Category Archives: Health/Nutrition

Fun Custom Cereal Giveaway

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"Food Gal's Favorite'' -- my custom blended cereal mix.

Except for some crunchy granola scattered over my bowl of yogurt, I’m not the world’s biggest cereal eater.

But Me & Goji just might make me one.

The New Hampshire custom, artisanal cereal company lets you design your own blend of cereal. We’re not talking Rice Krispies mixed with Special K and Cocoa Puffs. Instead, you can choose from more than 60 all-natural ingredients, including 5-grain muesli, “samurai wheat” bite-sized shredded wheat cubes, barley flakes, acai powder, goji berries, chia seeds, pine nuts, dried strawberries and sesame seeds.

You can name your cereal and upload a photo to decorate the resealable, recyclable, heavy-duty tube it comes in.

The company was started a couple years ago by two active, sporty guys — Alexander Renzi and Adam Sirois — who graduated from Northwestern University, where they played soccer together and longed for healthier food options to recharge with.

Recently, they offered me a chance to design my own cereal on the house.

Your cereal arrives in a resealable, recyclable capsule.

The name I gave my cereal.

I blended a mix of the “flax and flaked” (a blend of corn flakes, amaranth seeds, flax seeds, and sesame seeds) with granola, whole almonds, walnuts, sesame seeds and mulberries. And I named it, “Food Gal’s Favorite.” But of course!

I love this cereal. It is crunchy, nutty, full of varied textures and a far cry from the almost candy-like cereals on store shelves. It tastes fresh, healthful and delightful.

According to the nutritional info on the back of the tube, my cereal mix weighs in at 161 calories per half cup (a lot less than most granolas I eat), with 7.5g total fat, 75mg potassium, 4.8g protein, 3.5g sugar, and 9 percent of the daily requirement of iron.

My mix would have cost $13.90, plus $3.99 for shipping and 99 cents for the tube, which contains about 10 cups of cereal.

There’s also a handy “recipe ID” number printed on the back of the tube, so if I want to re-order the same blend, I just enter that number on the Web site and it’s automatically added to my cart for check-out.

Contest: I’m thrilled to be able to give one lucky Food Gal reader a chance to try their own custom cereal blend for free.

Entries, limited to those in the continental United States, will be accepted through midnight PST March 26. Winner will be announced March 28.

How to win?

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Healthful Pizza, Ruth Reichl Visit, Chef Demo & More

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The Mexican pizza at ZPizza in San Francisco. (Photo courtesy of the restaurant)

Organic Wheat Flour Pizzas in San Francisco

Laguna Beach, Calif.-based ZPizza, which has more than 90 locations nationwide, now has a locale in San Francisco at 833 Mission St., Suite C (at Fourth Street).

The pizza dough is made from certified organic wheat flour, the sauces are prepared fresh daily, and the cheese is part-skim, rBGH-free mozzarella from grass-fed cows. Gluten-free crust and vegan cheese also are offered. Gourmet ingredients include cremini and shiitake mushrooms, as well as truffle oil and the African hot sauce known as pili pili. For delivery, the pizzas are ferried via bicycles to reduce carbon emissions. Gourmet salads, pastas and sandwiches round out the menu.

Pizza choices include the Thai, with peanut sauce, mozzarella, spicy chicken, cilantro, bean sprouts and serranos; the Mexican with housemade salsa, mozzarella, spicy lime chicken, green onions, avocado, sour cream and cilantro; and the Casablanca, with roasted garlic sauce, mozzarella, ricotta, mushrooms, artichoke hearts and parmesan. Pizzas are $10.95 for a small, $19.95 for a large, and $24.94 for an extra-large.

The one and only Ruth Reichl. (Photo by Fiona Aboud)

Ruth Reichl at Stanford University

Join former Gourmet magazine Editor-in-Chief Ruth Reichl at a free event at the Cubberley Auditorium on the Stanford University Campus in Palo Alto at 6 p.m. March 29.

Reichl, now an editor and author at Random House, will be speaking on “The Intersection of Food, Culture and History.”

A Different Look at Vanilla, Saffron and Chocolate

Sure, they taste good. But did you know all three of those ingredients are rife with politics?

Learn all about the intrigue in getting these three ingredients from harvest to plate at “Politics of the Plate — What’s Behind the Silky Sexiness of Vanilla, Saffron and Chocolate,” 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. March 16 at the Unitarian Universalist Church of San Francisco (Starr King room), 1187 Franklin St. at Geary Street.

