Christi's Adventures: Meeting Chef Anne Burrell!

Last Tuesday I took my daughter to the Freehold Barnes & Noble to meet chef and food network star Anne Burrell, who's promoting her new cookbook, Cook Like a Rock Star.

I have to say that I was so disappointed with the setup at this B&N. I guess Debbie at the Princeton store has spoiled me! There were only about 20 chairs set up, which were all, obviously, taken by the time we got there at about 6:40pm. So, standing room only shouldn't be too bad, right? Right, except that SRO consisted of standing in a single file line next to the periodicals. My poor kid couldn't see anything.

But Anne was a delightful speaker. She talked about the cookbook for just a few minutes, and then spent the rest of the time answering questions from the audience, particularly from the kids in attendance. She even acknowledged the woman behind me who had a question.

There were a lot of questions on how Anne got into the business, what filming a show is like. What I loved is that at one point Anne said, "If you're in culinary school because you want a food show, you need to drop out right now." She said she didn't want to be discouraging, but take a look at all of the chefs in the world, and look at how many chefs are on TV--it's awesome if it happens, but you shouldn't expect it to!

Ugh, they HAD to have Tyra Banks' book on display right there, right?

Much better, see ASHES right there.

I did like that people with children were allowed to get in line first, so we only had to wait about five minutes for the actual signing. My daughter got all starstruck, though, and we were kind of rushed, so I don't even think I said much more than hi. And this is the first book event I've attended with actual bodyguards--see the gentleman in the snazzy suit in the background? There were 3 or 4 similarly dressed gentleman surrounding the area. OK, she's a TV star, but she's not, like, Emeril. Strange. But fun!

Daughter has decided that we're going to try the macaroni & cheese recipe first. I'll let you know how it comes out!

Enjoy your reading--and your eating!

Christi