009. | Permalink |
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