Monica Kochelee

The word is out that there is a Great American Seafood Cook off happening in New Orleans. The cook off is supposed to be using domestic sustainable seafood recipes.   This cook off is one of the most prestigious contests.  The winning chef will win the title of King of American Seafood.  I went onto the Internet to find out what I could about the contest.

I’m very excited about the event because it is featuring local, fresh food instead of something foreign, frozen or canned.  I think that promoting local seafood is important.   I’d love to be able to enter my Aunt Johnnie’s baked seafood recipe in a seafood cooking contest!

This is her recipe:

Aunt Johnnie’s baked seafood casserole

1 pound of fish (suggests scallops, shrimp, or crab)

2 T butter (or oleo)

2 T flour

1 c chicken broth

1/8 t nutmeg

salt & pepper

Parmesan cheese

Bread crumbs

To make veloute sauce:  In a saucepan, melt butter, stir in flour, slowly add broth.  Return to heat, stirring constantly until thick & smooth.  Blend in salt & pepper & nutmeg.  In a separate frying pan saute fish in butter for approximately five minutes.  Combine the fish with the veloute sauce and put all in a shallow baking dish.  Sprinkle top with bread crumbs and Parmesan cheese and brown it quickly under the broiler.

This recipe does not specify what KIND of bread crumbs to use, whether to buy the canned seasoned bread crumbs, or crumbs made from fresh bread.  So I’ve tried it both ways and I think I like the the fresh bread crumbs version the best.

If you’d like to share your favorite recipe with me, I’d love to hear from you!  Feel free to leave a comment with your recipe in it!

I was reading on the Reuters.com website that researchers are working on a new material that converts heat into electricity.  The hope is that using this material will help cars get more miles to the gallon.  According to the article, only about 25% of the energy produced by a typical gasoline powered engine is used to move the vehicle, and the rest escapes through the exhaust pipe.  The researchers are hoping that this new material will enable the car to recycle some of that escaped heat into energy that will power the car.  That would be kind of cool!

I was just reading an article on Time.com that France has decided to extend their 35 hour work week. I didn’t know that France had a 35 hour work week! That meant that if they worked more than 35 hours, they got paid overtime! Anyway, France’s government has decided that they will allow businesses to require that their employees work longer hours without paying them. Understandably the businesses are happy about that, the employees not so much.  I know I’d rather have a 35 hour work week!

The local newspaper ran a short story, contributed by some readers about a couple from Maryland who go to the grand openings of Chik-Fil-A restaurants around the country. (For those of you who may not know what Chik-Fil-A is, it is a fast food restaurant that sells chicken products, no beef products. Their advertising campaigns involve cows encouraging people to eat chicken.)   Their chicken sandwiches and nuggets, and their fries are very tasty, and I can understand people wanting to get free food from the restaurant, but this couple has gone to extremes!

They camp out in the parking lot the night before so they can be one of the first 100 customers. Chik-Fil-A gives out “free Chik-Fil-A for a year” coupons to their first 100 customers. This couple has gone to eighteen of these grand openings in the past year, and have decided that they can’t use all the coupons, so now they just go for the fun of it and give the coupons away.

I don’t understand what is so much fun about camping out in a parking lot to be one of the first 100 customers to get free food if you then give away the free food! I’m udderly confused.

I was reading an article on Time.com about how the two satellite radio companies are attempting a merger. The article was talking about how the FCC is leaning towards approving the merger. If the merger is approved then the satellite radio business will become a monopoly. I thought monopolies were not allowed; isn’t that why the Bell System was broken up in the 1980s?