Category Archives: General

New Citizen Chef Cooking Kits

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You can have this fresh, vibrant meal on the table in 15 minutes flat.

How many of us race home after work, wishing we had an extra pair of hands to help get dinner on the table fast?

Yup, that would be all of us.

Citizen Chef aims to come to the rescue.

The new San Francisco company just introduced a variety of cooking kits that are designed to get a healthful, tasty meal ready in only 15 minutes.

The refrigerated kits include already chopped veggies, a tub of sauce, and quick-cooking grains. You just add your own choice of protein — chicken, fish, shrimp, beef, pork or tofu. You can even use the kit as is, without adding any protein at all.

Choose from: Thai Sesame Stir-Fry (carrots, cabbage, and sugar snap peas in a coconut milk-base sauce with brown rice), Tuscan Limone Garlic Saute (broccoli, carrots and onions with couscous), and Hawaiian BBQ Stir Fry (carrots, purple cabbage and sugar snap peas with brown rice and a sauce made of roasted tomatoes, ginger and pineapples).

Each $10 kit serves 2 to 4, depending upon what else you add to it and how much of it. They’re available at Whole Foods and Mollie Stone’s Markets in the Bay Area.

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Granola — In Chip Form, Plus a Food Gal Giveaway

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Butter Pecan Granola Chips to munch on.

The folks in Oregon have gone and given granola a new look.

Willamette Valley Granola Company has eschewed the usual clusters for chips instead.

Yes, its new Granola Chips offer the crunch of granola, but in bite-size chips a little larger than a quarter.

They’re made with whole grains, including oats, barley, amaranth and quinoa. The chips get their sweetness from milled cane sugar and barley malt syrup. A 28-gram serving is 110 calories.

There are four varieties: Honey Nut, Vanilla Bean, Butter Pecan, and Wild Berry.

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A Toast to Absinthe

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A popular starter of hamachi sashimi at Absinthe Brasserie and Bar in San Francisco.

No matter how long you’ve lived in the Bay Area, it’s impossible to get to every restaurant you’d like to try.

There are just too many of them. With more opening each and every week, too.

Such is the reason why it took me this long to finally visit the 15-year-old Absinthe Brasserie & Bar in San Francisco.

When an invitation to dine as a guest at the restaurant presented itself a couple of weeks ago, it was the needed nudge that finally got me in the doors.

And boy, have I been missing out.

The lively restaurant in Hayes Valley is almost always packed, especially before nearby theater performances with folks grabbing a most civilized meal before racing off to the ballet or symphony.

Executive Chef Adam Keogh, who has cooked at Chez TJ in Mountain View and at a couple of Michael Mina Group restaurants, infuses classic French brasserie sensibilities with California flair to come up with menu items such as Atkins Ranch lamb sugo over papardelle ($22); spicy fried chickpeas ($4); and beef tartare ($16) with violet mustard, green apple and red onion.

A cocktail is a must here.

The plush dining room.

The restaurant is made up of several plush rooms, done up with burgundy walls sporting gold trim. There’s a large mural in one, depicting the inside of a dining room restaurant complete with servers and tables of diners.  At the entrance to the kitchen, there’s even a small toque painted above, appropriately enough.

When a restaurant is named for a once illegal spirit, you’ve just got to order a cocktail, don’t you? Absinthe has long been famed for its well-executed cocktails.

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Cantaloupe in Cake? You Bet!

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Yes, you can bake with cantaloupe. Who knew!

I’ve enjoyed berries, peaches, plums and all manner of other fruit in baked treats.

But cantaloupe?

Not until now.

Don’t get me wrong. I love that beautiful netted fruit with its sunny orange flesh. But cantaloupe in a cake seemed as farfetched to me as watermelon or honeydew in one.

That is until I spied a recipe for “Cantaloupe Cake (Torta di Melone)” in “Dolci: Italy’s Sweets” (Stewart, Tabori & Chang), of which I received a review copy. The book is by Francine Segan, a food historian and New York City cookbook author. The cookbook boasts more than 125 recipes for Italian specialties such as sweet ricotta crepes, rosemary semifreddo, angel hair pasta pie, and even an unlikely chocolate eggplant dish.

Because the melon chunks are soaked in Asti Spumante, a glass of the Italian sparkler makes a nice accompaniment to the cake.

I couldn’t let a chance to bake with cantaloupe pass by, so I gave it a whirl.

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New Premium Licorice, Giant See’s Lollypop To Be Unveiled & Food Gal Contest Winner Plus Bonus

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New licorice products by the makers of Red Vines. (Photo by Carolyn Jung)

Premium Licorice and How To Get A Free Bag

Union City’s American Licorice Company — makers of everyone’s favorite Red Vines — has brought out a new licorice product: Natural Vines.

Made without artificial colors, flavors or preservatives, the Natural Vines are sweetened with only cane syrup and molasses. They contain real licorice extract, too.

Natural Vines come in two varieties: Strawberry and Black. The strawberry has an actual vivid berry flavor, while the black licorice tastes of anise and almost black coffee. Both types come not in your traditional long strands of licorice, but fat nubbins, about an inch long. They’re softer to chew than Red Vines, too. Each piece has 17 calories.

Eight-ounce bags are $3.49 each in select grocery stores.

They come in handy, resealable bags. (Photo by Carolyn Jung)

If you’re a film buff, you’ll get a chance to try the licorice. The American Licorice Company will be giving out thousands of full-sized bags of both the Strawberry and Black Natural Vines throughout the summer at San Francisco’s Film Night in the Park, Movies on the Square in Redwood City, and the Starlight Cinema Series in San Jose.

The licorice will be given out at the Aug. 4 and Sept. 29 showings in San Francisco; the July 19, Aug. 2, Aug. 6, Aug. 23 and Aug 30 showings in Redwood City; and at the July 19, July 26, Aug. 16, Aug. 23, and Aug. 31 showings in San Jose.

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