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By JEFF HOUCK

jhouck@tampatrib.com

Published: December 7, 2008

It's been almost 25 years since Sara Moulton started working at Gourmet magazine, testing recipes and styling food for photographs. It was a great break from the years she spent working in restaurants, but after four years, she began to miss the creativity and pace.

So in 1988, the Culinary Institute of America graduate moved over to the magazine's advertising side and took over as executive chef of the 16-seat dining room Gourmet uses to wine-and-dine corporate advertisers. Think of it as a chef's table of sorts.

"We do two hors d'if $Capital { return "Œ" } else { return "œ" }uvres, first course, main course, dessert," Moulton says. "Or we'll do tastings, or sometimes do tapas, or something like that, and then ply these poor, unsuspecting people with tons of alcohol, and then hit them up for the ad pages."

In the early 1990s, Moulton became one of the fledgling Food Network's first stars as host of such shows as "Cooking Live," "Cooking Live Primetime," and "Sara's Secrets."

In addition to being the food editor of ABC's "Good Morning America," and authoring such books as "Sara's Secrets for Weeknight Meals" (Broadway Books, 2005), Moulton launched a new 20-episode television series on PBS, "Sara's Weeknight Meals."

In her free time (insert laughter here) Moulton does live demonstrations across the country. She'll be visiting Tampa on Thursday to do a cooking demo, sign cookbooks and do a VIP meet-and-greet at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino.

Moulton will present "The 12 Recipes of Christmas." Included will be a discussion of holiday vegetables.

"I love all the vegetables at this time of year," she says during a recent interview from New York City. "The Brussels sprouts, the parsnips, the butternut squash."

Why the squash?

"Well, butternut squash you sort of can't mess up," she says. "You'd be a moron."

Another one of her favorites are the tiny pumpkins everyone thinks are decorative.

"They're the best eating winter squash you'll ever have," she says. "I treat those the same way I treat butternut squash. It's perilous to cut those up because they're so hard, so I cut them in half and scoop out the seeds. Then I put them cut-side down on a sheet pan, and I roast them to get the pulp out. That's how I start regardless of what else I'm going to do with it.

"I've never understood why, when someone goes to make soup with butternut squash, they start with peeling it and putting it into cubes," she says. "I don't think so. That is just dangerous."

Tickets for the 8 p.m. demonstration are $35 and are available through Ticketmaster outlets at (813) 287-8844 and/or at the Hard Rock Shop, (813) 627-7625.

FUTURE FOODIES SWELL ART INSTITUTES PIPELINE

I was invited to speak to food and beverage students Tuesday at the Art Institutes of Tampa. I've been a guest speaker there since 2006, when the program had about 50 students and three instructors. Today, there are close to 400 enrolled and a dozen teachers on staff. I frequently run into former students while covering various food events in the area.

The program recently installed another gigantic teaching kitchen at the facility in the Tampa Bay Park business complex on North Himes Avenue. Chef Michael Lynch told me that the school is working with neighboring St. Joseph's Hospital to give students some experience in the facility's new 25,000-square-foot cafeteria, production kitchen and patient services area, which is expected to come on line by the beginning of 2009.

CALLING ALL HAIKU, ALL YOU FRUITCAKE FANS

The deadline for submitting haiku in the third annual Mrs. Harvey's White Fruitcake Haiku contest is fast approaching. All submissions must be received by 5 p.m. Monday.

Competition is stiff again this year. Some examples:

Sweet, candied fruit chunks

Sometimes a cube, sometimes round

Looks like vomit

Laurie Griffith, Clearwater

The perfect end for

The well-traveled fruitcake gift --

Burial at sea

Janet Watson, Wesley Chapel

Foreclosures, bailouts

I prefer nutty fruitcake

To fix our country

Karen Young, Valrico

You can e-mail your haiku, subject line: Fruitcake Haiku, to jhouck@tampatrib .com. Or you can go online to my blog, The Stew, and enter it online.

GIFT DISCOVERY OF THE SEASON

I went out at midnight on Black Friday in search of gifts at the Prime Outlets mall in Ellenton. (Apologies to the 3,000 cars I cut in front of at the exit off I-75. Oops. My bad.)

As a lover of kitschy food gadgets, I was nearly sent to the emergency room with a case of the vapors when I came across a dog-shaped device called Hero The Hot Dog Steamer at Kitchen Collections. For $19.99, it steams six hot dogs at a time.

It also barks when the hot dogs are ready.

If they're all out of Hero, might I suggest a $19.99 football-shaped snack bowl that plays the Fox NFL theme music when you open it? As if anyone of us needs to think about Terry Bradshaw when we carb-load.

To see those and other food gifts, check out my blog at www.tinyurl

.com/thestew.

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