This is a collection of photos and a few words about the AOL Food Chat Party held in Long Island on May 20th and 21st, 2000.

I, personally, had a wonderful time at the party and wanted a spot to show it all off to everyone! When we got together it was almost as if we were family.......have fun checking out the pictures! Love ya guys! :) Annechef

Below is an article that appeared in Long Island Newsday on May 31st, 2000.

FOOD DAY
WEDNESDAY
A La Carter
They Feed
The Hunger
For a Real
Good Chat

Sylvia Carter

FULL AND complete disclosure is called for here. I have never visited a chat room. Yet a couple of weekends ago, I hung out with some food chat-room buddies at the home of Nancy and Leonard D'Airo in West Babylon.

If you know more than I do about chat rooms, this probably seems confusing.

A chat room is not a real place, is it? Don't chat room participants get together via computer? Yes, they do. And that's how this group originally got together.

To get there, chat room participants who subscribe to America Online (AOL) had to hit chat, then special interests and finally, food chat.

Sometimes they chat, exchanging recipes and freewheeling banter, for hours.


After a couple of years of computer talk, however, about 50 visitors to the room hankered to meet each other up close, in real rooms instead of in real time. (Repartee flows back and forth quickly, unlike regular e-mail, to which one replies at leisure. In fact, it seems to me that slow typists would never get a chance to "speak.") When chat- room loyalists gathered at the D'Airos' on a recent Saturday, their name tags bore their electronic discussion monikers, with their real first names beneath. (Even a long-haired chihuahua named Sweetie had a tag.) George Ross, the chat-room host, a retired fire chief from Hickory, N.C., brought his rig for deep-frying turkey and contributed three birds marinated in Cajun spices.

Intrepid turkey-fryer that he is, Ross sat in his wheelchair holding an umbrella over the first turkey for nearly an hour, shielding it from rain as it bubbled in a vat out on the deck.

Nancy D'Airo made a luscious chocolate mayonnaise cake with thick peanut butter frosting. Others brought chili, pasta and more desserts, but those from Indiana, California and other far-flung places contributed money for beer and soda.

They stayed at a nearby motel and were ferried back and forth to the D'Airo home for the day-long meal on Saturday and a brunch on Sunday.

The D'Airos, both widowed, met and, in November, married, after finding each other through the food chat room. None of the other visitors to the room has gone farther than flirting-at least not yet.

The chat-terboxes trade recipes and banter. But they also provide encouragement to others in the chat room who are having a rough day, or a rough life.

I could see that one of the nice parts about visiting this way in the chat room would be that you don't have to dress up or comb your hair. Nobody knows or cares how you look. In person, these folks were pretty casual, too, actually. In person, they were also supportive of each other, just as they seem to be when conversing by computer.


Both Ross and Leonard D'Airo have put together recipes for cookbooks, Jerry Redding once cooked at a four-star restaurant in Philadelphia and "Shadow" (also known as Cindi Vaudreiul, her real name) of Hubbardstown, Mass., deals in fruit and other produce.

Others are relatively inexperienced food fans, but all are treated with equal respect in the room.

Few, if any, of the participants suffered anxiety about meeting each other and shattering illusions. But some of their teenaged children worried on their behalf.

"My daughter thought I was going to a cult meeting," said Justine Talarico, who owns a beauty shop in Ocean Port, N.J.

Talarico said that 17-year- old Jessica Woodin said, "Ma, you don't know who these people are!" Talarico brought chocolate-dipped strawberries, addictively good macadamia nut cookies and half a ham.
And her daughter's fears proved groundless.

"None of us packed an ax," joked Cami Snell, a tanned and bubbly woman who is an office manager for a neurologist in Greentown, Ind.

AnneChef (real name, Anne Coleman) of Bethlehem, Pa., embraced chat friends with squeals of delight. Coleman's husband, Marty, and her four children, Cassidy, 10; Megan, 8; Erin, 3, and Declan, 9 months, came with her in a borrowed van.

Lucy Francesco, Leonard D'Airo's sister, who lives nearby, is not involved in the chat room but she came over bearing baked ziti and said she had no problem with the way her brother met his wife, who was living on two acres in Ohio at the time.


"They're like two love birds," she said.

Katie Gutierrez of Astoria brought pasta primavera, roses, wine, her son, Andres, 8, and perhaps most important, her husband, Ivan, who whipped up terrific fresh guacamole.

Katie Gutierrez, a restaurant manager in Manhattan, is the chat room member, but Nancy D'Airo declared Ivan Gutierrez an "honorary member," both for his guacamole and his helpful advice to arthritis sufferers in the group.

(Ivan Gutierrez works in the field of sterilization and infectious diseases.) Betty Garcia-Thabet and her husband, Ismael Garcia of Brooklyn, who had been the D'Airos' matron of honor and best man, had hosted an earlier, smaller get-together of the group in December.
"Betty and Nancy are the popular ones," said Talarico, a beauty shop owner, of Ocean Port, N.J.

They are like den mothers for the group, she said.

Billy Birdsall of Deer Park, who owns a fleet of zeppole concession trucks, brought five cheesecakes. His baking secret? "I never use milk, only cream," he said.

He's a man after my own heart.

All in all, the experience was much the same as for any group of friends getting together for a potluck dinner, except that most of these friends had never laid eyes on each other before.
My conclusions: I'd go anywhere, any time, with anyone to eat a succulent turkey fried by Ross.

I am not planning to join the chat room, but I'll be making this recipe for years to come.

Justine Talarico got this recipe from a supermarket weekly years ago; it won ,000 in a baking contest.

Gloria Bradley's Maui Macadamia Macaroons 2 1/2 cups shredded, sweetened coconut 1 cup unsalted macadamia nuts, chopped, quartered (see note) 1 (14-ounce) can sweetened condensed milk 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract 20 Premium Saltine crackers, finely crushed 2 egg whites Vegetable oil or cooking spray 6 ounces semisweet chocolate, melted (chips, discs, chips or other chocolate) 1. Place coconut and nuts on a 15 1/2-by-10 1/2-by-1-inch baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees until lightly toasted, about 10 minutes. Stir frequently. Cool.

2. In a large bowl combine milk and vanilla. Stir in coconut mixture and crushed crackers. (Talarico crushes them in a blender.) Blend well.

3. Beat egg whites until stiff, then gently fold into coconut mixture.

Grease baking pan lightly with vegetable oil or cooking spray. Drop rounded tablespoons of cookie mixture onto baking sheet. Bake at 350 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes or until golden around edges. Cool completely.

4. If chocolate is in discs or blocks, chop before melting. When cookies are cool, dip cookie bottoms into melted chocolate. Place on waxed paper and refrigerate until set. Makes about 36 cookies.
Note: Use salted nuts if you cannot find unsalted; Talarico does. Also, you can use coarsely chopped nuts instead of quartering them.