Betty MacDonald fan club fans,
Seattle's French Fest will be a very interesting event and you can enjoy excellent French food.
One of the literary projects of Betty MacDonald and her sister Mary Bard Jensen was a cook book entitled 'The Stove and I'.
Lisa and Betty MacDonald fan club cooking research team are working on a new item 'Betty MacDonald and her favourite recipes'.
They will be able to use several letters in Betty MacDonald fan club letter collection.
Betty MacDonald fans asked their favourite writer many questions regarding her cooking and recipes.
There had been many excellent cooks in the Bard family, for example Betty MacDonald's mother Sydney Bard.
Betty MacDonald's husband Donald Chauncey MacDonald tried to be a good cook too.
Can you remember his favourite recipe?
If so send us mail and you can win the new Betty MacDonald fan club item 'Betty MacDonald and her favourite recipes'.
Deadline: February 29, 2015
Good luck!
Don't miss Betty MacDonald fan club birthday contest, please.
I'd need some support too because I have no idea who is going to celebrate birthday very soon.
Any advice?
Many greetings to Brad, his outstanding breakfasts and unique Seattle!
"This is Me," by Bad Kid Billy. [Official Music Video]
Seems I'm in this for a hot second. I remember being asked to participate one day on the street in front of the bookstore where I work. I didn't think to ask what it was for, or even so much as the name of the song or the band. Didn't want to be late coming back from lunch. Silly bugger. The very nice young woman with the green hair also featured herein happens to work at Magus Books. She mentioned she'd seen me. Told me the name of the band, and here we are.
Wolfgang Hampel's Vita Magica guest was a very famous TV lady, author and singer and she is our new Betty MacDonald fan club honor member.
Betty MacDonald fan club honor member Mr. Tigerli is a gourmet and crazy about exellent food and very beautiful ladies.
I have no idea whether our new Betty MacDonald fan club honor member is a brilliant cook but Tatjana Geßler's books are really very funny and fascinating.
Let's have breakfast at the bookstore with Brad and Nick.
This song might be the next ESC 2016 winner but who knows?
The ESC voting is getting more and more strange and so are the results.
I have no bad cold right now and if I had one I wouldn't gargle with kerosene.
My grandfather would have done it.
My crazy very beloved Grandpa tried everything.
I miss him very much.
He was a bit the same type like Betty MacDonald's wonderful grandmother Gammy who was an awful cook.
Why Did the World’s Greatest Chef Just Kill Himself?
( see info below )
That's really tragic.
Take care,
Marcel
Don't miss this very special book, please.
Vita Magica
Betty MacDonald fan clubBetty MacDonald forum
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Wikipedia ( German )
Wolfgang Hampel - Monica Sone - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( English )
Wolfgang Hampel - Ma and Pa Kettle - Wikipedia ( French )
Wolfgang Hampel in Florida State University
Betty MacDonald fan club founder Wolfgang Hampel
Betty MacDonald fan club interviews on CD/DVD
Betty MacDonald fan club items
Betty MacDonald fan club items - comments
Betty MacDonald fan club - The Stove and I
Betty MacDonald fan club groups
Betty MacDonald fan club organizer Linde Lund
Dana Kennedy, a former correspondent for ABC News, Fox News and MSNBC, who also writes for the The New York Times, the Financial Times, the International Herald Tribune, Time magazine and People, among others, is based in Europe.
02.01.16 4:10 PM ET
Why Did the World’s Greatest Chef Just Kill Himself?
By all appearances, Benoît Violier, at 44, was on top of his profession and on top of the world. And then he pulled the trigger.
NICE, France — Why kill yourself with a shotgun one month after you’re voted the best chef in the world?
That’s the mystery that’s taken hold around the famed Restaurant de l’Hôtel de Ville in the picturesque Swiss village of Cressier, where 44-year-old chef Benoît Violier apparently committed suicide at home on Sunday.
He loved hunting and published just last year a book on cooking “feathered game.” (The prestigious daily Le Monde waxed ecstatic
over his snow partridge in a wine reduction with tiny Roscoff onions.)
The gun that he appears to have used to kill himself reportedly was one
of those he used for game.
Swiss police have opened an investigation into the case.
Violier’s restaurant was named the best out of 1,000 restaurants
in 48 countries in December by France’s La Liste. Such was the prestige
surrounding the award, it was presented at the French foreign ministry.
The
chef was in the prime of his life. Handsome, charismatic, said to be
calmer in temperament than most world-class cooks, he was married to a
beautiful woman, Brigitte, who left her job in cosmetics to work at his
side at their highly sought after, three-star restaurant near Lausanne
that was normally booked up four months in advance. The couple had a
12-year-old son and an equally photogenic dog, Mac Queen.