Experts Patricia Rain (vanilla), Juan San Mames (saffron) and Mark Magers (chocolate) will be on the panel with moderator Janet Fletcher, a San Francisco Chronicle food writer.

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Food Gal Ticket Giveaway and Foodie Happenings

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(Image courtesy of Paso Robles Wine Country)

Win tickets to the Los Angeles Grand Tasting Tour

Taste wines from more than 40 Paso Robles wineries and nosh on gourmet bites at the glam 2011 Los Angeles Grand Tasting Tour, 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. March 2 at the Virbiana.

Tickets are $60 each. A portion of the proceeds will benefit the Alzheimer’s Association of Southern California.

Because the Food Gal has so many loyal readers who live in or travel regularly to the Los Angeles area, I’m happy to announce that I’ll be giving away three pairs of tickets to the event.

Contest: Entries should be limited to those who will be in Los Angeles on the day of the event, March 2. Contest runs through midnight PST Feb. 26. Winners will be announced Feb. 28.

How to win?

Tell me one of your favorite eats in Los Angeles and why I should try it the next time I’m there.

Here’s my own answer to that question:

“Do you love Chinese dumplings? And specifically, do you love xiao long bao, otherwise known as “soup dumplings”? Then, make a beeline pronto for Din Tai Fung in Arcadia for the very best dumplings you will ever have. I have Pulitzer Prize-winning, Los Angeles food writer Jonathan Gold to thank for telling me about this place. Here, the wrappers are the thinnest ever and so fragile you have to be careful picking them up with your chopsticks, lest you puncture them accidentally. They are tender, juicy, brothy and plain amazing. How good are they? So good that my husband and I ate there twice in three days last year. Until recently, its two Arcadia branches were the only ones outside of Asia. But Pacific Northwest foodies are sure to be rejoicing now that one just opened in Seattle.”

Winner of the Last Contest: In the most recent Food Gal contest, I asked you to tell me your favorite thing to eat back in school. The top three answers will win an annual membership to Blackboard Eats.

Congrats to the winners:

1) Single Guy Ben, who wrote: “I felt like we had the best school lunches growing up in Honolulu. Every day was a different entree always served with a carton of milk, a side salad (which I always ate) and dessert. And I don’t want to date myself but we got all this for a quarter! (Yeah, back when we actually did walk a mile to get to school.)

One of my favorites is the good ole’ Sloppy Joe. It’s ironic that it’s my favorite because growing up (and still today as an adult) I’m a bit of a neat freak. I used to eat my lunch in sections, eating the salad, then the entree, then dessert. Never mixing bites here and there. So sloppy isn’t really in my vocabulary. But something about the Sloppy Joe, whether it’s the flavor or the fact that the sauce soaked into the bun and made everything soft and juicy, just brings a smile to my face. An oddly enough, the Sloppy Joe’s weren’t necessarily super slopppy. Sure, a few clumps of ground beef would fall out as I slowly ate the bun in a systemized concentric pattern, but it still held together.

It’s funny how a lot of school lunch favorites aren’t a part of our regular diet when we grow up. It may be my adversity to eating too much red meat, so I haven’t had a Sloppy Joe in many many years. Or maybe it’s because I don’t use those ready-mix packets any more so don’t have the perfect recipe for Sloppy Joe’s made from scratch. But when I look back, I think now that a perfect, juicy, Sloppy Joe may be just the item I’d like as my last meal on Earth.”

2) Sadie, who wrote, “We had different exchange students every year when I was growing up. Nothing was more wonderful than discovering that a stroopwafel from Barbara or a pulparindo (tamarind candy) from Claudia had snuck into my otherwise very Wisconsin-Midwestern lunchbox.”

3) Jennie Schact, who wrote: “We carried lunch to school. Mom would sandwich thick slabs of roasted turkey between slices of challah slathered with Russian dressing (which is to say, mayo and ketchup stirred together), wrap ‘em up, stack ‘em in the freezer, and throw one into the lunch bag in the morning. You were lucky if it was defrosted enough to eat around the edges at lunch time. Frozen turkey = not pleasant. She was also the innovator of leftover cold hamburger on a bagel. I preferred Ring Dings from the vending machine.”

Dungeness crab salad at One Market Restaurant. (Photo courtesy of the restaurant)

Fabulous Restaurant Events

There’s still time to indulge in the annual Lark Creek Restaurant Group’s “Crab Festival.”

