I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve stopped to take more than two breaths after the Thanksgiving weekend. Teaching my class in freelance travel writing at UBC is keeping me quite busy, and this is what we call the \u2018silly season\u2019 in broadcasting. Everyone is coming through Vancouver to promote their latest cookbook or TV cooking show, there are more and more dinner invitations\u2026and I know you don\u2019t feel sorry for me, but it can get a little tiring trying to keep up the pace. <\/p>\n
Last week I was one of the few journalists in Vancouver to be granted a one-on-one interview with Jamie Oliver, the Naked Chef, visiting the city to promote his new show, Jamie\u2019s Kitchen. He\u2019s taken a bunch of jobless 16 to 24-year-olds in London and trained them to run his new not-for-profit restaurant. Their selection and progress unfolds over the next few weeks on the Food Network. I\u2019ve seen the first episode and while I\u2019m generally not a fan of reality TV, this one really works. Jamie set himself a tough task, and he thought he would find a good group from the hundreds who applied, it was hard to find even 30 kids that knew which end of a knife to use. One hilarious scene shows Jamie talking with one of his potential employees who cut the tips off the asparagus he was about to cook instead of the stalks. Jamie\u2019s Kitchen debuts on the Food Network on Sunday, November 2nd. <\/p>\n
I was the last person to interview Jamie before he headed back to London. He had been away for two weeks, and was exhausted, as well as missing his wife and two young children. Still, he perked up when I started asking him about the show and the restaurant. He took a lot of risk to do this, most of the project has been financed from his own resources. At one point he had to put up his house as a loan guarantee, \u2018and I didn\u2019t really tell Jools (his wife) what that really meant right away.\u2019<\/p>\n
Jamie was also my last interview before returning to the Cowichan Valley for a little R+R. On Friday we went for what was supposed to be a brisk hike around the shores of Spectacle Lake near the summit of the Malahat. It turned into a mushroom hunt, as my fianc\u00e9 Dana goes crazy for edible wild mushrooms this time of year. The only problem is, we\u2019re still learning how to identify the ones that ARE safe to eat. We know chanterelles quite well, and a couple of others, but the chanterelles seem to be scarce this year, and some of the other edible mushrooms have been eaten by creatures large and small before we got to them! (many of them were wormy) The most important thing to remember when it comes to mushrooms you find is, don\u2019t eat them unless you are ABSOLUTELY sure they are edible. We always consult our friend Bill Jones, who is a mycologist (mushroom expert) along with being a great chef. Check out the photos from our walk\/hunt. Even if you don\u2019t want to go mushroom hunting, they are neat to look at, and it\u2019s a great time of year to get into the outdoors, now that we\u2019ve had a bit of a break from the torrential rains. I\u2019d love to hear about your own mushroom hunts. Just scroll to the bottom of this page and enter a comment.<\/p>\n
To see the photos for this entry please visit the gallery here >><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve stopped to take more than two breaths after the Thanksgiving weekend. Teaching my class in freelance travel writing at UBC is keeping me quite busy, and this is what we call the \u2018silly season\u2019 in broadcasting. … Continue reading