Dawn Garcia

My Love A-fare With Chefs

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I love food. I love chefs. I love passionate cooks. So much so, I am writing a book about it. No this isn’t the book. Just a few foot notes of my accepted vice. It isn’t the traditional kind of story though. It’s a story that gives a proper introduction into my own personal love a-fare. It is a tale that is adventurous, cultural, sensual, provocative, enticing, mouth watering, passionate, and infinitely endless. Endless meaning it’s a love I believe will never end.

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SLS Nike Skateboarding World Tour

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Founded by pro skateboarder Rob Dyrdek in 2010, Street League Skateboarding (SLS) was created to foster growth, popularity, and acceptance of street skateboarding worldwide. Since then, SLS has evolved to become a platform that serves to excite the skateboarding community, educate both the avid and casual fans, and empower communities through its very own SLS foundation. In support of SLS’ mission, Nike SB joined forces with SLS in 2013 to create the SLS Nike SB World Tour.

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Thomas Hill Organics

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The very first time I came to Paso, I met Chef Ryan Sims. I was here to meet a winemaker and she took me out to one of her favorite local restaurants, Thomas Hill Organics. At the time, Ryan was an apprentice and Sous Chef, and as luck would have it that was the one time I was able to meet owner, Debbie Thomas. This time around however, Chef Ryan is the Executive Chef and the food he creates? Sheer brilliance. From the complexity to the candor of local ingredients, every single dish is a tasty art piece worthy of pause. Crafted with the local produce in mind, tonight’s dinner was nothing short of spectacular, and Chef? The best thing to happen to the region in my opinion.

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Zoetic by Chef Corinne Rice

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Corrine Rice can be described as sheer passion, purity, complexity by way of beautiful understated luxury, and passion. Her cuisine is the kind of fare that supports everything I believe in: Quality, sustainable, local, farm to table, and my all time necessaire: gluten-free. When invited to partake of this evenings’ popup, I was genuinely thrilled. Chef Rice is not the egocentric chef. She is the epitome of culinary love and it shows in every dish.

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French Stewart as BUSTER KEATON!

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“I mean, I never thought I’d have all of this. Look at me! I’m 50, married to this incredible woman [pointing to Vanessa], have a beautiful little girl, work for Chuck Lorre during the day [MOM on CBS], and at night, I get to do this with all of my friends playing a character of a man I’ve admired all of my life. I’m living the dream!”

– French Stewart

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Maya Angelou

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Letter From The Editor: You see, we live in a world that is chaotic and full of hate but then we are given a beacon of light. A human being who does not accept our willful attempts at hate. A human being who looks deeper into humanity and simply watches it behave in order to understand who it truly has become. Mind you, not who it is but rather who it has allowed itself to become. She epitomized the idea that conditioning ones soul to respond in anger or hate is mere choice by which we can make a change. She believed inexhaustibly that life was hope. That dreaming was essential. That caging a free bird was the detriment of ones soul. This woman declared that regardless of what change happens “to her”, it would never reduce her worth, her value, diminish the core of who she was. That woman – that human being – is Maya Angelou.

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2014 Austin Food & Wine Festival

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I love the city of Austin. It’s no secret the city won my heart the very first time I visited in 2012. Combine a city of just about everything I love AND toss in the most sensational range of culinary prowess into a week long festival of kickoff events, culinary battles, sweet delights, imaginative parties, and some of the greatest chefs in the US? Um yes. Count me in. This year however, I decided to invite my Austin photographer, Kevin Curtis to go in and capture some of the more notable moments. You can see for yourself that it was nothing short of tasty entertainment!!

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‘THE CONGRESS’ Film Review

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If given the choice to be young forever, would you jump at the opportunity? Actress Robin Wright (Princess Bride, House of Cards) is given that choice, albeit through contractual agreements, by the fictional Miramount Studios in Ari Folman’s (Waltz with Bashir) The Congress. Studio executives propose her body and facial expressions should be scanned by advanced computers with motion capture technology so they can puppeteer her image into c-grade films and, as the greedy studio head Jeff (Danny Huston) would argue, “keep her young forever.”

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An Unconventional Letter From Mom

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The story goes that once upon a time, I swallowed a bean. It was a magical bean and it was a bean only your daddy and I would know about. It was made especially for us. We had searched high and low for the bean we “thought” was ours but turns out the seedling was with us all along. (Seems grown-ups are a little “slow on the draw” sometimes.

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“The One I Love” Film Review

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If you could be with the ideal version of your partner would you be happier? Is embracing them for their flaws part of the accepted insanity that is love? The One I Love aims to answer that by reinventing a familiar premise with excellent performances and a quirky, clever script fusing relatable human drama with science fiction.

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“Who Took Johnny” Film Review

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“Who Took Johnny”: What sounds like the beginning of a nail-biting Hollywood thriller is a sad and disturbing reality—one that American parents face each and every day and is the main focus of documentary Who Took Johnny, a dissection of the stranger-than-fiction disappearance of Iowa paperboy, Johnny Gosch, a boy who seemingly “vanished into thin air” and a case that still remains unsolved.

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REFUGE Film Review

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REFUGE. Amy Behr (Krysten Ritter) becomes a mother out of unexpected circumstances. She tries to raise her two younger siblings who struggle with day-to-day life: her younger brother, Nat (Logan Huffman), writes to-do lists concerning mundane tasks, like attempting to converse with other people, after he has a brain tumor removed that mildly disables him . Amy’s teenage sister, Lucy (Madeleine Martin), has a hatred of high school and experiments with drugs and shoplifting as her grades slip.

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