Ani, me and Chris

These ladies with the gorgeous smiles standing with me in the photo above are Ani Simón and Chris Garboski, managers of the test kitchens at Nestlé USA. I took a little road trip up to the Los Angeles area last week to visit the Nestlé headquarters in Glendale, see firsthand what goes on in the test kitchens and find out what it’s really like to be an in-house recipe developer at a major food company.

In front of the Nestlé USA headquarters in Glendale, California

I didn’t realize before that Nestlé is actually the world’s largest food company, with more than 25,000 employees in the United States alone. Besides Toll House morsels (aka, chocolate chips), which is the product I most often associate with the company, Nestlé USA owns a slew of other well-known brands, including Buitoni, Carnation and Libby’s Pumpkin. A major corporate headquarters might be the last place you’d expect to encounter warm hospitality, but that’s exactly what I experienced during my visit. Entering Chris and Ani’s workplace kitchen was like being a guest in their home.

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© Cooking On the Side, 2011. | Permalink: http://cookingontheside.com/a-visit-to-the-nestle-kitchens/

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Holiday entertaining tips and traditions were the topics of a lovely conversation I had last week with Lucinda Scala Quinn, Executive Director of Food & Entertaining at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, cookbook author and host of Hallmark Channel’s Mad Hungry with Lucinda Scala Quinn. Whether you’re attending a holiday party this week and need ideas for the perfect hostess gift or you’re looking for a homey comfort dish to serve on Christmas morning our interview will give you some great options. A spokesperson for Bauducco Panettone, Lucinda also shared some tasty ways to enjoy the sweet, Italian specialty cake during the holidays. You’ll find a great recipe for Panettone French Toast at the end of this post.

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Lucinda Scala Quinn

Cooking On the Side: What are you and your family planning to do for the holidays this year?

Lucinda Scala Quinn: Normally, we stay in New York. We love New York, it’s very festive. We have our traditions for Christmas Eve: we do the Italian side of the food chain on Friday night and then we do the English side on Saturday. So I make a big Italian feast for Christmas Eve and then for Christmas Day we have a six-rib standing rib roast. It’s kind of a present in and of itself. Only once a year would I buy something like that. It’s actually quite easy to cook if you handle it properly. And then it gives off all those drippings and I make individual Yorkshire puddings. I can’t even make enough of them anymore. It’s one of those things about building traditions – if I tried to stop doing that I would have a riot on my hands. I didn’t grow up with that but I just started doing it myself and then my family just loved it.

COTS: I wanted to ask you about when you attend gatherings. What do you typically like to bring as a hostess gift when you’re invited to somebody’s house around the holidays?

LSQ: I always think about bringing something that’s not going to complicate the hostess’ life. Around this time of year I do the simplest, simplest thing. I buy vodka and a bunch of Meyer lemons and I just peel off the peel and try to do it in a nice circular sort of spiral. Then I just put the lemon peel in the vodka, buy a nice-shaped bottle, take off the commercial label, clean up the bottle and put on a bow. So you’ve got the clear [bottle] with the beautiful lemon peel. Even if it only sits one day and they want to use it it’s great. If it’s two months [later] it’s great. It looks like it’s a gift, it isn’t just meant to be used that night.

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© Cooking On the Side, 2010. | Permalink: http://cookingontheside.com/holiday-qa-with-lucinda-scala-quinn-panettone-french-toast/

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Congrats to our Windows Phone 7 “Do More With Less” giveaway winner, Schmidty (#169)!

Thanks to everyone who entered. I’m glad I asked you to share the ways you make your life easier in the kitchen – I’ve already adopted many of the great tips!

© Cooking On the Side, 2010. | Permalink: http://cookingontheside.com/congrats-to-the-windows-phone-7-winner/

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It just got a whole lot easier to navigate Cooking On the Side from your iPhone – welcome to the mobile version!

So often I need to look up a recipe while I’m away from the computer – I love it when a recipe site has a mobile version I can access on the fly and easily find what I need. If you use an iPhone, all you have to do is navigate to www.cookingontheside.com in the Safari browser as usual. The site will automatically detect that you’re using an iPhone and display the mobile version. Prefer the regular full version? You can always switch back, using a link at the bottom of the screen.

iPhone users: Give it a try and let me know what you think!

© Cooking On the Side, 2009. | Permalink: http://cookingontheside.com/cooking-on-the-side-for-iphone/

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