Category Archives: Fruit

Adopt An Olive Tree — Plus A Food Gal Giveaway

The spring adoption kit to grow your own mini olive tree. (Photo courtesy of Nudo-Italia)

How would you like to be a proud parent of a budding, baby olive tree?

You can, thanks to Nudo-Italia, an artisan olive oil company founded by Jason Gibb and Cathy Rogers, former TV producers who chucked it all to restore an abandoned 21-acre olive grove in Italy’s Le Marche.

Besides selling wonderful olive oils, they offer a unique program in which anyone around the world can adopt an olive tree for a year. The project is a collaboration between Nudo and small-scale artisan olive oil producers in Le Marche and Abruzzo.

The company’s new spring “adoption box”  ($97) includes a personalized adoption certificate and booklet that describes your tree, one 250ml tin of first cold press extra virgin olive oil, three 500ml tins of first cold press extra virgin olive oil from your adopted tree, an invitation to come visit your tree, and a “Grow Your Own Olive Tree in a Tin” with growing instructions. It’s a gift that definitely keeps on giving.

Contest: One lucky Food Gal reader will get a chance to try out their green thumb on their own “Grow Your Own Olive Tree in a Tin” (a $7.49 value). Stick it on a windowsill or kitchen ledge, then water. Who knows — this cute little thing might even bear some fruit.

Entries, limited to those in the continental United States, will be accepted through midnight PST March 31. Winner will be announced April 2.

How to win?

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Taste of the Nation, Love Apple Farms Tomato Seedling Sale & More

Chef Michael Tusk will lead the culinary team for "Taste of the Nation.'' (Photo courtesy of the chef)

Time for “Taste of the Nation”

James Beard Award-winning Chef Michael Tusk of Quince and Cotogna, both in San Francisco, will be the lead chef overseeing the culinary gala, “Taste of the Nation,” March 29 at the Bentley Reserve in San Francisco.

The event benefits Share Our Strength, a national organization dedicated to making sure no child grows up hungry.

Guests will enjoy tastes and sips from 45 of the Bay Area’s best chefs, wineries and mixologists. Among the restaurants participating are A16, Cafe des Amis, Frances and Park Tavern. For a complete list, click here.

Tickets are $95 in advance or $120 at the door. VIP tickets (which include access to the event an hour earlier and free valet parking) are $165 in advance or $190 at the door. For big spenders there’s “executive admission” at $500 in advance or $550 at the door. That top ticket gets you complimentary car service to the event, a champagne toast, access to a private lounge with more food and drink, and admittance to the after-party.

Love Apple Farms Famous Tomato Seedling Sale

Get ready for it — the largest tomato seedling sale in California.

Love Apple Farms of Santa Cruz, which grows produce exclusively for Michelin two-star restaurant, Manresa in Los Gatos, hosts a seedling sale every year that even entices folks from as far away as Los Angeles to drive to and fro in the same day.

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Apple-Stuffed Biscuit Buns — That’s What I’m Talkin’ About

These are practically too good for words.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking, “These sure look like cinnamon rolls.”

But don’t let your eyes fool you.

They may look like pillowy, yeasty cinnamon rolls, but they actually have the flakiness of biscuits.

These “Apple-Stuffed Biscuit Buns” are true butter bombs, too.

For nine rolls, you use 17 tablespoons of butter. (Cough, cough) But let’s not hone in on that, shall we? After all, without the butter, these wouldn’t be so wonderfully fall-apart flaky. And that’s what you want in a great biscuit or else why bother, right?

The recipe is from the new “The Apple Lover’s Cookbook”(W.W. Norton & Company) by Amy Traverso, senior food and home editor of Yankee magazine. The book, which I recently received a review copy of, is full of 150 recipes, both sweet and savory, that make use of fresh apples, apple cider and applesauce. There’s a handy primer, too, on varieties of apples that includes tasting notes, texture descriptions, best uses and origins.

Flaky, buttery and full of apples and cinnamon, it just doesn't get better than that.

These biscuit buns get their name from the fact that the dough is rolled up around a filling of cinnamon-sugar and one diced apple to create a pretty spiral effect when cut into slices.

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Chef Mourad Lahlou’s Prawn-Kumquat Skewers

How pretty are these shrimp-kumquat skewers? And they taste even better than they look.

If ever food on a stick could be drop-dead glam, this would be it.

I practically felt like lighting candles and artfully arranging silk pillows all over the floor to set the proper mood to enjoy them with.

“Prawn-Kumquat Skewers” will do that to you.

The irony is they couldn’t be easier to make, yet they look as if some fancy restaurant made them for a fortune.

The recipe is from the new cookbook, “Mourad: New Moroccan” Artisan) by Mourad Lahlou, chef-proprietor of the magical Aziza in San Francisco, the only Moroccan restaurant in North America to boast a Michelin star.

Born in Marrakesh, Lahlou left his native land at age 17 to study economics at my old alma mater, San Francisco State University. But the flavors of his homeland beckoned him into the kitchen and it wasn’t long before he was running his own restaurant, Aziza.

Over the years, the food there has morphed from traditional to astoundingly progressive, with flavors that are hauntingly true and clear.

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A Grape Way to Sweeten Your Valentine’s Day

A grape way to someone's heart.

Sure, you can celebrate Valentine’s Day with chocolate.

But that’s just so expected, isn’t it?

Why not shake things up by giving a gift that’s sweet, symbolizes (ahem) fertility and is loaded with antioxidants that do a body good?

I’m talking about the humble grape.

You might be thinking, “boring,” but hear me out. The juicy seedless clusters you mindlessly pick up at the grocery store go all-out glam here.

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