OTG Restaurant at Jet Blue JFK Terminal

There are more and more alternatives for eating, dare I say, dining at the airport these days.

Restaurant Smart Brief contributor Janet Forgrieve has reported: “Airport restaurants run much like traditional eateries, with a few additional challenges. Airport restaurants benefit from delays and flight cancellations but all too often seats are filled with hungry, angry passengers. Among the many rules and regulations is the requirement for kitchen knives to be tethered at all times. Metal knives on restaurant tables are not permitted.”

According to OTG Management spokesperson Dave Allen, “We don’t have airport restaurants, we have restaurants at airports. Really, we operate our restaurants like they are in the restaurant districts in the very best part of the cities we are in.”

In fact, just last month, OTG announced it “will offer five chef-driven restaurants, an expansive food hall, fresh markets, the integration of Apple iPads, pop-up retail stores and more” for Delta Airlines at LaGuardia’s Terminal C.

Every new employee at an airport restaurant now must first undergo security clearance, while all food deliveries are carefully scrutinized for lethal bugs of all kinds.

Private plane chefs and caterers like Elaine Frances have a slightly easier time. They can supply elegant picnics or partially cooked food that is reheated aloft in microwave ovens for the crew and passengers. The ability to taste the food is greatly diminished at 30,000 feet.  (This is the reason airline often food tastes of — well — nothing at all.)

As you see, there are several opportunities for employment in the airport arena. They range from: menu planning, recipe development, recipe testing, financial management and waitstaff jobs.

Servers are required to have the patience of a saint as they placate and console the equivalent of teenagers in full heat.  In other words the job requires the skills of extreme motherhood. (A mother brings food, takes away the plate and sometimes suggests a little nap.)

If there is a small private airport near you, consider writing a plane catering business plan and bring tasting samples along. (ICDT!) I Can Do That!

“I always thought that the only kids getting their entire public schooling online were in the hospital, living in the Alaskan tundra, or pursuing a career as a singing orphan in the road company of “Annie.” Not so. There are now around 250,000 cyber school students in kindergarten through high school and the number is growing fast.”

–Gail Collins, New York Times Op-Ed Columnist

That leads me to ask: would you consider creating an online class based on your own unique experiences in the food universe?

Food-related classes are not limited to culinary schools. Community colleges are just one among many other opportunities.

They search for new sources studying kitchen inventories, trade and taxation records, and ancient cave carvings, drawings, menus and then look around for ways to use their knowledge. Their information may be combined with a job in travel, teaching, or writing.”

Culinary libraries need the help of historians, as do academic journals and publishers. So, too, do modern movie makers and producers of TV series. Directors must make sure Braveheart warriors, diners on The Titanic, Upstairs, Downstairs and Harry Potter characters eat the food of their period in history.

Trend predictors and futurists rely on historical patterns too because it is imperative to understand the past in order to grasp what is happening now and what is likely to occur in the future.

Writing the history of what we eat provides a geographic destiny, and social history of the nation. Food puts everything into a living, ever evolving reference derived from paintings, photographs as well as diaries and oral histories.

I CAN DO THAT! ICDT!

We should remember that funerals are for the living.  The most honored survivors walk slowly and mourn from a lectern.  Grieving friends who are held in high esteem are invited to shoulder the casket from outdoors to indoors and back out again.

Others simply sob.

All this heavy-duty emotion is sure to build up a hearty appetite.

Brunch for the Bereaved is a niche market that is assured of growth as the population ages and the inevitable becomes, well, unavoidable.

Restaurants catering to mourners should specialize in tasteful advertising and appropriate interior design.

Chef Shoop is part of a team of oncologists, naturopathic doctors, nutritionists, mind-body specialists and therapists that use a whole-person approach to ensure optimal nutrition for their patients. This approach is based on the fact that cancer does not affect one part of the body but rather the body as a whole — as well as all aspects of patients’ lives.  He says: “Our purpose is so wonderful and beautiful…really it’s about two Ls — loving and listening.”

Note: Personal and private chefs may specialize in a specific health area, for example preparing gluten free meals or tasty food for those living healthily with diabetes.  Even folk yearning to shed a couple of pounds can be helped to slimness with the aid of a personal chef.  Do you remember how much weight Oprah lost? And her cook’s cookbook sold literally millions of copies.n

Science writers (should) deal with statistics, risk assessment and replicable clinical trials.

