The Business of Food with Steve Alexander

“It fell off a truck,” always gets a laugh when characters in film and television explain the presence of a new appliance or a box of steaks or lobster. But it’s no laughing matter to the shipping industry, which loses millions of dollars worth of cargo each year to thieves. And in the audio clip below, Scott Cornell, the crime theft specialist at Travelers Insurance, tells WGN’s Steve Alexander that thieves are increasingly more clever and tech-savvy in their thefts. Sure, some are still doing it the old-fashioned way where a truck is stolen and items are sold off the back of the truck. But, thanks to digital technology, they don’t even have to see the truck. They can hack into accounts and change the coding and the destinations.

When Kashen Ellerbrock encounters the predictable question, “So, what did you do this summer?” he has quite a story to tell classmates and teachers at Kewanee High School. In the audio clip below, 16-year-old Kashen tells WGN’s much older Steve Alexander what it was like when his Chianina steer, Bill, was judged Grand Champion of the Illinois State Fair, and then brought a record-tying $105,000 at the Sale of Champions. He shares what he’ll do with the winnings, as well as what it’s like to part with an animal he had been working with 12 hours a day for eight months.

TomatoPalooza is how Chicago Tomato Man Bob Zeni describes the weekend gathering of heirloom tomato fanatics at the Chicago Botanic Garden’s Heirloom Fest. In the audio clip below, he tells WGN’s Steve Alexander programs are scheduled to give advice about growing and using heirloom tomatoes and other heirloom vegetables, with displays, seed saving how-tos, and more. Bob will display a wide variety of heirlooms direct from his garden, all started from seed. Zeni has developed quite a following among tomato fanatics, each spring selling thousands of heirloom plants he grew. He’ll also display some of the types of seeds he uses. Also at the Heirloom Fest:

See a variety of seasonal vegetables, herbs, and fruits growing at the Regenstein Fruit & Vegetable Garden.

Visit the Discovery Carts and explore many types of heirloom tomatoes and vegetables you can grow in your home garden.

Discover heirloom fruit varieties with the Midwest Fruit Explorers.

While supplies last: Take home an ‘Orangelo’ thyme plant through the garden’s August plant giveaway.

If there’s a silver lining to the impact of COVID on the restaurant industry, it can be traced to Wow Bao. The Chicago-based company with its “clean” cooking process of steaming bao buns was able to expand while others were struggling by moving into “dark kitchens.” In the audio clip below, Wow Bao CEO Geoff Alexander tells WGN’s Steve Alexander the brand found “dark” spaces in other restaurants’ kitchens that weren’t being used and could easily accommodate Wow Bao’s steaming equipment. Then, the pandemic hit. Wow Bao became a lifeline for struggling brick and mortars. Wow Bao lit up dark spaces in 170 restaurants from April to December of 2020. In 2021, another 250-300 were added. In the past year, a few hundred more joined in. The following year, it added another 250–300. This year, the number of kitchens that made room for Wow Bao has grown to more than 700. And there’s a new distribution deal coming with Walmart. All told, the company’s first brick and mortar location in the lobby of Chicago’s iconic Water Tower Place will have morphed into more than 7,000 retail locations. Quite a success story for what was first pitched as an appetizer at LEYE’s Big Bowl. Alexander says CEO Rich Melman recognized it could be more than that.

Frozen is the answer from a new player on the Chicago retail food scene. Wild Fork Foods says its frozen foods — everything from veggies to meats to desserts — are tastier because it blast freezes the food, which retains its freshness. In the audio clip below, Alex Bord, head of development for Wild Fork, tells WGN’s Steve Alexander how blast freezing at the peak of freshness locks in straight-from-the-farm flavor. In store or on line, there are the standard cuts of meat and varieties of seafood, and exotic items for the adventurous: alligator, ostrich, bison, goat, duck (from a farm in Indiana), rabbit, and many other specialty items. Wild Fork is growing, with nine locations in Chicago and more to come.

Sarah Pratt was an apprentice under famed “Butter Cow Lady” Norma Duffy Lyon for many years. When Norma retired, Sarah stepped up and spends her summers sculpting butter cows and related themes at the Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas State Fairs, along with scattered special projects. She can’t do it full time because her first love is teaching art, which she does in West Des Moines, Iowa. Over the last few years, her teenage daughters have been her sculpting apprentices and this year, as Sarah was sculpting a likeness of Orangeville, Illinois, dairy farmer Lorilee Schultz milking a cow, daughter Grace was sculpting Lorilee’s daughter Lacy with a calf. Both are on display through August 20th in Springfield, and Sarah’s sculpture can be seen on a live webcam.

Friday, August 4th, is National Chocolate Chip Cookie Day, so we called on WGN’s resident baker, Johnnie Putman, to share her recipe. In the audio clip below, Johnnie tells Steve Alexander about how she started baking Toll House cookies when she was eight years old, and some 20 years ago when her husband and on-air partner Steve King was diagnosed with celiac disease, she modified the recipe to be gluten-free. The choices of GF flour, and even recipes, were slim pickings back then, but she landed on one flour she prefers: King Arthur’s Measure for Measure Gluten Free Flour, available at local stores like Jewel, Trader Joe’s, and Whole Foods. The complete recipe is below.

This recipe makes 2 doz large, thin GF cookies or 2 1/2 dozen smaller.

Pre-heat oven to 350

1 cup & 2 TB of King Arthur Measure for Measure GF flour

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt (if salted butter is used, skip this)

1 stick of softened unsalted butter

6 TB sugar 

6 TB brown sugar

1/2 tsp vanilla

1 large or extra large egg

1 cup of mini chocolate chips

**Many GF cookie recipes call for xanthan gum. I don’t use it.

Mix butter and sugars well. Add salt, soda and flour. Gradually mix into butter/sugar. Add vanilla. Add egg. And finally mini chips.

Scoop heaping rounded TB full onto cookie sheet sprayed with Pam. For the crispiest cookie (the snappiest!) flatten each mound with the bottom of a dampened glass dipped in sugar or gently pa the mounds to flatten for a crisp but thicker cookie.

Bake 13-15 minutes & let cool 2 minutes on cookie sheet. Carefully lift the large cookies off to a cooling rack. 

Enjoy the snap!