CMT Blog: Food

Trisha Yearwood is stirring things up with the release of her second cookbook, Home Cooking With Trisha Yearwood: Stories and Recipes to Share With Family and Friends, in stores today (April 6). From what I've read about her scrumptious skills in the kitchen, this one's sure to please the palate. Take for example, "Garth's Breakfast Bowl," featuring hearty ingredients like bacon, butter, eggs, cheese and pork sausage. Although maybe not the healthiest, it sure seems like the perfect dish to get the morning started. For an afternoon snack, the "Crock-Pot Chocolate Candy" sounds like a nice pick-me up, too. The singer is preparing for book-signing dates around the country, starting tomorrow in Princeton, N.J.

While Gwyneth Paltrow was in Nashville for the past three months shooting Love Don't Let Me Down, her upcoming movie with Tim McGraw, she was apparently moonlighting as a travel blogger. Her latest Goop blog has a very detailed list of everything she ate, drank, bought and watched while she was there. In her quest to find the best fried chicken, McGraw recommended Swett's. She liked it but also found the stuff at Prince's Hot Chicken Shack to be pretty good. And she loved the traditional Southern heart attack of a meal she had at the Loveless Café. But it wasn't all meat ‘n threes. She also took in shows at the Ryman, the Grand Ole Opry ("the quality of the concerts is truly remarkable") and the charming Station Inn ("When it fills up, they stick a paper plate on the door that says 'Sold Out.'") It sounds like she might've done some hootin' and hollerin' at Robert's Western World, but because it's Nashville, where paparazzi don't really live, it's hard to find pictures and videos of Paltrow out and about. Hard, but not completely impossible.

Photo credit: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images

Keith Urban's helping me make dinner tonight. He says I'll need eggs, milk, flour, butter, bacon, onion, grated cheese, bran, basil and salt and pepper to make his quiche. He says so right there on page 66 of the April issue of Good Housekeeping magazine. You basically throw all those ingredients in a bowl, mix them well, pour into a pie plate and bake at 325 for one hour. His recipe makes a super-healthy crustless quiche, and I'm not super healthy, so I may actually throw a pie crust in mine. I don't know if he's as good in the kitchen as he is onstage, but I'll know in about an hour. He's just one of many celebrities who have turned over favorite recipes to the magazine, so readers can enjoy Impossible Urban's quiche along with Oprah's smoothies and Reese Witherspoon's tea. Bon appétit.

What is it with the Zac Brown Band and food? When the band was very new on the country scene with "Chicken Fried," back in November 2008, Brown had done these cooking videos from his home kitchen in Smyrna, Ga. A year and a half later, he's still all about a good meal. So the former restaurant owner has a brand new cookbook out, Southern Ground, with 27 of his favorite comfort food recipes like farmer's fried green tomatoes and revival peach cobbler. And he's still doing his Eat-And-Greets at concerts, where the band invites about 75 fans to share some Southern cuisine before the show. Because he is so good in the kitchen, Brown has even created his own GA Clay Rub and Brown Sauce that will soon be available in stores. What's he have to say about all the food love? "Obviously we're always working on our music, but with this tour we're building an experience that involves all senses to ensure that it blow fans away every time," Brown says. "When people come to our show, we want them to smell the food cooking, taste our favorite recipes, watch our home videos of the road, listen to some great new artists and feel our excitement -- a full five-sense experience."

Uncle Kracker came to Nashville yesterday (Feb. 24) for Country Radio Seminar, now that "Smile" is poised to cross over to the country charts. (It's been a big hit on several pop formats already.) While he was in town, the likeable musician dropped by CMT to perform a few songs, and to talk about the sunny "Smile" video, which he filmed in and around Hale, Mich., during a Fourth of July celebration. And if you're ever in Hale, he highly recommends the bacon and jerky at Alward's -- just look for the storefront awning that says BACON. One of Kracker's dogs, Henry, makes a cameo appearance in the video, just chilling on a park bench. "He's about 120 pounds of 'I-don't-care-one-bit'," Kracker says. If you liked the video for Kid Rock's "All Summer Long" (which Kracker co-wrote), I'd wager that you'll like "Smile," too. Man, I can't wait until summer.

