Category: Blog
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Easter FRANK…a Tale of Texas Foraging
After my seemingly endless blog about the underground restaurant FRANK that I run with my bestie Jennie Kelley from season 2 of MasterChef, I though I’d be done writing about FRANK for awhile. However, our Easter seatings in March were so incredibly epic and special, and so many of you have requested the story behind…
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Nimble Chef…my latest project
For the past year I’ve been working secretly on a really cool project with Iron Chef Cat Cora and the team that created her iPad app Cat’s Kitchen. And since the project was officially announced yesterday, now I can share it with all of you!!! It’s a revolutionary app called Nimble Chef, and it takes…
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All About FRANK
“Just who is this FRANK character and why does Ben Starr spend so much time with him?” That’s a rough translation of an email I got from a delightful Italian fan last week. Then I realized, many of you are intrigued with this FRANK thing I’ve got going on with my bestie from MasterChef Jennie…
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How to Convert a Refrigerator for Curing Meat or Aging Cheese
WARNING: Working with electricity is dangerous. This article will teach you several ways to convert a refrigerator into a chamber for curing meat or for aging cheese. (The same principles can be used to convert a refrigerator into a lagering chamber for making homebrew lager beer, or converting a chest freezer into a kegerator.) If…
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Utah Series: Midway and the Heber Valley, part 1
Utah is like an entire continent in one state. Never, in all my travels around the world, have I discovered a place so dramatically varied in climate and geology in such a comparatively small space. And while I tend to focus on wilderness spots in my Utah writings…(and Utah has no shortage of wilderness)…in this…
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Curing Wild Boar
My wonderful neighbor Ron surprised me a few days ago with some cuts from a few wild boar he shot on a recent hunting trip. I took that as my excuse to get set up for home-curing…something I’ve been researching for a VERY long time. Curing meat through the application of salt, occasionally smoke, and…
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Wild Mushrooms!
I have a confession to make, and I can’t hold it in any longer: I am a mycophage. But I’m not alone. You’re probably a mycophage, too. In fact…most of us are. If you eat mushrooms, truffles, cheese, beer, yogurt, or bread…you’re a mycophage. Mycophages eat fungus. My house backs to a large park, the…
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Go Ahead…Shoot Me
I’ve never been a person to shy away from a debate. When I was 8 years old, my mother, exhausted after an hour of verbal sparring with me, threw her hands up in the air in a rare display of lost temper, and screamed, “YOU’RE GOING TO BECOME A LAWYER WHEN YOU GROW UP, I…
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Utah Series: Hot Springs
Those who follow my blog regularly know how obsessed I am with natural hot springs. They never cease to amaze me. The fact that toasty warm water seeps up from beneath the ground and provides us with a natural jacuzzi just blows my mind over and over. In this special series where I’m highlighting my…
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2012/2013 Flu Diary H3N2
I’m usually a pretty healthy person and I haven’t had the flu since I was a kid. Still, I almost always get the flu vaccine each year because my allergist insists on it. This year, because of a crazy travel schedule and a constant stream of visitors since Thanksgiving, I hadn’t had time to get…