Photo by Sonya Yu
Sure, you’ve indulged at restaurants in wine flights, beer flights, and even dessert flights.
But when’s the last time you’ve succumbed to a porky-licious bacon flight?
You can at Lafitte at Pier 5, just blocks from the Hilton in San Francisco’s Financial District.
Now, this is one club I’d love to be a member of — Ozumo Restaurant in Oakland’s sake “300club.”
The restaurant invites patrons to purchase one of eight different 300ml bottles selected by Director of Sake Jessica Furui each time when visiting the restaurant. Ozumo will then record each purchase. When a customer has tried all eight club selections, they will receive a complimentary 720ml bottle of Ozumo’s “Seitoku” signature junmai ginjo sake.
Moreover, each time a customer orders a bottle of club sake, they will receive a small card containing information about the sake and brewery, plus a map of Japan showing where the brewery is located.
There is no cost to join the club, no food purchase is required and club selections will be changed every six months.
Kampai to that.
The next time you swing into 7-Eleven for a cup of Joe, you can lend a helping hand to cancer survivors.
All you have to do is purchase a snazzy Will Ferrell-designed coffee cup as part of the convenience store company’s annual “Coffee Cup with A Cause” campaign.
The zany actor is the fifth celebrity to design a coffee cup for 7-Eleven, joining the ranks of Snoop Dogg, John Cena, Jennifer Hudson and Nicole Ritchie. His snowman cup is for sale through Jan. 3 or until supplies last.
Proceeds from the cup will benefit Cancer for College, a California-based charity that provides support to cancer survivors through academic scholarships. Since its inception in 1993, it has granted more than $1 million in scholarships to more than 800 cancer survivors and amputees.
When Nikhil Arora and Alejandro Velez graduated from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business last year, they thought they would become investment bankers.
Instead, they invested in themselves, becoming farmers whose innovative way of growing mushrooms ended up, well, mushrooming beyond their wildest dreams.
Now their small start-up company, Back to the Roots, produces about 500 pounds of fresh oyster mushrooms a week — all grown in recycled Peet’s coffee grounds (10,000 pounds a week of it to be exact).
It was during their last semester in school when Arora and Velez figured out it was possible to grow mushrooms this way.
Nurtured on the grounds of Peet’s fine brew, these mushrooms have won over the likes of Alice Waters of Chez Panisse and Bay Area Whole Foods stores, which sell them for upwards of $10.99 a pound.
This year, they also launched the “Easy to Grow Mushroom Garden” ($19.95), which allows folks to grow up to a pound of fresh oyster mushrooms at home in as little as 10 days. You get multiple crops from it, too. Just set it on a kitchen window sill and mist twice a day. Just think: a project to amaze the kids and a way to have fresh, gourmet mushrooms at your fingertips for cooking up delicious meals. The kits, which come complete with a mister and recycled coffee grounds, are available at Whole Foods markets.
Through the holidays, 5 percent of all sales from the kits will be donated to the Susan G. Komen Foundation for breast cancer awareness. It’s a cause near and dear to Velez, who is a cancer survivor.
Contest: One lucky Food Gal reader will get the chance to win a free kit. The contest is open to anyone in the United States. Deadline to enter is midnight PST Dec. 4. Winner will be announced Dec. 6.
How to win? Just tell me your most memorable experience with mushrooms — be it a dish you tasted for the first time or an adventure you had involving them in some way. The best answer will win the kit.
To get you started, here’s my own answer to that question:
The rolling pin above is as old-school as it gets.
It’s not in vogue like those slender, tapered, elegant French rolling pins coveted by today’s bakers.
The red color on the handles long ago started fading away in spots.
It may be worse for the wear, but I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
You see, it was my late-Mom’s rolling pin.
I’m not even sure when she acquired it. All I know is that for as long as I can remember, it was stored in a cupboard in our family home, along with all the other baking equipment.
As a kid, I’d rifle through that cupboard till I found it, then roll out dough for peach pies in the summer or fanciful decorated cookies for Christmas in the shapes of stars and snowmen.