Don't quit your day dream
Here's a desktop image for your computer courtesy of Food On Your Shirt reminding you not to quit your day dream.
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chop chop
We are loving Chopped Canada!
Every week we are going to tune in to discover which Canadian chef is going to be bringing home the maple gilded top prize.
The concept of the show is based on the mysterious 'black box' that is both exciting and terrifying. It's a great way to get your creative juices flowing in the kitchen.
The Chopped Canada basket includes some curve balls like sprinkles and beef tongue and digestif cookies. And the clock, tic, toc, chop, chop.
The breakdown...
Every episode, four talented chefs enter the kitchen for 3 rounds of mystery basket cooking.
Round one. Appetizer. 20 minutes.
One chef gets chopped.
Chop.
Round two. Main. 30 minutes.
One chef gets chopped.
Chop.
Round three. Dessert. 30 minutes.
One chef gets chopped.
Chop.
The last chef standing wins. Chopped Canada Champ.
Hosted by Dean McDermott with the badass chainsaw voice and that fierce eyebrow.
And the judges.
A shmorgasbord of Canada's top culinary talents.
Chef Roger Mooking.
Chef Lynn Crawford. Agro? or Dolce?
Chef Susur Lee. Kitchen Ninja.
Chef Anne Yarymovich.
Chef Chuck Hughes.
Chef John Higgins.
Chef Michael Smith.
Restaurateur Vikram Vij.
For fans of Chopped Canada we designed a fun shirt to wear while you are cheering on the chefs or ripping it up against the clock in your own kitchen.
Here is the Chop chop shirt
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Offal television
Video courtesy Breakfast TV Calgary.
Jill Belland puts on a brave face but enjoys the final taste of her Tongue to Tail soup.
Here's the recipe and the t-shirt.
Pig Head Mortadella
Sometimes I get to tag along with John and Connie of Charcut when they do cooking demos... for comic relief.
At this year's Terroir Symposium in Toronto Connie decided to do the Pig Head Mortadella demo, but to add a little twist.
Instead of just demoing, she decided to go head to head against one of the chefs in the audience. A face off, if you will, to see who could bone a pigs head fastest.
Connie's record before the demo was 1 minute and 16 seconds.
The head of the Butchery program at Geroge Brown was chosen from the crowd of highly acclaimed chefs and he swaggered up to the stage. After rolling up his sleeves and deftly swirling the and twirling the knife a few times he was ready.
I started the clock.
Connie called time and I was shocked because it hadn't even been a minute.
48 seconds.
I was stunned silent, Connie was beaming and her competitor was deflated.
Later that day Connie received an award as the Best Chef in Canada. Quite a day, it's a wonder she stays so humble.
The next day at a special chef's meal we served the pig head mortadella to Lotta and Pers-Anders of Fool Magazine. They loved it.
After we got home to Calgary, I pitched the story and art and it is now in the much anticipated Fool Magazine Issue #3.
Here is the shirt of the pig head mortadella in all its glory.
Alice Eats illustrations
Giant Alice is attacked by the Queen's card guard in Alice Eats Wonderland. This illustration gets split and run over the last 2 pages of the book.
Here is a look at how a typical illustration was created for the Alice in Wonderland book. It starts with a pencil sketch, gets traced using a Pilot V5 Hi-Tecpoint pen, scanned and layered in Photoshop using a library of brushes and patterns that I've created and collected, then it is placed on the page in InDesign.
Alice Eats Wonderland
The time has finally come to announce the Alice Eats Wonderland Cookbook.
The classic 12 chapter storybook is filled with tea-party themed recipes throughout the storyline, including an extended Mad Hater Tea party!
Julie Van Rosendaal (Dinner With Julie) and Pierre A Lamielle (Kitchen Scraps) have teamed up to bring the story of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland to life with a fun new Alice Eats Wonderland Cookbook coming Fall 2013 from Whitecap Books.
Julie Van Rosendaal has created recipes that will delight and distract with gorgeous step by step photos to tantalise and help make cooking easy.
