To say things have been busy at Rancho Obi-Wan would be a HUGE understatement. Just three days after we packed and sent off enough cool items for the Rancho Obi-Wan Experience at Star Wars Celebration Europe II (Essen, Germany, July 26-28), restocked the shelves with previously unseen treasures for several months of tours, and cleaned the place, we spent the day taping a TV show with the awesome Joey Fatone, singer/dancer/actor extraordinaire and fellow Star Wars geek.
It began innocently enough just a month ago with a brief message from a mutual friend: “Joey Fatone wants to contact you for a project he’s working on….” Um, that’s intriguing. I had met Joey and his family at Celebration V in Orlando in 2010, and we’ve been trying to get him to visit Rancho Obi-Wan since. But the man works nonstop. Currently, among other gigs, he hosts “My Family Recipe Rocks” on Disney’s Live Well Network. Joey asked me to get in touch with his producer, Jeff Aiello. And then we got the full story.
Disney’s cable television honchos wanted a crossover version of “My Family Recipe Rocks” to air on the young-male skewing Disney XD channel, and sent over a list of Disney’s top brands to choose from. When Joey saw that Star Wars was on the list he told Jeff, “Call Sansweet!” And with wonderful input from Rancho general manager and ace cook Anne Neumann, we devised what will go down in history as the world’s first Star Wars cooking/museum tour show!
We worked for seven hours straight, powered by Joey and Jeff’s enthusiasm and fueled by Anne’s tasty treats based on some of her own recipes and some from the various Star Wars cookbooks—but all saga-themed. We had the best time! There’s a lot more to share about what happened and when the show will air, and we’ll be sharing that information in the coming weeks. We can assure you now, however, that Star Wars is really…yummy!
–Steve Sansweet
See story and photos from Joey Fatone’s visit to Rancho Obi-Wan!