Some in the media are in the business of selling “stories.” Storytelling is enhanced with the use of words like danger, contamination, disease, poison and death. The media encourages distrust of authority, and fans the flames of suspicion using pursed lips and pointed fingers.

Note:Every year many hundreds of people are injured by squirrels…to avoid squirrels (and dear deer), drivers crash their car into a tree or oncoming traffic.)

Science writing is a noble profession. To get started you have to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out!

Reese Schonfeld was a very big shot back then. He was managing editor of United Press Movietone News, Vice President of United Press International Television News. He founded the Independent Television News Association, the first satellite-delivered television news service. With his pal Ted Turner, he created CNN and served as its first President. Today more people watch the TVFN than CNN!

Today close to 100 million households can tune in to the Food Network.  There are stations in Atlanta, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Detroit and Knoxville.  There are viewers in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Korea, Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, Monaco, Polynesia and Great Britain.

What is turning this huge audience on to all these American Culinary Idols? It’s Big Boy Mario Batali, the Nasty Bits of Anthony Bourdain and Paula Deen, the Southern Belle who could dare serve grits with grape jelly and red-eye gravy. And Sandra Dee as she concocts a store-bought package of lady fingers, a plastic container of vanilla pudding, a whisper of artificial rum flavoring, a jar of jam and a squirt of whipped topping and declares it “mostly homemade.”

And the Barefoot Contessa who cooks for her well-heeled pals.  And the perpetually smiling Giada (with her revealing cleavage alluring generations of boy culinary students). And the lovely Lydia and La Bella Nigella and sweet Sara M. and  perkily determined EVOO’d Rachael   — American Eye Dolls almost all.

The food network is shamelessly derivative.  Science channels are morphing into the food channel. So are the travel programs and adventures in survival. Competition is hot. Quick.  Who can make the best ice cream while marooned on a blazing tropical island where there are no utensils and ingredients, (don’t even think of using the palm  oil).  You have just 30 minutes before the scheduled arrival of 2,602 Carnival Cruise line passengers.  The winner is…pause…pause…wild applause for the Instantly Iced Sandy Snapping Turtle Smoothie.

Who’ll take the cake for transporting turrets of spun-sugar from here to there without dropping it?  Who will be the judge of the judged?  Who will deliver forth the next incandescent banality?

Paddy Chayevsky, who wrote about the television as mass madness wouldn’t have believed just how completely mad the medium has become. We have traveled light miles from the simplicity of the Pillsbury bake-off. We remember our beloved Julia who inspired three generations to just go into the kitchen and cook.  How we yearn for Jacques and the Galloping Gourmet, (but not the frugal one.)

The genie is out of tube and we are spending way too much time searching for the next Aladdin with a new lamp to rub.We don’t want to watch anything remotely serious or educational. Just bring on the new game, the new competition. The new STAR.

If the job of celebrity TV chef appeals to you, first take media training, then try to get a start at a small television station, then study giraffes so you will be able to stand head and shoulders above all others.  Bam!

This astonishing fact appears to be true.

A plant biologist at the University of Nancy in France reveals there are two sexes of truffles. Thus it can be revealed that by injecting the roots of certain oak trees with the spores of both mates, it become possible to produce predictability.

Lay this wisdom at the feet of genetic engineers who unraveled the truffle DNA containing, as it turns out, 7,500 genes (compared with 30,000 in the human genome.)

If only the perfumers could recreate the aroma of truffles that drives pregnant pigs, dogs, squirrels, boars and other wild life mad with desire, they could make a fortune. (Incidentally a gene that is found in rice has been detected in male underarm sweat…)

I just thought you might like to ponder the possibilities…

Carving up a whole animal whether a whale or an ox or a suckling pig or the Thanksgiving turkey has always expressed not only the interconnectedness of the family — and in a wider context — the community, but also the hierarchy of each member of the group. The carver is traditionally the head of the household whose responsibility it is to assign various cuts of the protein and to determine the size of the serving.

The Monk’s Chicken

A man of the cloth was invited to carve a chicken for the family meal. He cut off the head and handed it to the father, as he was the head of the household. He served the neck to the mother because she supported the head. The wings were given to the “flighty” daughters while the sons received the feet, as they were the foundation on which the next generation would stand. That done, the carver ate the rest of the bird himself.

The role of the butcher can be interpreted in many ways. Some confine themselves to simply butchering the language.