Munchie Musings

Selland's Market Cafe EDH Opens

2012-01-29T11:38:00.000-08:00

As much as I love the Selland Restaurant's Ella and Kitchen, it may surprise some that I've never eaten at Selland's Market Cafe. Yes, I've been in the East Sacramento location on occasion, but I never bought anything and sat down to eat it. My first meal at a Market Cafe ended up being the brand new location in El Dorado Hills, which opens tomorrow, January 30th.

A few years ago I hung out in EDH a lot because my long term boyfriend has a house up there. As often happens when you haven't been somewhere in a while, you notice all the changes. There are new shopping complexes and a new giant Target store. There are also a lot of closures.

I drive up the hill and enter the well known EDH Town Center complex and notice what's still there and what isn't. Past the original Town Center buildings is the newer building in which the new Selland's Market Cafe is located. The building has a French Quarter feel with lamps and wrought iron fencing all around. Selland's has a choice spot - the corner with lots of patio space overlooking the man-made lake and fountain.

In keeping with the architecture, the interior has a bright and cheerful bistro feel. If you love wine, you'll find there are plenty of brands to choose some off to the left of the entrance. I'm sure that this new Selland's will also host the weekly 2 for $25 special which includes entree for two and a bottle of a paired wine.

My sweet tooth and eye are drawn to the pastry cases where there are choices from brownies and cookies to cheesecake and panna cotta.

You will also see the cold case with all the pre-made salads, some of which are packaged ready-to-go. Nearby is the hot case with delicious looking entrees. The market side of the business is seen in the colorful displays of treats and specialty food items throughout the store.

We were given $20 in fake money to dine with as we please. It went quickly. I chose the small servings of my items and came away with the very tender beef brisket, mac n cheese, crab cake, and broccoli salad. My only disappointment was the crab cake. I like mine heated and this one was dense and cold. I think if it had been heated it would have been softer and nicer. (Been told they are supposed to be heated and staff will be reminded. Soft opening learner mistake.) Later I went back and bought a panna cotta for dessert. It was light, smooth, creamy, and not too sweet. Lovely.

Some of the guests brought their children as well. It was well suited. You can bring your family, everyone chooses what they want to eat, and you know you are getting quality food made with the best ingredients.

Randall Selland also made the rounds talking to guests and serving a few from behind the counter. I even caught him in the back prep area apparently tailoring a special salad for someone.

Selland mentioned that he knew he wanted to open another place, it was just a matter of the right location. This El Dorado Hills spot is perfect for their brand. The location is prime, lovely, and a perfect fit. This is one business I know I will be able to find there for years to come.

Sausage Stuffed Jalapenos - Regular and Vegetarian Versions

2012-01-27T07:00:00.000-08:00

My BFF and friends have become addicted to sausage stuffed jalapenos. Seriously, every time I've been over there during the last three months I've eaten some. BFF can easily buy out a jalapeno farmer's crop. I won't complain though. They are damn good.

Normally the sausage stuffed jalapenos are stuffed with a pork sausage. Thank goodness BFF realized some changes needed to be made and so she at least switched to turkey sausage and cut down on some of the cheese. She likes to use smoked gouda versus the parmesan so often called for in the recipes.

I wanted to see if I could make it even healthier and so I made a vegetarian version using tempeh. If you want to go completely paleo, I would mix in a whipped raw egg to hold the tempeh together as you stuff the jalapenos.

When I told BFF that I was making a vegetarian version she tipped up her nose. BFF is a picky eater - no seafood, no mushrooms, no meat other than pork, beef, and chicken. I explained to her that it's the jalapenos and the cheese that are the most important elements, not the sausage. In fact, I don't notice a "meat" difference when I use the tempeh. But she will have none of that.

I'm supplying you with the original version found all over the internet and then my vegetarian version. You can choose which way you wish to go. I do use cheese in my vegetarian version. I also wanted some more flavor since I wasn't using an Italian sausage like BFF does, so I added some vegetables and spices.

If you have ever had the problem of cutting jalapenos and then burning your eye when you touch it due to the jalapeno juice, then be sure to watch the video to see how I avoid it. It also shows you how to keep your jalapenos from being too hot taste-wise.

Regular stuffing:

    1 pound ground pork sausage
    1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
    1 cup shredded Parmesan cheese

Place sausage in a skillet over medium heat, and cook until evenly brown. Be sure to break it up as much as possible. Drain the grease.
In a bowl, mix the sausage, cream cheese, and Parmesan cheese.

Vegetarian stuffing:

1 t olive oil
1 pkg of ground tempeh. I use Smart Grounds.
1/4 c minced onion
1/4 c minced red/green bell peppers (optional)
1/2 t Italian seasoning
1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1 c shredded cheese of choice (I used Monterey Jack)

Place a skillet on medium heat and add olive oil. When it is hot, add the onion and bell pepper and saute until tender. Add tempeh and Italian seasoning. Cook until heated through. Transfer to a mixing bowl and add cheeses. Mix thoroughly.

Stuffing and cooking the jalapenos

Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
Slice the stem end off of the jalapenos. Slice them in half lengthwise and remove seeds and membranes (see video for a great technique).
Take a spoonful of the stuffing mixture and press together in your hands so it will hold together and then press into the half of the jalapeno.
Repeat for all of the jalapeno halves, placing them on a baking sheet, mixture facing up.
Bake in the oven for 20-25 minutes until jalapenos are tender.

Making Kombucha at Home is Easy

2012-01-24T13:35:00.000-08:00

starting another batch w/ starter on the right

About 15 years ago my mom-in-law started drinking this concoction made with this juice from a mushroom. Yuck! Now I've discovered kombucha and when I asked her if it was the same thing, she said, "yes".

First you need to understand that I consider my mom-in-law a hippie. She's actually my ex mom-in-law, but as my ex sis-in-law says, "You divorced my brother, not me." Anyway, Tina is mom-in-law and she really has been sort of out there, hippyish for most people. Is it even OK to call people Hippies in 2012? I guess today you would say she's into a healthy, natural lifestyle. She's successfully battled cancer using alternative medicine along with regular medical techniques. She's a vivacious free spirit who has WAY more energy than I do and she's 20 years older than me! I cannot keep up with this woman.

Years ago she starts making this mushroom tea stuff that is supposed to be really good for you. All I needed to hear was the word "mushroom" because I hate mushrooms. And all I needed to see was this glass jar filled with tea and this nasty looking mushroom floating around in it. I ignored it all as some disgusting hippie experiment.

SCOBY floating in the left tea

Fifteen years later and I'm hearing Kombucha left, right, and everywhere. Curiosity gets me and so I grab a bottle of an elderflower flavored kombucha soda at the Co-op to give it a try. I've recently fallen in love with elderflower and so it was a winner right off the bat. But it also had a curious tang to it. I read the label and it went on about some of the digestive health benefits of kombucha.

I break out my computer and start researching kombucha. First thing I discover is that you can make it at home for pennies and that it is made from a mushroom starter. But as I read on I soon learn that it's not really a mushroom at all, it's just gotten that as a nickname over the years. The real name for it is SCOBY, which stands for Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast. The bacteria and yeast strains live together in a complex, mutually supportive community, supporting and depending on each other. They create a sort of white, slimy pancake that is the live culture starter to create the kombucha tea. The SCOBY can contain up to seven different beneficial bacteria strains and each SCOBY will vary based on factors such as what tea, water, and sugars were used, temperature, time, etc.

Are there health benefits? Like everything these days, there's a lot of claims but no concrete evidence. You may recall my recent post on drinking vinegar shrubs. Like apple cider vinegar, you can consider kombucha to be a centuries old home remedy. The bacteria are supposed to be the kind that are good for your digestive tract. The glucoronic acid in it is supposed to be a liver detoxifier. Let's just say that if there are health benefits, it's a great bonus, but I'm here just for the beverage.

Also similar to the drinking vinegar shrubs I made last month, kombucha is converting the sugar that is used to make it. Where you start with sugar, tea, water, and SCOBY, you end up with a brewed tea where the sugar has been partially or completely consumed by the yeast and bacteria. Basically, if you wait for it to completely brew you will have a sugar-free beverage! How awesome is that? Something that is tasty, good for you, yet sugar-free!

You can even go a step further and take the finished tea and some fruit juice or puree, put it into an airtight bottle, let it ferment some more and Ouila! You have a soda! The fermentation creates carbon dioxide fizz that is sealed into the tea since it can't escape the airtight bottle. So now I've got a fabulous sugar-free soda!

Like I said, SCOBYs are starters, similar to vinegar mothers, sourdough starters, yogurt starters, etc. You have to keep feeding them to keep them alive. You have divide them up to make new batches as well. SCOBYs get passed amongst family and friends just like you pass on a good sourdough starter. If you are in the Sacramento area and would like a starter, I can give you one.

The website that I found had the best information, including a video, is CulturesforHealth.com. I'm not going to give a recipe here because you should go to their site, but if you want to know the basics to understand how easy it is, here you go...

You need to get a SCOBY and tea from someone. You will usually get this is a quart canning jar. You brew some green or black tea, let it cool, remove the tea. Add sugar, a piece of SCOBY, and some of the kombucha tea from the SCOBY starter. Cover it with a breathable lid so air can get in and then wait. That's it! Easy!

graduating to bigger batches

How long you wait is dependent on how you like your kombucha to taste. You can start drinking it after a week, but there will still be a lot of sugar. If you wait for a month, the sugar will be converted, but it will be very strong kombucha. Some people like that vinegary, astringency. I do. Just remember you have to keep some tea and SCOBY to start the next batch.

I'm thinking of buying some reusable swing-top bottles so I can make some sodas. I did make one with blueberry and lavender and it was delicious and fizzy!

As with my discovery of drinking vinegars last month, my discovery of kombucha and kombucha sodas has me excited. Since I don't drink alcohol, these additions are wonderful to add as non-alcoholic beverages that I can drink, but also create on my own.

Going Bald for St. Baldrick's - Or, Star Trek Made Me Do It!

2012-01-19T03:00:00.000-08:00

I am a Classic Trekkie. That is, I prefer the original Star Trek over all the incarnations that followed it. In fact, when I was a preteen, I kept a binder with listings of all the episodes, books, and photonovellas that were out. Yes, I am a geek.

This was back in the late 70's. I was still living overseas and was excited yet disappointed when the first Star Trek movie, Star Trek: The Motion Picture came out on December 7th, 1979. I remember the day exactly because of my birthday, but I was half a world away and would have to wait to finally get to see it.

In that movie the Indian actress/model Persis Khambatta played the bald headed alien, Ilia. She was gorgeous even without hair. Even though the movie stunk for overall quality, it was still a hit and Khambatta's role was unforgettable. It was then that I first had a curiosity over what I might look like bald. Enter the 80s and now we had people like Sinead O'Connor and Grace Jones. Later on you can add Natalie Portman, Demi Moore, and most recently, Britney Spears. Certainly if they could do it, I could too.

I've actually always been able to carry off any haircut I get. I have an oval face shape and a long neck and so I've had bristly short hair to hair just to my shoulders. What I can't seem to pull off is curls and length. My hair is super fine and healthy. It refuses to hold a curl without being cemented in place. It also looks straggly once it starts getting to shoulder length.

I've seen people participate in St. Baldrick's in past years. St. Baldrick's is a charity that raises funds for children's cancer research. Their biggest fundraiser is to have people shave their heads. These events take place all over the world and are quite popular at pubs. I personally have never known a child to be battling cancer, but I know that there are thousands out there. It's dramatic enough to battle cancer, but then there is the added burden of going bald.

Here in Sacramento, de Vere's Irish Pub hosts one of the events. This year they are challenging their new sister pub in Davis as a Battle of the Pubs. By the looks of the bars' pages though, Sacramento is going to win just from the amount of people who have signed up so far - 19 vs. 4.

This year I decided to take the plunge myself and joined the Sacramento team. Sometimes I get one of those bugs in me that just itches. I was asking people if I should do it, worried that I wouldn't be able to raise my goal of $1000. I soon realized that I needed to put my head into it instead of just talking about it. If I didn't do it it would seem like I had woosed out. So I've gone ahead and signed up and this is my fundraising page.

The event takes place on March 12, which works out well for me. As you know, I'm holding the first Sacramento Food Film Festival on March 10. I will need to do a bunch of publicity before it. I'm already scheduled for Channel 10's Sacramento & Co. on February 27th. I'd prefer to have hair for that. March 12 works perfectly. I'll be done with the festival and it will be the tail end of winter.

So please, pay to see me bald. It will, of course, be a future blog post around March 13th with all the before and after pictures. It's a wonderful cause. Again, this is my fundraising page. And thank you!

Nothing Bundt Cakes - New to Sacramento

2012-01-17T07:36:00.000-08:00

In my opinion, bundt cakes and pizzas have something in common. They originated in another country, but Americans have made them all their own. No one does pizza in more variations and better than Americans (yes, Italian style is good in its own right), and no one has created an entire world of bundt cakes like we have. Americans love bundt cakes because they are easy, decorative, and delicious. It's no wonder that a new successful franchise, Nothing Bundt Cakes, has been opening stores nationwide while other businesses are closing.

Giveaway at bottom of post!

I first came across Nothing Bundt Cakes last May when I was at my reunion in Dallas. I was staying with a childhood friend and noticed a gift certificate they had on their counter. Later I came across the actual storefront when I was driving around their suburb. I quickly looked up the website and found that it was offering franchise opportunities. I almost even participated in one of their recruiting conference calls.

Someone else who was busy looking at the Nothing Bundt Cakes opportunity was Cameron Diviak. Diviak and his partner, Greg Leuterio, were in banking and looking for something new to go into. They visited the closest stores to us, in the Bay area and Reno, and then met with the Nothing Bundt Cakes founders at corporate headquarters in Las Vegas. Everything they heard and learned was encouraging and in December they opened their first store in Roseville with hopes to open another in Folsom soon.

The Nothing Bundt Cakes store is located close to REI and the old Home Expo (across from the Galleria Mall). The signage on the building is simple and the Galleria Blvd address could confuse you in finding it. Once inside you find a bright, cheerful store with lots of color. In front of you is the display case with some finished cakes and bundtinis. The rest of the store is filled with gifts and those other items you need but might have forgotten to get - candles, decorations, and cards.

taste testing the bundettes

The menu consists of nine standard flavors. Diviak said the top sellers vary in different regions of the country, but for them they have been (in order) Chocolate Chocolate Chip, Red Velvet, and then Lemon and White Chocolate Raspberry. Some flavors are seasonal. In December they featured Pumpkin and coming in the future will be flavors such as Almond Poppyseed and Lemon Raspberry.

I got to taste the Chocolate Chocolate Chip, Lemon, White Chocolate Raspberry, and Cinnamon Swirl. All were very moist. A staffer asked which one I liked best as she was packing them up for me to take home. I honestly couldn't pick - they were all good. I will say my least favorite was the #1 seller, the Chocolate Chocolate Chip. The reason? Because I make the Killer Kahlua Fudge Cake (also known by some as the Better Than Sex Cake) at home and theirs just can't compare. Diviak says that the Cinnamon is not a big seller until he puts out samples. Once people taste it, they order it. I had to agree that it was a great sleeper flavor. It had just a nice hint, not overpowering, touch of cinnamon.

There are several sizes of cakes to choose from. The littlest are bite-sized bundtinis, then mini-cakes called bundtettes, and then cakes of either 8 or 10 inches. They can also do things like create tiered cakes with the 8 and 10 inch rounds. All of the cakes are topped with a cream cheese frosting. The standard, thick "petals" are easy to pull off if you are a non-frosting person like myself. You can also get it drizzled, light drizzle, or even extra frosting for an additional fee.

I asked about how the cakes were made - did they come pre-mixed? Diviak explained that the dry ingredients come from corporate, but the dairy and eggs are all purchased locally and the cakes are mixed and baked on site. There are no preservatives or additives, just fresh, whole ingredients. He said the founders even went through over a hundred vanillas before finding the organic vanilla that they use now. The cakes are super moist and stay fresh on countertop for a good three days and refrigerated for five. They can also be frozen.

What about vegan or gluten-free? At this time they do not offer either. Both are being looked into by corporate, but, in the case of gluten-free, they need to take into account cross contamination and how to ensure that the cakes would be absolutely safe for people with the severest forms of celiac disease. Diviak even ensures that he explains to peanut allergy customers that although they don't use peanuts, they do use pecans and wants them to be sure they are OK to eat them.

decoration book

I was surprised by how creative they get with the decorating. Although the cakes themselves are the same cake and frosting, the ribbons, flowers, and other trinkets they put on top can create some spectacular arrangements.The back room has a wall dedicated to all colors of ribbons and fake flowers. Whether it is for a birthday, a sports team, or baby shower, they have a decorative cake that will be sure to please.

GIVEAWAY!

