Iron Chef Bobby Flay and the Sneeze Guard Heiress

This afternoon Barbara and I went to the Westfield Annapolis Mall in Annapolis, MD for a booksigning by Iron Chef and author Bobby Flay at the Williams-Sonoma store. You can learn more about Bobby Flay here.

I have watched every season of the Next Food Network Star, so it was fun to meet one of the judges/hosts in person. Unlike a few well-prepared line-waiters, we did not bring a folding chair. That would have come in so handy. We did get a chance to sample several things from the cookbook—Williams-Sonoma salespeople brought around samples of a pumpkin soup with toasted pumpkin seeds, chives and cranberry-maple creme fraiche (delicious!), a red velvet cupcake (good!), hot potato chips with blue cheese sauce (yum!), and apple chopped salad with toasted walnuts, blue cheese and pomegranate vinaigrette (really, really tasty!).

We stood in line beginning about 1:00 p.m. until we finally got into the store to meet him and have him sign our copies of his latest book, Bobby Flay’s Bar Americain Cookbook. How’s that for perseverance? The last image I shot was time stamped 15:34:36, so we waited exactly 2 hours, 34 minutes and 36 seconds to get the photo of Barbara and Bobby below! Barbara did get a chance to mention to Bobby that she is a Sneeze Guard Heiress (to learn more about that story, click here). Barbara had him sign my book as well, but I had to get the shots! At last count, there were more than 200 copies sold when we made our way through the chain in the store. (Jeff Evans—you would be happy to know that Bobby shares your love of black and white Converse sneakers. He be stylin’!) Check out Barbara’s blog, Kelley Hospitality, here.

Truly a sad day in the publishing world…

Michael and I just got back from browsing our local Borders. There was a four-book series in the discount cookbook section and I caught the error immediately. If you don’t see it, then you, my dear friend, need to visit the Grammar Girl‘s site. Real quick like.

I flipped each book over and the title is correct (losing the “are” in the title). No, I didn’t buy it—for many, many reasons: 1) we already have a gazillion cookbooks, 2) I’m still doing the vegetarian thing (gave up chicken and turkey two months ago; beef almost 20 years ago), and 3) even though it was only $2.99 (a bargain for a hard cover cookbook), I simply can’t bring myself to put something like that on my bookshelves. I think it was a British publication—the price printed on the back was in pounds.

I just noticed the type in the circle at the top left—“This book just makes you wanna cook.”

No. This book just makes me wanna weep.

As my father, the Grammar Guru, says….so many errors, so little time to correct them all.

Oh. One more thing. This book cover photo is courtesy of Michael’s camera in his new iPhone 3G. What an marvel that thing is! He e-mailed the photo to me while we were in line to check out. How’s that for service?