13ABC’s Zack Ottenstein Helps Make Dinner
Posted on 5 August 2007 under Barbecuing, Grilling, Photos
We generally don’t share our times we have with this particular dear friend online here outside of his normal line of work, that of reporting his part of the news on the local ABC affiliate, 13ABC WTVG in Toledo. But after reporter and sometimes anchor Zack Ottenstein said he wanted to learn how to make my signature German-Polish Oven-Roasted Potato Salad (which he’s been known to eat for breakfast in the studio before air-time), we couldn’t pass up the opportunity of showing you this particular side of this popular local reporter. Because of his schedule we don’t see Zack very often, but when we do it’s always a good time, be it at our house for a homemade meal, or at a restaurant for just an hour or two.
You know, when you see someone like this on-the-air, working hard to bring you the news, knowing they work considerably-longer hours than just those few you see on the air, sometimes you wonder what the rest of their lives are like. Getting to know Zack has been a real education in this. Working sometimes seven-days-a-week for longer than just those days (he worked 19 of the past 20 days), and with family 300 miles in one direction and a special gal 200 miles in the other direction, you just wonder how he keeps going outside of that schedule, and still keeps smiling. But that’s part of why we feel blessed to have Zack’s friendship. It’s his great positive energy.
Zack’s not afraid to get his hands dirty in the kitchen, either! Sure, I made him wear those funky food-handler’s gloves when he was mixing the potato salad as I talked him through it. But that’s because of those tiny Punjabi celery seeds I use in the salad. One wrong move, and you end up with one of those danged seeds jammed full-force deep under a fingernail. That hurts! I’d picked up the gloves for another project some months ago, but the gloves also protect well when a seed goes into attack mode. They’re impossible to dig out of there with a pair of tweezers. You really have to get under the nail with the pointy end of a toothpick, just digging and digging till the seed pops out.
As Zack continues to move up in the world of television news reporting, it’s great to watch him delve into other areas off-air as well. Would he also make a good TV chef? I tend to think so. But then again, if you’ve ever seen him play basketball on the same team as that Lee Conklin guy, you’d be thinking, “Hey, he’s pretty darn good at that … I wonder how he’d do on a pro basketball team …”
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5 August 2007 @ 2:43 pm Posted by Mary Liske
He is soooo frick’n cute!
7 August 2007 @ 10:10 am Posted by Mike Ingels
Uh oh, Dave. You gotta keep tabs on that Zack.
7 August 2007 @ 10:14 am Posted by LunaPierCook
Naaaah … he took some leftovers and headed off to his gal’s place, where she promptly requested the recipe for ye ol’ tater salad!