Disneyland’s Food & Wine Festival
It turns out that even Mickey and Minnie want to know how to cook!
The grand-daddy of theme parks, Disneyland in Anaheim, hosted their 3rd annual California Food Wine Festival, and I got the chance to do some cooking demonstrations for the event. Throughout the month of April, Disney offers a wonderful array of culinary events and activities 7 days a week in their California AdventurePark. With outside stages set up, guests can wander (and there is no additional cost once you’re in the park) to food and wine demonstrations and tasting. What a great deal!
I was there for 2 days doing a total of 6 demonstrations on behalf of The Coca-Cola Company. Now, you might be thinking this was about basting a ham in Coke, but oh no it was a similar concept but much more contemporary for today’s tastes and using a wide range of Coca Cola products as cooking ingredients.
I was asked to work with the Coke ZeroTM and Simply LimeadeTM since both are sold in the park. And the recipes needed to be on the lighter side. I created a chicken satay using Coke ZeroTM in the sauce which also included honey, peanut butter, tamari sauce, ginger and all served over rice. Perfect for an entree or party appetizers. The Simply LimeadeTM was used to make feathery light mousse-like cheesecake; great make ahead dessert for summer entertaining. Here, check out the recipes!
Disney efficiency and commitment to excellence is amazing. The chef assigned to work with me actually called me, in advance, to make sure they had all my ingredients correct and to review the recipes. All too often, when you show up for a guest appearance like this, most times they don’t know who you are, where your ingredients are, and what you’re doing. Not in this place . . . the food was all prepped and we sampled about 500 people over the course of the 2 days.
And for anyone who has lost a cell phone, I lost mine in Disneyland. But not to worry because their Lost & Found department actually had and it’s being mailed back to me. Now that’s service.
