You are here: Home / Archives for Food

Not a Greek Yogurt in Site

November 11, 2010 by

During my travels over the last few weeks, I had my fill of restaurant food. For 12 days straight, breakfast, lunch, and dinner, consumed in a place other than my home sweet home. I know there are many people that would consider this a luxury, but eating out all of the time can get old fast. By my 6th day on the road, all I wanted for breakfast was a Greek yogurt, something I was used to having every week, if not every day at home. However, in our staff lounge, the convention center only provided “regular” yogurt. No matter how much I begged, pleaded, and flirted with our lounge staff, no one could seem to find a Greek yogurt within two miles. Sad, but true.

Little did I know what was waiting for me when I arrived home one week later.

While away, Scott called to tell me that I received several packages in the mail, one being a perishable package. Lucky for me, I arrived home to find a dozen perfect cartons of Siggi’s yogurt! Now I know Siggi’s is not “Greek” yogurt per se, but after tasting it for the first time that night, I can honestly say it is VERY similar to Greek yogurt, and maybe even better! Gasp!

Siggi’s yogurt is a type of skyr yogurt – the traditional yogurt of Iceland. It’s similar to Greek yogurt in that it is much thicker than regular yogurt because it’s strained several times. Because of the straining process, it has a significant amount of protein. But, unlike most Greek yogurt brands, Siggi’s skyr is comes in several flavors, including vanilla, grapefruit, blueberry, orange, acai, and more. Plus, Siggi’s is fat free and only flavored with real agave nectar  – no sugar or artificial sweeteners.

So how does it taste? I have to admit, the vanilla and blueberry Siggi’s hold their own against any Greek yogurt I’ve tried, but the orange flavor is more of an acquired taste.

Although I am still partial to my Greek yogurt (oh how I still miss you!), Siggi’s is really giving Greek yogurt a run for it’s money.

Filed Under: Food Tagged With: , , ,

Touring California Walnut Country

October 17, 2010 by

I recently had the great pleasure of touring California’s walnut county on behalf of the California Walnut Commission. The tour was quite an adventure that spanned two days – two days of learning about walnut harvesting and processing, as well as the many great benefits that walnuts hold.

My adventure started at the beautiful Citizen Hotel in downtown Sacramento where I joined a group of 20-25 other journalists and walnut experts for an elegant dinner. Prior to dinner, we watched cookbook author Mollie Katzen and Chef Michael Tuohy from Grange restaurant whip up some very easy pesto.

We all proceeded to get our hands a little dirty making Chef Tuohy’s own version of white walnut pesto. This was, by far, the best pesto I have ever tasted and not just because I made it. I am not a huge fan of pine nuts or basil in pesto, which are standard ingredients for many restaurant pestos. But Chef Tuohy’s white pesto was made with a base of cheddar, olive oil, red wine vinegar, dijon mustard, and, best of all, ground walnuts! Again – the best pesto I have every tasted! Don’t worry, I do plan on posting the recipe in a few days!

Our cooking demo was followed by a three-course dinner, with walnuts playing a starring role. We also were very fortunate to hear award-winning researcher and author Dr. Brian Wansink discuss some of the pitfalls to American eating, much of which was discussed in his book, Mindless Eating.

The next morning, we were treated to a walnut-studded breakfast at Old Soul Co. in Sacramento, which included walnut scones, banana walnut sweet bread, and even spinach and goat cheese quiche with walnuts.

After breakfast, we headed to the main event – a tour of the walnut trees at Fedora Farms in Meridian, CA. Here we learned about the varieties of walnuts, how they are shaken from the tree and collected, and how they are hulled and dried before being sent to the processing plant. What I was impressed by most about Fedora Farms was how much time and care they put into harvesting quality walnuts – it really is a great source of pride for the Fedora family and for walnut growers in general. Like Fedora Farms, most walnut farms/orchards are experiencing a fantastic harvest this year. According to the California Walnut Board, California will produce a record harvest in 2010, estimated at 17% larger than that seen in 2009.

Lunch was a gourmet meal underneath the walnut trees provided by Chef Patrick Mulvaney, owner of Culinary Specialists Catering. Chef Mulvaney prepared a first-class lunch for our tour, right in the middle of the walnut orchard – very classy! Oh, and did I mention the menu included 4 uses for walnuts, including the chocolate pudding!

After lunch, we headed to Yuba City to visit the Sacramento Valley Walnut Growers, where they process, package, and distribute the walnut grown in the area. What surprised me most about the processing and packaging of the walnuts was how many steps are in the quality control process – I counted at least four but I’m sure there were more!

For dinner, we headed back to downtown Sacramento to The Kitchen Restaurant, touted as one of “the most entertaining and distinctive dining destinations in Sacramento.” This meal and whole experience truly lived up to the hype. Not only was the atmosphere like no other that I had experienced (when do you ever get to go into the kitchen of a restaurant and just hang out?) but the food was unbelievable! Granted, I did not eat all of the 6 courses because they included seafood and beef, but the presentations were extremely entertaining and amazing looking!

