Top Chef – The Muse Pallet

Chef Dakota Weiss & Her Top Chef “Mother Effin” Snakes

November 17, 2011

Author’s note: This is a continuation of a series of blogs about the experience of watching my daughter, Chef Dakota Weiss, make her way through Bravo TV’s Top Chef Texas, currently airing on Wednesday nights. Spring break at Scottsdale Culinary Institute gave my daughter, Chef Dakota Weiss, now a Top Chef Season 9 contestant, time to stay with us in our northern New Mexico log house in the middle of an apple orchard. Beautiful place. True to the Top Chef public relation […]

Beef or Rattlesnake For Top Chef Quick-Fire?

October 27, 2011

Of course I had more questions than ask.com, but I knew Dakota was limited in her ability to answer. Top Chef new seasons and episodes are hush-hush.

A Berry Pie, A Pale Carpet, & A Top Chef Future?

October 4, 2011

After a 1986 spring visit to the chi-chi shops of Palm Springs, a Southwestern pastel pallet of peach, mauve and teal inspired a redo of our harvest gold and brown home’s interior. Two weeks later, my now pre-adolescent daughters and I swooned over a pale apricot carpet sample. OMG the apricot carpeting and peach painted walls, trimmed in pale teal, was gorgeous. It reversed our masculine-inspired home to a three females in-charge and in-control home. Concurrent to the home redo my […]

Top Chef Contestant Bucks Up–‘Cuz Mama Said

September 27, 2011

In other words, buck up. Deal with it. Take responsibility. I couldn’t do everything. Skid marks cut and scarred my own learning curve. It sounds hard-lined, but as mother, father, earner and guide, the options ranged between zero and nothing.

Top Chef Cheftestant Mama

September 21, 2011

Dakota’s road to Top Chef began after a long labor some 30-plus years ago in my home where I gave birth to Dakota. The unconventional birthing included a male midwife, my late husband, a psychic, an astrologer, and my Siamese cat who was very concerned throughout the entire 22-hour birthing drama.