Media Blitz

It always warms me when one of my relatives makes a scene...in the paper that is. Here's a picture of our granddaughter coming in second in the pedal pull contest at the Marion County Fair. Her win qualifies her to compete in the petal pull at the State Fair in September. She wasn't half as excited as her parents and the rest of us. She didn't need to be coerced into doing this nor into doing the calf chasing contest. She says she's growing up to be Daddy's cowgirl. http://www.hillsborofreepress.com/content/view/18090181/31/>

Picture courtesy of Hillsboro Free Press

Our nephew recently made a big splash on the front page with this story: >http://www.hillsborofreepress.com/content/view/18089925/31/

Picture courtesy of Hillsboro Free Press

Picture caption: "As Tim Unruh watches, master chef Lynn Crawford offers cameraman Kristoff Roehon a sampling of Unruh’s cherry mousse during a break in filming for the Canadian Food Network show tentatively titled “Fearless Chef” in the Peter Paul Loewen House." Don Ratzlaff / Free Press

The Peter Paul Loewen House is widely known as the Adobe House Museum in Hillsboro, commemorating the settling of Mennonites from Russia in the Hillsboro area. Tim was wearing a beard for Hillsboro's 125th celebration which certainly gave him the authentic look of an 187o's Mennonite. However, it's not authentic that a Mennonite father would have cooked and baked, nor been a stay-at-home father. He's lucky to live in this era with the right to pursue his talents.

Here are excerpts from the article: "And he [Tim] did it all in the stark surroundings of the Peter Paul Loewen House, the traditional Russian clay brick house built in 1876. The show’s host, Lynn Crawford, most recently the executive chef at the five-star Four Seasons resort hotel in New York, and her camera crew of five were in Hillsboro to film part of an episode for a new show the Canadian Food Network is producing under the working title of 'Fearless Chef.'"

In addition to raving about his baking techniques, Crawford simply gushed as she sampled the Mennonite-ethnic New Year’s Cookies, mulberry-rhubarb pie and cherry mousse he had prepared in advance.

"I’ve eaten pie in some of the best restaurants anywhere, and this is absolutely the best I’ve ever had,” she said between bites.

"Such high praise could be hard to swallow for a person hoping to represent traditional Mennonite humility.
“I guess I was really surprised,” Unruh said about Crawford’s response. “Here you have this five-star chef—in my mind, that’s like the ultimate. She’s experienced everything—she went to chef school and is really well-trained. She was working at a famous hotel-resort.
“For her to compliment me like that... it was a good feeling.

"Filming at the Loewen House was only the first stage of a three-day experience for Unruh. That evening he was interviewed at his home for an additional hour.
But that wasn’t the end of it either. The traditional “feast” was to follow the next day.
“That ended up being at our house,” said Unruh, who also is a veteran horticulturalist who works a few hours a week for The Garden Center in Hillsboro.

"The new show will begin airing in Canada after the first of the year. Director Cheryl Zalameda said they hope they have done enough shooting in the United States that the program will be purchased also by the Food Network or Discovery Channel in this country.
Whatever the outcome, Unruh said the crew promised to send him a copy of the finished episode. But it isn’t likely that Unruh or his family will forget the experience anytime soon.
“For a small-town boy in Hillsboro to have this opportunity to learn something from—or just be in the presence of a famous chef—it was one of those opportunities that you can’t pass up,” Unruh said.
“I love cooking so much, and I wanted to learn as much from her as she was learning from me. It was a huge honor for me to have her here.” (End of quotes from the article).

Tim works parttime at the Loewen house. I hope you'll follow the link to the full article. It's so exciting to have Tim's talents shared with others. He and his wife and three sons live in his parents home, and another story is how they've furnished and decorated it with antiques.

Tomorrow or as soon as I can, I'll post pictures of Tim's garden I took last summer. The picture at the top of my blog is his inviting back porch. I want to sit down in that chair and have a quiet time.