Aside from the highly interactive dinner preparations, I was really impressed with the fact that each dish could be, and was in my case, tailored to fit each guest’s likes/dislikes. Don’t care for frog legs? No problem! They will just replace them with tender breaded chicken made to look like frog legs – so  you don’t feel completely left out! Furthermore, as a testament to the Chef’s creative genius, 5 of the 6 courses included walnuts. After my 5-hour culinary experience, I was quite full and ready to fall into a deep, walnut-induced food coma.

Overall, the California Walnut Harvest gave me a new perspective about the growth, harvesting, and processing of walnuts. It’s not every day that I get to see a food that I love go from the tree to the table. And, although I have written about the many health benefits of walnuts before, this tour reinforced how healthy these little nuts are and how incorporating them into any meal is possible and easy.

If you don’t know by now, walnuts are one of the best, if not the best, nuts in regard to nutritional value. Don’t believe me? Check out the California Walnut Commission to see the full details!

Filed Under: Food Tagged With: , , , , ,

5 Reasons To Eat Dark Chocolate Every Day

October 10, 2010 by

Dark Chocolate

(Photo source)

The health benefits of dark chocolate have been widely reported in the last few years. It has even been called a superfood due to its positive impact on a variety of health conditions. I rarely need an excuse to eat chocolate. But if you were looking for another reason to eat chocolate every day, here are five good ones!

5 Reasons to Eat Dark Chocolate Every Day

  1. Helps our Heart – Numerous studies have associated heart health with eating dark chocolate. Even recent studies have shown that the powerful antioxidants, flavanols, in dark chocolate can help prevent the activation of platelets in the blood, which contribute to heart disease. Other studies show that the antioxidants can even reverse some of the artery damage cause by smoking, although this is definitely not an incentive to keep smoking nor is it a good excuse to start.
  2. Makes You Smarter – Dark chocolate (at least 70% cocoa solids) is a major source of magnesium, a mineral essential for brain health, while it also helps prevent the plaque build-up that leads to Alzheimer’s disease. Furthermore, there is evidence that chocolate boosts memory, attention span, and increase our reaction time.
  3. Boosts Our Immune System – A 2009  study in the British Journal of Nutrition found that dark chocolate has immunity boosting power, possibly helping us fight off infection.
  4. Reduces Stress – Eating about 1.5 ounces of dark chocolate every day may help to reduce your stress level, particularly those with moderate to high anxiety.
  5. Helps Us Live Longer – Finally, Harvard researchers found that people who ate chocolate lived an average of one year longer than those who did not, although the association was stronger in men than women.

Have a great night everyone – I’m off to eat some chocolate!

Filed Under: Featured, Food Tagged With: , , ,

Interview with Iron Chef Cat Cora and Cookbook Giveaway!

October 3, 2010 by

The Chicago Gourmet held last weekend played host to many of Chicago’s famous chefs, including Rick Bayless and Jimmy Bannos, Sr. But the event also brought in other, more international chefs, including one Iron Chef – Cat Cora. During this event, I had the pleasure of chatting with Cat Cora about her latest book, how she gets her kids to eat new dishes, and about her new show on OWN – the Oprah Winfrey Network.

5 Minutes and 5 Questions with Iron Chef Cat Cora

1) When you’re not doing cooking shows and book tours, what’s a typical day like for you?

I get up with my kids (four boys under age 6), we eat breakfast together, get lunches ready for school, get everybody dressed, then wrangle everybody together to head to school. After that, I go to work in my home office. I also try to get in a workout, maybe a little yoga. Then we end up back at home and done with everything by 5 PM to eat dinner and spend some quality time together.

2) In your latest book, Cat Cora’s Classics With A Twist, you have a variety of flavor combinations and ethnic foods. How do you get your kids or kids in general to eat these ethnic foods and try different things? My kids don’t eat everything that I cook for them in this new book. There are some things that they’re just not ready for. It’s about getting them involved in meal planning and mealtimes, gearing the food toward them and actually getting them invested in the meal. If you get kids invested in the meal, they tend to eat more and eat more often, and they feel empowered because they can help make decisions about the meal. And this whole discussion with kids should be a 5-minute conversation not a two hour negotiation – give them two options and have them pick one.

3) How do you decide if/when a new recipe will be added to your restaurant menu?

You need to decide who your audience is first, which helps narrow things down. Then, you need to think about the style of restaurant you have and your concept. When we started the restaurant at Disney, we really had to look at things that were familiar to people. We couldn’t get too crazy or too out-of-the box because it is Disney. You get people from all over the world and there are a lot of different things that they like to eat. We’re about to open a sexy lounge with small plates at the Virgin America terminal at the San Francisco airport. That’s a whole different dynamic and a whole different audience.