I have two gift certificates to give away. The first step is to go to the flavors page and pick your favorite flavor.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Fuzion Eatz Hits the Streetz

2012-01-15T06:30:00.000-08:00

Over the last couple of months we got some new food trucks on the streets of Sacramento. One of them is Fuzion Eatz, which started out in the county last July and hit the City of Sacramento streets around Christmas.

Business partners Jeremy Lopez and Nathan Sawyer see the truck as the road to one or more brick and mortar restaurants. Like many truck owners nationwide, they use the trucks to build brand recognition and customer loyalty before getting into an actual physical location. Sawyer and Lopez decided that they wanted to go with a fusion idea where they could mix flavors and foods together.

It was at SactoMoFo3 that I first tried their food. The truck serves a selection of gyros and a couple of burgers on their standard menu.

That day I had their Cry Baby burger - Five ounces of Ground Angus Beef infused with Pickled Jalapenos, topped with Pepper Jack Cheese, Beer Battered onion Rings, a Japapeno Popper and Cucumber Salsa, served on a toasted Bacon Ranch Terela Roll. I was a bit concerned due to the name of the burger, but it wasn't a big deal. It had a nice kick, but wasn't out of control. If you want to cry, I suggest squirting on some Srirachi sauce. But I really liked it because I could eat it and enjoy it. Be warned though, their burgers are messy!

This was evident when this week I tried the Rosemary's Baby burger with my friend, Jeremy. Now a good handmade burger is not over-manipulated. When you form hamburger patties you are supposed to have a light hand. That's so with the burgers from Fuzion, perhaps a little too light handed. The burgers are messy because they do tend to fall apart.

The Rosemary's Baby burger is Five ounces of Ground Angus Beef infuzed with Rosemary and Feta Cheese, topped with Whiskey Grilled Onions, Tomatoes, Lettuce and a Waffle Fry, served on a Bacon Ranch Telera Roll. You know how your sense of taste and smell are closely connected? Some people have no taste because they've lost their sense of smell. Well they both come into play in a big way with this burger. As I bent over to take my bite, my olfactory senses were overcome by the aroma/taste of the rosemary. You need to like rosemary for this burger. But rest assured, if you are a fan of rosemary you will love this burger! Jeremy's first bite overwhelmed him. He found it overpowering. Yet as he continued to eat it he said that it mellowed out so that by then end he liked it.

This week I got around to trying one of the gyros. This is where you will really see the fusion idea. They are making Greek gyros but using Indian Naan bread and then filling it with the standard sliced lamb, but with varying accoutrements. I had the Pancho Villa -

topped with Cucumber Salsa (Red Onions, Tomatoes, Cilantro & Cucumbers) Pickled Jalapenos and a Guacamole & Lime Tzatziki sauce. Another variation is their Outlaw - topped with Pepper Jack Cheese, Cilantro & Lime Black Beans, Beer Battered Onion Rings and a BBQ & Horseradish Tzatziki sauce.

I liked it, but my only suggestion would be more meat. I ran out of meat before I ran out of bread and lettuce. My favorite part of it was the super fresh, soft naan. It was a great exchange for pita bread.

Lopez says they are working to get a gyro rotisserie loaded onto the truck. I would also love to see them use actual chunks of lamb meat versus the rotisserie versions. Hopefully that will happen as they roll forward into the future.

Fresca Deli

2012-01-11T12:00:00.000-08:00

They say that if life gives you lemons you should make lemonade. And if you have a restaurant whose concept doesn't work, you change concepts. Such is the case with Fresca Deli - formerly the downtown Freshii.

Eric Heffel and Larry Shield opened Freshii at the CalPERS building last April with a lot of enthusiasm and excitement. It was the first Freshii in Sacramento - a franchised operation from Canada that featured customizable salads, wraps, bowl, and soups using the freshest of ingredients. Although I liked the idea myself at first (Freshii review), I must admit that I became tired of it quickly. After all, as not a super healthy eater, the healthy focused menu didn't appeal to me as something where I would go back often enough - just once in a while. There were other things too, but in the end Heffel and Shield decided that Sacramento wasn't the market for Freshii after all and they cut their ties with Freshii in December.

So now what? Time to go it alone and create a new identity and a new menu. Freshii became Fresca Deli and the team began creation of a new menu of sandwiches, salads, and soups with an emphasis on grilled sandwiches while having to work around limited cooking facilities. The location has no hood and so they are limited to cold items or hot items from panini presses or cooked on countertop burners (soups, stews). They will soon be offering some pastas as well. The Yogurtagogo side has always been a hit and so those fantastic yogurts are still there with all the toppings.

Before I continue and lose any former Freshii lovers, it should be noted that they should not abandon the new Fresca Deli altogether. The top sellers in each category of the Freshii menu were kept on, just under new names. If you were a fan of the Warrior Chicken bowl, it's now called the Kickin Chicken bowl. If you had a truly customized item that you always ordered, you can still get that too. Although they weren't able to keep all 72 ingredients in the Freshii lineup, they do have the most popular. So let's say you always ordered a customized wrap with rice, black beans, corn, tomatoes, jalapenos, chicken, and cilantro, you can still order it and it will be made up for you. And if you ordered it on a very frequent basis (my coworker used to go twice a week), then they can file your creation so that when you come in to order they have it at their fingertips.

My favorite new items are the grilled cheeses. First off, I rarely eat cold sandwiches. The only cold sandwich I will run for is a banh mi. Fresca is looking into adding those to the menu soon. :-) But meanwhile, there are a selection of grilled cheeses now made with quality cheeses, including havarti and brie. Nothing beats the ooey gooey deliciousness of melted cheese. Melted cheese belongs right up there in foodie stratosphere with bacon in my opinion. Yes, they sell grilled cheese inside at the competing cafeteria, but they can't compare to quality of the cheese blends used at Fresca.

On another day I went and had the pesto chicken sandwich. This sandwich is filled with tons of quality shredded chicken. You get your money's worth. Originally made with feta cheese, I suggested the havarti would do better for the melt factor and to hold the sandwich together better. They agreed and switched the cheese. That's one thing I will say is that they are willing to hear suggestions and feedback, certainly more so in person than being blasted via social media. But that will be a topic I will discuss in another post soon.

Also coming off the panini presses are the quesadillas. They fill the tortillas with plenty of fillings, fold them into a nice square, and then sear them closed with the panini press. I had the Fiesta which had cheeses, chicken, tomato, corn, jalapenos all in a whole wheat tortilla. It comes with a side of salsa.

In the soup category they have a few that are regulars like the tomato bisque and the pozole. One regular that is zesty and robust was the shrimp and corn chowder. There's a nice tang from some spices that give it a Southwestern flare.

After work it might be nice to stop by for a drink. Fresca carries two beers on tap at all times and sells about a half dozen bottled beers as well. Also in the cold case are some Smirnoff drinks and hard ciders. If you are a wine drinker, they have wine from E.T.C. (a collaboration between Duckhorn & Berringer) available.

Maybe you like theme nights. Over the last year the former Freshii held jazz and karaoke nights. Themes will continue at Fresca. Already they have a good crowd for Thursday Salsa Nights. In the winter they move out all the furniture and in the summer they will continue to use the spacious and attractive patio area. There are also Beer Pong Wednesdays. This later crowd has Fresca trying out some later hours as well. They stay open until 1 a.m. on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays.

Disclaimer: Eric Heffel, co-owner of Fresca Deli and owner of Yogurtagogo, advertises on my site and has become a friend.

Dine Downtown - Tuli Bistro

2012-01-10T06:00:00.000-08:00

When I looked up my last review of Tuli Bistro I wasn't too surprised to find that it was done in 2009. Back then I had been wary because of mixed reviews from friends. I had no issues on my visit and came to the conclusion that it was a top star in the Sacramento dining scene. Since that time I have been back to Tuli a few times, but not in the last year.

Dine Downtown is running from now until January 18th. For those who haven't heard of Dine Downtown before, it's objective is to bring diners out to eat during the slower month of January. The second objective is to entice in new customers who have wanted to try a restaurant but might not have gotten around to it. The participating restaurants provide a prix fixe menu at $30 which covers three courses - generally soup or salad, entree, and dessert. Dine Downtown has been happening every January for at least four or five years because I take full advantage of it every year. I'm so interested that I often try to pin down the exact dates as early as November so I can get my reservations in before everyone else. This year I was happy to be given the chance to do a preview of Tuli Bistro.

I walked in the door to find owner-chef Adam Pechal busy chatting up some patrons at the bar. The hostess greeted me and offered me a table, but I requested the bar. Tuli offers an open kitchen layout and so the bar seats edge the kitchen area so that you can watch the cooking action. This is my preferred seating preference when it is available. It just gives you something to watch while you are eating instead of spying or eavesdropping on everyone else around you. In this case it also worked out great for lighting for the photos.

My guest eagerly agreed with my plan to order everything offered and share. Each Dine Downtown restaurant has the freedom to create their menus. Some may have as many as five entree choices but they must have at least two. Tuli Bistro had two choices per category and so it was easy enough to say, "We'll take one of everything" and then share it. Our only change was the pasta course to have a vegetarian sauce versus the bolognese since my friend did not eat beef or pork.

The first course offered a choice of soup or salad. The salad was a Classic Caesar Salad with Garlic Croutons and a Parmesan Crisp. The lettuce was properly cut to bite size. You know how nice it is not to have to sloppily eat salad because the veggies are too large. I appreciated the Parmesan crisp while my companion got to scoop up my croutons. Both of us commented that the dressing had a great tang to it. In fact, my companion said it was one of the best Caesars she had ever had.

The soup was a Spanish Vegetable Soup with garbanzos, cilantro, and pepitas. I'm not a garbanzo fan so I left some of those behind, but the tomato broth was nicely spiced. I enjoyed the crunch of the pepitas (pumpkin seeds) and, as a fan of cilantro, liked the generous flourish added to the top.

Chef Eric Sarmento w/ housemade pasta

It was after the first course that Adam Pechal stopped by to meet us. I had briefly met him when I judged the Trailfest Chefs Competition last fall. We discussed the competition and his two restaurants. Pechal also operates the relatively new Thir13en at the Sterling Hotel. I am actually going there for Dine Downtown tomorrow, so I was getting to do both of his restaurants. He explained that they use the larger kitchen there to do most of the production cooking and he had had to run over there to get more bread pudding since they had already run out at Tuli.

Pechal says he spends more time at Thir13en these days and leaves the Tuli kitchen to Eric Sarmento. He prefers Tuli, though, for the open kitchen design and the neighborhood, friendly atmosphere. He hopes to get back over to Tuli more in the future after Thir13en is more established.

Our conversation ended as the entrees arrived. I had the Beeler's Fire-roasted Double-cut Rib Chop with Pecan Honey Glaze, which came with roasted vegetables. The chop was very thick and juicy. I asked what else was in the glaze and Sarmento said it was simply the pecans, honey and butter. But he also explained that the chops were brined in apple cider vinegar and spices. That explained it. All that juiciness from the chop mixed with the glaze to create the flavor combination. I had to take half of it home so I could still eat dessert.

The pasta selection is House-made Herb de Provence Pappardelle with Country Bolognese and Ricotta Salata di Testa. What you see above, though, is the vegetarian version of the pasta. Mixed in were mushrooms and Broccoli Romanesco. It might not have had meat, but it was still a beautiful and flavorful dish. I only had a bite before I started my chop, but I could have easily eaten a full plate of that. There was a nice sweetness to the sauce that I really enjoyed.

The first dessert choice was the bread pudding that Pechal had to run and get more of. It was an Apple-Cranberry Bread Pudding with Whiskey Caramel and Salty Caramel Cream. The cranberries added quite a bit of sweet tartness and the ice cream added a creamy accent.

But both of us say - Get the panna cotta! My friend was very tempted to lick the plate and I was thankful for the square ended spoon which made it easier for me to scrape the plate. My only critique is that I would say the dessert is mislabeled. Panna cottas get set with a bit of gelatin and this was more pudding consistency. I would rather say it was closer to a creme brulee without the crispy brulee topping. The panna cotta was topped with sections from blood orange with a bit orange glaze and came with a side almond biscotti. Of the two desserts, this was the clear winner.

As I mentioned at the start, one of the goals of Dine Downtown is to entice new people to come in and introduce them to the restaurant so that they will hopefully return in the future. Mission accomplished. My friend had never been before and looks forward to bringing her husband. We had both looked at the regular menu and found several items that we were interested in having... but that will have to wait for another day. Meanwhile, I get to stop by Thir13en next!

Disclaimer: Our meals were provided free of charge as a preview via the Downtown Sacramento Partnership.

Black Bear Diner

2012-01-04T07:18:00.000-08:00

Considering the poor economy it's always refreshing to hear of a business that is actually expanding and therefore bringing new jobs. Such is the case of Black Bear Diner. I was first introduced to Black Bear Diner about 8 years ago when on a romantic getaway with a boyfriend.

Each area of the country has their chains. The freeway diner/restaurant chain in the Midwest and South is Cracker Barrel. For the west, it's Black Bear Diners. A decade ago there were only about ten in California. Now there are 28. It seems that a bunch of them have come on-line over the last couple of years. Here in Sacramento, we finally got one about a year ago. It's located by the truck stop at I-80 and West El Camino.

This year I used a couple of Groupons to try out the Sacramento location, one for brunch and one for dinner.

Black Bears serve breakfast through dinner and are famous for their fruit cobblers. My first visit was for brunch. If you are a brunch person, you can't go wrong with Black Bear Diners. They serve generous portions so that you won't leave hungry. I chose Eggs Benedict since I hadn't had them in ages. I opted for the country style potatoes versus the hash browns.

The eggs were beautifully poached and sat atop thick Canadian bacon and English muffins. I really enjoyed the potatoes because they didn't skimp on the onions and peppers. They also had nice crunchy bits for where the potatoes were allowed to brown up in the pan. The fresh fruit cup was just the perfect bit of refreshment and cleanse as I ended my meal. I had also ordered a giant biscuit because I tend to judge breakfast places on the quality of their biscuits. Black Bear's is large and soft, but not exceptionally flakey or tender. My search for my perfect biscuit goes on.

I also stopped for lunch at a Black Bear in Grant's Pass when I was heading home for Thanksgiving. So this bit about lunch may or not pertain to all Black Bear Diners or the one in Sacramento. It was a brand spankin' new diner and I stopped and ordered a grilled Reuben. Again, a generous sandwich, but my beef here was the greasiness. It appeared that they grilled the pastrami to get it hot before they added it to the sandwich and grilled it with the bread, cheese, and saurkraut. Although in theory this is a great idea because I want the contents hot as well as the grilled bread, it unfortunately created so much grease!

My most recent meal at the Sacramento Black Bear Diner was on Christmas day. I had driven back from Oregon this time and was happy to be home but wanted to have some sort of Christmas meal. Luckily ours was open until 6 p.m. and I got there at 4. They were serving holiday specials of turkey or prime rib. I opted for the prime rib and asked for medium rare.

No pictures for this meal, but it was a good one. I got a large slice of perfectly cooked prime rib - medium rare just like I asked for. Mashed potatoes and brown gravy with a side of sauteed veggies - the typical zucchini, onion, carrot mix. They had originally had green beans for the specials but had run out. It also came with a sweet cornbread muffin. I'm not a cornbread fan unless it is sweet cornbread. This one was a bit on the crumbly side but a nice one just the same. I was very happy with my meal.

small cobblers/pies can feed 1-2 people

I chose to take dessert home with me since I was so full. The pies and cobblers they sell are about six inches in diameter, so pretty large for one person. They could easily be split with someone else. I had their berry cobbler in the past and it was very good. This time I opted to try a pie and asked for a banana cream to be boxed for me.

Once I was ready for dessert back at home, I pulled out my pie. The crust was thick and a bit hard, making it difficult to break through with a fork. The custard cream was good, but there were barely any bananas. Finally there was the whipped cream topping. I suppose it is typical of any pie shop's that needs them to keep for a while, but I really can't stand the fakey Cool Whip-like toppings that was used. (Same at Nation's, which was another disappointment on a different day.) I think in the future I'll stick to the cobblers at Black Bear Diners instead.

I'm Drinking Shrubs! My Drinking Vinegar Obsession

2012-01-03T07:10:00.000-08:00

No, I'm not drinking woody, low lying plants. I'm drinking cocktail mixers called vinegar shrubs. Here's the alternate definition for you:"any of various acidulated beverages made from the juice of fruit, sugar, and other ingredients, often including alcohol."

Now many of you know that I don't drink alcohol because I'm allergic to it. This really limits what I can drink at bars. I love it when I find a bartender that knows how to make good mocktails. Just as food has gone through a renaissance over the last twenty years, so is mixology now. The cocktail scene is changing, or rather, returning to the past. The trend behind the bar right now is a return to bitters and shrubs. These two bartending staples were used for centuries but have gotten lost over the last fifty years. They are now starting to enjoy a revival.

