15 minutes of fame

Nearly a month ago a friend of mine sent me an online posting from the local news paper asking for young food bloggers to participate in a recipe challenge. I responded immediately and was accepted into the challenge.

The basis was this: I and my fellow "young, Milwaukee food bloggers" (The Accidental Wisconsinite, Burp! Where Food Happens, The Post-College Kitchen, A Serving of Life, and The Vivacious Chef) were to take a recipe from the book Masting the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child, cook it, and then write a blog about it. This blog entry would then be printed in the Food section of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and online. All of this to promote the release of the movie "Julie & Julia."

You can read my full entry online, so I'm just going to throw in a few behind the scenes tid-bits.

I was a little worried how the article would turn out because the editor seemed to imply they would take the story I sent them and alter it as they wish to fit their needs. But I was very pleased with the output; hardly any changes at all. There is, however, one funny edit they made. There's a part in the article where I'm talking to my dad about what I should do since I couldn't find any veal. His advise was that I was "shit out of luck", but I knew I couldn't publish that, so I put 'SOL". The editors didn't like that either, so they changed it to "I was stuck". HeHe.

I also briefly mentioned I had to baste the roast quite a bit. The recipe called for a regular bulb baster; which I didn't have. I knew I could just use a spoon to base it, but at the time all of my regular spoons were dirty...the only thing I had left was a grapefruit spoon. So I basted the roast with that.

The title of my article in the paper was "She has a beef with marinating." Which I did. I have been caught many times before not reading a recipe until minutes before I was going to make it, and realizing I had to marinate something. Silly, Silly, me I let it happen again. I needed to marinate the beef for at least six hours, but I hardly had six hours until dinner by the time I had started.

Overall, I had a great time cooking it, and it turned out OK. I will defiantly make it again. I am also very appreciative of the Journal Sentinel and the Food editor Nancy J. Stohs for giving us this opportunity.