Entertaining with Kathi Column ~ October 24, 2007

Going Green with An Eco-Chic Soiree For Halloween
By Kathi Dameron

A frightfully good Halloween Party was the heady brew bubbling in the cauldron of my imagination.

My vision was to concoct a zany recipe for a weird and wonderful party that would be cutting edge and in-step with the times.

In a moment of serendipity, the contemporary newsworthy expression “Hasta La Vista Baby To Greenhouse Gases…” from the lips of THE TERMINATOR popped across my imagination and I was off and stirring with a ghoulish idea.

Co-mingling current affairs with thought-provoking art is an idea that I first tasted during my impressionable forays into the avant garde New York City design world of the late 1970’s. Showcasing the noble and worthy through the artistic, the fun and even the outrageous is a tasteful strategy for drawing attention to a worthwhile cause. In my book, the future of our environment qualifies as an important cause to be embraced.

So for a Halloween soiree- why not transform the front yard into a creepy and foggy cemetery. On gray headstones, global warming messages could be painted in shaky blood-red lettering while rented fog machines could create the eerie effects of smoke and smog.

Halloween is indeed the perfect time to throw an all out crazy palooza! For Halloween gives us the opportunity to do the otherwise insane.

But instead of being crazy, the party theme and menu would be very sane for it would showcase the epitome of environmentally conscious entertaining.

We are talking eco-chic soirees, here. My conscious shudders with guilt over the many times that parties I hosted or catered over the years were anything but eco-chic. But hey we all make mistakes, and some of us, yours truly included, might have a tendency to arrive fashionably late.

The good news is… it’s not too late to clean up our act and get moving forward on an ecologically chic pathway.

So where would we begin? How would one go about throwing an environmentally conscious party? It begins in the planning process when a conscience decision is made to only do that which is good for the environment and reject that which is destructive.

How To Throw An Eco-Chic Party

1. Invitations - Whenever possible opt for post-consumer recycled paper and soy ink or even send a digital invitation. Did you know that there are free online invitation services?

2. Tabletop Dishes – Use the real thing. It is so much nicer to eat off real dishes with real silverware anyway. Beverages also always taste better in nice glassware. If you must use disposable products, then choose products that are recyclable, biodegradable and made from unbleached materials.

3. Candles – Dim the lights and use nontoxic, beeswax or soy-based, petroleum-free candles. If you have a collection of half-burned candles, recycle them by melting them together and re pouring them into old jelly jars to create new candles.

4. Food- Think local! Plan your menu around seasonal, locally grown fruits and vegetables. Support our local farmers.

5. Serving Dishes-Use natural containers for your food. At Halloween, pumpkins are great as a wonderful and whimsical dual purpose soup tureen or dip container.

6. Leftovers- Donate excessive left over food to the food bank or send guests home with food!

7. Garbage- Make it easy on your guests to recycle. Set up separate recycle bins near the garbage.

8. Transportation- Encourage guests to carpool.

9. Clean-Up- Use non-toxic planet friendly cleaners.

10. Menu Ideas – Attend one of my eco-chic cooking classes for delicious and regionally inspired green party menus.

This article was originally submitted to the Northeast Chronicle, a community publication of the Tallahassee Democrat for the October 25, 2007 "Entertaining with Kathi" food and entertaining column.

Kathi Dameron teaches Make and Take Cooking Workshops. To request a cooking class schedule contact Kathi at 850-422-3599 or at askkathidameron@aol.com

Photo Credit: Chris Withers (Springfield Illinois) & SXC

The secret is in the sauce for wild game By Kathi Dameron

“Come over on Sunday and watch the wildlife frolic. I'll cook you some real food, too - the sort of food we eat around these parts,” the Georgia Bulldog said.

“I suspect you are a real connoisseur of buckshot speckled-delights,” I responded. “Sounds like a plan. How about I drive up after church?”

“Make sure and wear your jeans; no one dresses up on this ranch. Do you own cowboy boots?”

“Absolutely! I've been around ranches in my life. I'm a cowgirl from way back."

“Good. I'll take you out riding on the trails.”

“Can I bring something?”

“No, no, no. We don't need any of those chlorophyll leaves you city folks call food. You just bring yourself. I'll handle the provisions.”

Being the foodie that I am, I couldn't help but to ponder what sort of meal this bachelor beau would be cooking for a former caterer. Rich, hunteresque flavors rustled my taste buds as I reminisced about wild-game meals I had enjoyed in years past while growing up with a dad who enjoyed autumn hunts with his ranching buddies and who always kept the family's freezer well stocked with sides of beef and wild caches of pheasant, duck and deer. It had been a long time since I'd dined with a hunter. I couldn't wait.

“If this dinner tastes as good as it looks and smells, I'll be dreaming of buck-shot meats for a long time. I hope you'll share at least one recipe with me.”

