Category Archives: New Products

Foodie T’s and A Food Gal Giveaway

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Show your love for kimchi with this bold T-shirt. (Photo courtesy of Flavour Gallery)

You’ve heard of wearing your heart on your sleeve?

Now, you can wear your favorite food on  your torso.

Flavour Gallery, which launched about a month ago, specializes in specialty T-shirts that are all food-oriented.

The shirts, almost all made in Los Angeles, come in men’s and women’s sizes with artsy graphics spelling out “kimchi,” and “Gigi’s Oyster Bar,” as well as designs featuring knives or a hand sprinkling salt.

Recently, I received a sample of a women’s “medium” in the short-sleeve “kimchi” design.  The soft, 100 percent-cotton T is thin like a man’s undershirt. It fits pretty true to size. It’s cut long enough to cover the hips, so it’s perfect for jeans that sit at belly-button level or lower.

How's this for a "sharp'' shirt? (Photo courtesy of Flavour Gallery)

The company also makes scarves, tote bags and memo pads adorned with its distinctive designs.

Prices range from $4 for a memo pad and $20 for a scarf to $28 for a woman’s tank top and $68 for a man’s hoodie.

Contest: One lucky Food Gal reader will win his/her choice of a Flavour Gallery T-shirt, as well as a tote bag and memo book. Entries, limited to those in the continental United States, will be accepted through midnight PST April 23. Winner will be announce April 25.

How to win?

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Coffee with a Mission and a Food Gal Giveaway

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Coffee beans from the Aleta Wondo village of Ethiopia.

The impoverished Aleta Wondo community of Ethiopia grows some of the world’s finest coffee beans.

Brew a cup as I did from some sample beans, then revel in the smooth, rich notes of vanilla and bergamot without any of the ubiquitous “burnt” flavor of so many dark roasts these days.

Yet the farmers who grow these precious beans often don’t make enough money to feed or care for their children properly.

Enter Common River, a Mill Valley non-profit, which is working to change that.

Started by Donna Sillan, an international public health consultant, and Tsegaye Bekele, an Aleta Wondo native who now lives in Marin after starting a plumbing business in the Bay Area, the organization was able to build a new school in Aleta Wondo that educates 130 children in the community. It also started a summer camp program there that is staffed by Mill Valley volunteers.

Moreover, Sillan and Bekele began exporting the Aleto Wondo coffee to the United States. All the profits from the sale of the coffee goes back to the village of farmers to help fund the school and other needed projects.

The beans are sold under the Equator brand.

You can do your own part to help by trying the coffee, yourself. It’s available at Whole Foods in Mill Valley and San Rafael. It’s also for sale directly on the AletaWondo site. Additionally, Equator Coffees & Teas, the socially conscious coffee company that just opened its first retail cafe at the San Francisco International Airport’s Terminal 2,  buys the Aleta Wondo beans and sells it under its own label.

Contest: One lucky Food Gal reader will get a chance to enjoy a 12-ounce bag of the Aleta Wondo coffee beans. Entries, restricted to those who live in the continental United States, will be accepted through midnight PST April 16. Winner will be announced April 18.

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Matcha Kit Kat

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Japanese Kit Kat bars flavored with matcha.

Who doesn’t love a Kit Kat bar, with its crunchy “fingers” that consist of three layers of wafer cookies covered in chocolate?

But did you know just how many variations there are around the world?

Sure, we can’t resist the basic milk chocolate Kit Kat found in stores everywhere in the United States. But folks in Canada can indulge in peanut butter ones, while hazelnut cream ones are sold in Germany, strawberry ones in Australia and tiramisu in the United Kingdom.

Japan, though, is where you’ll probably find the greatest array of specialty Kit Kat flavors, including azuki (red bean), pickled plum, wasabi and soy sauce, according to Wikipedia.

Last week, I snagged a bag of matcha Kit Kat bars at Nijiya market in San Jose’s Japantown. Yes, green tea-flavored ones.

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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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