Welcome to Home Skillet, a food blog that always remembers fork on the left, knife on the right. Dining events are slowly reanimating after the holiday season. Here’s what’s on tap this week:
Now-February: Look, we all love food, but do you ever stop to think about how the food gets from your plate to your mouth? No? Well, maybe you should.
Right now through February, Winterthur Museum and Country Estate is running “Feeding Desire: Design and the Tools of the Table, 1500–2005,” an exhibit that illuminates 500 years of cutlery and flatware.
From a release, “Discover a rich view of the evolution of European and American dining from the 1500s to the present, showing the drama of dining and design through cutlery, books, and art. For the last 500 years, the designs of knives, forks, and spoons have provided beautiful and useful extensions of our arms, turning the act of eating into the experience of dining. The exhibition’s themes include Dining on the Move, Fashionable Foods, Specialty Tools, Materials & Production, Naturalism, Ergonomics of the Table, Color at the Table, Flatware for Children, and 20th-Century Modernism.”
This really neat look at cultural and anthropological studies via the dinner table is housed in the Graves and West galleries and is included with all admission tickets. Admittance is free for members, otherwise it’s $15 for adults, $13 for students and $5 for kids and seniors.
Call 888-4600 or visit http://winterthur.org for more info.
Saturday, January 17: On Saturday, Tom Foolery’s Restaurant in Middletown will host a 40th birthday party for its owner Chuck Boyce. There will be cocktails, hors d’oeuvres, fun, singing and cake.
Ah, but this is no ordinary cake. Chuck’s cake happens to come from Charm City Cakes, the wacky Baltimore bakery chronicled on Food Network’s show “Ace of Cakes.” The Food Network will send a production crew to film the cake delivery and at Tom Foolery’s with the hopes of airing a clip on TV.
So what kind of physics-defying cake did chef Duff Goldman and his crew of hipster pastillage pros produce? Chuck and his wife Angel, oddly enough, love penguins. It began in college, when the couple pored over the comic strip “Bloom County” and its lead character, Opus the penguin.
Angel shared this account: “We knew we would be meeting with staff from Charm City Cakes in a few months and we had lots of fun discussing the possibilities for the cake. When we met with Duff, we began to describe our thoughts and it was a delightful experience as he caught our vision of fun and frolic, as we described different penguin activities on the iceberg…keg party, penguin snow angels and DJ, Duff suggested a penguin break dancing…spinning on his back, we loved it! Then I asked about dry ice to create the sensation of cold and fog, and from there we just kept filling out the vision of the cake. When we thought we had it complete, my husband chuckled, it’s too bad it wasn’t the iceberg that the Titanic struck…and we were off again! We so enjoyed the spirit of fun designing the cake.”
Look for Delaware’s wacky penguin cake on Food Network later this year.
Sunday, January 18: Liquid brunch, anyone? Join Rehoboth Beach Main Street for its benefit brunch Sunday at DISH!, a new retro restaurant-slash-art gallery in downtown Rehoboth. Things get going at 11 a.m. with $3 Bloody Marys and Mimosas. Food, too. Twenty percent of day’s proceeds will be donated to Rehoboth Beach Main Street.
To make your reservation (and they are suggested), call 226-2112 or visit http://www.dishrehoboth.com/ for more info.
New digs: Check back Friday for a closer look at Orillas Tapas Bar in downtown Wilmington.
In the meantime, hit me up. Happy new year, people.
