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Monday, March 16, 2009
Oakwood grad writes cookbook using nothing but Trader Joe’s products
When Deana Gunn wanted to make sure her father, Hamid Rafizadeh of Oakwood, ate well during December when her mother Fara — the cook in the family — spent the month overseas, she didn’t have to write down any recipes.
She just handed her father a copy of the cookbook she co-authored, “Cooking with All Things Trader Joe’s” ($29.95, Brown Bag Publishing), and headed off to the Trader Joe’s grocery store at Town & Country shopping center in Kettering to stock up.
“We went through every aisle in the store,” Gunn recalled in a telephone interview from her home in San Diego, where the electrical engineer is a married mother of a 6-year-old boy and 4-year-old girl. “In the end, my father was truly inspired. Even after my mother returned, he has continued to cook.”
Gunn had always been a fan of Trader Joe’s, and a few years ago the 1987 graduate of Oakwood High School decided that what shoppers of her favorite grocery store needed was a cookbook using Trader Joe’s ingredients. She teamed up with a former fellow engineering student, Wona Miniati, who now lives in San Francisco, and hammered out their cookbook, and formed their own publishing company, Brown Bag Publishing, to self-publish the book.
Gunn said “Cooking with All Things Trader Joe’s” is “completely independent from the Trader Joe’s company.” In fact, the grocery chain politely declined to sell it in their stores, Gunn said. “We had hoped they would distribute it, but they told us food and drink is what they do.”
This hasn’t dimmed Gunn’s enthusiasm for Trader Joe’s line of products, and she and her co-author are working on an as-yet-unnamed sequel to “Cooking with All Things Trader Joe’s” that should be released “before the holidays.”
Recipes in her existing cookbook range from Mediterranean Lentil Salad to Asian Dumpling Soup to Go Go Mango Chicken, an entree that contains just three ingredients: boneless chicken breasts, jarred pineapple salsa and frozen mango chunks.
Gunn said she and her co-author both grew up in households in which cooking was very important, and both learned to cook from scratch. But as they married and began trying to balance jobs, parenting and cooking, they began looking for short cuts in the kitchen that would not sacrifice taste.
In the cookbooks, Gunn strives to come up with recipes that are approachable and easy for busy mothers and amateur cooks, but which are flavorful and creative enough to hold the interest of family members who will be dining on her dishes — all while using Trader Joe’s products exclusively.
“We just felt there was a need for a cookbook like this one, and the time-savings aspect is just huge,” Gunn said.
Her father, apparently, agrees.
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TweetAre falling beef prices giving Dayton-area diners more and cheaper options?
Take a look at this this “hot-off-the-presses” Nation’s Restaurant News article headlined “Falling beef prices help operators grow steak offerings”.
I had heard rumblings of this a few months ago when I was working on a story on less-expensive cuts of beef. The recession is prompting more grocery store shoppers to buy cheaper cuts while leaving the T-bones, New York strips and beef tenderloins to sit in the meat case.
Here’s an excerpt from the NRN story:
The prices of some premium cuts of beef have fallen to their lowest levels in years as demand for those cuts has slowed, allowing restaurateurs to expand their steak selections and offer them at better prices to cash-strapped consumers.
According to CattleFax, a Centennial-based market analyst firm for the cattle and beef industry, the wholesale prices for some Choice rib cuts and strip loin subprimals in February were at the lowest they had been since 2002. In addition, an increase in the amount of USDA Choice-grade meat available also has put downward pressure on prices. …
In contrast to premium beef, demand for ground beef remains robust, and so does its price.
Any signs this is happening in restaurants around Dayton?
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