FN Dish – Food Network Blog: Go behind-the-scenes at Food Network featuring your favorite chefs, shows, recipes, events and more.

Around here, temperatures creep above 80 degrees well into late September, making it difficult to think about cool weather food like beets and kohlrabi. But since gardeners are always planning ahead, it’s time to start thinking about planting late-harvest crops and returning seed to the soil for yet another round of delicious rewards.

The same wonderful vegetables (like radishes, lettuces and beans) that appreciate spring’s cooler evenings will thrive when planted in late August to early September, keeping your garden in business past pumpkin season. And consider planting hardy cold-weather vegetables like broccoli, cabbage, carrots, beets, turnips, kale, mustards, spinach and Swiss chard, as well as bulbs like garlic and onions, which will survive even longer.

For the most successful fall garden, try to identify the average date of the first hard frost in your area, and count backwards, planting only seeds whose “days until harvest” fall within this time frame. If temperatures drop quickly in your area, consider planting in raised beds and pots, where the ground stays warmer longer, and can be moved inside in the event of an early frost.

But we don’t have to worry about frost just yet, so get out there and keep digging.

Sarah Copeland, Recipe Developer and Good Food Gardens Spokesperson

Aida Mollenkamp is back with a brand new season of Ask Aida, and she’s made some exciting changes. We caught up with her to hear all about the new style and to find out what viewer question (almost) stumped this gastronomical guru.

FN Dish: The new season just premiered on Saturday. Loved the first episode! Can you give us a little taste of the rest of the season?
CONTINUE READING

Although I am the last person who should be casting aspersions on other people’s brand extensions — really? This is a good idea?

…They hadn’t seen a marinated steak in forty days. It made the boy sad that they had marinades but no steak to eat them on. The old man had taught the boy to rope the cows that once marinated would eventually become their steak. The old man had scars on his hands from the ropes used to catch cows but those scars were not fresh. It had been years since the old man had roped a cow and then marinated it. The boy said “Remember how once we roped eighty-seven cows and marinated steak?” “I remember” said the old man.

[EMD via YesButNoButYes]

Rupa Bhattacharya, Culinary Writer

[poll id="14"]

Anyone who’s ever visited the Food Network’s kitchens knows just how immaculate they are: all gleaming, crumbless surfaces and floors you could eat off of. And yet in even the most spotless of kitchens, there is always something better left uningested. The overwhelming majority of these somethings cannot be seen without the aid of a microscope and, fortunately, are rendered harmless by the miracle of cooking. But every once in a while some foreign object inexplicably finds its way into the kitchen. So let me explain. Yes, in a test kitchen lowboy, on the bottom shelf, all the way back, in the plastic container,  is a LIVE VIRUS TYPHOID VACCINE. Yes, it is mine. Me me me. All mine. I did it. And I can explain.

Owing to a doctor’s error earlier this week I find myself in the possession of a rather expensive vaccine that I don’t actually need and probably shouldn’t take. And due to force of law, neither my pharmacist nor my doctor is allowed to accept it for proper disposal. So today the vaccine sits in the lowboy, in a very strange sort of limbo. And until I can determine the safest way to dispose of it, there it will stay. Help!

Jonathan Milder, Research Librarian

Brian Boitano’s new show, What Would Brian Boitano Make? premieres this Sunday! He was just in town on a media blitz, and we caught up with him for a quick chat. As promised, we asked your burning questions.

FN DISH: Everyone knows you as a skater. Why the jump to a cooking show?

BB: Before the Olympics I was on a strict regimen with a limited diet. I always dreamed of what I would make and what I would eat after the Olympics. After I won, I started having friends over and entertaining a lot, and it just grew from there. I’m actually very lucky because food and skating are my two loves. I’m still skating full time and juggling that with a show is ideal.
CONTINUE READING

My mother, who was blessed with a green thumb, has always loved to garden and grow plants and herbs of all kinds. As a child, I always remember her saving the pits of almost anything, sticking some toothpicks in them and placing them in water to see if they would root.

This season she tried her hand at potted terrace grown potatoes with fantastic results. She is so proud of her potatoes, and with good reason. They cook up creamy and sweet, with all the fresh potato goodness that you get from a good farmers’ market potato.

My co-workers, many of them who are urban gardeners as well, were very impressed and wanted to know more about growing your own potatoes, so I decided to ask mom some questions and get some tips that I could pass along.

CONTINUE READING

This is spectacularly soothing, and probably useful if you have a sorority initiation or a Van Halen tour to prepare for…

And no, I have no idea what a discodip is either, though a quick google seems to suggest it’s the Dutch term for the opposite of hagelslag. [via]

Rupa Bhattacharya, Culinary Writer

Well done FN Dishers! We were worried that we made the clues too tricky this time, but you came through and solved the mystery. Yes, those shots were from the set of Cooking for Real with the lovely Sunny Anderson.

But we made him take a picture with us anyway:

Dave Mechlowicz, Culinary Purchasing Manager