Destination Guide: Omaha, NE

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The Old Market
Omaha, NE

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All Wrapped up in 'Unwrapped'

Friday morning, I skipped out of the office and onto the set of the Food Network's Unwrapped.

After spending months on the phone researching chocolate bars and candy, planning shoots, and booking crews, it was time to see it all come together. Today, we would be filming our first set of host wraps for the 10th season of Unwrapped. Many of the products I'd been working on would now be introduced by the one and only, Marc Summers!

Marc Summers, our veteran Unwrapped host (and everyone's favorite game show host of the eighties and nineties--Hello Double Dare and What Would You Do!!!), flew in to Denver for this glorious occasion.


Our whole crew was excited to spend the day on location. We had lights, we had the camera, we were ready for action. We set up props, logged with 'Script Boy,' and even starred as extras!

We ooohed and ahhed as Marc nailed line after line of flawless intros and outros. It takes a lifetime to learn how to crank 'em out like he did.

The former magician had plenty up his sleeves, including mind boggling "now you see it, now you don't" disappearing tricks and incredible scare tactics. ;) I will never forget the time Marc played a practical joke on me. As the tapes were rolling, I walked through the shot as an "extra" carrying a sandwich, when Marc stopped mid-sentence, turned and roared like a zombie in a haunted house! I nearly poured the entire plateful of chips down my shirt! It was startling, but hilarious. A good chuckle indeed!



At one point, I found myself sharing salad and pizza with Marc at the crew lunch. Sitting directly across from him, I reached into my back pocket and found all those questions I'd saved for one of those "If you could have dinner with any person in the world" type situations. Did you always want to be a TV host? Where is your favorite place to travel to? What's your dream job?



It was great to be back on the set again. It's super fun to work in TV. Our crew is fantastic. And I say that not because I'll see them all at the office tomorrow. We have a really fun group of people on our team.


Can't wait to do it again!

You are what you eat.

Think about your favorite foods. I'm thinking Thai food. Cookie Dough. Any kind of pasta. Chick-fil-A! Mmmmmm. Now, imagine someone told you you could never eat those foods again.

That's what it felt like when my doctor told me I had food allergies to five of the most popular ingredients in the American diet:
1. Wheat
2. Milk
3. Eggs
4. Soy
5. Peanuts

It was a like a death sentence in the world of food. What! I can't eat wheat! No pasta. No bread. No cookies! Wheat's in everything. Ok, ok. Fine. Well, I guess I don't need to drink a glass of milk everyday, I'm not getting any taller. No, wait, milk is in butter, it's in cheese, it's in ice cream. Sigh. I can never go back to Switzerland! It would be too horrible to go there and eat no cheese and no chocolate! OOhh, but I can still go to Hungary...GOULASH! Yay! But no egg noodles. No Germany. No spaetzel. And Italy, forget it.

Okay. I'll just eat Asian food. I'm down with that. I'll just pretend I'm in Korea! That's where I came from. Maybe that kind of cuisine is what my body craves. I'll eat rice, kimchi, seaweed, soup, and meat. It's too good to be true-Not so fast! Soy sauce. I can't eat soy! It's practically in like EVERY Asian food. I LOVE ASIAN FOOD. This is no good!

I have always pretty much eaten whatever I wanted. When I'm feeling fat, I cut down on the cupcakes, but never have I actually been on a diet. And now, I'm totally on the opposite end of the spectrum. I've got to study every damn thing I put in my mouth, which means I'm hungry all the time.

I decided I would give this diet a couple months trial.

I started reading the labels on everything. What was once a routine trip to the grocery store became an afternoon activity. Pretty much every box or can I put into my hand went straight back onto the shelf. What is this "soy lethicin". It's in freaking everything. I don't care to what quantity, the labels on almost all packaged food in the grocery contains this ingredient.

By the end of the trip, my cart was merely full of fruit and veggies, rice and Rice Krispies. Bye bye cookie dough. Hello veggies.


I started shopping at Sunflower Market and Vitamin Cottage. So this is where all that organic, guten-free, alternative diet food lives. It was a whole new world. Soy-free this and milk-free that. Did you know they make cake mix that's wheat-free, milk-free, egg-free! Now that's worth $5. Ever hear of rice cheese (yuck, is disgusting), or corn pasta? Hallelujah.

After a number of bad run -in's with goat milk (ewwe), overcooked rice pasta, and wheat-free, dairy-free "Mac and Chreese," I surrendered to a diet of simple but boring rice and seaweed and an avocado for calories. It's one thing to be Vegetarian. It's a whole other story to be allergic to wheat, milk, soy, eggs, and peanuts. Unlucky.

It's ironic that within the same few weeks I started my new job working on a show for the Food network, I also discovered my food allergies. It was like the universe was trying to tell me to focus on nutrition (or lack there of) and take some time to learn what's in the food I eat.

Interestingly, a date with a true Allergist shed a whole new light on the situation. While my original blood test indicated I had five dreaded food allergies, completing a skin test revealed nothing of the sort. The food allergies...Bogus! That's right, the initial results were absolutely BOGUS. Thank God I didn't let this fiasco continue on any longer.

Bar-cycle: Pub Crawl on Bikes!

Biking from bar to bar in Northwest Denver was one heck of a way to spend a Saturday afternoon. My buddy Millsy invited me to join his wife and friends on an annual tradition, the 7th annual Fall Crawl. With more than 150 bikers last year, it was quite a site to see... We pedaled to six neighborhood bars: Three Dog Tavern, El Chapultepec Too, Coral Room, Berkeley Inn, The Oriental Theater, and Music Bar (quite a creative way to learn my way around Denver...)