So picture an obscene amount of butter, chocolate chips, M&Ms and sugar. Add a swanky car service, catered lunch, an upscale bakery and a handful of Food Network employees. Toss in a bag of free swag and an autographed cookbook and you have my Wednesday afternoon.
EDWRR sent me and another intern, Amanda, along with two of their kitchen employees, Laura and Caroline, over to the Milk and Cookies Bakery downtown for a special lunch with the Deen brothers, Jamie and Bobby.
If you haven't heard of them, surely you've heard of their mama, Paula Deen. If you haven't, look up "heart attack inducing foods" in the dictionary, and you'll see her picture. Yummy.
Let me just say the for two guys I could have cared less about before the meeting, I couldn't love them anymore if I tried now. ADORABLE. Southern boys are keepers, ya'll.
So Laura, Caroline, Amanda and I felt bad having two cars come pick up the four of us, but whatever. The arrangements were made and it just meant we had more room in the car to spread out and relax. Of course, Amanda and I, being the way we are, had a momentary freak out and thought we were in the wrong car. The number on the door didn't match up with the number we had in an email, so we mouthed silently to each other in the back and mildly freaked out, but didn't actually do anything to verify we were in the right car because neither of us wanted to speak up. We had no idea what the address was anyways, so we wouldn't have been a help if we did.
Luckily, we did end up at the right spot. And btw, this is the neighborhood I want to live in. I think it was Chelsea, but whatever it was, it was beautiful and quaint and there were things besides Dominican grocery stores and laundromats. Loved it.
So we get out of the car and some photographer snaps our picture a bazillion times as we come towards the steps. Awkward. Awkward and AWESOME. He holds the door open for us and we go inside this super-cute bakery with flower arrangements made out of muffins (delish) and a little table all set up for lunch.
Besides the four of us RR people, there was a lady from Sandra Lee's magazine, a lady from Parade magazine and a bunch of PR people who organized the whole shindig. And the Deen boys, of course.
We meet everyone and hang out by the food table (duh) before the guys give us their whole spiel about baking and cooking with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter (the product the event was promoting). They had us bake cookies with them to show us that we couldn't taste a difference in the finished products - even if this wasn't true, it wouldn't matter. The Deen's are so nice, they could convince you of almost anything, I'm pretty positive.
...so you say spiders make meatloaf tasier, boys? Sure, I'll try!
Case in point...I baked cookies with I Can't Believe It's Not Butter this weekend. I'm so gullible.
Anyways, we broke into teams to bake the cookies so Amanda and I split up and cooked with the kitchen pros...we have no business in a kitchen unless it involves taste testing. I went with Caroline and we hung out Jamie Deen (the hot one, in my opinion) and Amanda and Laura got Bobby (the hot one, in their opinion). So it all worked out.
Except my hot one was married with a kid, but whatever. Story of my life.
Caroline and I embarrased ourselves like whoa...Rachael Ray would never admit we were her employees. I broke a measuring cup using some brown sugar, Caroline didn't stir the mix right, and we both made uber-small cookies. Jamie took over after making fun of us for about 10 minutes.
Our cookies were chocolate chip with nuts and M&Ms (tasty - thanks, Jamie!) and Amanda and Laura made white chocolate chip with cranberries - I don't know what the other magazine people made. I was too busy listening to Jamie tell Caroline and I about himself. We laughed at everything he said, of course, and probably looked like major idiots.
While the cookies were baking we sat down to lunch with the guys...guess who sat right next to Jamie and across from Bobby? Score!
One half of the table talked about something or other, while our half talked about food (obvs) and where we grew up, etc. So I had the guys to myself for quite some time...no complaints here. ;)
Lunch was delicious (a cod appetizer, a main course of chicken with mashed potatoes and then brownie rasberry tortes for dessert). And THEN we ate all the cookies we had made earlier and made fun of Bobby because he forgot to put sugar in his...not yum-o at all. But to be fair, this was their third session of the day so I suppose after baking two batches of cookies one might slip and forget a crucial ingredient.
We took tons of pictures with the guys afterwards and they auographed copies of their new cookbook (
Ya'll Come Eat - I would have bought it for the title alone). The PR people gave us swag bags with a bunch of recipes from the dishes served at lunch and lots of nice cooking stuff...hello, Crate and Barrel cake pan!
Then, (boo) we left. But our fancy car service was back to take us to work, so it was ok! I tell you, it was a huge disappointment to take the subway again the next day. Once you have a car service, you should never have to go back.
Seriously, the best day ever. Good people, good food, good times. I probably gained about 10 pounds, but it was worth it.
And I discovered that I would like to be a Mrs. Deen at some point in my life (either guy will do). So now I have a goal for the future. I have a feeling it'd be easier than writing for a living...and the food will be better. ;)
Gotta go. I need to tell Paula to expect me for Thanksgiving next year.
