A little embarrassing but fun. Check out the staff & volunteers of the School of Cooking on YouTube! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDs5oQOEKsM Dave Grotto, an author and dietician extraordinaire, Elizabeth Wiley from the Meadowlark http://www.meadowlarkrestaurant.com/ , and I couldn’t have had more fun at work last week! To top it off, Dave even convinced both Wiley and the entire crew from the SOC to preform an impromptu dance of our own version of an American Idol audition song. We had a ball hanging out, cooking, teaching, laughing. Our students got to enjoy 2 nights filled with fabulous foods that not only tasted great but were incredibly good for you!

What I like about Dave is that he is completely down to earth and talks about real foods and nutrition in ways everyone can understand and incorporate into daily lives of people like me who LOVE food. You can read about our class on his website at www.davidgrotto.com.

His newest book 101 Optimal Foods features several recipes from both Wiley and myself and is available now at our stores and bookstores in the Dayton area.

Due to the generosity of our customers during the Food For All holiday promotion, DLM was able to donate $2,448.95 to the Franklin Area Community Services and $4,548.06 to The Foodbank of Dayton. Food For All is a year-round program. To donate, have a donation card scanned at the register when you check out. All donations are tax deductible.

Purchase any DLM Breakfast Sandwich, Quesadilla, or Quiche (available 7 a.m.–10:30 a.m.) and receive one Tall Boston Stoker brewed coffee at no charge at our Washington Square location.

DLM Breakfast sandwiches are made with fresh organic scrambled eggs & tucked into our all butter croissant topped with Cheddar cheese and your choice of ham, bacon, or sausage. Or try our Breakfast quesadilla filled with those fluffy organic scrambled eggs, cheese and either our chorizo or bacon. Our small quiche is the perfect size for breakfast. Lorraine, Florentine, Broccoli & Cheddar, or Wild Mushroom are some of the variety of Quiches we make fresh every day.

Start your day the smart way with DLM and Boston Stoker!

Starting today and every Friday for Lent we are featuring our Chesapeake Crab Cake Sandwich.

Our warm Chesapeake Style Crab Cake is made with 100% real crab and barely enough Hellmann’s Mayo and fresh breadcrumbs to hold it together. We top it off with remoulade sauce, fresh tomato and crisp lettuce piled on our Bakery fresh bun.  It’s a perfect sandwich that you can eat here or take it home for either lunch or dinner.

It’s a great deal at $6.99 plus it comes with DLM potato Chips and a pickle. C’mon in and try it -I think you’ll love it.

Looking for some new ideas? Try our bakery’s Fresh Bavarian pretzel dipped into warm and gooey DLM Jarlsberg Dip. Or pick up some sandwich pretzel rolls to make your favorite sandwiches with a built in twist.

Serving a large group of fans? Toss our award winning, freshly cooked meatballs in DLM Original Marinara and stuff it all into an Italian Loaf & top with plenty of DLM Fresh Mozzarella. Bake until bubbly and cut into servings.

We use our fresh Honestly Better DLM Chicken to make our chicken tenders by hand everyday. All you will have to do is pop them in a hot oven and serve with your favorite dipping sauce or toss with your favorite BBQ or Hot Sauce.  

DLM is Dip Central - we carry an amazing selection of fresh dips and cheese spreads that you won’t find anywhere else. Our spinach dip’s reputation is impeccable and sure to please almost everyone. Try the buffalo dip or spread hot with celery and carrots! Have you tried our fresh guacamole along with the mariachi salsa? It’s a no brainer that they’re perfect with tortilla chips.

Go team!

Sitting at the dinner table last night with my wife enjoying our Heavenly Ham bean soup my youngest son Morgan walked in the front door. We were glad he made it home safely via 675 on such a snowy night. He was carrying a bag of groceries he had purchased when he left after a long day working at DLM in the Meat Dept. As many of you know all of my children have worked at DLM and have always made me proud. Morgan is 19 and works with my brother “Uncle Mike” at our Washington Square Store. As Sharon and I welcomed him home safely he was eager to show us his purchases. The first item was some fresh Monastici (thin sliced steak with prosciutto and provolone) he was going to cook himself dinner. The next item was a 1.5 lb Sirloin steak he was saving for Dinner with his girlfriend at her apartment on Saturday, next was a small chuck roast he also purchased so he could show her how to use her new crock-pot she had received as a gift. What! No pop-tarts? Where are the chips and salsa? It truly has been a joy watching him mature from a shy young boy to a confident man instructing customers on how to prepare a standing rib roast or pan fry some delicious store made sausage. I could not have been more proud.

