Daisy Martinez - Food Network Star Helps Texans Celebrate Their Latin Roots
If America is a melting pot, then Texas adds an unmistakable spicy Mexican flare. When times are tough, we focus on what’s really important, family, togetherness and good food! This holiday season, more than ever, we’re celebrating family and our unique heritage. Gathering around the dinner table, during the holidays or everyday, offers us a touchstone – a way to reconnect with our loved ones and learn a thing or two about cooking the meals our parents and grandparents always loved. Available to show your viewers how to create a heritage recipe incorporating traditional Florida-Latin influences is Food Network Star Daisy Martinez, host of Viva Daisy! This Brooklyn, New York native has deep roots in Latin cuisine, as the daughter of mainland Puerto Rican parents.
Alex Fitzpatrick - www.mawhats4dinner.com
Alex Fitzpatrick, founder of Ma What’s For Dinner –
http://www.mawhats4dinner.com/ ; a popular blog that focuses on the often talked about topic (and struggle) – getting kids to eat. Alex’s cooking videos and recipes promote cook WITH kids rather than for them – all in an effort to expand their palate, get them to eat and promote more family time. Alex has three young boys and used to spend hours cooking AND convincing them to eat. After useless attempts, she decided she’d get them involved and it made all the difference. Now at 2, 4 and 5 – the boys are eating pate, red pepper, curry, tomatoes and more. Obviously the juggle between work and family time can be daunting and the focus of Ma What’s For Dinner’s encourages parents to spend a few nights a week bonding in the kitchen so they don’t have to miss quality time with their kids. Plus the introduction to different foods plays an enormous role in getting them to eat when it comes out of the oven. As parents we hear it all the time, “Ma! What’s for dinner?” Those dreaded four words that come moments before you spend an hour at the table convincing (or bribing) your kids to eat. Well, not in my house! At least not anymore. My ears ring to a different tune. And it goes something like “Ma, let’s cook dinner!” After the birth of my third son, Cooper in 2006, I decided there had to be a way to get my kids to eat full (and healthIER) meals. I could have stuck to the old faithfuls – chicken nuggets, spaghetti, mac-n-cheese or pulled a Jessica Seinfeld and hid the good stuff in the bad stuff. But how long could I really get away with that? The solution was easy: cook WITH the kids instead of for them! I figured I could tell a story about each ingredient and let them choose what they wanted to eat. For example, I could have easily dropped a pizza topped with chicken and black olives on the table, but chances are, they wouldn’t eat it. But if we cooked it together and they were presented with a choice of black olives, broccoli or mushrooms, they would pick the one they least hated (or loved) and eat it! Children like choices and want to feel grown up just like mom and dad. So, eating what they pick offers a great sense of achievement.
Amanda Simpson - "Food Porn Daily"
Fresh off a 26-city national book tour, cookbook author Amanda Simpson has no intention of slowing down. The creator of the popular website
http://www.foodporndaily.com/ (that has had more than 23 million hits since 2008) continues to do interviews with outlets around the United States to promote her new cookbook. "Food Porn Daily," the cookbook, provides an uncensored, up-close look at food so delectable it's positively sinful.
Simpson, whose website generates more than 50,000 hits a day, says that food porn is a high-resolution, close-up image of any food that gets your salivary glands flowing, whether a huge, juicy cheeseburger, or a healthy-yet-flavorful piece of grilled fish. Calories play no role in the definition.
Graham Kerr - "The Galloping Gourmet"
Residence: Mt. Vernon, Washington; naturalized U.S. citizen Family: Married in 1955; three children, six grandchildren 2 great-grandchildren Birth Date: January 22, 1934, London, England. Graham Kerr is an internationally known culinary and television personality, award-winning author, and master of metaphorical speaking. His focus is on serving people who want to make healthy, creative, lifestyle changes and believes that the only lasting changes are the ones that we enjoy. His life goal is “to help to convert habits that harm into resources that heal both for ourselves and others in need.”
