Book review: Why I believe in God, by Cornelius Van Til.

As a part of the thrilling challenge that I’ve made with creationist Mark Tetzlaff to read Richard Dawkins’ “The Greatest Show on Earth,” I agreed to read two Christian books of his choice. I put no pressure on him to decide which books. He chose ones that I assume speak to him, his intelligence, and his cause. I’m still working to complete the first book, “Evolution, the Grand Experiment” by Dr. Carl Werner. The second book, “Why I believe in God,” by Cornelius Van Til arrived Friday in the mail, and I decided I needed a little change of pace, so I went ahead and read it.

For the record, I read “Why I believe in God” out loud, word for word, in my kitchen, and read a couple pages four and five times. I read it out loud because I wanted to really digest its words, not because I’m a poor reader. I typically read fast, but I wanted to carefully examine Van Til’s message.

For a bio on Van Til, go check out his wiki. He’s Dutch by birth and moved here with his family at a young age. Everyone knows I hate Dutch people, so the book didn’t go over very well with me.

Honk.

Must … Catchup … Dinner blogging

What kind of café is this? How long has it been since I meal blogged? Too long. I don’t have much to share, as I’ve been experimenting more, and experimentation usually means that I haven’t figured out how to serve the dish aesthetically, because I’m concentrating on flavors, fabrication, recipes and pleasing guests and/or Tina’s tastebuds. I’ve been trying to do more vegetarian dishes, and sometimes the colors are harder to photograph.

If you’re new to the café, I’m aspiring to be a better cook. I cook or prepare meals almost twice a day, and we only eat out about twice a month. Because I work from home as a photographer, I use the commute time to plan and prepare menus. I’ve found that cooking is an artistic outlet, and aspire to be more appreciative of the art of gastronomy, the major religion of the French. Plus, I’m trying to get my blood pressure down, and it helps when I prepare all my meals.

Back to the food. Last night’s dinner was far from vegetarian. It was grilled sirloin with thin-sliced grilled potatoes, which is simple and easy, except for the fact that last night’s weather was windy and humid. Our back porch is on the third floor and there is no wind protection or roof over it. An El train track is about 20 feet from the deck and trains runs about 40 or 50 miles per hour every 10 to 20 minutes on average. At rush hour, a train rumbles by every couple minutes in either direction. When I’m grilling, it plays a role in causing mental instability.

That said, here’s a shot of last night’s meal. Battling the elements is part of the process, and when I get a steak with perfect grill lines and hardly any burned taters, I’m a happy camper. The wind tends to blow out the flames, and I barricade a bunch of chairs around the grill. I also grill at a higher temperature than I would like, because it helps keep the flames lit. But after all that, it was worth it.

Visual Bon Appetit (more below the fold).

Saturday Night Dinner Party Blogging

We had a dinner party on Saturday night with Faye and her partner Warren, Keith and Colleen and the Wittifinis of course. I didn’t get a chance to photograph all the food. I’m still working on cooking for more than Tina, and it’s not easy.

The menu was:

Hors D’ouvres
• Mushroom bruschetta on various crackers
• Portabello and jalapeno pizza, thin crust and not too much mozerella

Entrée
• Shrimp with sautéed arugula over middle eastern couscous with mixed veggies.

Dessert
• Dark chocolate brownies served with Vanilla Ice Cream and Mint Leaves. The mint made it taste like a thin mint on steroids.

The party favor for the night was a sort of portraiture setting with our guests.

As always, I wish you were here to sit at our table with us. Café Witteveen is implementing weekly dinner parties as an effort to become more creative and fill my head with different, progressive, contrasting, wacky and different ideas.

Food Photo Blogging

Le Café Witteveen wanted to remind you of some items on the menu. First I want to say that it seems people are confused that many of the photos I upload are my dishes. Sundays are the only days that Michael cooks. I usually cook two out of three meals a day, and try to photograph the meals that turn out best or are new to the menu. So I usually have between 6 and 10 shots that I’ve taken, but I tend to only update with a few as everything doesn’t photograph well.

All that said, two of the photos below are Michael dishes.

This first shot (below) is grilled figs that Michael does. He grills them with a little olive oil, slices and puts over ice cream. Very good. Sorry about the picture quality, I took it in passing and didn’t notice how shitty it was until now. I guarantee you it’s great. I’m uploading, because it’s a great idea to impress friends. Figs are really good for you, and they taste really nice off the grill.

Michael Serfini's Grilled Figs

Below is a dish that Michael prepared for my parents this past Sunday. It’s grilled chicken in pesto with four-cheese raviolis. In the pesto is basil, pistachios, cilantro and lots of olive oil.

Michael Serafini's lemon pesto with grilled chicken

Finally a dish I did last night. It’s non-sloppy sloppy joes. The half-sandwich is tofu and the full sandwich is beef. Served with slightly sautéed potatoes that I had cooked on the grill during another meal last week*. On the sloppy joe, I added sour cream and shredded cheddar cheese. I made both tofu and beef, because we are trying to eat more vegetarian and I went ahead and experimented with both styles. The tofu version turned out excellent. I added some to a salad for lunch today, which brightened it up.

Integrating more vegetarian dishes into your diet is not only good for you, it decreases your carbon footprint. Try eating vegetarian once a day, if you don’t already. Tina and I are going to remain carnivores, but we have successfully become part-time vegetarians. Usually, two meals are vegetarian per day, and at least two to three days are completely vegetarian per week. For example, I’ve started using mushrooms instead of lunch meats. The taste is excellent. It’s lighter and meaty.

Bon appétit.

Jeremy's Non-Sloppy Sloppy Joes

Cooking Non-Sloppy Sloppy Joes and Potatoes

Okyne Media Lab, On Excellence — Charging a Charlie Trotter Prix and Delivering McDonald’s Fare

For all of you who think this is too long/didn’t read:
Don’t hire Okyne Media Lab.
They are unprofessional and do not deliver on their promised services.

Okyne Media Lab is not a solid choice for wedding or event DJ’ing.

If you’re a vendor, and you charge premium prices for your services, you had best perform above expectations. When you charge premium, and you deliver, you develop a customer base that has been hypnotized by a spell of excellent services. When you don’t perform, you should own up and be prepared to buy your way out of bad reviews.

If you are the recipient of bad services, you should tell the world about it. There are great avenues to do it these days. Yelp! facebook. Blog. Smoke signal.

Last August I got married. I’m fully aware that the wedding industry consists of the crème de la crème in confidence artistry. I’m also aware that some of the best parties I’ve been to were weddings. Why were they the best? Because someone paid premium price for premium talent (be it culinary, music, décor, etc.) and vendors delivered ten fold.

Take my wedding for example. We rented the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, which meant we hired Wolfgang Puck as our caterer. Dinner was expensive. Really expensive. And you know what? Dinner was amazing. The caterers were amazing. We paid top dollar and were treated like it. Despite what we paid, we knew we got the best. So we were happy to dump thousands of dollars on someone else’s lap.

Everyone we hired we expected much the same performance level.

Everyone performed to expectation, EXCEPT, <bum bum bum!> the DJ!