As I mentioned in my earlier post, I have been traveling for work during the better part of the last three weeks.  This past Saturday through Wednesday, I was fortunate enough to have my day job take me to the International Home and Housewares Show in Chicago for the second consecutive year.  In a word, the Housewares show is amazing.

More than 3,000 exhibitors, ranging from manufacturers and marketers of mops to the highest end kitchen equipment, show off their wares to buyers.  On top of that, you’re liable to meet anyone from an entrepreneur who has poured their life savings into a better spatula to an Iron Chef as you walk the aisles of the show.

The show, which ran for four days this year, really defies description.  It takes up three massive halls in the McCormick Center and I seriously doubt one person could see it all in the four days.  The scale of the show and the displays can be daunting.

One of the great things about it is that it gives you a chance to see what items and categories will be hot in the coming year.  As one of my colleagues said, “There appear to be a lot of cake pop pans in America’s future.”

Among the things that got me most excited were the prevalence of water immersion ovens designed for in-home use.  If you’ve watched Iron Chef or just about any other cooking contest, you know that the immersion oven comes out eventually.  The whole idea is that you create better tasting, more tender and more nutritious uniformly cooked food by putting the ingredients under a vacuum and cooking them at a steady temperature in a water bath.  It’s been a standard technique in high-end restaurant kitchens and now companies like Sous Vide  and Kitchen Advance  are looking to bring the technology into the home at a variety of price points.  Despite the utter lack of space in my kitchen, I am pretty sure one of these machines will be finding its way onto the already overstuffed shelf of kitchen tools.

Molecule-R’s DIY molecular gastronomy kit

I think the coolest thing I saw this week were the kits sold by the guys at Molecule-R.  The Montreal-based company has produced a couple of DIY molecular gastronomy kits that enable you to whip up, literally, all the foams, caviars, spaghettis and spheres you care to consume.  They also market a molecular cocktail kit and sell the tools and ingredients required to outdo your other foodie friends.  No doubt I’ll be adding at least one of these kits to my kitchen arsenal as well.

More Housewares recap to come tomorrow…

I’ll be writing about those trips over the next few days and, with any luck, have some over-the-weekend cooking adventures to write about too.

And, for those of you waiting with bated breath, the two Morrison Wood cookbooks promised in my last post have arrived.  You’ll be happy to know that they are just as awesome as I thought they would be.  I promise to try out at least one of the recipes this weekend and let you know how it goes.

I know things here have gotten off to a slow start.  But, if you hang around, I  promise you won’t be disappointed.

- Chuck

with more than 350 1940s-era recipes, all of which include wine, Morrison Wood's With a Jug of Wine is worth tracking down.

What my 24-hour trip to New York this weekend lacked in great food, it more than made up for with good friends, a great track meet and brushes with minor celebrities.  But that’s not very good material for a food blog.  Luckily, I also had to assemble a bookshelf last weekend.  You may also think that has nothing to do with a food blog, and that is where you are wrong.  While moving my books from the old bookcase to the new one, I came across an old cookbook I had largely forgotten: my 1960 edition of With a Jug of Wine  by Morrison Wood.

Wood, who wrote a cooking column during the 1940s and 50s titled “For Men Only” syndicated by The Chicago Daily Tribune.  Before becoming a food columnist, Wood grew up in Chicago, served in stateside in the Army during World War I and then ran a Chicago moving and trucking company with his father.  You can read examples of “For Men Only” here and here.

I found my book sitting on a table at a Half-Price Books in Austin, Texas sometime in the mid-90s.  Initially, I was intrigued by the Wood’s tone (the introduction begins with “I think this is a damn good cookbook…) and the fact that every recipe in the book includes some sort of wine.  Even if the dishes were not great, I thought, the book would be an entertaining read.  But the recipes are great.  They have a lack of pretense that reminds me of the first edition Joy of Cooking my aunt picked up for me at a library book sale, and the and frequent use of strong and obscure ingredients that make it clear these dishes were cooked for people who smoked and drank…a lot.

WhenI sat down to write about With a Jug of Wine this evening, I thought  I would be writing about a book that had faded into obscurity.  I could not have been more wrong.  Although I could not find any more biography about Wood than the information on the dust jacket of my book, I did learn that there are a lot of Wood fans on the Internet.  Like me, they have yet to find a bad recipe in his books.  I say books because I also learned that he authored at least three other cookbooks in addition to With a Jug of Wine: More Recipes with a Jug of Wine (now unavailable on Amazon, but the URL is here), Through Europe with a Jug of Wine, and The Fisherman’s Wharf Cookbook (not listed on Amazon, but information available here).  I quickly ordered copies of More Recipes with a Jug of Wine and Through Europe with a Jug of Wine, which is surprisingly still in print.

I cannot wait to try out the several hundred new (to me) recipes in the two books.  And when I try the recipes, you’ll hear about them here.

Flash forward to Christmas and there, in José’s own hand, was the personal exhortation to launch my food blog.  I couldn’t really drag my feet after that.  I registered this domain and earnestly set to work… then almost two months passed before I sat down to write the first post for this blog, Hot and Sharp.

So what’s the blog going to be about?  I don’t really know yet.  Look for stories about, recipes for and pictures of the things I have cooked.  There will probably also be stories about places I have eaten, and stories and recipes that I just thought were interesting enough to put here.

I hope that you enjoy what you find here, and I hope this will blog evolve into a conversation.  My friend, Gary Hailey, writes about music at his blog, 2 or 3 Lines. Yes, you should take a look.

It took a while for things to get started, but soon he began receiving comments from a strange and wonderful assortment of readers, including an independent horror filmmaker and graphic novel artist from Iceland who loves death metal and Vanilla Ice’s later recording work.  If this blog generates conversation half as interesting, I will be one happy blogger.

Thanks for reading.

-Chuck