I thought writing a cookbook was hard – then I discovered what it takes to shoot eleven cooking videos in one day! On Thursday, July 19th I had the opportunity to display my cooking skills for an eight hour video shoot with a young filmmaker named Juan Ossa, and his assistant, Natasha Yakimenko. How did all of this come about? I was chosen several months ago by Demand Media Studios as an on-screen expert, which gave me the opportunity to film cooking videos that will be available at www.eHow.com/food. Travel commitments required me to backpedal for about six weeks, trying to put the brakes on the shoot, because I had a vague sense of how much work it would be. Finally, after I almost lost the opportunity in late June, I decided to commit the time and resources to make it happen.
In planning the videos and creating a shooting script for each one, I quickly realized that I was going to have to make eleven completed dishes, as well as prepare each recipe to various stages, as well as have all of the ingredients prepped for the initial shots – essentially tripling the amount of food I needed for each video! After all, these are 3-5 minute videos, and the filmmaker doesn’t want to sit around while my lasagna takes an hour to bake!The process of preparing for the filmmaking session taught me the value of organization – and the benefit of having three refrigerators, because there’s no other way I could have stored that much food for the four days it took me to prepare. Many thanks go to my dear friend Shannon Nash, who helped me the night before the shoot, and another dear friend, Gina Elliott, who served as my kitchen slave on the day of the shoot – I could not have done it without them!
I’ll let you know when the videos are available on eHow, but here are the ones I shot last Thursday:
- How to Make Marinara Sauce With Fresh Tomatoes How to Make Basic Marinara Sauces With Diced Tomato Puree
- How to Cook Meatless Lasagna
- How to Make Vegetarian Chili in a Slow Cooker
- Vegetarian Polenta Recipe – The Lazy Cook’s Guide to Polenta
- How to Make Real Italian Polenta
- Polenta With Sausage Recipe – Polenta with Peppers, Fennel, and Italian Sausage
- Healthy Sausage Recipes – Sweet and Sour Cabbage with Kielbasa
- Vegetarian Corn Enchiladas with Chipotle Sausage
- Vegetarian Beef and Mushroom Stroganoff Recipe
- Yummy Vegetarian Dishes for Meat Eaters – Chicken Piccata without the Chicken
I’m thrilled at the opportunity to get the word out on the internet about my approach to vegetarian cooking and hope that you like my videos. My filmmakers ate the meatless lasagna for lunch and the chicken piccata for dinner and loved every bite. Then on Friday, I had thirty friends for dinner who happily chowed down on the fruits of my labor.
Creating these videos is probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done – I am definitely moving out of my comfort zone, learning new skills, and testing myself. Growth is great!
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