My Life in Food Styling

By Lori Powell

As the Food Director at Prevention magazine, I see our food pages from the conceptual stage straight through to the finished product. I don’t just oversee, I am the person who is writing the ideas on paper, then shopping for the groceries, developing and writing the recipes, and then styling the food for the camera.

All of this requires me to leave my home in Pennsylvania to stay in a hotel in New York City, a week out of each month, to do the food styling for our pages. Not too shabby since I get to have a New York fix, visit the green markets there and eat out a bit! Do I love my job? YES!

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Judging the 2011 National Beef-Cook-Off

By Sandy Hu

If you’re a beef lover like me, tucking into 20 great beef dishes over two days, prepared by an excellent chef, may seem like a sublime, died-and-gone-to-heaven experience. And, okay, I’ll admit I enjoyed it.

But being a judge of a recipe contest is also serious business and carries considerable responsibility – especially when $25,000 is at stake for the National Beef Cook-Off’s grand prize winner.

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Time for Squash Blossoms – Three Easy Uses for Edible Flowers

By Katie Barreira

Zucchini, yellow crooknecks, pattypans…the coming season promises a deluge of thin-skinned gourds. But before the onslaught of summer squash there are squash blossoms, the flowering buds of a squash vine.

These delicate blossoms are entirely edible and usually seen on restaurants’ seasonal menus. Like Jean Georges’s fabled “Peekytoe Crab and Squash Blossom Beignet,” a simple crab salad stuffed into squash blossoms, coated in tempura batter and fried. But the flowers don’t require such flourish.

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In the Mood for Chowdah

By Lori Powell

I seem to be in a fish mood as of late. And sometimes, what is available to me as “fresh” is not looking all that great… or that fresh.

Not all fish keeps well frozen but some companies do get it right. One is Cozy Harbor of Maine’s frozen lobster meat, It’s the perfect dinnertime solution for making fish cakes, lobster salad or yes, lobster chowdah.

Also, since all of the work is done for you (cooking, shelling and cleaning), you have more time to actually enjoy this delicious concoction.

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A Chef’s Makeover of Chef’s Salad

By Katie Barreira

Culinary historians have mused over the origins of chef’s salad, some tracing the dinner salad back to diet-conscious California, others to the kitchen of New York City’s Ritz-Carleton. But as noted in a 1999 issue of Gourmet, “Nobody has ever stepped forward to claim the title of the chef in 'chef's salad.'” No great surprise here, for truly, what self-respecting chef would put their name to the slapdash mélange of deli meat, cheese and chopped salad? Thus the sad irony of a dish, which was named for a chef but that no chef will own.

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