Bitters: "a liquid, often an alcoholic liquor, in which bitter herbs or roots have steeped, used as a flavoring, especially in mixed drinks, or as a tonic." You can see from the definitions that bitters and vinegar shrubs are closely related, but bitters tend to be alcohol based and vinegar shrubs are not.

How are they used? When it comes to the palate it is often important to balance flavors. Bitters and shrubs come into play as they give an acidic or bitter counterbalance to the sweetness from the sugars in drinks (or foods). A recent New York Times article talks about drinking vinegar cocktails.

So how did my new obsession start? When I was in Portland over Thanksgiving I went to visit Pok Pok on a recommendation from Andrew at EatingRules.com. He mentioned that I had to try the drinking vinegars. I'm always up for something new and so I sat down at the Pok Pok bar to inquire about their drinking vinegars. Pok Pok makes about ten different flavors but they only sell four for home use: apple, honey, tamarind, and pomegranate. I asked for a taste of the pomegranate and the bartender poured a shot into a tall glass and then filled the rest with soda water. The result was a very refreshing beverage with a touch of tartness. I bought a bottle of the vinegar shrub to bring home.

Once I returned to Sacramento I began researching on the internet. Drinking vinegar is nothing new. In fact, it's been a home remedy for centuries. Supposedly vinegar can help with blood glucose and cholesterol levels. Some people swear by drinking vinegar as a weight loss aid, especially apple cider vinegar because the pectin levels help to keep you feeling full, thus reducing appetite. Nevertheless, whether the medical benefits are valid or not (my guess is a lot are or it wouldn't be such a successful and popular home remedy), drinking vinegar is not new.

Now it was a matter of learning how I could make my own vinegar shrubs and save some money. That bottle from Pok Pok was about $18 and therefore equates to about $1 per serving. Also, buying and having it shipped would just get expensive. Luckily the making of your own shrubs is not that complicated. I found a great post on making vinegar shrubs on SeriousEats.com. From there it was experimentation.

The experimentation includes playing with different types of vinegars and different types of fruit. You can use any vinegar: apple cider (most common), raspberry, red wine, balsamic, huckleberry, palm, etc. The same is true with the fruit - limitless possibilities. Apple cider vinegar is the easiest and most popular to use because you can buy it unfiltered so that it still has the "mother" in it. Mother is equivalent to sourdough starter - a collection of bacteria that turns the sugars into alcohol and then vinegar. Mother is used in the wine industry as well. Having some mother in the vinegar is beneficial because it will continue to turn the sugars in your fruit juice to help both develop and mellow out the taste of your shrub.

My most successful vinegar shrub so far has just been using the pomegranate molasses I had in my refrigerator. I mixed about 1/4 cup of unfiltered apple cider vinegar with about one cup of the thick pomegranate molasses. It worked so well because the molasses was already thick and sugary - less work. I took the jar with me to Oregon and I had pomegranate shrub to make sodas all week long.

black currants in sugar

I also followed the Serious Eats article and made a batch of blueberry. It's been sitting at home and so it should be ready to try when I return to California. My dad is giving me bags of his frozen mulberries and black currants, so you know what's going to happen to those. I'm looking forward to adding some basil or lavender to the mix as well. I'll also be playing with balsamic and raspberry vinegar blends.

As a local bar note, Ella served up an autumn cocktail that made using their housemade pumpkin shrub mixed with brandy. I didn't taste it, but my friends enjoyed it.

Here is the link to Serious Eats' recipe that I used to make a cold processed vinegar shrub.

My 2012 To Do List

2012-01-01T02:00:00.000-08:00

As we begin a new year I choose to look forward. After all, 2011 was just an eh year. But I did notice that I hardly cooked at all and I really slacked off on restaurant reviews and so those will be a couple of focuses for 2012.

This will be a changing work in process.

Restaurants on my To Do List:
A lot of these have been around and I just haven't been to them. Others are new.

Grange - new chef
Porch
Thirteen
Ravenous
Ambiance
Green Boheme
Flaming Grill
Shoki Ramen House
Pork Belly Grub Shack
Waterboy - love it, just have never reviewed it

Elsewhere:
Manresa in Los Gatos ($$$$ have to save up for that!)
Incanto in SF

Foods I Want to Make or Use:

Kombucha (making my first batch now)
Mesquite Meal
Rillettes
Angel food cake from scratch, not a box
authentic Red Velvet cake

Mah Jong Table - Family History

2011-12-29T07:30:00.000-08:00

Over Thanksgiving I brought home the antique mah jong table that has always been in my family. It was my mother's and has a bit of history from her family that is interesting enough to share.

The story as I was told...

My mother was an upper class Filipina who grew up in Manila. My grandfather was one of the first Filipino actuaries and I say it was fate that I ended up working in the Actuarial Office at work. Anyway... during World War II the Japanese moved in to occupy the Philippines. As in Europe with the Nazis, the Japanese moved in and took over families' homes and pretty much trampled over the locals. My mother's family was forced out of their home when it was taken over by a Japanese officer. Also similar to the Nazis who stole valuables from the Jews, the Japanese stole as well. When the Americans finally liberated the Philippines and the Japanese fled, the family was able to return to their home. That's where they found this mah jong table which had been stolen from some other family. They didn't know who it was stolen from, and so it's been in the family since. My mother ended up with it. After she died, dad says the uncles actually called to see if they could get it back, but dad told them I had always claimed it for myself some day.

Please watch the video to see how really cool it is.

Eggnog Flan

2011-12-23T03:33:00.000-08:00

As we approach the New Year we end yet another holiday season. For readers of this blog, you probably noticed I didn't have much in the way of holiday postings. Just been in Oregon busy with dad's heart surgery. We brought him home yesterday.

With the new year only a week away it means that eggnog will soon be disappearing from the dairy case at the grocers. Yet there is still time if you need to put together an item for that a party you are going to. This is as simple as can be with only three ingredients. I came across it in the Food Network's magazine and just had to try it. It took about two hours to make, which is longer than regular flan recipes, but the texture is so smooth and light and worth the long bake time.

Eggnog Flan

2/3 cup sugar
4 cups eggnog
5 large eggs

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Stir the sugar and 2 tablespoons water in a medium skillet. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and cook, swirling the pan but not stirring, until deep amber, 5 to 7 minutes. Pour the caramel into a shallow 10-inch-round cake pan, tilting the pan so the caramel evenly coats the bottom.

Bring a kettle of water to a boil. Whisk the eggnog and eggs in a large bowl until smooth, being careful not to beat in too much air. Pour the eggnog mixture over the caramel in the pan, then place in a large roasting pan. Fill the roasting pan with enough boiling water to come halfway up the side of the cake pan.

Loosely cover the roasting pan with foil and bake 1 hour. Remove the foil and continue baking until the custard is set but still quivers, 40 minutes to 1 hour.

Remove the flan from the roasting pan and let cool to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate until cold and set, about 2 hours. To serve, run a thin knife around the edge of the flan, place an inverted flat plate over the pan and flip to unmold.

Finishing & Sea Salts at The Meadow - Salt Tasting

2011-12-22T07:48:00.000-08:00

As an avowed saltaholic, I am still ignorant of all the wonders and kinds of finishing salts available and the proper use of them. As a person interested in food, I had finishing salt on my list of subjects to learn more about. I was aware of the numerous types of finishing salts, but had never ventured much past packaged sea and rock salts. I had been online window shopping for a while and found it coincidental when Blair at the Sacramento Bee wrote on Exploring the wonders of salt , a review of a book I had been looking into - "Salted: A Manifesto on the World's Most Essential Mineral, With Recipes" by Mark Bitterman.

Mark Bitterman is owner of The Meadow , a store in Portland that specializes in finishing salts, chocolates, bitters, and flowers. Last year he opened a second store in New York City. He is truly gifted in how he writes and explains the different salts. For instance, "The salt deposits were capped under a hermetic layer of volcanic ash, protecting them from external contaminants, so you are literally tasting the flavors of the earth’s primordial oceans. Over the millennia, these salt crystals have taken on the translucent colors of cranberry and tangerine gemstones. This finishing salt is suitable for use in a grinder, whole in cooking, or as decoration at the table, or on special dishes. It is very mild, perfectly balanced, and slightly sweet, with a clean finish. Try it on seafood, ceviche, and salads of cucumber, lime, and chilis." How can you not be entranced after reading that?

I spent some vacation days in Portland when I went north for Thanksgiving and decided to check out The Meadow in person.

When I went to college in Portland in the 80s any decent business or restaurant was in the downtown area. Portland has seen a revitalization across the city and I was surprised to see that most of the renowned restaurants are now on the east side of the river in the many eastside neighborhoods. I ventured to Mississippi Avenue, an area that was once known more for its hookers and drug deals. Now there are several nice eateries, shopping centers, and The Meadow.

The Meadow is small and tucked back from the sidewalk. Inside can be a bit cramped if there are a few shoppers at one time. Two wall sections are filled top to bottom with the finishing salts. Another wall has the chocolates while the rear of the store has mostly liqueurs and bitters.

My focus was on the finishing salts and I was helped by Jordan, who was happy to answer any questions. The smallest jars are 1.5 ounces and range from $4 to $9. One of these little jars is labeled as "Sample" so that you can shake out a bit to taste. Jordan explained that the three factors for distinguishing finishing salts were moisture, mineral content, and texture, as in the crystal structure.

The finishing salts are laid out by types.

fleur de sel - sea salts
sel gris - more mineralized sea salts
rock salts
infused salts - infused with herbs or flavors
flake salts
smoked salts

Some of those categories are broken down even further.

Fleur de sel and sel gris are closely related in that they come from the same ponds. Salt miners collect sea salt into large ponds and let the water evaporate to leave the salt behind. The top layer is scraped for the fleur de sel, which is moist, flakey, and pure. The lower levels will retain more mineral content and it is scraped for the sel gris, also moist and flakey, but with more mineral taste. Salt water is different everywhere in the world due to such things as rain amounts, mineral content of the land nearby, and other environmental factors. Therefore, a fleur de sel harvested in Bali will taste very different from one harvested in Wales. Fleur de sels are the most versatile and a must-have for any chef's kitchen.

Mineral salts are also quarried as rock salts from the land. While sea salt will be moist, rock salt is exactly that -rocky. You often use a salt grinder or a grater to crush or granulize the salt. Himalayan salt block is also quarried into large cooking blocks, which we'll get into in a moment.

The smoked salts are just that. Set into a cold smoke environment so that they absorb that smokey flavor. These are particularly good on meats.

Infused salts are most often infused with herbs. But I bought a small jar of lemon salt which I have fallen in love with. It has beautiful pyramid shaped flakes. You can take a single flake of salt, put it on your tongue and it will absolutely explode with salty lemon flavor. This stuff is a must-buy in my book. Fantastic on fish, of course, but also good on salads and sweets.

In most of these salts there can be a variety of texture or crystal structure. "Crystals shaped in flakes, pyramids, granules, chunks, strata, fractalized blocks, contain a complex mix of trace minerals, and may also contain varying degrees of residual moisture."

I can't wait to get around to buying a Himalayan salt block. If you freeze it, you can then serve ice cream, sorbets, or other frozen treats. At room temperature, serve cheeses, fruits, and cold cuts on them. Or you can heat them up on a grill or stove top until they are super hot (handle carefully, of course) and then use them at the table to cook thin cuts of meats or seafood. All of these methods infuse a highlighting hint of salt to enhance the flavor of the food.

a variety of salts I've collected so far-check out the pyramid flake top left

I returned home with a few items, including The Meadow Salt Set - a set containing six of The Meadow's favorite selections:

I invited Suzanne over for a salt tasting in which I cooked some roasted potatoes and grilled a steak without any seasoning. We then sat down with a plate of 10 different finishing salts laid out and tried them all. Suzanne admitted she was not a salter of her foods and knew nothing except for table salt. To her the world of finishing salts and the variations were a revelation. We were amazed as a piece of meat could change from smokey savory to one with sweet undertones when you switched to a different finishing salt. Some finishing salts were not so noticeable for their flavor, but they added their texture to the experience - crunchy for a burst of flavor or melting on your tongue more subtlety.

Last summer I had received a chocolate caramel set with a different finishing salt on top of each piece. It was amazing how the salts changed the flavor of the chocolate caramel. That will be my next fun salt tasting - to make my own batch of caramels and then top them with my new collection.

Bitterman encourages you to decrease the amount of salt in your cooking so that you can, instead, play with finishing salts at the end. I look forward to doing so.

Sacramento Food Film Festival

2011-12-21T06:21:00.000-08:00

The idea? A one-day, first ever, Sacramento Food Film Festival!

Over the last few years there has been a new generation of documentary filmmaking. One subject matter that arises again and again is food! The first documentaries of note were Supersize Me and Food, Inc. They have encouraged other filmmakers to tackle the subject of food from the dirt to the table and all the steps in between.

Some of the films I am interested in bringing to the Festival are:

Dive – “This must-see documentary is an eye-opening look into the ¬billions of pounds of food that is thrown out each year in the U.S.” “The entire point is that this is perfectly good food, dumped by groceries, often before its expiration date. Seifert’s message is that too much food is shamefully going to waste.”

Fresh - Fresh celebrates the farmers, thinkers and business people across America who are re-inventing our food system. Each has witnessed the rapid transformation of our agriculture into an industrial model, and confronted the consequences: food contamination, environmental pollution, depletion of natural resources, and morbid obesity.

Farmaggedon - Farmageddon highlights the urgency of food freedom, encouraging farmers and consumers alike to take action to preserve individuals’ rights to access food of their choice and farmers’ rights to produce these foods safely and free from unreasona-bly burdensome regulations. The film serves to put policymakers and regulators on notice that there is a growing movement of people aware that their freedom to choose the foods they want is in danger, a movement that is taking action with its dollars and its voting power to protect and preserve the dwindling number of family farms that are struggling to survive.

The date is set for March 10, 2012 at The Guild Theater. I am currently working to book a venue and to secure the film rights for the films. If you know a company that would be interested in sponsoring, please contact me right away at sacpchef@gmail.com.

Food is such a big part of Sacramento. So is food education. I hope you are excited as I am about this Festival!

A Visit to Harry & David

2011-12-17T10:32:00.000-08:00

All my life I've driven up and down I-5. First it was family vacations when we would return from Saudi Arabia. We would often enter in Los Angeles and then do family activities as we drove back to Oregon to visit my aunt and cousin. Later I did the drive in the 80s when I would travel from college to Palm Springs for spring break. My years were the years that closed Palm Springs forever for spring breakers. Now I do the drive to visit my dad. He retired in Salem and so it's an 8 hour drive to and from.

So it's pretty amazing that in all that time I never stopped in Medford to go to visit Harry & David. I must admit I've never really bought from Harry & David since it was always a bit on the pricey side for me and I live in the Sacramento valley where we have all the produce I could ever want. My tightwad ways. It was quite by accident that I stumbled on their headquarters this trip. I was stopping in Medford for lunch and drove right by their main store.

Harry & David are brothers that took over their father's farm after his death in 1914. They took their agricultural expertise to expand the business with their famous Royal Riviera pears. The business took a hit, understandably, during the depression. It was some creative and inspired marketing that made the brothers venture into the mail order business. In 1934 they took boxes of their pears to influential businessmen in San Francisco and New York. The pears sold themselves and the mail order business was born. Since then the company has increased their product lines to include all sorts of fruits, chocolates, snacks, and baked goods.

freshly dipped pears

There are factory tours offered several times each weekday. Since I was there on a Wednesday and not in a great hurry, I signed up for the 12:30 tour. The tours cost $5, but then they give you a coupon for $5 off your purchases later. I had already shopped and had used their Foursquare check-in coupon of 10% off.

The crunch time for Harry & David is from about mid September to the beginning of December. The factory is exploding with bustling business. I was mid December and the plant was pretty quiet. The last of the pears were being packaged and some gift baskets were being assembled.

cheesecake!

Here you see the variety of cheesecakes being split apart. They are assembling the variety packs with a quarter of each cheesecake packaged together.

Moose Munch mixer

Their biggest product is the Moose Munch. They have about 20 flavor variations. I like the dark chocolate with macadamia and coconut macaroon. The popcorn they use is of two varieties. I didn't realize that each variety pops differently. One pops in a mushroom shape and the other in a butterfly shape, which they like to hold more caramel.

I finished the tour and soon went on my way with a few purchases. I guess I'll be stopping in Medford more often now that I've discovered the treasure hidden slightly off the freeway.

Smorgie - A Foodie Site

2011-12-15T07:30:00.000-08:00

For those familiar with my site, I've got over 100 restaurant reviews I've done over the last four years. (Use the tab above to see the list.) All of those reviews are linked to Urbanspoon.com as well.

Now I'm on another site as well. Smorgie lets users create lists of restaurants that they recommend. I was invited to set some lists up before the site went live. Each list has a selection of restaurants and any comments or recommendations I might have. For instance, Rick's Dessert Diner is listed but I note that I don't recommend their cakes.

