As some of you know, I am frequently a guest on the syndicated show Daytime. While I was taping my infamous Christmas Tree segment, Lindsay asked if I would be interested in coming on and making baklava. Well, of course I didn’t hesitate to say yes, it’s always so much fun hanging out with Lindsay, Cyndi, Dave, Rob, Larry, April and the whole gang. Definitely never a dull moment with them!

So, after I accepted the invitation, I realized that I had never made baklava. Kinda important to be able to know how to do something if you’re going to go onto national television to explain how to do it! Although this was going to be a segment following a story Lindsay did on Istanbul….and by the way WOW, it’s now on my list of must do’s!, but I took the opportunity to reflect on our trip to Greece that Barry and I had done while living in Italy. While in Mykonos, Barry went on a quest for the world’s best baklava. Needless to say we tasted our fair share of this decadent dessert. We actually found a little boutique café with the world’s largest variations of baklava I had ever seen, more on that later, I’m in the process of trying some variations myself. Then I remembered a couple of months ago while doing a boot camp at the Culinary Institute of America one of the dishes prepared was baklava. Then I recalled how sinfully good it was, so I went and dug into the recipes that we were sent home with. Fortunately, the baklava recipe was one that I did manage to make it home with. The Culinary's recipe is posted on Epicurious.com. Click here for the recipe, which by the way consistently gets rave reviews as the best baklava ever! It is not difficult in terms of technique, but do allow yourself about 2.5 hours to make. If you are doing this for serving guests, also allow time for it to cool, it must be served at room temperature.

If you aren’t able to watch the segment on Monday, January 11 then make sure to go their website at http://www.daytimeonline.tv/ for a recap of the show. – Debbie

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Click here to watch me on Daytime TV!

As much as I hate to see time pass by so quickly, in my mind at least, I am always so excited for the holidays. It always seems to bring out the brighter, more loving side of people…most of us anyway! There always seems to be time to add one more lunch, coffee, or “meet-up” to our already full schedules.

This year I am very thankful to have been able to add my twitter friends to the mix! Skeptics will say that you can’t develop relationships and or friendships with people without having ever met, I BEG to differ. Not only did I meet the love of my life via a computer started relationship 13 years ago, but I have made friendships and have watched other relationships blossom, which will blossom even bigger (you know who you are…LOVE Y’ALL) but I have also made business relationships as well. In fact, if you tuned in to one of my favorite morning shows, Daytime, you will see one of the many relationships developed over this past year. I was invited to come and share one of my family’s favorite holiday traditions, Grandma Cookies. I had just had dinner with some of my friends a couple of days prior, one of them being Kim Randall. She was so sweet and had brought me one of her gorgeous hand painted ornaments that she and her Mom are making this year, KimRandall.biz, so I decided that this would be a great gift for my friends on Daytime. Well, y’all check out what happened on the show if you didn’t see it on air this morning. Don’t worry the ending was a good one! (<;

I’m off to make another round of Grandma Cookies now, they seem to disappear as soon as I make them and heaven help me if there aren’t any in this house come Christmas Eve and Christmas, so with that being said, Merry Christmas! Hope you all are as blessed as I have been this year with family, friends and of course……GREAT FOOD!!! - Debbie

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Chicken Baked with Sage and Bacon

While recording some of our family favorites for my upcoming cookbook, I’m reminded of the most important ingredients found in all my dishes, love and passion.

I’ve been blessed to have grown up in a generation that experienced true family dinners. As a girl growing up in the south, it never occurred to me that everyone didn’t go to their grandmother’s home on Sunday to have dinner with the entire family, which always meant eating with a minimum of 15 people. Not that it was always a pie in the sky kind of experience…come on people it was real, June Cleaver wasn’t there. OK, so I’m going to date myself here, but it was a time without cell phones, game boys, or computers, so there was actually interaction with real people at the table with you!

Oh the smells that would greet you as you pulled into the driveway, a chicken that had been roasting for hours, okra or green tomatoes being fried, green beans that have been cooking in bacon. As soon as you walked in you were assigned a job and it was anybody’s guess as to what it would be for that day. Maybe it was going out to the garden to pick the fresh vegetables for the salad, peeling potatoes for the mashed potatoes, or maybe turning the crank on the machine for homemade ice cream.

As everyone gathered around the table (all 15 of us - and yes there were tables to accommodate this), the “games” began. Of course everyone talked at the same time, so you had a choice of topics. There were as many conversations as there were people but the one thing in common was their love and passion for the food served and the time spent together.

Family dinners are an art which seem to have been dropped along the wayside with the ever evolving hectic techno savvy world. Don’t get me wrong, I think that there are amazing advancements that help keep our world connected…But perhaps we should try one day a week, I prefer Sundays, where television, computers, game boys, cellular phones, PDA’s, are not allowed. Try it - it’s amazing what you will discover about yourself and your family. Here is one of our favorite recipes from those family dinners that has been handed down for three generations. Click here to see my Chicken Baked with Sage and Bacon.

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Pork Stuffed Shrimp with Creamy Polenta and Wrapped Haricots Verts

When I read this week’s ingredients for round 2 of the Virtual Kitchen II contest, I was so excited. I had been anxiously waiting for their arrival all week. When I read ground pork and camembert I was in heaven, the third ingredient (haricots verts) created a little hesitation, but I decided to move forward with what I knew I wanted to do with the pork and cheese and let the beans just kind of happen.

Being from the south and married to an Italian, I have fun marrying the two traditional cuisines to create my own interpretation of “Southern Italian”, so imagine how excited I am to take that and add my own third dimension of French undertones. And this week I’ve used a VERY local ingredient, a marinade which is also available on-line, but created and made by a friend who is also a Tampa resident, Intensity Academy Chai Thai Teriyaki. For my other local flavor I chose Key West Pink shrimp, always fresh and scrumptious here on the west coast of Florida.

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While taking the day off from the kitchen Sunday night, I hear someone jump out of their chair and in a very excited voice tell me I need to enter this. This what? Well, that response ended my day off in the kitchen….not such a bad thing for Deb I must admit.

Well, to back up a little, you all are pretty familiar with the fact that I have now rented space as a test kitchen for putting together my first cookbook. Well, I have finally moved all my equipment to the test kitchen, which as it turns out is not so good. When presented with the challenge of creating a dish in 24 hours or less, with 3 ingredients chosen by Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard and RedEye Chicago (Virtual Kitchen Stadium 2), my challenge was what the heck was I going to use to create what I was tasting in my mouth!

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