“Maybe one,” he said with a wink as he raised his glass and toasted the animals for their lives.

“I don't know that I want you putting my recipes in your newspaper column or anything. These recipes have been handed down in my family for generations. In fact, we keep copies in the bank vault,” he said as he puffed out his chest with generational pride, while cautiously carving the crisp, golden roasted venison.

“So, what is your secret?” I asked.

“Kathi, one of the secrets to great tasting game is to marinate it for a couple days.”

There you have it, from the mouth of a shotgun-shooting and card-carrying outdoors man who knows how to cook what he hunts and how to hunt for what he eats.

Maybe one of the best parts of eating a wild game dinner with the hunter himself is witnessing the hunter's delight in reliving the experience of hunting that meal. You almost feel as if you are in the field at sunrise with him in the company of his good friends, faced with the challenge and about to be tested to the limit.

I learned something from this meal and from the wisdom gleaned that hunting for one's food is about so much more than what it appears to be on the surface. It's about an intimate relationship between man and his food source, and it's about putting a delicious meal on the table. It is also about carrying on an age-old tradition of human survival - perhaps even today it is still an important skill. With the cost of meat from a butcher in the double digits, hunting starts to look more and more like a desirable and affordable solution for dining on real food.

This article was originally published in the Entertaining with Kathi column in the Northeast Chronicle- a community publication of the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper published on Oct 10, 2007.

Kathi Dameron is a Tallahassee, Florida based food writer and food publicist. She teaches culinary arts, entertaining and crafting classes for locals and visitors to the North Florida, Panhandle and South Georgia geographic region. Learn more about the scope of these classes
plus other services provided by Kathi Dameron & Associates at http://www.kathidameron.com/

Photo Credit: Rodolfo Clix (Sao Paulo Brazil) & SXC

My Le Quack Duck Story

This article was originally published with the title, "Giving Amsterdam A Down-Home Flair" on September 26, 2007 in the Northeast Chronicle, a publication of the Tallahassee Democrat newspaper.

Giving Amsterdam A Down-Home Flair or AKA My Le Quack Duck Story
By Kathi Dameron ( A Florida food writer and culinary artist who use to cater big fancy parties but now writes about food and teaches cooking classes in North Florida and South Georgia.)

Whoosh! The cars whipped past us as we voyaged through the city of watery reflections.
“Watch the pothole!” Beth barked. “Pay attention and don't shilly-shally! We are going to turn at the next street.”

Zoom, Zoom, Zoom. The motorcars zipped down the street.

“If I survive this, it will be a miraclem” I mumbled as I crossed through the mirror.
Somehow by the grace of God, we arrived at our destination. As we parked, the pint-sized, kangaroo-pouched adoptive mother of two hopped off her bike to remove her toddler from the back seat.

Beth, my step-sister, had been trying to teach me street smarts ever since our parents had stitched our two families together, during a season when she was a graduate student in Bologna, Italy, and I was a college freshman in Podunk, middle America. A good 10- or 12-year span had passed in the interim.

“Kathi, what were you afraid of?” Beth snapped with her standing-on-tip toes-know-it-all attitude that could either stretch you or shrink you, depending on your openness or resistance.

“You can't come to Amsterdam and not ride bikes. It's the quintessential Dutch experience. Everyone does it.”

“I didn't come all this way to get crushed to death,” I wanted to say, but the sight before me took my breath away.

We had arrived at the famous floating flower market.

That night as the spell of moonlight pulled its shade of darkness over the day, I dined on one of the most incredibly delicious appetizers I had ever put in my mouth.

I ordered Peking duck at the restaurant my Dutch brother-in-law declared as Amsterdam's best eatery (and probably it's most expensive, too). The crisp duck, green-onion fans and hoisin sauce wrapped up in tiny blankets of mandarin pancakes were worth every penny.

Years later, I prepared this dish for a sophisticated catered event I did at a Thomasville, Ga., plantation. On the menu and monogrammed entree card, I named the dish Le Quack Duck. These delicate crepes were a huge hit with the game-loving crowd, for I had taken the traditional dish and tweaked it with Georgia flavors. Caramelized Georgia pecans and a peachy hoisin glaze brought the dish home and gave it a taste of regional relevance.

Le Quack Duck

Paper-thin crepes

Hoisin sauce mixed with diced peaches

Green onion fans

Crispy roasted duck

Caramelized pecans

Smear peach hoisin sauce over crepe. Place one or two green onion fans, 2-3 slices crisp roasted duck and caramelized pecans on the crepe. Take one side of the crepe and fold it into the middle, take the opposite half and fold it to meet the other, then take one unfolded side and fold it in half.

To learn about the step-by-step process involved in making Le Quack Duck and other great tasting recipes by Florida Chef Kathi Dameron, visit http://www.kathidameron.com/