The characters and illustrations have been re-imagined by illustrator Pierre A Lamielle who has given Alice a whole new Wonderland to explore.
The book is created for Alice in Wonderland fans of all ages with delightful tea party themed recipes, complete with helpful step by step instructions and photos.
It can also be enjoyed at bedtime as the complete story of Alice in Wonderland to inspire dreams tasty adventures.
This little piggy went to market
We are in the Calgary Farmer's Market from now until Christmas.
We also made a "This little piggy went to market"
You can order any shirt from our online shop, use the promo code "CFM" to pay no-shipping and pick up your order the following week at the market. It'll be wrapped up and you can pick out a free sticker fun page to go along with it.
Here's our cart. Come by say hi and check out our shirts.
Limited Edition Calgary Interfaith Food Bank shirts!
We had an awesome idea: design a fundraiser shirt for the Calgary Interfaith Food Bank. But then we forgot to write the idea down and we forgot.
Meanwhile, the Calgary Interfaith Food Bank also had a great idea: get Food On Your Shirt to design a fundraiser shirt. Luckily, someone wrote the idea down... in an email to us! Awesome!
It's all so serendipidous.
To make it even awesomer they gave us free-reign to put whatever we want on a shirt. So much awesomer!
We always love coming up with new designs, that's why we serve up a new shirt design every Thursday but this was a rare and wonderful opportunity to work with a client that just gets it and lets you run with it.
So we sent in 4 concept sketches...
and they chose the "Choose Your Weapon". My favourite one!
I was stoked to get to use a cheeky concept I've been wanting to bust out for a while and Candace was stoked to get to play around with some handtype and some cool design elements. After some colour experiments we finally came to a shirt design that we are so proud to present to help raise money this winter for the Calgary Interfaith Food Bank.
The Limited Edition shirts will be available starting on December 3 at the Calgary Interfaith Food Bank Fundraiser with more details coming soon.
Happy Holidays and don't forget to donate to the Calgary Interfaith Food Bank or your local food bank wherever you are.
Soup Sisters
Who is ready for a warm bowl of soup?
Soup Sisters is an incredible organisation started in Calgary by Sharon Hapton, but in 3 short years it has spread across the country.
I can't say enough great things about the organisation. The monthly soup making events are held in 15 locations across the country and they are a tonne of fun with lots of laughs, lots of cooking and lots of feeling good. The organisation brings volunteers together to make large batches of soup to donate to local charities who support women and children in transitional situations who are leaving domestic violence.
They are about to reach the 100,000 bowl mark and it is coinciding with the launch of their very first cookbook published by Appetite a brand new imprint from Random House Canada. It is a compilation cookbook with recipes from chefs and volunteers and certainly has a fair number of big names as well as folks you've never heard of, but they all know how to make a bowl of soup.
Robert McCullough is the man behind Appetite. He is a legend in the Canadian culinary cookbook scene and can be credited with nearly single handedly creating most of Canada's finest cookbooks.
Soup Sisters events are a blast! I love volunteering as the chef at the events, and I was lucky enough to work on the cookbook project with Sharon and Appetite (Robert and Lindsay). I drew the illustrations and streamlined all the recipes from all the chefs. We worked hard to create an easy to use, all in one pot soup cookbook.
The book is full of fantastic photos by the fabulously wonderful Julie Van Rosendaal of Dinner With Julie.
Here is my picture for Glam Clam Chowdére (this photo isn't in the book, Candace took it while we tested the recipe). It's perfect for fancy ladies who generally eat martinis for dinner as well as salty seadogs with hearty appetites and cold waterlogged toes. It's on page 136. So go get the book if you want the recipe.
Lovin' Shirts
We have awesome friends. It's nice to know you have friends who will tell you when you have food on your shirt... it's even better when they tell other people you have food on your shirt. At least it is in our case.
It's nice to have friends like Julie who is so giving with the love.
Also, you'll be lovin' the announcement Julie and I are coming out with later this Fall.
--PAL
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