The dawn broke not long after I woke at The Hampton Inn just north of Mundelein, Illinois, our hometown. I looked out over the cloudy vista of dampened fields outside the hotel window. We showered and headed out. The day had come for the re-dedication of Mundelein High. It was…
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Our Home Town Celebration
We flew up to our old home town of Mundelein, Illinois yesterday for a weekend of family and friends. The place we went to high school at is celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the school’s opening…NOT my 50th reunion…the school’s. So there will be celebrants coming from across decades to…
Norman’s Orlando
It has now been over 8 years ago that I was asked to create a second “NORMAN’S”. But I can instantly recall how it all began… Some of the senior management from The Ritz-Carlton Companies were having dinner in my Coral Gables restaurant one evening back then and a rather…
OUTWARD BOUND
Our home is a jumble of boxes and things that won’t or have not yet fit into them. The roots of life and everyday living are dangling sideways, slumped on couches, leaning toward windows as if looking for the light they had so carefully known prior to the decision to…
Father’s Day
Grampa Van Aken I have read stories of negligent fathers in the past and one again this morning. Its heart-wrenching. I’ve read about the love sons and daughters sought but did not find. I had known of the hurt of a father’s lack of…well let’s just call it constancy. My…
Of Country Hams, Husk And Earl
When I was about 19 years old I started hitchhiking around America with a couple of buddies. It seems reckless to me now, but we were sheathed in the armor of youth and thusly protected. One of the routes I came to know was the one between my hometown in…
Southland Cooking Report
We worked our asses off last night in South Carolina doing a “black tie dinner”. (See the previous posts on Kiawah). But we had a good time and made our food pretty darn close to the way I hoped it would be. The Ocean Room team led by Chef Nate…
Celebrating Corn on Kiawah Island
The day has arrived…or actually the day and night. We are cooking on the Island known as Kiawah to raise money for cancer research at the Hollings Center of Charleston. It is one of the great things to be able to help in our way by cooking for appreciative folks…
Sauce Sketching
Part of the bounty from a recent trip up to Homestead was a large box of plum tomatoes. I went to work preserving them in a variety of ways. Since we have a new smoker I went in that direction with many of them. For the majority of the tomatoes…
If You Want To Get To Heaven…
I arrived in Key West near Easter a long time ago. It was long before ‘Margaritaville’, (the song, the place, the conglomerate) and the year-round festivals that keep Duval Street packed with revelers. It might be hard to imagine for some what Key West was like back then. But if…
Easter Awaits Us Again
Falling in love with Key West was one of the most natural events of my life. I was freezing in the so called Spring of 1971 and I had arrived after hitchhiking from near the Wisconsin-Illinois border to a party my friends were having in Champaign, Illinois and then taking…
Bollitos Go To Kiawah Island
I’m happy to be going to the beautiful Kiawah Resort about 30 mile south of Charleston to cook with the team there to raise money for the Hollings Cancer Center at the Medical University of South Carolina. Kiawah is located along 10 miles of pristine beach and their golf resort…
Charlie Trotter Walks His Own Road
In 1985 my wife, Janet and our son, Justin were living in a rented home in Key West. I had recently taken over as Chef of Louie’s Backyard. The setting of that restaurant was heavenly to me. The hours inside that kitchen were some of the most physically punishing of…
Boat of Hope
A few times a week we head past the boat you see and into the ‘indoor-outdoor’ building behind it called “Fishbusterz”. It is a commercial and retail fish house on Stock Island. The folks who own it are having a tough time, as many are in this economy, that is…
Louie’s Backyard Remembering
Part of the reason we were able to prevail, (see the last quote in the story), was due to the fact that the three owners of Louie’s Backyard were gutsy enough to back my wild notions. One of them, Ms. Pat Tenney passed away this week at the too young…
Cooking Old Key West
I walked into shack of a restaurant (even by Key West standards) on a late morning in the spring of 1971 and was handed a sea-water damp menu with items like Turtle Steak, Jewfish Chowder, Fried Bollos, Tostones, Guava Milkshakes, a meat dish that translated as “old clothes”, (Ropa Vieja)….