MNN - Mother Nature Network

This is my last post for 2010. As I looked back through my posts from the year, I found that there were some topics that I gravitated to. What were some of my favorite things from 2010? Read on and find out.

 

The first lady became my hero. I love Michelle Obama. She launched the Let’s Move! Campaign to combat childhood obesity, fought for healthier school lunches and was instrumental in getting the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act passed, brought real chefs to schools, and continued to make kitchen gardens hip. She even showed off her garden on an episode of "Iron Chef," even if the chefs did end up using stunt vegetables instead of ones from the garden. I so want to spend an evening with Michelle Obama talking food and sharing a bottle of wine.

 

Jamie Oliver launched an American food revolution. The celebrity chef’s "Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution" only ran for six weeks, but it made a lasting impression on Americans — young and old. The show eventually won an Emmy. Oliver won a TED Prize and inspired us with his TED Talk, wrote one of Britain’s best-selling cookbooks ever, and started an army of online food revolutionaries. I can’t wait to see what he accomplishes in 2011.

 

The iPad changed things. In 2009 it looked like Gourmet magazine was dead and gone for good. But then the iPad came along and resurrected the revered cooking magazine as Gourmet Live. Restaurants have started to use the iPad for their wine lists. Food and wine magazines, cookbooks, and cooking websites are pumping out apps for the iPad quickly. We now have an iPad in the house courtesy of my husband’s new job, so stay tuned for my reviews of iPad apps in the new year.

 

Restaurants embraced farm-to-table. Farm-to-table certainly wasn’t a new concept this year, but this was the year it seemed to become mainstream. When Esquire released its list of the 20 best new restaurants in 2010, eight of them emphasized local foods. When chefs were asked what the biggest trend of the year was, they answered that restaurant gardens were the hottest thing, turning the farm-to-table movement into a seed-to-stove movement.

 

I tackled some new recipes. As someone who writes about food all the time, you’d think I was cooking up a creative storm every night in my gourmet kitchen. But it’s not the way it is. My family gets stuck in our food habits like everyone else does, and my kitchen is far from gourmet. Still, I made the time to tackle some recipes this year that I’d never tried before. I didn’t write about all of them, but I did tell you about some like beef bourguignon, plum clafoutis, chicken with a pear and stilton cream sauce, and coq au vin. Who knows what I’ll cook up next year?

 

I’ll finish by wishing you a very happy and safe New Year. See you in 2011!