Category Archives: Enticing Events

Coffee Cup with a Cause

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Funny man Will Ferrell designed this coffee cup for 7-Eleven. (Photo courtesy of 7-Eleven)

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.

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Bay Area Mushroom Entrepreneurs; Winner of the $100 CSN Card & A New Giveaway

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Two UC Berkeley business school grads and their innovative mushroom company. (Photo courtesy of Back to the Roots)

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.

Pasta with homegrown oyster mushrooms. (Photo courtesy of Back to the Roots)

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:

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Tyler Florence Cookbook Winner & New $100 Food Gal Contest Giveaway

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The family rolling pin.

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.

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Come Meet the Food Gal and Four Cookbook Authors in Palo Alto

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Yours truly is proud to be moderating a fun and timely panel, “Rethinking Your Holiday Meal,” at 7 p.m. Nov. 16 at Books, Inc. in Palo Alto’s Town & Country Village.

I hope you’ll join me and four wonderful, local cookbook authors as we talk about ways to make your holiday feasts less stressful, more enjoyable and downright fool-proof.

The panelists:

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Scenes from “Worlds of Flavor” 2010

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Cold soba noodles in gelee at the 2010 "Worlds of Flavor'' conference on Japan.

Over the weekend, the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in St. Helena presented its 13th annual “Worlds of Flavor International Conference & Festival.”

It was the first time that the conference — attended regularly by top chefs, restaurateurs, purveyors, food scientists and media — focused entirely on the cuisine of Japan.

For good reason.

A Japanese dancer.

Everywhere you turn these days, you can’t help but notice the influence Japanese cuisine is having around the world — from sushi being sold in most every American supermarket to ingredients such as edamame, yuzu and nori finding their place in professional kitchens around the world.

Assembling curry udon for the crowds.

Okonomiyaki -- savory noodle pancakes -- get grilled.

Turn on the TV to watch the excitement of “Iron Chef”; visit New York to wait in line at Chef David Chang’s wildly popular Momofuku Japanese-style, street food-inspired restaurants; or pick up the latest Michelin Guide, which awarded its highest honor of three stars to an astounding 12 restaurants in the Kansai region of Japan — more than any other area in the world.

The conference, “Japan: Flavors of Culture, From Sushi and Soba to Kaiseki,” was attended by 750 people, including more than 54 presenters from Japan, some of whom were visiting the Napa Valley for the first time.

It was a kick to see Masaharu Morimoto, Hiroyuki Sakai and Yukio Hattori — all of “Iron Chef” fame — wandering around the storied culinary campus. And even more memorable to hear Morimoto belt out an a cappella song in Japanese at the end of his cooking demo.

Morimoto cooking with suckling pig at a demo.

And what cooking demos there were — from watching a chef from Japan painstakingly make soba noodles from scratch on stage to the intricate details that go into making a perfect dashi stock to seeing Chef Doug Keane of Cyrus in Healdsburg prepare a broth made with his favorite matsutake mushrooms, which he confessed to loving even more than prized European truffles.

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