Through the end of the month, you’ll find special dishes at each restaurant that spotlight fresh, sustainable Dungeness crab.

Look for such lip-smacking fare as crab salad with grapefruit at One Market Restaurant in San Francisco; Dungeness crab raviolis with chanterelles and brown butter at Yankee Pier at Santana Row in San Jose; and chili roasted Dungeness crab with garlic and smoked paprika at Fish Story in Napa.

There’s also still time to try the the special prix fixe Black History Month menu with wine pairings from African-American wineries at 1300 on Fillmore in San Francisco.

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The Art of Ubuntu

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Ubuntu's gorgeous and delicious potatoes with sauerkraut mousse.

Are you sitting down?

Meat Boy went vegetarian.

OK, it was only for one evening, but yes, my ultra-carnivorous husband actually ate an unprecedented meatless meal recently.

He figured if he was going to take that bold step, he might as well do it at Ubuntu in Napa, the veggie-centric restaurant that has garnered critical acclaim far and wide, including a Michelin star.

Ubuntu “is an ethic or humanist philosophy focusing on people’s allegiances and relations with each other emphasizing community, sharing and generosity,” according to its Web site. It’s also unique in that it boasts a yoga studio on its mezzanine level that’s fronted by frosted glass. Indeed, if you peer toward the back staircase, you can often spot mat-carrying students on their way to and from class.

If that all sounds a little too touchy-feely, granola-loving, Birkenstock-ish, you’re in for a surprise. The food, with much of the ingredients sourced from its own biodynamic garden, is a revelation.

If you’re expecting fresh, but rather tame and uninspired food, you couldn’t be more wrong. The dishes here are like a Versace fashion show on a plate — a riot of vivid colors and forms that make you sit up and take notice each time one is set down on the table. The flavors are shockingly bold, developed and complex. This is not timid tasting food in the least, despite the fact that there is no meat, poultry or seafood present whatsoever. There’s also no tofu or seitan — mainstays of most other vegetarian restaurants — at least not on the current menu. Instead, it’s all about the stellar vegetables and great technique.

Yes, there is butter and plenty of cheese used here. But you can opt to get many dishes vegan-style.

I was invited to dine as a guest of the restaurant a week ago. It was my first time to this four-year-old restaurant. I wish I had tried it when opening Chef Jeremy Fox (who went on to become creative director for the Tyler Florence Group for five months) was still on board, just for comparison’s sake. But Executive Chef Aaron London, seems to be carrying on splendidly. He cooked for awhile with Fox at Ubuntu, before leaving for a spell to work at Bottega in Yountville. London also has worked at such acclaimed establishments as Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York. Ironically enough, like Fox, who was known for his meat and charcuterie skills when he worked at Manresa in Los Gatos, London also helped open the meat- and foie gras-centric Au Pied du Cochon in Montreal.

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Fermenting a New Approach to Sauerkraut

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Kathryn Lukas, who wants to change the way you think of sauerkraut.

As a young girl, Kathryn Lukas remembers her Irish grandfather serving her hot dogs piled high with sauerkraut, just the way he liked it. And each time, she would push the shreds of pungent, fermented cabbage off to the side, trying hard not to make a face.

She may not have been a kraut fan then. But now, with more than 25 years in the restaurant industry, Lukas has grown into a kraut evangelist, bent on a mission to change the perception most of us have of the age-old condiment.

In 2008 in downtown Santa Cruz, she started her own business, Farmhouse Culture, which specializes in artisan contemporary kraut — made with local, organic and sustainable ingredients in intriguing, seasonal flavors such as Smoked Jalapeno, Apple Fennel, and Horseradish Leek.

Her raw, uncooked sauerkrauts can be found at nine Bay Area farmers markets, as well as local retail stores such as select Whole Foods, where they sell for about $7 for a 1-pound jar. For those outside the Bay Area, you’ll be glad to know that you also can buy the krauts on Foodzie.

Horseradish Leek sauerkraut.

Lukas knows sauerkraut may not be an easy sell to some palates, but she’s been pleasantly surprised by all the old-timers who come up to her to tell her they remember their grandparents making kraut or by the college students who have become regular customers at her farmers market stands after developing a new-found addiction to the stuff.

“I can’t tell you how many times a day people walk by our farmers market stands and say, ‘Sauerkraut? Ewwww…,’ ” Lukas says. “We talk them into trying a taste. I’d say 75 percent get converted. They tell us they hated sauerkraut their whole lives, but love ours.”

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