The lists I have created so far are:

Sacramento Sweet Treats

Sacramento, You Won't be Disappointed

Sacto's Best Ethnic

So Many Pizza Styles in Sac

I'm waiting for Rodney, AKA @BurgerJunkies, to create a list of his favorite burger places.

I'm not really sure of the future for Smorgie. After all, I'm left feeling, "I created my lists, so now what?" But I can see that it could be a very useful site for when you are traveling. Since the lists are pretty much going to be made up by locals, you know that these would be some solid recommendations, especially if you friend people you can trust to have the same foodie tastes as yourself.

Another thing I noticed when going through the lists is that you can find them for a certain diet. For instance, here's one someone made for gluten-free places in the Alexandria, Virginia area.

So check the site out. Remember that's new. Help it get better by making your own lists for your areas of expertise - whether it be ethnic, diet, favorite food, etc.

Smorgie.com - Make and Share lists of Yummy

This sponsorship is brought to you by Smorgie.com who I have partnered with for this promotion. I am receiving payment for this post.

Sexy Chai Brownies

2011-12-13T07:30:00.000-08:00

What can be more sexy in food than chocolate and spices? As my chai obsession continues (see Gluten-free Chai Snickerdoodles), I paired the two together in chai brownies.

Normally I always put nuts into my brownies because I like the textural crunch they add. I did not want nuts to detract from tasting the spices in the chai brownies and so I opted for cacao nibs instead. Some may be surprised, but this was the first time I had ever bought and used Scharffen Berger cacao nibs. They added the perfect bit of crunch while letting the spice shine through in these chai brownies.

I took the chai brownies to a holiday party this last Saturday and they were a big hit. I had promised I'd put the recipe up in time for others to make them for this weekend's round of parties.

Sexy Chai Brownies

the spices

9 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped

1 cup of unsalted butter, cut into cubes

1 1/2 cups of sugar

4 eggs

2 teaspoons of vanilla

1/2 teaspoon salt
3-5 teaspoons chai spice (below)
1/2 teaspoon xantham gum if making gluten-free

1 cup of flour or gluten-free flour mix
1/4 cup cacao nibs

Chai Spice

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground cardamom

1 tsp ground cloves

1 tsp ground ginger

3/4 tsp ground black pepper
Make chai spice mix: In a small bowl, combine the cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, ginger, and pepper. You can choose to add some or all of it depending on the strength you want. I added 4 tsps to mine and found it the perfect strength.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease a 9x9 pan and set aside.

Melt together butter and chocolate together in a double boiler over a steaming water. Melt only until just blended together, not to a point that the butter separates.

Remove from heat and mix in the sugar. The mixture will be grainy. Add one egg at a time, whisking each egg into the batter.

Add the chai spice mixture, vanilla, and salt to the batter and mix thoroughly.

Add flour (or GF flour + xantham gum) to batter and mix thoroughly.

Pour batter into pan and spread evenly, smoothing top. Sprinkle cacao nibs across the top. Bake in oven for 25 minutes or until top has a dull finish and a tester comes out smoothly. Cool on a rack.

Gluten-free Chai Snickerdoodles

2011-12-11T07:30:00.000-08:00

I can become fixated, especially when it comes to flavors. I'll fixate on a flavor or flavor combination and then need to see what I can do with it by making numerous items. Lately that obsession has been chai.

I've never been a coffee or tea drinker. The hot drinks I like are hot chocolate and cider. About a year ago, though, I saw a Chai Hot Chocolate up on a menu board and decided to try it out. After all, I was always putting cinnamon and nutmeg in my cocoas anyway. After that discovery I switched to ordering chocolate chai lattes when I was at a coffee bar. Six weeks ago I decided that I needed to cut down on the sugar and so I started to order just chai lattes without the chocolate. That is my current hot drink.

It then occurred to me one day that snickerdoodle cookies are rolled in cinnamon sugar and so it wasn't that much of a leap to think of chai snickerdoodles. I was all proud of myself until I decided to search the internet and found out that other people had already had that thought. Oh well.

I decided to make these chai snickerdoodles for the Great Food Blogger Cookie Swap. Over 600 food bloggers joined this global(?) event. You had to bake three dozen cookies and mail a dozen to three other bloggers. In return you received three dozen cookies as well. As of this writing, I've received two out of three of mine.

When you make these chai snickerdoodles and eat them fresh out of the oven you will think that there's hardly any chai at all. For some reason the cinnamon is very pronounced when the cookies are fresh. But as the chai snickerdoodles cool down and even sit for a day, the chai flavor develops in strength. It's one of those recipes where the flavor develops with age. It wasn't until the next day that I could really pick out the ginger and cardamom flavors.

I should also point out that the first time I made these was with Bob's Red Mill All Purpose Gluten-free Flour. I wanted to see how well the flour performed. The chai snickerdoodles came out nicely puffed with a great set of snickerdoodle cracks on top. The second time I used my own blend, linked in the recipe.

Gluten-free Chai Snickerdoodles

adapted from EatTheLove.com

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground cardamom

1 tsp ground cloves

1 tsp ground ginger

3/4 tsp ground black pepper

2 tsp cream of tartar

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp kosher salt

1 tsp xantham gum

1/2 cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, room temperature

1/2 cup trans-free shortening

1 1/2 cup white sugar

2 large eggs

1 large egg yolk

2 tsp vanilla extract

1/4 cup sugar

1 Tbsp ground cinnamon

3 1/2 cups gluten-free flour

Preheat the oven to 350˚ F

In a small bowl, combine the cinnamon, cardamom, ginger, cloves, cream of tartar, baking soda, salt, pepper, and xantham gum. Set aside.

In a large bowl, beat together the butter, shortening, and sugar on medium speed. Beat until creamed together well.

Add the eggs, one at a time beating after each addition and scraping down the sides with a spatula. Add the egg yolk and beat again. Add the vanilla and beat again.

Pour in the spice mixture from the small bowl and mix well.

Add the flour and beat until smooth.

In a small bowl, mix together the sugar and cinnamon to roll the dough in.

Roll 1 tablespoon amounts of dough into 1” balls into the sugar/cinnamon mixture. Place on the baking sheets about 2” apart.

Bake for 12 minutes of until the tops of the cookies start to crack a little. Try not to over bake them, but don’t underbake them either. You want them them to crack on top, but not to look to dark brown. Let them cool on the pan for 3 minutes and then move them to a rack to cool.

Baking Mud Hens

2011-12-08T07:43:00.000-08:00

the meringue top doesn't show well in the picture

No, mud hens are not birds (in this case). Mud hens are a cookie bar, apparently a Southern treat, that I had never heard of before. I stumbled upon them on the internet and thought they looked interesting and worth a try. They consist of a cookie crust layer, then nuts, marshmallows, and chocolate chips, topped with a brown sugar meringue.

I'm not going to go into a lengthy post today. I'll just tell you a couple of things I would note about the recipe.

First off, they are really sweet. So you may wish to cut down on the sugar, perhaps in the crust layer and the meringue layer.

choc chips, marshmallows, nuts go over the cookie crust layer

meringue is spread on top

The original recipe called for making them in a 9x13 pan, which I did. As you can see from the pictures, they are a bit too thin. I have changed the directions to put them into a 9x9, but it's up to you. Considering the sweetness, you might want them thin. But I think the next time I make them I will do them in the 9x9 which will also mean less chocolate chips and marshmallows due to less surface area.

I will make them again, but with those changes for next time.

Mud Hens
taken from SouthernPlate.com

1/4 Cup shortening
4 Tablespoons butter, at room temperature
1 Cup sugar
1 whole egg
2 eggs, separated
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 cup Chopped Nuts (optional)
1 Cup Mini Marshmallows
1/2 Cup (or a little more) Nestle Semi Sweet Chocolate Chips
1 Cup Packed Brown Sugar (dark or light)

Butter or grease a 9x9 pan.

In a large bowl, cream the shortening, butter, and sugar. Beat in the whole egg and the yolks of the other two eggs.

In a separate bowl, shift he flour, baking powder, and salt together.

Combine the flour mixture with the creamed mixture, blending thoroughly.

Spread the batter into the baking pan, patting with your hands if need be.

Sprinkle chocolate chips, marshmallows, and nuts over the batter.

In large bowl, beat the 2 egg whites until stiff. Fold in brown sugar until well combined.

Bake at 350 for 30-40 minutes, or until lightly browned on top.

Cool completely and then cut into bars.

Voodoo to You Too - Voodoo Doughnuts

2011-12-06T07:30:00.000-08:00

Voodoo is not evil - except for calories.

I went to New Orleans about ten years ago courtesy of The Pampered Chef. I had earned a trip to the conference there and I was so excited to explore the city. One of the stops I made was at the Voodoo Museum.

It turns out that voodoo is not necessarily an evil religion even though it is often times depicted as such in movies. It's just another religion that believes in a supreme being, but also that there is a spirit level between us and God.

For some folk the name is apropo for Voodoo Doughnuts in Portland, OR. I'm guessing that for some people their doughnuts take them into a spiritual world as they savor their round confections.

The last time I had been in Portland for the day it had been Saturday Market day and the line for Voodoo was around the block. I admired from afar, but decided I wasn't interested enough to stand in the line. This time around I went on a Wednesday and found no line. I also found other foodie tourists just like me - taking pictures of the famed shop. The one downtown is the original, of course, but there is a second Portland location and one in Eugene as well.

The store is bright with a lot of pink. I liked the carousels with the displays of doughnuts - different from the typical doughnut store display case. The carousel adds to the cheerful atmosphere of the place as you contemplate what delight(s) you will choose.

I only had $3 on me and so I chose carefully. I got the Old Dirty Bastard and a chocolate coconut cake doughnut. The Old Dirty Bastard was a raised doughnut with chocolate icing, crushed Oreos, and a peanut butter drizzle. I actually saved them for the next day's drive home and they were both great the next day.

Some of the other whimsical treats include the Voodoo Doll. It's a doll shaped raised doughnut decorated as a doll and inside filled with raspberry jelly, with a pretzel stake through its heart. There is also a Maple Blazer Blunt in the shape of a cigar end with red sprinkles for the firey ash end. The Cock-n-Balls looks like you think and has the words "Bite Me" on it.

I, of course, couldn't help but think of our own new Doughbot Donuts and how they are trying to be similar doughnut trailblazers here in Sacramento. After seeing Voodoo, I think Doughbot is doing quite well with their own flavorful creations. It's good to know that you don't have to travel 300+ miles to Portland to get creative doughnuts, but if you are in the City of Roses, do stop by Voodoo.

Bob's Red Mill Tour

2011-12-04T07:57:00.000-08:00

I was stunned when I saw the number of products made by Bob's Red Mill. After all, we usually see no more than 20 on any store's shelves. But I was at the headquarters and at their store where the shelves were lined with every product they made in multiple sizes.

When I went to college in Portland, OR in the 80's, Bob's Red Mill wasn't around, or wasn't big and visible like it is today. Now the large red mill is impossible to miss as you drive down Highway 224 through Milwaukie, OR. Farther down the road is the actual processing plant where all their products are packaged. It's at the plant where I was greeted by Cassidy Stockton, their Social Media Manager. She had kindly offered to take me on a private tour. (Public tours are offered every morning at 10 a.m.)

First mill

We started in a section of the plant that held some historical photos and milling equipment. The business started out as a bit of a hobby. Bob Moore's wife, Charlee, loved to use whole grains in her cooking. Bob started playing around with grinding his own flour for her. Slowly it grew to supplying friends and family until it got to become an actual business. Actually started in Redding, CA, the Bob's Red Mill moved to Oregon in the 80's. Over the years they have grown from grains and flour to include beans, mixes, soups, and more. They are especially known for their line of gluten-free products.

Here you see Bob's very first millstone. Bob's Red Mill uses only traditional French millstones that have been favored by mills for centuries. Apparently the granite at this one quarry in France produces porous granite that is extra hard with lots of edges that can grind down the grain. The channels that are cut into the stone automatically channels the grain so that as it gets finer, it moves down the channel to get ground down finer still until it finally drops through as flour.

Testing lab

As I mentioned, Bob's Red Mill has become particularly well known as the gluten-free market has grown and grown over the years. The company takes it very seriously to make sure there is no possibility of cross contamination. There are separate lines, staff, and labs for all of the gluten-free work. Production staff do not cross between the gluten-free and conventional lines to keep things clear.

Leftover bits of flour are given to local food shelters and banks. The debris flour on the floor is swept up to be used in animal feed.

In a time of economic upheaval in the country, Bob's is one of the few companies that can say they have grown. Cassidy tells me they have seen 20% gains each year. She couldn't supply me with numbers for the gluten-free versus conventional sides of the business, but I suspect the percentage growth is higher in the gluten-free area.

This machine mixes together ingredients for cake or pancake mixes (etc)

Sorghum flour being milled

Inventory ready to be shipped

After my tour was over I headed to the store and was so overwhelmed with all the products that I didn't buy anything. One thing I liked at the store was that they sell huge 25 pound bags of some items, like the flour. Usually we are only exposed to their little one pound bags in the store. They also had bulk bins, which is a wonderful option. I would love to have a Bob's store with all the products and options nearby. For now I'll have to make do with the fact I can go when I visit my dad up north.

I want to thank Bob's Red Mill and Cassidy for their time and generosity. Since it is the holidays I asked Cassidy if I could have some product for our food drive instead of for myself, which she is graciously sending.

Tips for Mobile Food Festivals

2011-12-02T10:05:00.001-08:00

Back in April SactoMoFo was a bit chaotic, being the giant success it was. It was our first mobile food festival and so many people didn't know what to expect. I've been to many mobile food events now and here are my best tips for you.

Go as a team! The biggest tip of all. Not a huge team, but one of about 4-5 people. You should all get into different lines and order enough to share with your group. The reason you only want about four people is that some trucks will limit the amount of food you can order at one time. If you had a team of 10 but were only allowed to order enough food for four, that would be hard to share.

Go early. It's all about lines and so I'd much rather be at the front of the line then at the back of a 2 hour line.

Bring utensils and containers. It makes it easier to share, but I also happen to like to order enough so that I can eat things later or the next day. I can only eat so much and if there are 22 vendors, there is no way I could eat it all while there.

Bring chairs. This is not always allowed, but for events that are on concrete with no place to sit, this is a big one.

Bring small bills. Help the trucks out so that there's not a problem with them having to run to a bank for change to break $20s, etc. It also makes the lines go faster.

The last thing isn't really a tip because it happens naturally at these events - Make friends with those around you. In fact, this is one of the things I love best about food trucks. People socialize while in line and waiting for their food. There's a camaraderie that is so awesome. When was the last time you chatted up all the tables around you at a restaurant? Nope, it's food trucks that create this social atmosphere and that we want more of here in Sacramento.

Have a great time!

Portland Food Pod Visit

2011-11-30T06:00:00.000-08:00

43rd and SE Belmont, PDX

I can never visit Portland without a visit to some food carts. Food carts have become one of the main attractions of the city for visiting foodies. With over 400 carts throughout the city, there is something for everyone, from vegan to carnivore, Thai to Scandanavian, and everything in between.

This visit I wanted to visit a food pod in a residential neighborhood. If you've read my article, Mobile Food Pods Revitalize Neighborhoods, then you know that I had already researched this topic from afar. I had not actually visited any of the pods in a residential area though, only downtown. I agreed to meet my friend, Brett, at the pod at 43rd and SE Belmont.

Brett is the Portland food cart expert. You've probably seen him on Eat St. and other shows about food trucks and carts. His website is foodcartsportland.com and he's probably eaten at every cart in the city. We met up to talk about nationwide cart/truck issues while I checked out a couple of the carts.

Lardo in customized little house

Unfortunately it was a Tuesday in the winter season. More than half of the carts were closed. I walked the lot to check out the fair and this pod had pretty much everything. There was coffee, sushi, Thai, burgers, chicken, vegan, Scandanavian, and more.

Add caption

Property owners are interested in carts because they generate revenue for an otherwise empty lot. They are still paying property taxes on an empty/parking lot whether it's occupied or not. By renting spaces to carts, they now have a revenue generating property instead of a revenue sucking one.

This lot owner now has 14 or so paying tenants at a few hundred dollars a month each. She made her lot even more attractive by providing electric and water hookups, porta potties, picnic tables, and awnings. Another entrepreneur has a business supplying ATM machines to lots such as this. Brett says there are a couple of pods that even supply grease dumps, like are required at restaurants and commissaries.

Being in a residential area, this pod closes at 10 pm each night. It has different traffic patterns than the downtown pods since it is not catering to office worker lunch crowds.