Do you know someone who can’t get enough of the Food Network? Do you love someone who can’t stop reading cookbooks, pouring over recipes or food magazines?

Why not treat them to a “live” cooking class? There is no better place to learn about good food than right here at DLM! Whether they just want to watch or roll up their sleeves and get busy we have the perfect class to make everyone happy.

The best part of this gift is the flexibility- They can pick and choose what class they want and what will work with their schedules. This gift card works not only for a class but for anything DLM has to offer. If you’re lucky, maybe they will invite you over for dinner!

Our new Winter Spring Schedule comes out on January 6^th with more than 60 classes to choose from! Come by the School of cooking while you pick up your holiday feast and see how we can help you with your last minute gifts.

We had a shindig at my house last night and made a big spread: DLM Fresh Turkey, Heavenly Ham, DLM Artisan Bread, and so on. One of the things we did that was a hit was putting out a couple of cheese plates showing some of the great things going on in American cheese making these days. A generation ago, if you wanted traditionally made cheese, you had to import it from Europe. Now in the U.S. we have blues on the order of Gorgonzola and Roquefort, cheddars like England’s, and Alpine style cheeses with the same nutty/butterscotch complexity of Gruyere. So last night, with help from Josh (Cheese Manager at Springboro DLM), I picked out a few representative cheeses from around the country, including Vermont, northern California, and the great state of Georgia.

For starters, everyond loved cloth-bound Cabot Cheddar. It is a traditional hand-made cheddar (where the curds are pressed by being stacked and re-stacked on top of each other) and is aged in caves in Vermont. It is way different from processed “cheddar,” and has a natural pale hue, complex, rich flavor, and somewhat crumbly texture.  Cyprus Grove Humboldt Fog was the second cheese. It is named for the fog that rolls in daily in rural Humboldt county in the far north of California. This is another visionary company making artisanal cheese, this time from goat’s milk. This cheese is beautiful; a soft ripened goat cheese with a line of edible ash running in the middle. It’s so creamy and perfectly tangy!

The third cheese on our little “tour de force” of American cheese was from the land of peaches and sweet potatoes. Take off the packaging and taste Green Hill by Sweet Grass Dairy and you think you are in France. Oui, mon ami…this cheese could fool the most devoted Francophile! Talk about expanding your mind, not to mention your palate: a bloomy rind Camembert style cheese hand made in Georgia. It’s super creamy, buttery, and fresh, great spread on a baguette (it was good on our hard rolls last night as well).

If you’re having a party soon, stop by the Dorothy Lane Market Cheese Shop, and let us help you pick out some fantastic cheeses, be they from abroad, or from right here in America. We would love to be your tour guide!

We just learned that Dorothy Lane Market has been voted “Best Gourmet Grocer/Food Hall” by the readers of www.luxist.com. Luxist is a part of AOL, and is promoted in several national magazines such as Food & Wine and  People. To read more about the award, click here: http://www.luxist.com/2009/11/30/dorothy-lane-market-wins-readers-choice-award-for-best-gourmet/

It’s our priviledge to serve you with great food. We won only because we have such wonderful customers and friends who voted for us. See you in the store soon, and thanks for your vote!

What a night it was! The wine was spectacular and the food- well, it just kept coming! We served more than 3000 individual appetizers off of their serving trays! There was a talented crew of associates working hard “backstage” making all of those appetizers. The seafood department’s Poke Tuna showed up on top of a cucumber with a dollop of Red Bone Alley’s Wasabi Aioli. We chose to hightlight some of our new sandwiches - look for the Retro, the Duck Confit, and the Toscano. The Gourmet Take Away department debuted their new empanadas too - just to name a few.

It is always fun to mix it up with our friends from local restaurants and our vendors that keep us supplied with the best products out there. How about that Charcuterie Table? Wiley’s pork taco, Jenn’s Spanish chicken, and Anne’s salad were all excellent -not to mention all of Jeni’s Ice Cream!

Did you get a chance to visit the oyster bar? I whipped up a new mignonette sauce that had yuzu and fresh ginger in it. I don’t mean to leave out the Porchetta, the Roasted Beef, all that Crab, the list goes on and on……

Our guests can’t get enough of those dates - I’ll let you know the secret: three ingredients, medjool dates (from our Produce department), Parmigiano-Reggiano, and DLM Applewood Smoked Bacon. Pit the dates and stuff with a small block of the Parmigiano-Reggiano and wrap with bacon. Bake at 375º until bacon is done to your liking. (about 15 minutes or so). Try real hard not to burn your mouth because you just can’t wait!