You Art What You Eat Food Challenge

Last month I received an honorable mention at our Publication Department's Semi Annual Food Challenge.  The theme of the April Food Challenge was: You Art What You Eat.  For this culinary event we needed to create dishes that were inspired by works of art.

Since I moved to the NC office and the rest of the department is in NYC I was faced with the additional problem of shipping my entry up to NY! After much thought I decided to ship  chocolate & bourbon pecan pies up. Craig and I had made pies like this once to take to my Aunt's house on Thanksgiving a few years ago and I remember that everyone really liked them. This time, I made them alone with a little over the shoulder supervision from Craig.  I followed the recipe for pecan pie that was on the Karo Syrup label and added chocolate chips and some Maker's Mark Bourbon to my taste. We didn't actually have enough Karo Syrup in the pantry so there was a tad less in the pies than  the recipe actually called for.

I decided on the pies because I thought they would ship well, and I could use my favorite Paul Friedrich piece with Dr. Strangegutt contemplating evil or pie.  I stopped at the party supply store to buy boxes and tissue paper and other items that would help with the shipping.  For 24 hours I was really nervous that they would arrive as one big mess.

Actually, they shipped so well that one of my coworkers emailed me to let me know that they were still intact even after the box had been sitting on its side in the reception area! I was happy about that but then I became nervous that they were actually as hard as rocks! After the challenge was over I  received lots of emails letting me know how good the pies were and I was relieved that they were edible. My honorable mention certificate is tacked up on my cubicle wall now, below my employee of the month certificate and next to my 2nd place certificates for the "Hair of the Dog" and the "Picking & Grinning" food challenges.

Evil or Pie . . .

Characters from Paul Friedrich’s Onion Head Monster comic have decorated the walls of various restaurants and coffee shops in downtown Raleigh for quite some time now. I remember first seeing some of Friedrich’s art at the Vertigo Diner back in the late 1990’s. If my memory serves me correctly, I believe that I had even gone to an Onion Head Monster art gallery opening the summer after I graduated from college. More recently I remember seeing some of his art upstairs at The Morning Times Café a few months ago.

Last week, when walking past Holly Aiken’s store, Stitch, I saw that she had a purse with Dr. Strangegutt, contemplating evil or pie, dangling in her front window. Apparently she had collaborated with several local artists and created a limited edition line, cleverly named CAHOOTS.

Seeing the bag there in the window put a smile on my face. Not only does it bring me back to when I first saw this particular illustration, it reminds me to ask myself: "what am I in the mood for?"