Rick, Lardo's owner

Above you see Lardo in the customized house trailer. Brett ordered a deliciously juicy banh mi sandwich. I ordered the Lardo dirty fries above. Much more than garlic fries, these had herbs, spices, bits of peppers, and pieces of pork belly. They have a nice kick to them and you gotta love pork belly. It was the best fries I've had in ages.

Viking Soul Foods Meatball Lefse Wrap

My other choice for lunch was from the Viking Soul Food airstream trailer. Here they took traditional Lefse, potato griddle cakes, and had a choice of fillings they rolled up in them. I opted for meatballs with Norwegian cheese sauce and sour cabbage. What a great item! There were about six small meatballs in this one little wrap with just the perfect amount of sauce and a bit of cabbage for crunch.

This SE Belmont pod has been open for a year and a half. I asked Rick if he was open year round and he said he was, but during winter it was only a one man operation with him and his partner splitting the shifts. During the summer the business required two people working at a time. Once school starts though, his revenue drops 50% and then down to about 30% in the coldest months of January/February.

I'll probably stop at another pod tomorrow before I head back to Sac. But each time I come to Portland and see the abundance of carts I have to ask myself - why can't Sac have this too? As I said in my other post, these are the places I'd like to see food pods. How about you?

Downtown Plaza where the ice rink sets up in the winter

Oak Park

Del Paso

Natomas around Northgate and West El Camino

People Worldwide Make My Daring Bakers Challenge: Filipino Desserts

2011-11-27T07:30:00.000-08:00


photo: R. Blackwell

It took me almost four years. It took me that long to host the Daring Bakers challenge. This blog will be four years old next month and in the following January I also joined the Daring Bakers. I knew back then what I would use as my challenge for the group and the opportunity finally came.

Let's start with an explanation of what Daring Bakers is. It's an internet group made up mostly of food bloggers, although having a blog is not a requirement. Each month a member hosts the challenge for the month. The idea is that the challenge should teach some baking techniques or introduce us to some baked goods that we might never try otherwise. The challenge is posted on the 1st and for the entire month everyone is busy making it and posting their results on the member forum. On the 27th of each month it goes public and food bloggers all over the world post their results on their blogs. Over the years I've made croissants to danishes to fancy tarts and pastries. Some have been really challenging and other things had been much easier than I would have anticipated.

When I first joined, the host schedule went by seniority according to when you joined the group. Even though the membership was a lot smaller back then, I knew it would be many years before I got to host. But sometime later the scheduling changed and I became aware that I could volunteer to host. This was a year ago and I was told I could have November 2011 if I wanted it. I said yes and spent time over the last year practicing and perfecting which recipes I wanted to put up, even though I had known from the start what recipe it would be. Each recipe needs to be well thought out and documented before posting.

November 1st was posting day. I misunderstood and didn't realize that I was supposed to post the challenge, I thought the group founders would. We in California are at the end of the global spin of timezones. I found out that I was about 18 hours overdue in posting the challenge and people in Australia, Korea, Greece, Spain, etc. were all posting on the member forum - Where is the challenge!! Oops.

My challenge was titled - Filipino Desserts. I always knew I wanted to do Sans Rival and later I decided to add Bibingka as well. The Sans Rival was meant to challenge skills for those newer members who had never made a meringue dacquoise and French buttercream before. The bibingka was to add a cultural challenge for a flavor/dessert that many would never have had. Although the desserts had required elements, they were allowed to modify the flavorings and choice of nuts in the Sans Rival.

I've posted these recipes myself over the years, so I won't here, just click the hyperlinks to get to the recipes. Instead I've decided to share some of the results from the other bloggers worldwide in the collage above. What I especially liked was some of the variations of flavor and styling. Some did a more rustic take by leaving the edges unfrosted and others made individual mini cakes versus a large single cake.

I'm happy to say that the results were great and many people commented on how much they liked the Sans Rival. Many of them were served on Thanksgiving. Hardly anyone tried the bibingka, but that's alright. I posted something that I love, was new to them, and represented the Philippines.

Leftover Turkey Kimchi Fried Rice

2011-11-25T06:30:00.000-08:00

The beauty and the danger of fried rice is that you can use whatever leftovers you have in the kitchen. I say danger because my mom once got food poisoning from eating fried rice when we were in Asia. Lesson learned - only order steamed rice when you are overseas.

This recipe took care of two problems for me. I wanted to try this kimchi fried rice that everyone was talking about and I wanted to use leftover turkey from my Whole Foods Holiday Meal leftovers. I had half a turkey left and just little old me. I also didn't want to suffer the typical leftover turkey fair of repeatedly eating the same meal over and over until it's gone. I wanted something different! (As an aside, my family's traditional leftover turkey meal is turkey tettrazini, which I crockpotted earlier this year.)

In my frig were the two jars of kimchi that I had made about three weeks ago. Here was my chance to actually use the stuff. The result is a very different Korean fried rice with the chili paste as the major flavoring in contrast to the soy sauce Chinese fried rice or the fish sauce Thai fried rice. Because it uses chili paste, it has more bite to it. And because kimchi is cabbage, you take care of the crunchy vegetable component.

Leftover Turkey (or whatever else you got) Kimchi Fried Rice

Note that I add a spread of ingredients so you can go low if you like less of an ingredient or high if you like more.

1 T vegetable oil
3-4 green onions, chopped
1/2 medium onion, chopped
1/2 - 1 cup kimchi, you may need to chop it down to smaller pieces
2-3 cups cooked rice
1 T chili paste
1 T sesame oil
1/2 - 1 cup cooked turkey, chopped
1 egg

In a large skillet over medium heat, heat oil til hot. Add onions and green onions and cook until the onion is transluscent. Add kimchi and rice. Toss everything together to mix well. Add in chili paste and sesame. Mix thoroughly. Add turkey and toss to mix everything together. Let mixture cook a bit so that the bottom layer gets a bit crunchy, about 5 minutes. Toss again. Make a small whole amongst the rice and break in an egg. Cover the pan with a lid and let the steam cook the egg until the white is set, but the yolk is not completely cooked, about 3 minutes. Uncover and serve immediately.

Making Kimchi

2011-11-22T17:20:00.000-08:00

I love food and yet there are still a lot of foods that I'm coming into late into life. Some I've posted about before. Things like squash and figs were items that I didn't grow up with and so I had no experiences to draw from. Some things were just plain stubborness. Like sushi. I only learned to eat it about seven years ago because I had the typical naive aversion to the idea of eating raw fish. Another is jalapeno peppers. I was afraid of them, I guess, until I cut one up in a burrito and realized that it added so much more flavor and heat. That was about 15 years ago. Or even being as silly as to not putting a flavoring into my hot chocolate. Now I can't stand hot chocolate plain, I have to have some sort of additional flavor added to it.

Kimchi was one of those scary foods. After all, it's fermented cabbage with a reputation for being spicy. Don't get me wrong. I love spicy foods. Yet, here I was having a stubborn obstinance to trying this strange looking concoction of hot cabbage.

That's all gone now. I've sampled several versions of kim chi at Korean restaurants that serve relish trays as an appetizer. My favorite application of kimchi - in Drewski's Mustang, a grilled cheese with Korean short rib, kim chi, and a sarachi aioli. Awesome!

After seeing another blog post on how easy it is to make, I've finally made my first batch. Stay tuned later this week for a recipe in which I use the finished product.

Step 2: Weighing down the cabbage to drain

Taken from DavidLebovitz.com

Kimchi
About 3 cups (750ml)

1 large Napa cabbage (2 pounds, 1kg)
2 tablespoons coarse salt (do not use fine table salt)
1/3 cup (80ml) white rice vinegar
3 tablespoons Korean chili pepper paste (gochujang)
1 tablespoon very-finely minced garlic
2 tablespoons coarse Korean chili powder (gokchu garu)
1/2 tablespoon very-finely minced fresh ginger
4 scallions, sliced in 2-inch (5cm) batons, including the green part

1. Remove the tough outer leaves of the cabbage and slice it lengthwise in half. Remove the core.
2. Cut the cabbage into 2-inch (5cm) pieces. Toss the cabbage with the salt in a large bowl, then transfer it to a non-reactive colander. Set a plate on top then weigh it down with something heavy for 24 hours.

3. Mix together the vinegar, chili paste, garlic, chili powder, and ginger in a large, non-reactive bowl. The original recipe says to let this stand overnight as well, but I didn’t.
4. Add the cabbage in handfuls to the marinade, taking small bunches at the time and squeezing them of any excess water before adding them to the marinade. Mix the cabbage with the marinade, adding the scallions as well.
5. Pack into a jar, cover tightly, and let stand at room temperature 48 hours, then chill for 4 days before serving.

Let Whole Foods Cook Your Holiday Meal

2011-11-20T08:00:00.000-08:00

The one and only time I had a grocery store prepared holiday meal was about 15 years ago. My parents rented a cabin in Tahoe for Christmas and so we couldn't be bothered with cooking up things from scratch with limited cooking equipment. We went to XXX grocery and picked up a turkey dinner with all the fixings packed into Styrofoam containers. The mashed potatoes were a gummy puree and the rest of the meal was just an unmemorable.

I appreciate the working relationship I have with the Sacramento Whole Foods stores. Thanks to them, we were able to pull off SactoMoFo last April and now they are helping me get the Sacramento Food Film Festival going for next March. When they offered me a Whole Foods Holiday Meal sampler, I took them up on it and hosted a small dinner party last night to try out the dishes. I had high expectations for Whole Foods and they did not disappoint. Now I know I can, if necessary, reach out to them for a quality holiday meal.

There are a variety of Whole Foods holiday meal selections available.

Some of the options are:

Intimate Goose Holiday Dinner - Pitman Farms, free-range geese

Vegan Holiday Dinner

Health Starts Here™ Holiday Dinner

Latin Feast Holiday Dinner

For my Holiday Meal sampler, I was given a variety of items. Pardon the photos. When you have guests chomping at the bit it's a challenge to take pictures.

The first was an organic, pre-cooked Diestel turkey. Most restaurants in Sacramento these days are serving Diestel turkeys because they are raised locally in El Dorado County and are organic. This one was pre-cooked and frozen. My instructions were to thaw it out and then put it in a 350 degree oven for 60-90 minutes to heat and brown it. I will tell you to go for the 90 minutes. I went for 60 minutes and the center was still cold. But the turkey was juicy and flavorful. I had 5 guests and was worried that the turkey was small. I ended up with half the turkey as leftovers.

The next item was surprisingly my favorite sample. The field roast stuffed en croute is a vegan roast – a rich grain meat seasoned with toasted hazelnuts and rosemary stuffed with a sausage style mixture of field roast, cranberries, apples and crystallized ginger wrapped en croûte with a vegan puff pastry. All of us were wary of a vegan entree, but two of us loved this one the best. It was hearty, full of flavor, and actually had a meaty taste to it. You bake it for half an hour at 425 degrees and the puff pastry gets a nice golden color. If you are hosting a Thanksgiving and have to cater to a couple of vegetarians/vegans, I highly suggest you pick this item up for them.

Another vegan item was the Health Starts Here stuffed acorn squash- roasted acorn squash stuffed with a mixture of lentils, wild rice, garlic, pearl onions, cranberries, pecans, currants, and apricot. This is filled with super healthy ingredients that are power packed with nutrients. I enjoyed this item and actually thought they might have overdid it with the amount of filling.

We also received the broccoli cheddar potato gratin- Yukon Gold potatoes layered with fresh broccoli, cream, onion, herbs, and lots of cheddar cheese. Everyone loves a good gratin, my only complaint was that it was on the dry side.

Most of the table liked the apricot glazed sweet potatoes the best, probably because those were closest to a traditional item that we all know. There were chunks of fresh sweet potatoes, seasoned with fall spices, glazed in orange juice, maple syrup, and apricots.

For dessert we got a traditional pumpkin pie. The one suggestion from my guests was that a can of whipped cream needs to be included. After all, rare is the person who eats pumpkin pie without whipped cream!

Not pictured but also in the Holiday Meal package is a beautiful bouquet of autumn flowers. (These got set aside since a guest brought me a lovely homemade arrangement.) There was also a bottle of wine - Pacific Rim Riesling.

Be sure to also check out the review of the Paleo Whole Foods Holiday Meal put together especially for Cakegrrl.

Check out the Whole Foods holiday meal selections and then you can order your holiday meal.

There are Whole Foods recipes and tips for you as well.

Follow Whole Foods Northern California on Twitter. If you tweet with #WholeForTheHolidays you could win a turkey dinner! There is one winner a week. Good luck!

Hoddeok

2011-11-19T05:49:00.000-08:00

Cleaning up my archives, I found this old post (2008) and decided to repost because I had forgotten about it and need to remake them myself. I love looking at other food blogs and discovering new things. I stumbled across hoddeoks at My Korean Kitchen. Hoddeoks are Korean street food, pancakes with a brown sugar/cinnamon filling. They looked interesting and easy, so I figured I'd give them a try. Tips for next time: more filling, try chocolate shavings.

Ingredients for 6 pancakes

* All purpose white flour - 1¼ cups
* Salt - 1/4 tsp
* Milk - 90 ml (6 tbsp)

Fermented yeast water (mix these well in bowl 1)

* Warm water (40℃) - 45 ml (3 tbsp)
* White sugar - 1/4 tsp
* Dry yeast- 1/4 tsp

Stuffing (mix these well in bowl 2)

* Cinnamon powder - 1/4 tsp
* Crushed walnuts- 2 tbsp (you can use peanuts instead, but I prefer walnuts)
* Dark brown sugar - 90 ml (6 tbsp)

Leave the mix of fermented yeast water in a warm place (30-40 ℃) for 10 minutes. Add the flour, salt, and milk. Mix well. Cover with plastic wrap and place in a warm place for two hours.

Oil your hands and then split the dough into six equal parts. Take one and flatten it into a pancake in your hand. Put a spoonful of filling in the center and then seal the dough around it.

Heat a skillet with a little oil. Place a pancake in and flatten with a spatula.

Brown both sides and serve. Here is a cut one to show you the inside. The brown sugar should be melted in the center. Yum.

Food Truck Catering - What Trucks Consider

2011-11-17T14:17:00.000-08:00

You can forget the cupcake wedding cakes, today's hot thing is to have food truck catering at your wedding.

I get contacted frequently to act as a go-between when people are inquiring about food truck catering for a wedding or charity event. I just give advice on which food trucks are out there, what they specialize in, and help with the exchange of contact information. Often times, though, I hear a bit of disappointment later when it turns out a party couldn't book a food truck.

The problem is that food trucks, like all businesses, have to think in terms of money. They have a lot to consider when planning their schedules. In terms of food truck catering for an event, here are two things they consider that you, the client, might not have.

Days Off - Hey, food trucks need days off too. Most tend to take Sundays and Mondays off. It has to be really worth their while to get them to schedule a booking on one of their days off. Currently the Sacramento trucks have single crews each. That means they are all working long hours, often 12+ hour days, and sometimes even seven days straight. Not fun. I know that Miniburger is trying to get their second truck out on the road, so they will have more flexibility in the future.

Profitability - How many guests at the wedding or charity event versus how much they would make roaming their usual spots that day. If a food truck has a spot or route that they know they are going to be able to make $1500, then they might not be interested in a 100 guest wedding where they will only be making $800.

Then there are the shared events where a food truck is competing for sales with other vendors/trucks. It's the same mentality I had when I sold Pampered Chef and someone would host a Holiday sales party with Avon, Partylite, Cookie Lee, etc all at the same party. Instead of getting 20 sales from a party I would have done solo, I would only get 5 sales because people were splitting their purchases amongst all the vendors. It wasn't worth my time and I eventually stopped doing them.

Same goes for the food trucks. In a perfect world they want you to buy a complete meal from them, not split your money with one item from them and another from someone else. (Note that roundups are different thing altogether.) Therefore, if you plan on having a few vendors at your event, you can be sure the question posed to you will be, "How many people do you expect to attend?" The food trucks usually want about 200 people per vendor.

This is not to say that you won't be able to get a food truck for your 50 person birthday party. It just depends on a number of factors, the above which are only a couple of them. I will say that you should not limit yourself to thinking of only the gourmet, non-taco food trucks. There are lots of quality, authentic taco trucks that should be considered for bookings as well.

If you need assistance with food trucks, please feel free to contact me at @sacfoodtrucks on Twitter or via email.

Black Garlic Brownies? It works!

2011-11-14T07:30:00.000-08:00

My office loves me just for the fact that I constantly bring treats to work. Being single, I bake all these goodies and then need to unload them as soon as I can to prevent me from eating them! (Which I surely would.) In some cases, I will spring an item on them without giving them the info on what's in it until they have given me feedback.

I was thrilled when I got my order of fermented black garlic last week. I first heard about black garlic from Garrett on Vanilla Garlic. Bulbs of garlic are fermented for 40 days and then dried for a week. The result are the beautiful black cloves. Used for centuries in Asia, it's becoming a trendy food ingredient in the West. Eaten by itself, it's amazingly sweet with smokey undertones, which is why it is used in both sweet and savory dishes. It also brings chocolate instantly to mind as a perfect thing to pair it with.

