Update: CHIC Organic Garden

Chef John Fuente and his students are totally "digging" the garden. Chef's students prepared a squash blossonm stuffed with bleu cheese and served withtomato coulis...he also used cucumbers and herbs freshly harvested from the thriving garden...Weather has been great and cooperative,but the bunnies are a little too aggressive. I had to resort to some homwgrown concoction of cloves, cinnamon to ward them off.

ICES Convention St Charles, Illinois

Late last year, Mark Seaman, who served as one of the judges for our Gingerbread Competition asked us to lend a helping hand in the construction of the Illinois show cake for the International Cake Exploration Society. I immediately agreed, and Mark delivered the fondant, styrofoam and wooden board for the project. We started working on the project in February, I believe, with the help of a lot of students. This week, the annual convention started at the Pheasant Run Resort and will continue on until Sunday, Aug 2. We also helped set up the tiers, made hundreds of rocks, wrapped black eyed susan stems, cattails, served as gophers, and whatever necessary to finish.

The tiers were designed to represent all of Illinois, from the corn fields, to the violets (Illinois state flower)to the Elgin Joliet train line, the jazz instruments, the Fox River, the prairie landscape, and the Chicago skyline.