Category Archives: Health/Nutrition

Cool New Water Bottle and Food Gal Giveaway

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Win a new Groove water bottle with built-in filtration system. (Image courtesy of Camelbak)Camelbak, maker of those nifty water packs for biking and hiking, wants you to get into the Groove.

A new portable filtration water bottle to be exact.

The Camelbak Groove is a reusable water bottle that comes with its own carbon filter built into the drinking straw. Fill the bottle with tap water, and as you sip, the water is filtered before it hits your mouth.The straw has a bite valve — the same one apparently used by NASA astronauts in space — that locks into place when not in use, so you don’t have to worry about spills or leaks.

It’s great to stash in your car or to keep at your desk. Or tote one in your purse or briefcase. No more spending money on disposable water bottles or worrying about recycling them.

The 20-ounce bottle is made of BPA-free plastic and comes in four colors. It sells for $25. Replacement carbon filters (each of which should last for up to 60 gallons) cost $10 for a two-pack.

The Grooves are available online at the Camelbak Web site or at stores such as Target.

Contest: I’m happy to be able to give away one Camelback Groove to each of five lucky Food Gal readers. Entries, limited to those in the continental United States, will be accepted through midnight PST May 14. Winners will be announced May 16.

How to win?

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Convenient CSA Pickup at a Caltrain Station

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Would you believe you can pick up this bounty at a train station?

Leave it to Luke’s Local — the gourmet convenience store at a Caltrain station — to make getting farm-fresh produce on your commute even easier now.

The tiny store, which opened last year in a long-vacant ticket office at the Hillsdale station in San Mateo, just started offering a Community Supported Agriculture “Meal Box” that folks can pick up once a week at Luke’s Local. Imagine getting off the train after a long day at work, then picking up a box that contains not only fresh fruits and veggies, but a couple of ready-to-heat meals that you can load in your car to take home.

A sample "Meal Box'' from Luke's Local.

Luke Chappell, owner of the store, is offering this new service in a joint effort with Farmshares, a Community Supported Agriculture program of local farms in the Capay Valley. When you subscribe to the service, you pick up your box every Wednesday night at the train station.

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New Premium Organic and Humane-Certified Pastries & Food Gal Giveaway

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Mushroom-thyme savory scone from Pastry Smart.

For the past five years, Pastry Chef Mark Ainsworth has been crafting organic pastries, breads and cookies for a number of San Francisco Bay Area hotels and restaurants, including the Carneros Inn in Napa and the Lodge at Pebble Beach.

Now, you can enjoy his Pastry Smart products in your own home by picking them up at Mollie Stone’s, Real Food stores, Piazza’s and Shokolaat restaurant in Palo Alto, where he is the CFO.

Ainsworth was previously executive pastry chef at the Lodge at Pebble Beach and the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco. His Pastry Smart company is thought to be the first pastry producer in the United States to be American Humane Certified. The company also works exclusively with organic dairy Clover-Stornetta Farms.

Recently, I had a chance to sample a variety of the baked goods, which are made in a commercial kitchen in San Mateo.

Just reheat these in the oven for a few minutes and you're good to go.

The retail line includes par-baked rolls that only need five minutes in a warm oven to enjoy at home. The challah slider rolls baked up crisp on the outside, tender on the inside, and buttery tasting, but not overly rich. They’d be great for dinner rolls for company or to stuff slices of ham into for Easter brunch. The multi-grain rolls had a nice nutty taste and a crunchy texture from the sesame and sunflower seeds that cover their exteriors. A package of six is about $6.99 each.

Lemon cookies that you'll never guess are vegan.

The cookies are fist-sized and perfectly round — like lunch-bag staples from childhood. My favorite — surprisingly — was the vegan lemon shortbread. Made with vegan shortening, the cookies are very crumbly with a delightful topping of crunchy, crystallized sugar. Take a bite and they just melt in your mouth.  I’m not even vegan, and I couldn’t stop eating these. A box of six cookies is $6.95.

Pastry Smart also makes three types of savory scones, which would be perfect for lunch or dinner with a salad and soup. The curry scone is full pungent cumin seeds, curry powder and paprika.  Like the curry one, the mushroom thyme scone has a fluffy, light crumb, but with a more herbal, earthy profile.

Each square-sized scone is perforated into fourths to divide it easily into four bite-size pieces. But most folks, I’m sure, will see it and think they’re meant to eat the entire square. Just realize, though, that the calorie count on the back of the package is 130 calories for a fourth of that scone in your hand, and not the entire thing.

Cheddar corn cake with the kick of jalapeno.

Same is true with the corn cakes — tender, cakey, corn bread squares that are about half an inch in height. The calorie count for these is 170 per quarter cake, though, few people are going to stop at just a quarter of one, especially when they come in flavors such as blueberry, and cheddar jalapeno.

Contest: One lucky Food Gal reader will win a sampler of Pastry Smart goodies, which includes rolls, cookies, corn cakes and scones. Entries, limited to those in the continental United States, will be accepted through midnight PST April 9. Winner will be announced April 11.

How to win?

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Three-Hour Polenta

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Heritage corn polenta, now available for sale at Oliveto Restaurant.

You might think I’m playing an April Fool’s joke on you when I tell you I spent three hours cooking polenta on the stovetop.

But I kid you not.

That was part of the careful cooking instructions I was given when Oliveto Restaurant in Oakland gave me  a sample bag of Floriani Red Flint Corn Polenta to try at home. The medium-course grind polenta is made from heritage red field corn that was originally developed in Northern Italy. It is whole-grain milled, meaning that the entire grain — including all the germ, bran and endosperm — is milled without separating any of those components out.

Because of that and because it’s a harder corn, it takes three  hours to cook.

I was ready to start lifting more weights at the gym for this polenta workout that awaited me. My husband half-jested that he was going to hire a legal day-laborer to help me.

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Oliveto Keeps On Going Strong

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Crudo of local halibut with shaved purple artichokes.

Twenty-five years is a very long time in restaurant years.

But that’s just how long Oliveto in Oakland has managed to not only survive, but to flourish.

A parade of talented chefs have manned the kitchen over the years, including Paul Bertolli (who went on to found his fabulous Fra’Mani salumi company in Berkeley), and most recently, Paul Canales, who was at Oliveto for the past five years.

In December 2010, Jonah Rhodehamel took over as head chef, after previous stints as sous chef at three San Francisco establishments:  La Folie, Zinnia, and Americano.

He’s already started putting his stamp on the rustic, Italian fare here. He started a new dry-aging program to age rib-eyes for three weeks to concentrate their beefy flavor.

Recently, I had a chance to try his menu as a guest of the restaurant.

Enter the doors, and to your right will be the cozy, more casual cafe. If you go up the stairs, you’ll find the warm, inviting restaurant with its bank of windows that overlook lively College Avenue.

My husband and I started with a crudo of local halibut ($13), clean and bright tasting, with the slight bitterness of puntarella chicory and shaved purple artichokes.

The prettiest salad ever.

Rhodehamel also sent out a roasted root vegetable salad ($11.50) that was as gorgeous as a still-life painting. This seemingly simple dish was spectacular, with the carrots, beets and turnips roasted in salt to concentrate their flavor and sugars, and render them tender-crisp. Even an avowed vegetable hater would have a hard time not eating every last bite.

Oliveto has long been known for its house-made pastas, now made with local flours, so we just had to indulge.

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