Advice from Some Chefs: Cooking = More Money for Goin’ Out September 9, 2008
Posted by Max in : Press , add a commentCheck out Eli’s post on CollegeCandy.com. For those of you into the pop culture references, they abound, and there’s a sweet recipe from the book too:
Advice from Some Chefs: Cooking = More Money for Goin’ Out
By Freshman in the KitchenAnother year in school, and that means another year away from your parents. What a glorious concept. Breathe in that new year of college air. Do it fast though, because it’s the first week of classes (and parties) and pretty soon the air’s going to smell like burning couches and puke.
Now, college can be the greatest place on earth… that is, until the cash starts running low. And since right after you read this you are going to head to Urban Outfitters “just to look around”, and you are bound to find that rug/lamp/’80s drinking game/hip wall art, and you just “absolutely have to have them all because they are all so cute and will go perfect in your room,” you might not be the most frugal shopper on campus.
College can become a pretty expensive place for a lot of different reasons. Now, we know you aren’t paying for drinks at the bar (ahhh… to be a girl in college…) but next week is your BFF’s b-day and then your MFF’s HY b-day (most favorite friend’s half year birthday) and you are way past making them a friendship collage. Also I’m pretty sure season one of Gossip Girl comes out on DVD soon so there are some big purchases in the near future you cannot avoid.
With all these costs racking up, the 300 person line to that cheap franchised burrito place isn’t looking too long anymore (even though you know it only tastes good after 7 Slippery Nipples) and the Golden Arches seem like the right option to squeeze every penny. But we are here to convince you of another option. It’s called cooking. For yourself. With real ingredients.
Wait… wait. C’mon, at least let me explain before you go check Perez and go watch Lauren Conrad make yet another terrible BF selection (will she ever learn?).
My brother Max and I are professional chefs who wrote a cookbook that’s just for you. It’s a step by step guide starting with incredibly simple recipes that you don’t even need an oven or microwave for and then gets progressively more challenging with each chapter. By the end of our book you will be whipping up three-course meals for your BFFs, MFFs, BFs, GFs, RAs, TAs, roomies, your big sis, and maybe even the ‘rents. You’ll be like Monica from Friends, but without having to deal with Ross’s constant bitching about his lady troubles.
We want to help get it in your mind that cooking isn’t really all that difficult, time consuming, or expensive. In the cookbook we have tips on how to set up your kitchen, how to grocery shop, and even how to boil water and cook perfect pasta. So any possible cooking question you could have, we answer it. And if you come up with something we don’t answer in our cookbook, email and ask us and we’ll get back to you the same day. Technology is really an amazing thing.
Here’s a great healthy recipe below that isn’t too heavy so you can eat it before you go out. It will be so much more delicious that any fast food dinner option, too. We suggest having a few girlfriends pitch in so the overall cost is REALLY cheap. Grab a bottle of wine, crank up the Chris Brown and get cooking. We know you’ll feel a real sense of accomplishment once you finish making this. And hey, isn’t feeling a sense of accomplishment what college is all about?
The Book Has Been Released! September 3, 2008
Posted by Max in : Updates , add a commentSo we finally recovered from the excitement of the book release weekend for Freshman in the Kitchen and it could not possibly have gone any better. Here’s a small recap of the weekend.
Friday – Eli arrived in Michigan at about 5.30am, Max drove down from Ann Arbor (a few hours later) and we headed down to WDET 101.9 to do our interview with Craig from Detroit Today. Eli had never been on the radio before and had no idea what to expect, while Max was a seasoned vet from WBCN’s 3am slot. It turned out pretty well and we were happy to get on such a prominent show and radio station for 15 minutes. We spent the rest of the day prepping food for our first book signing to take place the next morning in Lexington Michigan. We both were very responsible and were in bed by 3am.
Saturday – We were on the road by about 8.30am heading up to Noble in Lexington. Lexington is right on Lake Huron and is one of Michigan’s many mini-resort small towns with fudge shops. Noble is a home and garden store housed in a beautiful 2 story building. We arrived, set up our food and then went to the outside garden where we were set to sign. We didn’t anticipate such intense heat though and by 11.30am it was over 90 degrees. Feeling that talking about our book while we were pouring sweat and constantly wiping it out of our eyes wasn’t the best selling technique, we moved indoors to take advantage of the A/C and the closer proximity to the store patrons. We were really pleased with everyone’s reception to the book. We sold a lot more books that expected and of course our extremely supportive family came out in full force to check out our very first book signing (which we hope to become quite historic).
Sunday – The bookbeat was the childhood bookstore where we grew up learning how to read and expanded our book consumption beyond the obvious harry potter-esque fare. Big special shout out goes to Sharon Zimmerman who was our personal reading guide as we were growing up and was there helping sell our cookbook. The Book Beat went so much better than we could have expected. The turnout was quadruple what we anticipated and we signed books for about 3 hours straight…not that we are complaining about that. We even had some walkups going to other stores who tasted the goods and then bought the book and that was one of the most exciting things to happen – total strangers convinced only by a taste of our food to buy our book.
Monday – Once again we spent all day in the kitchen. For this party we got to use the kitchen at eve – the restaurant so we were able to expand and make a much larger area incredibly messy as opposed to just the small kitchen at our parents’ house. We added a few dishes to the ones we had been cooking all weekend and were cooking right up until 6pm when the first people started showing up. The rest of the night is kind of a blur, it was basically everyone we knew in town who we hadn’t seen yet. The bar was open and there was tons of food, almost all of which got eaten which was quite a feat.
Big thanks go out to Sheldon and Gene of Noble Lexington, Cary and Colleen of Bookbeat and Eve Aronoff of eve – the restaurant for joining with us on our launch weekend to make it a huge success.
We’re not done yet–there will be plenty more opportunities to get your copy or say hi, just check our calendar for upcoming events.