The first dessert recipe I came across featuring black garlic was the post by Irvin from Eatthelove.com. He had made Black Garlic-Dark Chocolate and Vanilla Bean-White Chocolate Marble Brownies. He used the black garlic in the dark chocolate swirls of the dessert. I knew I wanted to try the black garlic with chocolate, so I decided to go with straight chocolate brownies. I noted that Irvin used a whole bulb of his garlic for only half (the dark part) of the overall brownie.

What food do you think black garlic would go well with? Comment below.

I used a recipe from Dorie Greenspan as the base because I wanted it to be rich and chocolatey. I, also, used a whole bulb of the black garlic. The result was a very strong "meaty" aroma-ed brownie. I really liked the result, but the interesting thing was the feedback I got from blind tasters at my office.

The first thing my tasters noticed was the pungent smell. In fact, that's where the term of "meaty" came from. One person even said, "I'm not sure if this is meant as an appetizer or a dessert." Some could identify an oniony smell, but were trying not to follow that thought since they were holding onto a brownie.

First bites were also fun to watch.It seemed to take people a moment for their tastebuds and brains to react. After all, they are expecting chocolate goodness, not this odd additional taste. I asked them to identify what flavors they could get from it and then whether they thought it was too strong and needed to be toned down. A few people did say that the garlic overpowered the chocolate instead of accenting it. They voted for at least halving the amount I put in. The flavor characteristics that were described were: meaty, smokey, oniony, umami, balsamic, and one even guessed the garlic. Only a couple of people said that they didn't care for it at all. Most said that after the initial shock of it not being what they expected, the flavor grew on them and it worked.

So, with that information, you will need to decide how much you are willing to put in your own batch. My personal opinion is that the aroma was so strong and the flavor did completely cover the chocolate flavor, and so the recipe below calls for half a bulb instead of a full bulb.

GF Note: For those unfamiliar with my blog, I do not have any dietary reason that I need to eat gluten-free. I choose to bake gluten-free within my home because I have an interest in all the other types of grains and flours that have been used by cultures for centuries. Why is America so wheat focused?

NOTE: The below recipe can be made either with flour or as gluten-free (which I actually prefer). Please pay attention to the instructions.

Brownies with Black Garlic

adapted recipe from Dorie Greenspan

9 oz bittersweet chocolate, chopped

1 cup of unsalted butter, cut into cubes

1 1/2 cups of sugar

4 eggs

2 teaspoons of vanilla

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 bulb of black garlic, peeled

1 cup of flour or gluten-free flour mix

1/2 teaspoon xantham gum if making gluten-free

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Grease a 9x9 pan and set aside.

Melt together butter and chocolate together in a double boiler over a steaming water. Melt only until just blended together, not to a point that the butter separates.

Remove from heat and mix in the sugar. The mixture will be grainy. Add one egg at a time, whisking each egg into the batter.

In a small bowl, use a fork to mash thoroughly the black garlic into a paste. Add the garlic, vanilla, and salt to the batter and mix thoroughly.

Add flour (or GF flour + xantham gum) to batter and mix thoroughly.

Pour batter into pan and spread evenly, smoothing top. Bake in oven for 25 minutes or until top has a dull finish and a tester comes out smoothly. Cool on a rack.

It's Just Lunch is Just a Waste of Money

2011-11-12T07:30:00.000-08:00

Dating as a woman in my late 40's in Sacramento sucks. And it's not just me. I have a posse of single girlfriends my age that look great, have good jobs, are smart and outgoing, and none of us can get a date with a decent guy in our age range.

I've been divorced now for ten years. I've tried it all - online dating, speed dating, Meetups, etc. In 2005, before the economy tanked, I tried It's Just Lunch (IJL). You may have seen their ads, especially in airline magazines. It's a dating service where they set you up on dates (basically blind dates) for just an hour - over lunch or over drinks.

In 2005 IJL had an office near Arden Fair Mall. I went in for an appointment and signed up for a year for $1200. I was so fed up with the online dating scene and I figured that "you get what you pay for". If a person is willing to pay that much money, they must have a decent job and be serious about finding a long term relationship, right? I was tired of the online players out there just looking for hookups and casual flings.

It worked out great. I was being set up for about a date a week, met some nice men, and finally clicked with one. Joe (not his real name) and I hit it off and put our IJL memberships on hold. Our relationship flourished and eventually our hold time ran out. We didn't care. We were very happy. That relationship lasted on and off for 3.5 years before it finally ran its course.

Over the last few years I tried online dating again. The thing is, my girlfriends and I go off it for months and then get so frustrated with the slim pickings, no dates, and loneliness that we sign up again hoping it's going to be better. But within a week of paying we are again pulling our hair out and cursing ourselves for being suckered into wasting our money again.

I've actually done a reverse search. That means that I pretended to be a man looking for a woman in my age range just so I can see what my competition is. Let me tell you, there are a lot of attractive women out there! Not so the men. It is so depressing to look at the men. So many are out of shape, can't spend ten minutes to write anything, and thus have bleak, uninteresting profiles. UGH!

My thoughts returned to It's Just Lunch, but they no longer had a Sacramento office. I looked on the internet and it said that they still do serve Sacramento. I contacted them to see about signing up again and found out that now they do everything virtually. They cut out the overhead costs of payroll and rent and just handle everything via computer and phone contacts. You send them a picture, talk to them and fill out profiles, and they set up the dates.

The other big change - they more than doubled their price! Now one year is close to $3,000!!! They do offer half year memberships as well.

Let me tell you, the sales pitch was good. They were so enthusiastic. They said there were plenty of members in the Sacramento area that there would be plenty of dates. I had had such a great experience in 2005 that I was all the more willing to give them another try. I opted for the six months. After all, the last time I joined, it only took two months before Joe and I clicked.

And then it all went to crap from there. Once they had my money, service was practically non-existent. Oh, they put all kinds of excuses out there, but it boils down to ABSOLUTELY CRAPPY customer service. Phone calls and emails not returned, no follow-ups. I've never been so disgusted with service levels in my life.

Oh, I've been on three dates with them. And the men themselves are very nice (although we haven't hit it off). But I can tell from my conversations with them that they are experiencing the same frustration with lousy customer service as I am.

They set us up on the dates, but the next day you are supposed to get an email asking how it went, what was good/bad, and what they should focus on for your next match. As of today it is over three weeks since I had my last date and I still haven't received an email or phone call from IJL.

The bottom line is - Do not, under any circumstances, sign up for It's Just Lunch. I say this because I have found an online consumer complaint page with loads of complaints from around the country.

Pastalaya - Jambalaya with Pasta

2011-11-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

Sacramento lacks tailgating. Serious tailgating. With a lack of major sports teams, our attempts at tailgating are few and far between and rather lackluster. Well, OK, maybe I shouldn't base my opinion off one observance at a recent Mountain Lions game, but compared to Pac 10 or NFL games, we stink at them.

I was channel surfing a week ago and came across a food show on tailgating - the serious kind. I guess it was before the big LSU/Alabama game because the tailgaters they were showing were LSU fans. One of the more well known LSU tailgaters was talking about his pastalaya.

Pastalaya? This was something new to me. It doesn't take a genius to figure out it's jambalaya but with pasta instead of rice. Yet I had never heard or even considered it before. I was intrigued.

Being single, one of my problems is that when I tackle something that makes large quantities I have way too many leftovers. That's why I have hardly cooked all summer long and also had stopped the crockpot posts. For the pastalaya I found a solution. BFF's family was at the Raiders game, she was moving back into her newly remodeled master suite and walkin closet, and so I went over to her house to cook. She's always feeding me and here was my chance to cook for her and leave it for the boys' return from the game.

As you can see, she loved it. Her family did too. Myself, I think I still prefer the original thing - jambalaya made with rice.

BFF loved it

Pastalaya adapted from CookingLouisisana.com

2 lbs. pork shoulder or butt chopped in bite sized pieces.

1 lb. Andouille sausage chopped in bite sized pieces.

4 lg. onions chopped

5 stalks celery chopped.

1 bell pepper chopped

4 cloves diced garlic

1 cup green onions

1/4 cup chopped parsley

2 bay leaves

Black & cayenne pepper

Louisiana hot sauce

Salt

2 16 oz. pkgs. fettuccini noodles broken in 4

Put pork pieces in a pot, cover with a water and simmer for one hour. Scoop the pork out, saving the broth, and use two forks to shred the pork. Set aside.

Sear sausage in a little oil well on all sides and remove from pot. Deglaze pot, add onions and cook until golden brown.

Add celery, garlic and bell peppers and continue to cook on med-low fire until reduced by 1/3 (cook them down good). Add a little water every so often so they don't stick or burn if needed. Add garlic and cook a few minutes stirring frequently to slightly roast the garlic.

Add the pork and sausage back into the pot and cover with broth and water. Add remaining ingredients. Bring to a slow boil for about 30 minutes stirring occasionally. Taste and add seasoning as needed. You want it a little salty which will be absorbed by the pasta.

Break the fettuccini noodles in four and add to the pot. Cover with water by a quarter inch. Bring back to a slow boil and stir frequently. Leave the cover off the pot.

As it cooks the water will be absorbed by the pasta and some will steam off.

Continue to cook until a little water is left at the bottom of the pot. Turn off the fire, stir and cover. Let set for 15 minutes before serving.

A Day at Twin Peaks Orchard

2011-11-08T07:30:00.000-08:00

I'm driving a beautiful country road on a gorgeous fall day. It's the Lincoln Newcastle Highway curving through lovely farmland as it makes a slight climb in elevation between Lincoln and Newcastle. I think I've only driven this road once before in my 20+ years in the area. I'm looking for Twin Peaks Orchards and as I round a curve it suddenly pops up in front of me quicker than I would have thought.

I am here to take a tour of the family owned orchards with Camelia Enriquez Miller. I had met Camelia and her mother at the Folsom Whole Foods press dinner where their dried stone fruit was part of the cheese platter and a peach jam was featured on the Diestel turkey. The dried fruit, in particular, was addicting. I had asked if I might come and visit and spent a couple of hours on their beautiful property.

Don't miss the Open House details at the end of this post.

The name Twin Peaks becomes self evident. The orchards straddle the highway with a hill on each side. The views from the top of each peak are spectacular. How lucky to live amongst such natural beauty. The property was originally bought in 1912 by the Japanese Nakae family. It's still family owned, although through marriages over the generations it has changed over to Camelia's father's hands, an Enriquez. Both Nakae and Enriguez families live in five residences on the property with Camelia's own children being the fifth generation.

Camelia greets me and we climb a steep hill to her aunt's house on the north peak. I'm introduced to her aunt, Carol, who is in charge of the commercial kitchen and all of the byproducts made from the fruit. Here she makes jams, jellies, sauces, and the sun-dried fruit. Today she is packaging up the last of the dried fruit which they sell at farmers markets and a little at Whole Foods.

The dried fruit is made from fruit that can't be sold due to blemishes or size. It is sliced and then maybe given a quick dunk in a diluted mixture of water and ascorbic acid (natural) to keep it from discoloring. The fruit is then set out on window screens, placed on racks, covered with netting, and then left in the sun to dry out. The resulting slices are filled with natural sweetness. I was given a small bag to take home and it never made it. In the half hour drive home it quickly disappeared.

Out of the 100 acres, 85 of them are farmed with over 60 different types of trees. The biggest crop is the persimmons, which are being harvested now. It turns out that the Newcastle area grows the majority of the nation's persimmons because many of the farms around the area were/are owned by Japanese who settled the area in the 20s. Twin Peaks grows three varieties: Fuyu, Hyakume,and Hachiya.

Persimmons are something I have almost no knowledge of. In fact, I'd never even seen or heard of them until I moved to Sacramento. Carol gives me an overview of the three. There are two kinds of persimmons - astringent and non-astringent. Astringent varieties need to be allowed to 'cure' to get rid of the harsh, puckering tartness.

Fuyus

The Fuyu, because it is non-astringent, is the only variety that can be eaten raw off the tree, like an apple. It is rounded and gets the lovely orange color.

The Hyakume is the largest crop of the three at Twin Peaks. It is round like a nectarine and gets more of a golden color when ripe. Even though they've grown them for decades, they were usually shipped out of the area until recently. This variety needs to be cured using alcohol. In the past they were thrown into barrels of alcohol to draw out the bitterness. The modern curing method is done in climate controlled rooms where the pallets of persimmons are gassed with an alcohol gas for a few days. I'm told that the home method is to put a drop of vodka at the stem and then seal them in an airtight container for a few days. They remain hard, unlike the Hachiya, so that after curing you can eat it like an apple. The ones you will find at Whole Foods have already been cured.

Hyakume on left, Hachiya on right

The last variety is the Hachiya, the one that is often used in cooking. As an astringent variety, you have to let it ripen to a mushy state. It has a pointed end to it and will also get the loverly orange-red color. Camelia tells me that her son likes to put the mushy fruit into the freezer and then cuts off the end and scoops out the innards like ice cream. Carol says that some people will actually cut the end and then squeeze the contents into their mouths like from a tube of toothpaste.

Hachiyas

It's the Hachiya that is also used to make Hoshigaki, the dried, massaged persimmons that are prized in Japan. "Each persimmon is hand-peeled, strung onto a rack, and massaged every 3 to 5 days for several weeks. Weather conditions are watched carefully. The result is a transformation into a sugary delicacy that is tender and moist with concentrated persimmon flavor." (For a slide show showing the process, go to Otow Orchards, Hoshigaki page.)

Twin Peaks offers two Open House days a year. The first is during the summer at the peak of the stone fruit season. Next year be sure to watch for their announcement of the summer open house as they will be celebrating their 100th anniversary with an extra special day of events.

The second Twin Peaks Open House happens this weekend on Sunday, November 13th from 10am to 3pm. The persimmons will be at their peak and you can watch a demonstration of the making of the massaged Hoshigaki. There wil be demos, workshops, food, wine tasting, hay rides, and more. You can also u-pick your own mandarins.

Twin Peaks Orchards Open House Details

Black Garlic Poke

2011-11-06T10:27:00.000-08:00

It's only about six years ago that I started to eat raw fish. I had one of those aversions like most naive eaters have when it comes to sushi. My conversion took place when I tried some fancy rolls. I still don't care much for just a piece of raw fish on a bit of rice, but I do like rolls that have a bunch of ingredients that add interesting flavors and textures.

Eventually I ventured a little further and tried sea steak specials and finally poke. Poke means slices or cuts. As a menu item, it means raw fish that has been cubed or sliced and tossed with a few ingredients, typically onions, soy sauce, and sesame oil. I am now a poke (and ceviche) convert.

Yesterday I received my order of fermented black garlic, something I've wanted to try after first hearing about black garlic from Garrett on Vanilla Garlic. Bulbs of garlic are fermented for 40 days and then dried for a week. The result are the beautiful black cloves. Used for centuries in Asia, it's becoming a trendy food ingredient in the West. Eaten by itself, it's amazingly sweet with smokey undertones, which is why it is used in both sweet and savory dishes.

For my first play with it as an ingredient, I decided to put it in a poke. The result was an extra dark version with just the slightest taste of mild, sweet garlic. I happen to have a thing for avocado with my poke. I like the creamy contrast of it. But it is not part of the recipe.

Black Garlic Poke

1/5 pound of sushi grade Ahi

4 green onions, chopped

1/4 cup sweet onion, chopped

1 1/2 T soy sauce

2 t sesame oil

1/2 t minced ginger

1 large clove of black garlic

red pepper flakes, to taste

sea salt flakes

sesame seeds, optional

Cut the Ahi into small cubes.

Put the cubed Ahi and chopped onions into a bowl and set aside.

In a small bowl, mix together soy sauce, sesame oil, ginger, and red pepper flakes. Mash the black garlic into the mixture. It is soft enough that it will blend completely into the mix. Pour into the Ahi mixture and toss to coat evenly. To serve, sprinkle a few flakes of sea salt and a bit of sesame seeds as a finisher.

Loving Latisse

2011-11-04T13:59:00.000-07:00

not mine, but similar

When I was 12 or 13 I went on an extended summer trip of the Eastern United States with a group of other 'gifted' children. This was a big deal considering that at the time I still lived in Saudi Arabia. This meant a two-month vacation traveling with our teacher and being away from my family.

Ah, puberty. It was during this trip that we girls started shaving. There probably wasn't too much to shave at that point, but it was a right of passage that began on that trip.

Upon returning home I now had a shaver amongst my bathroom toiletries. One day my father discovered it - how I'm not sure since I had a separate bathroom where my father never ventured. Anyway, my father came to lecture me about not thinking that I had any reason to be shaving. After all, I had most of my mother's Filipina traits in that I really had hardly any body hair. He didn't forbid me or stop me, but I still remember the talk.