So
why did the French-born Violier, who achieved what most would consider
the pinnacle of professional and personal success in this world,
apparently take a gun and shoot himself on Sunday, blowing to bits a
self-made universe that was the envy of all who knew him?
So
far, no one has any idea. ”Late in the afternoon, police went to
Cressier where they discovered at his home the body of Mr. Benoît
Violier,” Swiss police said in a cryptic statement.
Violier,
who obtained Swiss citizenship two years ago, had been expected in
Paris on Monday for the unveiling of the latest Michelin guide where, as
expected, his restaurant retained its three stars, or, as the French
call them, its three macarons.
Even when he talked about his childhood, Violier gave no hint of unhappiness. In an interview with the Swiss website Illustre in September 2015, Violiet described his idyllic upbringing near the seaside city of La Rochelle in France, and how his mother encouraged her kids to stay away from the TV and enjoy nature. Violiet didn't even take his first train ride until he was 17.
“To this day, when I have free time, I walk in the forest with my springer spaniel Mac Queen,” Violier said.
“Sometimes I would tell my mother that Sharon Stone or the king of Spain would come to my restaurant. She didn’t exactly understand who they were but she was very proud.”
Even when he talked about his childhood, Violier gave no hint of unhappiness. In an interview with the Swiss website Illustre in September 2015, Violiet described his idyllic upbringing near the seaside city of La Rochelle in France, and how his mother encouraged her kids to stay away from the TV and enjoy nature. Violiet didn't even take his first train ride until he was 17.
“To this day, when I have free time, I walk in the forest with my springer spaniel Mac Queen,” Violier said.
“Sometimes I would tell my mother that Sharon Stone or the king of Spain would come to my restaurant. She didn’t exactly understand who they were but she was very proud.”
“I go to sleep with cooking, I wake up to cooking,” Violier said during an interview with the Swiss TV network RTS
in December 2014. But he also said that customers were surprised at how
calm his kitchen was and he attributed part of that to modern chefs not
using or drinking as much alcohol as they had in the past.
The
only hints that all was not well in Violier’s seemingly perfect world
were the mentions he made more than once last year about losing his
biological father as well as his mentor, Philippe Rochat, who was the
second of only three chefs at l’Hôtel de Ville de Crissier. Violier had taken over running the restaurant from Rochat in 2012.
Rochat
died after reportedly “fainting” while riding a bicycle on July 8,
2015. Violier said he had, in effect, lost “two fathers” in 2015. (In an
odd twist, Rochat’s wife, Franziska Rochat-Moser, a world-class runner
who won the New York City marathon in 1997, had died at the age of 35
during an avalanche in the Swiss Alps while skiing in 2002.)
On
Monday, Twitter was awash in heartbroken tweets by some of the world’s
most famous chefs. Paul Bocuse, Pierre Gagnaire, Jean Francois Piege
were just a few who remembered Violier’s talent and charm. “A great
chef, a great man, a gigantic talent,” Bocuse tweeted. Three-star chef
Marc Veyrat tweeted that he was “destroyed” by the news of Violier’s
death, saying the “planet has been orphaned by this exceptional chef.”
But
some of the most poignant sentiments came from recent customers, so
thrilled to have just met their hero and flabbergasted to hear of his
sudden, inexplicable death.
“We were just there for a birthday lunch on Friday,” Ursula Kappeler, owner of the Swiss-based Sense of Delight
epicurean service, told The Daily Beast on Monday, “We met him and his
wife. They were both such a lovely couple. You could not see a thing
wrong. They seemed on top of the world. Maybe there was pressure on him
but he was just named the best chef. He seemed in very good shape
physically. We are still so in shock.”
Littli
Kewkacha of the Japanese dessert cafe Kyo Roll En in Bangkok was one of
many chefs and foodies who traversed the globe for a dinner at the
Restaurant de l’Hôtel de Ville Cressier and said the memory of his visit
still thrills him.
“Benoît really
took time and effort to invite me into his kitchen because he knew I
came all the way from Bangkok and was a keen foodie,” Kewkacha told The
Daily Beast. “He spent almost an hour explaining the history, the
philosophy of his cooking, even with his limited English. I remember the
day I went, his young sous-chef just won a cooking award and he was
genuinely happy and celebrating the success of his team. The mood inside
the grand kitchen was jovial and warm. He really struck me as a family
man, who loved, and was loved by, everyone around him.”
