On Monday, I was lucky enough to go to a demonstration by a Certified Master Pastry Chef named Frank Volkommer. There are really only a handful of CMPC's in the country so to see one at work is quite a treat. Chef Volkommer has taught at the Culinary Institute of America and is currently the corporate pastry chef for Cargill Cocoa and Chocolate.

Quite often these demonstrations are dressed up sales pitches for a brand of chocolate or other product. This one was no different, but that didn't make it any less interesting or relevant (at least to pastry professionals). While Chef Volkommer was using only Cargill brand chocolates, the demonstration was really about how to air brush colored cocoa butter into truffle molds to get colorful truffles.

Chef Volkommer made a tasty passionfruit ganache filling first. He then went into detail about a couple of different air brushing machines and how to use them for cocoa butter. The trick is to keep the parts of the air brush gun warm while using cocoa butter, if you're interested in trying this. The Chef went about finishing the truffles and set them aside to cool for later.

Green Tables is a project started by two health and eco-conscious groups, Les Dames d'Escoffier (LDEI) and the National Gardening Association (NGA), that hopes to encourage people to be more aware of their food, where it comes from and to make better food choices. Their program is called LDEI Civic Agriculture & Garden Initiative and it involves the 26 international chapters of the LDEI getting out and running projects in their communities, from cooking demonstrations to scholarships and other educational classes.

While many of the components of the initiative are public, most of them are aimed at encouraging youths to think about what they ear and, hopefully, to appreciate it more. Green Tables wants to educate people about why they might want to use locally grown foods and increase their environmental awareness. Ideally , participants will gain a deeper interest in community food, gardening and agriculture efforts, leading to both healthier foods and healthier lifestyles.

Since you can't take the television set with you when you're shopping at the market for ingredients to make Ina Garten's faaaaabulous croissant bread pudding, now you can take a video with you on you iPod.

Podcasting isn't new, and video podcasts certainly aren't earth-shattering either. However, the food world is just introducing themselves by offering videos that you can download to your iPod of chefs demonstrating things like pan-searing a salmon steak or whipping up a batch of chocolate chip cookies.

Currently, it seems like it is manufacturers who are using the technology to do demos that feature their products (Sub-zero and Wolf Ranges, for example), but it won't be long, I'm sure, before you can take Ms. Ray right along with you as you try to spend less than $40 a day in her favorite city.

Tomorrow I will be chronicling the steps required to make a Streusel Coffee Cake recipe from Martha Stewart Living. This is a great way to follow along with a recipe because you’ll be able to see all the steps and hear about all the tools and techniques you’ll need – just like on a cooking show, but without commercials! And like televised cooking shows, there is no pressure to make the food to be able to enjoy the process. I'll document everything with photos.

Of course, you can’t “cook along” with something you don’t know the ingredients for. Here is a list of everything you’ll need to make the cake, with a few notes of my own. I am using less cardamom than the original recipe because I am a huge cinnamon fan and a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to streusel coffee cake. I did use a bit, but feel free to substitute cinnamon for all of the cardamom. If you don't have yogurt, you can substitute buttermilk.