The thing is, he was right in some regards. I hardly have any hair on my arms and legs. But as we all know in our American culture, women still shave under their arms and sometimes in the nether regions. My point is, though, that this lack of body hair includes around my eyes. My eyebrows are light and my eyelashes are practically nonexistent.

My eyelashes have been such a nonentity that, except for special occasions, I've never bothered with mascara. It also meant that with no lashes, my eyes had no definition and, without makeup, are hardly noticeable. As far as makeup is concerned, some women can't live without mascara. For me, I couldn't live without eyeliner. That's why I got eyeliner tattooed on my eyes about 12 years ago - to define my eyes.

I had always been intrigued by the commercials for Latisse - the glaucoma drug that had been found to grow eyelashes. Last year I saw it displayed at Physician's Skin & Weight Centers. My girlfriend, who had taken me to my lipo appointment, bought some and, sure enough, she was raving about her results two months later. Having some extra cash to spare over the summer, I decided to get it too.

Now I know you want pictures and I did try taking them. But getting close up enough to see details with eyelashes requires special lenses and better quality picture taking then I am capable of. All I can say is that I finally have lashes that people can see! I am loving Latisse. I do wear mascara now. And just today I was questioned whether they were my real lashes.

My lashes started out sparse, short and thin. The Latisse has made them longer and thicker, but not more of them (unfortunately). Still, I now have lashes I am proud to show off with a couple of coats of emphasizing mascara.

Latisse is not cheap - about $100 for a one-month supply. But the truth is that one-month bottle actually lasts longer than that. They say to use a separate little brush for each eye to avoid contamination, but I just use one brush for both eyes to make the stuff stretch. You apply it every day the first month, then every other day after that. You maximize length, the literature says, at 12 weeks. I now only apply it twice a week.

Latisse is an investment and once you start, it means maintaining and continuing to shell out the $$. But if you've ever dreamed of having longer lashes or been jealous of people who have twice as many and twice as long as you do, then you might want to give it a try. After all, it's certainly one of the simpler cosmetic alterations you can do. And I believe you'll end up loving Latisse too.

Disclaimer: I did not receive any discounts or samples of Latisse.

Taste of Hawaii Tour with Alan Wong

2011-11-02T10:42:00.000-07:00

It's hard to imagine anyone not loving Hawaii. You've got a set of beautiful tropical islands that are part of the United States so that you get all the amenities of home while feeling like you are almost in a different country entirely. My first trip to Hawaii was to Maui with my parents in the 70s. Since then I've been back a few times, but I never had such a wonderful time as my last visit in August. I guess it was the freedom of being by myself so that I had the ability to explore, learn, and know Hawaii in a much more intimate way than ever before.

When I was told that there was going to be a Taste of Hawaii Tour with Chef Alan Wong coming to San Francisco, I had to sign up for one of the events. Alan Wong is one of the most prominent chefs in Hawaii. He was here to introduce his new cookbook, the first in over a decade, called "The Blue Tomato". Along with him was Arnold Hiura, a journalist who is now also known as a Hawaiian food historian. He also has a book out, "Kau Kau: Cuisine and Culture in the Hawaiian Islands", which I bought as well. They were in the Bay Area for a week, their only mainland stop. There was a full week of events, including the Chef's birthday bash. Eileen and I went on Sunday for a talk/dinner event at the Japanese Cultural & Community Center of Northern California.

Arnold Hiura started out talking about the cultural richness that Hawaiian food has developed due to the blending of so many nationalities. There's not much to Hawaiian history. The Polynesians settled the island and lived their lives the same for about a thousand years before the first European ships stumbled across the islands in the 1700s. But after that there was constant change as more and more ethnicities found their ways to the islands. It was similar to what I had learned in August at dinner (see Hawaiian Lunch Wagons post). I had gotten a brief history of Hawaiian plantation life and Hiura only added to the story. He had with him one of the tin lunch carriers and showed how the main section would be packed with rice and then the smaller top section would be filled with the entree (so to speak). At lunch the plantation workers would all sit together in a circle and keep their rice, but the other dishes would be put out in the middle for everyone to pick from with their chopsticks. This encouraged people to bring something good to share without it being too different to turn others off. He also talked about how it then progressed to mixed marriages. A Chinese worker might decide to stay after his contract was finished and end up marrying a local girl. Soon there would be a fusion of cooking.

Next Hiura brought out a can of Spam and one of sardines. He told about how you would have large families with not enough money who would learn to make a can of Spam and pot of rice feed ten people. That's how Hawaiians became the Spam experts. Chef Alan Wong got up quickly to joke that he created Spong - Spam that had been Wong-ed.

Wong then spoke about the change in the Hawaiian culinary scene over the last twenty years. Until the 90s the Hawaiian dining scene catered to mainland tastes and that meant shipping in most of the ingredients from the mainland and other countries. It wasn't until the late 80s/early 90s that the new generation of chefs started to focus on their own culinary history rich with the fusion of all the cultures that had settled on the islands. In fact, Wong was one of the twelve chefs that formed Hawaii Regional Cuisine. This was the start of their own Hawiian locavore movement of focusing on their own island farms, ranchers, and producers. This not only helps Hawaiian businesses, but it reduces the dependence on imports. As Wong noted, if there was a disaster the size of the Japan tsunami or Hurricane Katrina, Hawaiians only have about three weeks worth of food.

Wong then did a quick cooking demonstration. He made a soy milk panna cotta to use as the base to a seafood salad. Here you see a pan sized version and below you see the individual servings we ate in clear cups.

There were three dishes from Wong, the seafood salad, a Hamura Saimin with Kauai Shrimp and Red Onion Butter, and a Thai curried seafood soup.

We were also treated to a buffet from the Hukilau restaurant featuring Ahi Poke, Chinese Chicken Salad, Teriyaki Beef, Kalua Pork, Hukilau Chicken, Yaki Onigiri.

Wong and Hiura signed their books for all and there was a giveaway of dinners at Wong's restaurants. We each got Wong's book free with our event ticket, but ended up buying Hiura's book as well because it was so full of history and stories.

Food Truck Ordinance Update

2011-11-01T14:12:00.000-07:00

I know that many people have been waiting and waiting to know what's next with Sacramento's food truck ordinances.

The last time I updated everyone was probably the end of July. At that time we had had a few roundtable discussions with the City, the restaurant owners, the California Restaurant Association, and, of course, the food trucks.

The food trucks gave a wishlist of some of the things they would like. The list included such things as being allowed to park for the meter limit (if it's a 2 hour meter, they should be able to park there for 2 hours) and being allowed on private property with owner's permission.

Where we left it in July was in the City's hands. They had collected information from everyone and said they were going to start working on some proposed ordinances, it would take a few months, and hopefully they would have something in the fall.

Whatever is proposed has to go to committee first - the Law and Legislation Committee. At first we heard it would be October. Then it got pushed to today, November 1st. I was all set to go today and then found out it was cancelled.

I contacted the City to see if they had a status. Here is what I can tell you.

The new outlook for some proposed ordinances will be in the new year. Basically, we are getting to the holidays and the Council calendar is fast approaching their break period.

The City found out that the Parks Department has been working on some food truck ordinances themselves - to allow vending in the parks. Currently McKinley Park has been on a pilot program - you may have seen the falafel/gyro trailer there. The two, City and Parks, are now going to work together so that they aren't working at cross purposes.

There's a bit more, but nothing that I can share or really is all that interesting anyway. It all boils down to it not happening in 2011 like I, personally, and the food trucks had hoped. But government wheels always move slowly and perhaps I was being overly optimistic to hope that we could get proposed ordinances by year end. Oh well.

What positive thing I can say is what I've always said since April's SactoMoFo - that the City is interested and in a favorable mood toward food trucks and it's just a matter of finding out how much they are willing to change the ordinances. For now, though, it is still a matter of wait and see.

Patience, patience.

Be sure to follow my food truck Twitter account: @SacFoodTrucks for news on what's happening here and around the country.

Urban Chicken Housing - Holland Hen Houses

2011-10-28T12:39:00.000-07:00

I went house hunting recently. Not for myself, but for my future chickens. As of November 1st, urban chickens (three per household, no roosters) are allowed in the City of Sacramento.

I really didn't do much in the way of comparison shopping because once you've seen the best, that's all you can focus on. I had gone to the Eat Real Festival in Oakland last month and came across some hen houses that were attractive and the right size for a handful of fowl. Looking more closely, I could see that these were well-made coops that would last for years.

This is in contrast to my original thought - to have someone (handyman) build one in my backyard. I soon realized that this idea wasn't such a good one. They would probably slap something together without any real experience of what a coop should be. And quality would cost money.

No free products or discounts were given for this article.

That's not to say that Holland Hen Houses are cheap, they're not. The thing is, these are sturdy structures made by someone who not only has his own chickens, but grew up raising them as well. It's the classic tale of "you get what you pay for". Even better for us chicken newbies, Mario Klip shares his knowledge with you as he sets up the houses.

Mario stands with a smaller model, ready to be delivered to a customer (so it is not fully setup).

Mario Klip is originally from Holland, thus the name of his business. He's been in the United States since 2000 when he was transferred to work in the tech sector. In 2009 he wanted to get some chickens in his life again and started to look for houses/coops. He was disillusioned by what he found available and ended up constructing his own. Since then he's developed a thriving business building them for customers around the north Bay area.

The hen houses have become so well received that he's been approached by companies and parties wanting him to greatly expand his operation, even to have them made more cheaply in China. He's not interested. Each house is built by him in a shop he has in Sausalito. He transports and sets up most of them himself unless they are being shipped out of state. That personal touch is another attractive feature, which we'll get into more later.

The houses are only one of Mario's business ventures and yet he still is building about 20 per month. I was with him in Mill Valley at a friend's property where he displays the houses on the front lawn. Mario has about six different models that vary in size and whether they have a run or two.

One of the most important features of any enclosure is the wire caging. Mario explains that he uses 16 gauge wire with 3/4 inch squares. Any larger holes and you have to worry about predators reaching in. Last thing you want is come out in the morning to find that a raccoon has reached in, grabbed a leg, and pulled and pulled until they've ripped off a drumstick dinner. Half inch squares he feels are a little to small for viewing into the cage. The heavy duty 16 gauge wire is four times more expensive than cheap chicken wire. He showed me another old coop made with chicken wire and you could see it thin and rusting. In just a couple of years it would be brittle enough to crack/break open.

Remember that having animals is a serious commitment. Chickens need daily care and should be let out to run around for a while each day. You will need a hen sitter for when you are on vacation.

Most of the house is constructed with pine sanded inside and out. Mario explains that chickens are dusty creatures and sanded wood is more sanitary. Some people will save money by using rough or recycled woods. The problem is that with all those crevices in the unsanded wood, the dust, particles, and filth will collect in the them. The roofs are also wood and covered with roofing paper for insulation and sound. As he explains it, you wouldn't want to try and sleep in a room with a tin roof when the rain is pounding down on it.

"I've had customers who have bought other cheaper hen houses or tried to build their own. They come to me with stories of them falling apart or other issues and they realize they spent more money than if they had just started with one of mine."

Mario shows me a removable roosting box for easy cleaning. The chickens will poop where they roost, so this is easy to remove, dump the waste, and then replace.

The property that the houses are showcased on belongs to his friend, Ken Kirkland, who owns Wooly Egg Ranch. Ken sells chickens and eggs and often supplies chickens for Mario's customers.

Mario explains. "For an extra $50 an hour plus the cost of supplies, I will come and set up the hen house, bring the chickens, the feed, feeders/waterers, the pine shavings and give a quick lesson on everything they need to know. This is a great service for people who are absolute beginners at chicken raising and don't know what to do. I'm at the feed store often enough anyway, so it's no big deal for me to bring everything they need with me so that they are set up right away."

There's an end-of-season sale of his current stock of hen houses because there are no chicks available during the colder months, so business slows down. "Chick nurseries start up in the spring because they ship chicks across the country. If it's too cold, the chicks will freeze and die while waiting on an airport tarmac. People need to remember that it takes a chick six months to mature enough to lay eggs anyway." I tell him that's not a concern for me. My co-worker has too many hens and is happy to give me three that are already laying.

Some important chicken facts I've learned:

Chickens' best laying years are the first two. They need lots of food and water because most of it gets put into that egg they lay each day. Think about how much fluid is in a raw egg. If your chicken is getting fatter and laying less, it's getting past its egg-laying life. Time to consider soup.

They are omnivores, eating bugs, worms, their own eggs. You can feed them kitchen scraps, but it should mostly be vegetable and you still need chicken feed to give them all the nutrients they'll need to put into their eggs.

Holland Hen Houses
415 888 8264
info@hollandhenhouses.com

Daring Bakers: Povitica

2011-10-27T07:28:00.000-07:00

The Daring Baker’s October 2011 challenge was Povitica, hosted by Jenni of The Gingered Whisk. Povitica is a traditional Eastern European Dessert Bread that is as lovely to look at as it is to eat!

Quick reminder that I'm the host for the November challenge, so check the Daring Bakers site and join up before then.

Povitica (pronounced po-va-teet-sa) is traditional Eastern European dessert bread that is traditionally served during the holiday season. It is also known as Nutroll, Potica, Kalachi, Strudia, just to name a few. Family recipes, and the secrets on how to roll the bread so thin, was passed down through generations of families. However, the tradition of baking this type of bread has become somewhat of a dying art form.

This recipe actually reminded me of a Pampered Chef recipe we demoed years ago. Being that it was PC, it included a short cut of using Pillsbury bread dough, rolling it thin, and then spreading a similar topping and rolling it to create the swirls like this one does.

As I finished this recipe I searched frantically for my PC Stoneware Loaf Pan. I have or had one, but couldn't locate it anywhere. It's been ages since I've made a full sized loaf since I prefer the mini loaves I get from the Mini Loaf Pan (being that I'm single). In frustration I just ended up piling my bread roll into a round baker for an ill-shaped loaf and made do. (By the way, I see that both pans are currently on sale.)

The finished product is decorative and tasty and not all that difficult to make - just a bit time consuming. It would be a nice addition to your holiday brunch.

Povitica - 2 loaves

To activate the Yeast:
1 Teaspoon (5 ml/4 ½ gm) Sugar
½ Teaspoon (2½ ml/1½ gm) All-Purpose (Plain) Flour
¼ Cup (60 ml) Warm Water
1 Tablespoon (15 ml/7 gm/¼ oz/1 sachet) Dry Yeast

Dough:
1 Cup (240 ml) Whole Milk
6 Tablespoons (90 ml/85 gm/3 oz) Sugar
1½ Teaspoons (7½ ml/9 gm/1/3 oz) Table Salt
2 Large Eggs
¼ Cup (60 ml/60 gm/½ stick/2 oz) Unsalted Butter, melted
4 cups (960 ml/560 gm/19¾ oz/1¼ lb) All-Purpose Flour, measure first then sift, divided

Filling Ingredients:
3½ Cups (840 ml/560 gm/1¼ lb/20 oz) Ground English Walnuts
½ Cup (120 ml) Whole Milk
½ Cup (120 ml/115 gm/1 stick/4 oz) Unsalted Butter
1 Whole Egg, Beaten
½ teaspoon (2½ ml) Pure Vanilla Extract
1 Cup (240 ml/225 gm/8 oz) Sugar
½ Teaspoon (2½ ml/2 gm) Unsweetened Cocoa Powder
½ Teaspoon (2½ ml/1½ gm) Cinnamon

Topping:
¼ Cup (60 ml) Cold STRONG Coffee
1 Tablespoon (15 ml/14 gm/½ oz) Granulated Sugar
Melted Butter

Activate Yeast:
1. In a small bowl, stir 2 teaspoons sugar, 1 teaspoon flour, and the yeast into ½ cup warm water and cover with plastic wrap.
2. Allow to stand for 5 minutes

Make the Dough:
3. In a medium saucepan, heat the milk up to just below boiling (about 180°F/82°C), stirring constantly so that a film does not form on the top of the milk. You want it hot enough to scald you, but not boiling. Allow to cool slightly, until it is about 110°F/43°C.
4. In a large bowl, mix the scalded milk, sugar, and the salt until combined.
5. Add the beaten eggs, yeast mixture, melted butter, and 1 cup of flour.
6. Blend thoroughly and slowly add remaining flour, mixing well until the dough starts to clean the bowl.
7. Turn dough out onto floured surface and knead, gradually adding flour a little at a time, until smooth and does not stick. You may not need all the flour.
8. Divide the dough into 2 equal pieces.
9. Place dough in 2 lightly oiled bowls, cover loosely with a layer of plastic wrap and then a kitchen towel and let rise an hour and a half in a warm place, until doubled in size.

Make the Filling
10. In a large bowl mix together the ground walnuts, sugar, cinnamon and cocoa.
11. Heat the milk and butter to boiling.
12. Pour the liquid over the nut/sugar mixture.
13. Add the egg and vanilla and mix thoroughly.
14. Allow to stand at room temperature until ready to be spread on the dough.
15. If the mixture thickens, add a small amount of warm milk.