Loretta Lynn is working on quite a bit of new music, according to some newspaper interviews she's given lately. A story in the St. Louis Dispatch indicated that she's preparing a duets album and a Christmas album. And if you're looking for a new religious album, she told the Muncie (Ind.) Star Press that one's on the way. All this comes on the heels of her Lifetime Achievement Grammy award presented last month. Incidentally, 2010 marks the 50th anniversary of her debut single, "I'm a Honky Tonk Girl," and her musical legacy appears to be a key plot point of an upcoming comedy film, Queens of Country, about a champion line-dancer from Arizona. Personally I'm hoping I can catch her in concert this summer, either at Lilith Fair or HullabaLOU. Otherwise, I guess I'll just have to go back and watch Coal Miner's Daughter -- recently named as one of the top 10 music biopics by CNN.com.

Kix Brooks has a post-Brooks & Dunn plan when their farewell tour wraps up. And it is all about the wine he makes with 75 acres of grapes about a half-hour south of Nashville. It's called Arrington Vineyards, where Brooks and his partners make a dozen different wines, like his favorite KB 206 ($49.99). I've tried the Chardonnay, which is only $21.99, and it's fantastic. But even better than a glass of red or white is the Music in the Vines event they do every Saturday night in the spring, where anyone and everyone is invited to come out with a picnic basket and hang out on the hillside. Right now there are no details on who will be performing. But Loggins & Messina and Etta James have been there before, and sometimes even Brooks will play and sing. When asked about the end of the Brooks & Dunn run, Brooks tells CNN, "Unless you're Willie Nelson, it's probably not going to last forever. When I'm 70 years old, it'll be really great to come out here, and play in these fields, and check on these grapes, and check on this wine and see how it's doin'."

I thought I was personally responsible for maintaining Kraft Singles' huge profit margins. My kids eat so much of their individually-wrapped cheese slices, we are what they call "heavy users." But it turns out, we are just not eating enough. Sales of Kraft Singles are officially down 17.5 percent.

And when sales are slipping that much, there's only one thing that can really turn it around: country music. (The target audience for Kraft Singles just so happens to be the country music demo: moms in smaller U.S. towns and suburbs.)

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I'm not much of a Shape magazine reader. Page after page of bikini-ready women who are healthier and stronger and skinnier than me? Who needs that? But Kellie Pickler is in the January issue, so I picked it up. And she is, as usual, full of good advice on "Staying Centered." And her tips are easy to follow: laugh as much as possible, let loose with girlfriends every now and then, relax with a good book. Check, check and check. The only thing she says that I have a tough time buying is how she replaced junk food with raw veggies, nuts and Edamame. I mean, I believe she did it. I just don't believe I ever could. If I put baby soybeans up against, say, Cool Ranch Doritos, I think we all know what's going to win.

Not sure if these fine folks are Clay Walker fans. But when I heard this story, it was almost like the Walker song, "Chain of Love," had come to life. That's the one where a young guy helps a lady with a flat tire, then she stops at a café and leaves a huge tip for the pregnant waitress, then in the end it turns out that the guy who changed the flat tire is the waitress' husband. Anyway, the chorus about how "If you really want to pay me back, here's what you do/don't let the chain of love end with you" gets me every time. In this story, it all happened at the Aramingo Diner in the Philadelphia neighborhood of Port Richmond. A couple paid for their own meal, then the meals of another table of diners. Then those diners paid for someone else's meals. And so on in a pay-it-forward way for five solid hours. Random acts of kindness warm my heart this time of year, especially when there's a Clay Walker soundtrack in my head to go with them.