Category Archives: Enticing Events

Meet Alice Medrich in Brisbane and Enjoy Pisco Sours in San Francisco

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Alice Medrich's ginger cookies. (Photo courtesy of Artisan Books)

A Cookie of a Time with Alice Medrich

The Bay Area’s award-winning cookbook author and pastry expert Alice Medrich will be hosting a cooking demo at the Purcell Murray Culinary Showroom and Amphitheater in Brisbane, 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Feb. 5.

Medrich will be demonstrating delectable cookie recipes from her eighth and newest book, “Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy: Melt in Your Mouth Cookie Recipes” (Artisan). Learn how to make the cookies of your dreams at this fun event.

Admission price is $35 per person. Copies of Medrich’s book also will be available for purchase that day. For reservations, call (415) 330-5557.

Cookbook author and baker extraordinaire Alice Medrich. (Photo courtesy of Artisan Books)

Celebrate Pisco Sour Day at La Mar Restaurant

Who knew there was an actual “Pisco Sour Day”?

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Just in Time for Valentine’s Day — A Sweet Food Gal Giveaway

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Win this lovely box of petits fours by Divine Delights. (Photo courtesy of the bakery)With Valentine’s Day around the corner, it’s never too early to contemplate sweet gifts for your sweetie.

Divine Delights, a small family bakery in San Rafael, has got you covered.

The company — which has been touted in the New York Times, Gourmet and Bon Appetit — offers a full line of cookies, cakes, tarts, and petits fours.

Among its offerings for Valentine’s Day, are red heart-shaped boxes filled with signature petits fours — miniature almond butter cake layered with truffle cream, fruit fillings or buttercream, then enrobed in chocolate, and decorated with hearts and roses.

One lucky Food Gal reader will win one of the small Valentine heart boxes of petits fours (pictured above; a $37.95 value). It will be delivered to you just before Valentine’s Day. You can give it to someone you love — or just hoard it all to yourself. I won’t tell; I promise.

Contest: Deadline to enter is midnight PST Feb. 5. Winner will be announced Feb. 7. Contest is open only to those in the continental United States.

How to win?

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New Bar Bites and Lunar New Year Events

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Tender meatballs at Farmstead Restaurant. (Photo courtesy of the restaurant)

New Bar Hours & Noshes at St. Helena’s Farmstead Restaurant

If you’re famished after all that wine-tasting in the Napa Valley, pull up a stool at Farmstead Restaurant at Long Meadow Ranch in St. Helena, which has added extended bar hours on Friday and Saturday evenings, as well as some new tasty noshes.

Sunday through Thursday, the bar is open until 10 p.m. But on Friday and Saturday nights, you can chill out there until 12 a.m.

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FoodGal’s $100 Gift Card Giveaway and Winner of the Asian Cookbook/App

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It's worth a $100 gift card.

That smear of yellow makes me happy.

You see, I’m a bonafide condiment gal. Be it mustard, ketchup, pickle relish, chutney, jam or barbecue sauce — I love them all.

I pile ’em on high, so much so that my husband grows rather alarmed at times. But truth be told, I’d often rather have a bun loaded with just condiments than the actual dog or burger inside.

Is that wrong?

I don’t think so. Not when they add such zest and zip to life.

They’re my guilty pleasure — tasty dollops of this, that and the other that I secretly can’t get enough of.

Now, tell me what foodstuff is your guilty habit. Best answer will win a $100 gift card for any CSN online store. Use it toward spicing up your kitchen or adding some modern decor to other rooms in your house.

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A Visit to the 26th Annual Chefs’ Holidays in Yosemite

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Yosemite in winter.

YOSEMITE NATIONAL PARK, CA — Imagine hiking, snowshoeing and skiing, then dining on creative fare from celeb chefs — all in a breathtakingly spectacular setting.

That’s what Yosemite National Park is all about in the winter, when its “Chefs’ Holidays” takes place at the historic Ahwahnee Hotel, now through Feb. 4. Marking its 26th year, the event features 29 prominent chefs from around the country.

Three chefs are featured per session, which includes a “Meet the Chefs” reception, three cooking demonstrations, a five-course gala dinner with wines in the grand Ahwahnee dining room, and a tour of the hotel’s massive kitchen.

And what a hotel it is. Opened in 1927 with a concrete and steel frame designed to withstand fire, it cost $1.25 million to build or the equivalent of $19 million in today’s dollars. During a year of construction, costs grew and the project had to be scaled back. The building went from a planned 10 stories to seven. Although the kitchen had already been built, the dining room was reduced to a third of its original size to about 300 seats, as opposed to the original 1,000. As a result, the kitchen is actually 200 square feet larger than the main dining room.

All bread is made in-house. The starter for the sourdough dates back to the 1890s.

A large copper mixing bowl, original to the hotel kitchen.

An original ice box, used before modern-day refrigeration. In the summer, huge blocks of ice had to be sent via railroad from San Francisco.

Yours truly was lucky enough to be invited as a guest to the second of the eight sessions planned. This one, held during the second week of January, featured chefs Michael Tusk of Quince in San Francisco; Jesse Cool of Flea St. Cafe in Menlo Park; and Colin Ambrose of Estia’s Little Kitchen in Sag Harbor, NY.

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