Roll and Assemble the Dough:
16. Spread a clean sheet or cloth over your entire table so that it is covered.
17. Sprinkle with a couple of tablespoons to a handful of flour (use flour sparingly)
18. Place the dough on the sheet and roll the dough out with a rolling pin, starting in the middle and working your way out, until it measures roughly 10-12 inches (25½ cm by 30½ cm) in diameter.
19. Spoon 1/2 t of melted butter on top.
20. Using the tops of your hands, stretch dough out from the center until the dough is thin and uniformly opaque. You can also use your rolling pin, if you prefer.
21. As you work, continually pick up the dough from the table, not only to help in stretching it out, but also to make sure that it isn’t sticking.
22. When you think it the dough is thin enough, try to get it a little thinner. It should be so thin that you can see the color and perhaps the pattern of the sheet underneath.
23. Spoon filling evenly over dough until covered.
24. Lift the edge of the cloth and gently roll the dough like a jelly roll.
25. Once the dough is rolled up into a rope, gently lift it up and place it into a greased loaf pan in the shape of a “U”, with the ends meeting in the middle. You want to coil the dough around itself, as this will give the dough its characteristic look when sliced.
26. Repeat with remaining three loaves, coiling each rope of dough in its own loaf pan.
27. Brush the top of each loaf with a mixture of cold STRONG coffee and sugar. If you prefer, you can also use egg whites in place of this.
28. Cover pans lightly will plastic wrap and allow to rest for approximately 15 minutes.
29. Preheat oven to moderate 350°F/180°C/gas mark 4.
30. Remove plastic wrap from dough and place into the preheated oven and bake for approximately 15 minutes.
31. Turn down the oven temperature to slow 300°F/150°C/gas mark 2 and bake for an additional 45 minutes, or until done.
32. Remove bread from oven and brush with melted butter.
33. Check the bread at 30 minutes to ensure that the bread is not getting too brown. You may cover the loaves with a sheet of aluminum foil if you need to.
34. Remove from the oven and allow to cool on a wire rack for 20-30 minutes, still in the bread pan. Remember, the bread weighs about 2.5 and it needs to be able to hold its own weight, which is difficult when still warm and fresh out of the oven. Allowing it to cool in the pan helps the loaf to hold its shape.
35. It is recommended that the best way to cut Povitica loaves into slices is by turning the loaf upside down and slicing with a serrated knife.

Cranberry Almond Cake - Gluten-free

2011-10-23T14:52:00.000-07:00

GF Note: For those unfamiliar with my blog, I do not have any dietary reason that I need to eat gluten-free. I choose to bake gluten-free within my home because I have an interest in all the other types of grains and flours that have been used by cultures for centuries. Why is America so wheat focused? I figure I can get gluten filled products everywhere else outside my home.

Cranberries are something that I didn't really grow up with. Being in the Middle East as a child, we only had the standard canned cranberries and jellies for the holidays. Since it was relegated to holidays only, I had no reason to understand the attractiveness of the sweet tartness of cranberries and how they could add anything to savory dishes and never really came across them in desserts. Since then I've learned to appreciate how cranberries or raisins can add that special little sweet bite to a savory dish.

My sweet tooth, though, always turns to baking. Last year I bought a bag of fresh cranberries determined to do something with them. Thrown into the freezer, here it is a year later and I've finally gotten around to it.

It's also been a good long while since I baked anything gluten-free. I still stand by my above statement, but it's also so easy to be drawn back to the dark side of using wheat. LOL. Not that wheat is bad, but there are so many grains out there with so much to offer.

Last month I made a new blogging friend of Irvin at Eat the Love. In him I found a bit of a kindred spirit in that he loves to make desserts, but he also does a lot of them gluten-free. So for you gluten-free folk, be sure to check out his blog. He had the same sort of philosophy as me, although stated a bit differently. He realizes that other grains add so much more in terms of flavor and texture that sometimes it pays to go the gluten-free route on an item to really up the overall impact of the finished product.

That's the view I took with this recipe. I wanted a cake with cranberries, but I thought that almond flour would be much more interesting than wheat. When I added just almond flour, it still didn't have the almond flavor I wanted, only the texture. So I added a bit of almond extract as well. Hence a cranberry almond cake.

Unfortunately, I goofed and lost track of time with the baking. Although overcooked, it still came out moist and keeps well.

It did need a bit of decor, hence the homemade doily/snowflake of parchment paper.

Cranberry Almond Cake - gluten-free

1 cup almond flour
1/2 cup gluten-free flour mix
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch of salt
1 cup packed light brown sugar
2 large free-range organic eggs
3/4 cup buttermilk

1/4 teaspoon almond extract
2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
Lemon zest (fine grated peel) from 1 fresh lemon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 1/2 cups of fresh or frozen cranberries

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Line the bottom of a 9-inch Springform or cake pan with buttered parchment paper.

In a bowl whisk together the almond flour, gluten-free flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and sugar.

Beat the eggs in separate large mixing bowl until they are light and foamy. Beat in the butermilk.

Add in the lemon juice, lemon zest and vanilla and almond extracts; beat to combine.

Add in the flour mixture a bit at a time and hand mix til thoroughly incorporated. Add cranberries and mix them in.

Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan. Bake in the center of a pre-heated 350 degree F. oven for about 40 minutes or until a wooden toothpick inserted into the center of the cake emerges clean.

In Anticipation of Folsom Whole Foods Opening

2011-10-21T10:14:00.000-07:00

The east side of Sacramento County must be antsy with anticipation for the new Whole Foods (WF) opening on October 26th. Located on East Bidwell at the new Palladio mall and close to Highway 50, this location is set to be the granddaddy of them all. The largest one in our region, it will boast 45,000 square feet filled with items. But more importantly, over 200 local suppliers from the surrounding Sacramento, Placer, El Dorado, Yolo, and Amador counties will benefit.

The grand opening is Wednesday, October 26th at 10 a.m. The first 250 customers get reuseable bags filled with products.

But tomorrow, Saturday, October 22nd, there is a special Folsom Street Market pre-opening event. Folsom residents are invited to celebrate the opening. This event will be held in the parking lot and feature over 60 local vendors sampling their yummy products, community partners, live music, sneak peek store tours, beer and cider tasting (which will require a small donation to a charity), hay maze and pumpkin patch for the kids and a variety of DIY food workshops.

Ciara shows us the store

I was invited to attend a special, private event at the new store last night. We were given a tour and here are some of the things that make this store worth visiting.

If you are a home beer brewer, then you will love the new brewing station at the back left corner of the store (or head straight back from the main entrance). It has all the supplies and ingredients you need to brew beer, including hops, yeast, etc.

We turned to the meat and seafood section and even though the rest of the store is void of any perishables, I spot sides of beef sitting in the aging case. Some of the meat is locally sourced from Panorama Meats, which we will eat later for dinner. These are small, family-owned ranches that raise grass-fed, humanely treated animals that are supplied to the nearby Whole Foods. The Colorado ranches supply to the Denver stores, the Washington ones to the Washington stores. Ours is coming from the Dixon area.

Whole Foods has a 5 Step Animal Welfare Rating that includes: No cages/crates/crowding; Enriched environment; Enhanced outdoor access; Pasture centered; Animal Centered: no physical alterations and life spent all on one farm. When you look in the meat case you will be able to see the meat labeled with the rating level and choose according to your comfort level.

In the aisles you may see some colored labels on items. The orange indicates an Everyday Deal (special price). Here in green you see the gluten-free items marked. This store mixes GF items throughout the store instead of having a designated aisle. These days this makes sense since so many products are naturally GF anyway and there are hundreds of new items also entering the marketplace.

Did you know you can go on food tours according to your dietary needs? There are tours tailored to such things as gluten-free or diabetic diets as well as tours geared toward your budget or for parents wanting new ideas on feeding their children.

The largest bulk bin section of any Whole Foods in northern California, this one encourages shoppers to use their own reuseable containers. I've heard of this concept in the national news and am glad to see a place offering it here. You can bring your own containers from home and refill them instead of generating more landfill waste by using plastic bags (although they are still there if you need them). To do so, stop at the Customer Service desk to have your empty container weighed so they can zero it out. Here you see the section and I find chia seeds sold in bulk - hurrah! There is also an aisle designated for single source, local items. For instance, you may find and grind coffee from El Dorado Roasting or get locally grown rice in this aisle.

The cheesemongers cut whole wheels of cheese at the store. You can read about my witnessing the cutting of a parmesan wheel at the Arden store. And as you loop down the right hand side of the store you are in the area with the salad, soup, and hot foods bar, the pizza counter, and the sandwich and burrito counters. This ready-to-eat area is where you find all that stuff that is made-to-order or already set out as grab-n-go.

I was surprised to learn that neither Folsom or Roseville have classrooms, leaving that distinction to the Arden location. Instead, Folsom will have a Cooking at Home Specialist, located in the bulk foods section. She will give classes in that area of the store as well as provide guidance to shoppers who have questions about ingredients or need recipe suggestions.

For those with electric vehicles, there are two charging station parking spots in prime location - a perk for your green choice of transportation.

Finally is the Bier Garden, which will serve eight beers on tap that will rotate weekly and always feature local breweries including: Sudwerks, Knee Deep, Lockdown, Sierra Nevada and Lagunitas. A craft beer selection features Jolly Pumpkin, Dogfish Head, Mikkeller and many other imported specialties brews. The Bier Garden will also feature music and tasting events.

The Bier Garden serving counter

It's in the Bier Garden where we enjoyed our Farm to Table Dinner. Every course featured locally sourced food.

Sierra Nevada Cheese Company, assorted cheeses, Twin Peaks dried fruit, Creminelli Coppa and Mocetta

Field Greens, Salle Orchard Pear Vinaigrette, with goat cheese rolled in Fiddyment farm pistachios, served with crostini

Beef 2 Ways – Pumpkin and apple Beef Braised short ribs and porcini dusted grilled New York steak from Panorama Meats; Twin Peaks glazed Diestel turkey breast with fresh herbs and roasted apples;
Rancho Gordo beans, with winter squash and Swiss Chard

Salle Orchard Apple Tart Tartin with Crème Fresh, Chiffon Cake with a Marshmallow Cream and Chocolate Ganache from Sugar Lillie Bakery

Here is a calendar of events for the next couple of months.

Note: All events are free to the public unless otherwise noted.

Oct. 22-“Folsom Street Market,” Saturday, Oct. 22 from 11 a.m. – 3 p.m. Folsom residents are invited to celebrate the opening at the store’s “Folsom Street Market.” This event will be held in the parking lot and feature over 60 local vendors sampling their yummy products, community partners, live music, sneak peek store tours, beer and cider tasting (which will require a small donation to a charity), hay maze and pumpkin patch for the kids and a variety of DIY food workshops.

Oct. 26th-Grand Opening & Bread Breaking Ceremonies -9:45 a.m. -Join us on October 26th at 9:45 a.m. to celebrate our Grand Opening and Bread Breaking Ceremonies. Be one of the first 250 customers in the store and receive a FREE reusable shopping bag filled with a variety of our 365 items.

Oct 28-30th - Meet the Ranchers BBQ 11a.m. – 3 p.m. Enjoy some delicious BBQ and meet your local ranchers. Featured Ranchers will be Panorama Organic 100% Grass Fed Beef, Field to Family Chicken, Pozzi Lamb and Wellshire Farms.

Nov. 1st - Meet our Cooking Specialist- Cindy Soltesz 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. and 4 -5:30 p.m.
Nov. 3rd- Shop on a budget Holiday Tour 11 a.m. - Join Ciara our Marketing Team Leader as she gives a tour of the store while touching on unique ways to save during the holidays

Nov.4th - Head Water Brewery New Beer Release 6-8 p.m. - Meet the Head Brewer and be one of the first to sip on a brand new release! $5 tasting fee.

Nov 5th - Holiday Cheese and Wine Tasting 6-8 p.m. - Join our Specialist and let them assist you in selecting the best cheese and wine parings for your holiday gatherings.

Nov 7th- Tasty and Simple bulk recipes with Cindy 11:30 a.m. - 1:30pm and 4-5:30 p.m. - Join Cindy our Cooking at Home Specialist in the bulk department as she shares helpful tips on how to cook tasty and simple recipes using bulk products.

Nov 10th - Winter Brew Tasting- 6-8 p.m. - Meet John our Beer Specialist, and enjoy sampling a variety of our winter brews. $5 tasting fee.

Nov 11th.- Moylan’s Brewery 6-8 p.m. -Take some time to mingle with the Head Brewer as you sample out some refreshing seasonal brews. $5 tasting fee.

Nov 12-13 - Vita Mix Roadshow 10 a.m. – 8 p.m. - Whole Foods Market Folsom will be offering live demonstrations and delicious free samples while featuring the Vitamix 5200 series.

Nov 15th - Back to Basics Cooking with Cindy 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m. and 4-5:30 p.m. - Get back to basics with Cindy our Cooking at Home Specialist and re-discover the basics of everyday cooking.

Thai-style Spaghetti Squash Salad

2011-10-18T07:52:00.000-07:00

I believe that it is truly difficult to find a bad Thai restaurant. It might be mediocre, but to find one you would actually rate as bad (food-wise) is hard. There are so many flavors layered and blended in Thai food that they generally will mask over other flaws. Even a drive-thru Thai place works for me when I'm in a hurry or low on funds. Luckily I've learned a few Thai dishes so that I can quickly throw a Thai curry together or a Thai salad.

Earlier this year I had my dinner group challenge and this year's theme had been to draw a famous chef from a hat. I drew local star, Mai Pham. In one of her cookbooks she had a recipe that they use at nearby Lemon Grass, a kind of fake green papaya salad - a spaghetti squash salad.

Green papaya can often be hard to find even in our town that has plenty of Asian groceries. It can also be pricey. Mai Pham's chefs discovered that they could cheat by using spaghetti squash instead.

shredding the squash into ice water

I lost that recipe (I had borrowed the cookbook). The thing about some Thai dishes is that once you learn the basic flavor combos, you can often whip something close up. That's what this recipe is - my attempt to recreate the Mai Pham spaghetti squash salad recipe.

Note: This is a recipe that should be adapted to taste. For instance, we all like different amounts of heat, so you might want more or less chilis. Same with onions, etc. I also sometimes find I need more dressing, so you might need to increase the fish sauce, lime juice, sugar like I often do.

Thai-style Spaghetti Squash Salad

1 small-medium spaghetti squash

1/2 medium red onion, thinly sliced

3 garlic cloves, minced

1 small tomato, seeded, chopped

3-4 fresh red chilis, seeded and chopped

1/3 c fish sauce

juice from 2 limes or 2 T lime juice

1.5 T cane sugar (table sugar is OK)

1/2 pound of cooked and peeled shrimp (optional)
1/4 c torn Thai basil leaves

To cook the spaghetti squash, cut it in half and scoop out seeds. Place in a pot of boiling water and cook for 20 minutes. Drain the hot water and replace with cold water to stop it cooking and cool it down for handling. In a separate bowl, fill with cold water. Take the squash and with a fork, scrape the strands into the cold water bowl. Place shredded squash in water in the refrigerator to chill for an hour. The coldness makes the strands crunchier.

Remove the squash from the frig and drain the water. Take the wet strands and spin them in a salad spinner to remove as much water as possible. You can also put them in a colander and let drain for at least half an hour. You may wish to put it back in frig to keep the chill.

Mix together remaining ingredients except basil. Toss with spaghetti squash strands. Garnish with basil leaves.

You can either serve immediately or let it all marinate for a while (my preference).

Tangy Chicken Wings

2011-10-16T06:02:00.000-07:00

The final home game of the Sacramento Mountain Lions was a doozy. Tied scores throughout the game, they were down 13 to 20 with 29 seconds left on the clock and fourth down. They pulled it off and tied the game to go into overtime! They pulled off the win in just five minutes.

Before the game we had a small tailgate party of Twitterati. Since it was a simple tailgate and I wanted something that could be eaten cold and with fingers, I chose tangy chicken wings. Then it was just a matter of figuring out what type.

I decided to use the Jalapeno Apricot Jam I had made earlier this summer. What a great choice! Easy and delicious. I'm sure you can use any similar jam, but it's so much better when it's your own.

Tangy Chicken Wings

1 4 lb bag of wings

1 8 oz jar of jalapeno apricot jam

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Place a wire rack over a baking sheet/pan. Lay out wings evenly across the rack. Bake for 30 minutes.

Place jam in a bowl. Remove hot wings from oven and transfer batches into jam and toss them to coat them in jam. Return to rack. Place back into oven and cook for another 10 minutes. Baste with jam again. Cook 5-10 minutes more until glaze is nicely thickened and sticky. Remove and serve hot or cold.