My 100th Blog Post – A Milestone!

As a new blogger, I’ve had lots of fun writing about what’s important to me, living and growing in Boquete, Panama. Eleven thousand, eight hundred fifty (11,850) visitors have opened my site. It’s really astounding!

Thanks to all of you for peeking at our lives here in Boquete, it’s an amazing place in which to live. The rainbows are spectacular, the air is clean, and coffee grown here, is the best in the world!

In a nutshell, the first 100 posts were mostly about the people I know and love, the folks I see every day, and the neighbors who give so much to our community. There have also been fellow food bloggers and readers from around the world whom I call friends, although I’ve never met them face-to-face. I’ve mentioned lots of famous people who have impacted my life in some way or another. The nearly 100 people named in my blogs are named again below, and I really appreciate the contribution each person has made to my life since moving to Boquete, nearly 8 years ago.

Would you like to guess the most popular article of the 100 blogs I have written? How about guessing the average amount of time each visitor spends on the site at each visit? The answers are given below.

Thanks so much to the real stars of the past 100 blogs! By name, they are: Lauretta Bonfiglio, Sharon James, Juan Linares, Renny Kranich, David Kent, Jon Day, Kurt & Norman, Erik Carrera, Charlie Collins, Alison Holst, Anne Necker, Maritrini, Joyce and Nick Newton, Tom and Caroline Bot, Richard Detrich, Tammyjo Eckhart, Danilo, Jerry Wager, Elvin, Dorothy Lamour, Jorge Ortega, Liz Lees, James Cagny, and Tova Speter.

Thanks to Nelson, Calixto, Belisario Torres, Kelly Herring, Jim and Cindy Eickhoff, Julia Quiroz, Cesar, Doris Day, Idu, Papa Ricco, Giovanni, Carrie and Jonathan, Violet, Patricia Martinelli, Carlos Williams, Amy Adams, Greg Henry, Gobbles, Clyde and Phyllis Stevens, Ruby McKenzie, Eddie Cantor, Marian and Ethan Becker, Hershel and Mikey, Grandma Gates, Zorida, Lee Zelter, Axel Schob, Kirsten Peck, Judy Garland, Gale Cellucci, Drick Perry, and Anayansi Menendez.

I so much appreciate David Necker, Eric and Jane, Lori Lynn, Dave and Erin Ross, Groucho Marx, Rachel White, Martine Heyer, Richard Meyer, Mickey and Squirt James, Frederic Chopin, Mario Batali, Edgar Castillo, Vasco Numez Balboa, Irma Rombauer, Julia Child, Craig Claibourne, Barbra Streisand, Michelangelo, Diego Rivera, Bill Streit, Bing Crosby, Emeril Lagasse and Steven R. Covey.

You can still guess the top blogs, these photos will give you a hint. The top, broad category is “Boquete Living”, including blogs about daily living in the Highlands of Panama.

The #1 blog in my first 100 articles, is “My Fiestaware Collection”, written October 8, 2009. The blog you visited almost as many times, at #2, is “Panama’s Coffee Cup – Cafe Duran”, dated January 8. The #3 blog is “Hollywood’s Golden Age of Dining”, written January 3.

At each visit, the viewer stays on boquetegourmet.com site an average of 2 minutes, 37 seconds, quite an amazingly long period of time, especially when there are millions of other sites to visit.

I’m so very grateful to all of you for your time these past several months, and I hope to make my second hundred articles even more interesting and fun! If you’d like to suggest a particular subject, please let me know. Thanks again for your support!

Hugs,
Cora

Hollywood’s “Golden Age” Dining

It was a very different sort of evening in my kitchen last Monday, when blogger, photographer, and chef Greg Henry from Los Angeles and sous chef, Liz Lees from San Diego were ready to present a special cooking class about how movie stars dined during the “Golden Age” of Hollywood. It was an age when “being seen” was EVERYTHING!

That afternoon, Greg and Liz measured ingredients for the famous “Signature Cocktail” from the glamorous Cocoanut Grove Restaurant in the center of Hollywood and they carefully scooped black and red caviar into old-fashioned champagne glasses for Trump’s “Plantains with Black Bean Sauce”.

They cleaned, sauced and sauteed chicken livers for Don the Beachcomber’s “Rumaki” and peeled, deveined and skewered shrimp for “BBQ Shrimp with Ginger and Lime” from the old Spago Restaurant, which overlooked Sunset Blvd.

They poached chicken breasts and saved the broth for me, boiled eggs, and chopped various lettuces and cheeses for the Brown Derby’s “Original Cobb Salad’.

The final dish was the “Romanoff’s Chocolate Souffle”, the perfect ending to this sumptuous meal. Liz had pre-measured the ingredients of this very glamorous finale into a beautiful “mis en place” arrangement, including 12 carefully separated eggs, milk, sugar, flour, vanilla extract, salt and powdered sugar.

As students arrived, they were greeted with stories about how Hollywood restaurateurs developed their menus, prepared their dishes and built their reputations. They learned how movie stars became the center of attention, while being surrounded by some of the most elegant cuisine the world has ever know.

As the evening progressed, everyone mingled like movie stars with flashbulbs popping, and they dined on great recipes prepared with flair by Hollywood photographer and chef, Greg Henry. Each famous, delicious and historic dish was fit for such super-stars as Dorothy Lamour, James Cagny, Judy Garland, Groucho Marx and Bing Crosby.

And just think, this all took place in my lovely kitchen high up on the side of a volcano overlooking Boquete, Panama.
Lucky me,
Cora