4) If you weren’t a chef, what would you be doing?

I definitely know that I would want to perform. I would have definitey tried to go into acting of some kind. I also love to write, so maybe a novelist – and I can still do that, it’s in the future plans!

5) What’s on the horizon for Cat Cora?

I have a new show coming out in January 2011 on Oprah’s network – OWN (which stands for Oprah Winfrey Network). It’s an hour-long show, once a week. We can’t announce what it is or what the name is just yet, but it’s really about bringing families together about food and solving people’s dilemmas in the kitchen – very similar to an intervention show. I’m super excited about it.

Cookbook Giveaway

In keeping with the chef/cooking theme, I’m giving away a brand new book by another notable chef and author Jennifer Chandler. Her book Simply Suppers features homestyle comfort foods, such as potato soup and enchiladas, with a southern flair.

To enter the giveaway, you can either…

  1. Leave a comment on this post about who your favorite celebrity chef is and why OR
  2. Tweet/Retweet this post

You have until Tuesday, October 5 at 9 PM Eastern to enter. Good luck!

Filed Under: Food Tagged With: , , , ,

Chicago Gourmet – Take Two!

September 29, 2010 by

Just a few more photos from Chicago Gourmet 2010 – Enjoy the photo tour!

Filed Under: Food Tagged With: , ,

Chicago Gourmet: Wine, Dine, and Lines

September 28, 2010 by

For the third consecutive year, the Illinois Restaurant Association hosted the highly anticipated Chicago Gourmet. And for the third year, the attendees, including yours truly, seemed to leave with mixed emotions about the event.

On Saturday, I received my first taste of the event in the form of an hour-long check-in line. Unfortunately, this was not the only line I would encounter throughout the weekend. Luckily, as a corresponding writer for Foodbuzz, I was able to bypass the first queue and get right down to business – drinking wine and eating fancy food. However, within no time at all, I realized that I would be doing quite a bit more drinking than eating. Of the more than 150 food and wine vendors present, wine, beer, and liquor tents easily out-numbered food tents 2 to 1, or at least that is what it seemed like.

Due to this imbalance in food v. alcohol, most of the food tents had lines, albeit many were fast-moving. Reminiscent of the first two years, the lines for the more popular restaurants, ie. Frontera and Gibson’s, snaked around so far that it was hard to tell where they ended. When I did finally work my way up to the front of the line (and I did wait – no line jumping for me!), I was a little surprised at how heavily focused the dishes were on meat and seafood. This, of course, is a man’s dream, but for someone who does not eat meat or who is a vegan, finding food beyond dessert was challenging at best.

Sunday proved an even greater challenge when those lucky enough to score a Groupon discount arrived for their fair share. I am sorry to report that their fair share included even longer lines and even less food, with some vendors even running out of food.

In spite of the lines and limited vegetarian options, there were a number of highlights that deserve a mention. The plentiful seating included a mix of tables with umbrellas and plush chairs and lounge stools – very relaxing and trés chic. The seating combined with the sporadic live jazz interspersed with piped-in music from all decades created an ambience of an upscale outdoor wedding, perfect for a crisp fall day. Furthermore, the long lines for popular restaurants often left much shorter lines at others, especially in the dessert tents.  These were definitely the hidden gems of the event and where I was able to try some fantastic treats, including pumpkin bread pudding, tiramisu, pumpkin and sugar cookie gelato, and sticky toffee pudding.

For wine and alcohol enthusiasts, Chicago Gourmet was a virtual dream come true. The wine and other spirits flowed freely and merchants weren’t hesitant about filling and refilling glasses. And, just like the chefs who were present, the wine merchants were passionate about their wineries and their products which made for enjoyable conversation.

The wine tastings and cooking demonstrations, often led by Chicago’s top chefs, were more than informative and enjoyable. The demonstrations held on the main Bon Appetit stage made you feel as if you were actually watching a professional cooking show, while the smaller stages made for more intimate demos. No matter what demonstration you witnessed, the chefs and other presenters, including such top names at Iron Chef Cat Cora and Chicago’s own Rick Bayless, were more than willing to interact with the audience, take questions, and allow for photos.

Even with two years under its proverbial belt – not to mention Bon Appetit magazine as the title sponsor, Chicago Gourmet still had a few sticky spots – even beyond the decadently sticky toffee pudding I tried. That’s not to say it was all for naught. Most of the people I encountered seemed to be in good spirits – although maybe due to the alcohol – even those who had traveled quite a distance to get there.

Overall, Chicago Gourmet may not have lived up to its expectation, especially for foodie purists, but it still has great potential. Let’s hope that fourth time’s a charm.

Filed Under: Food Tagged With: , , ,

Chicago Gourmet Teaser…

September 26, 2010 by

The weekend was full of wine, gourmet food, and chats with famous chefs – including this Iron Chef…

I’d love to give you a complete review of Chicago Gourmet, however, I’m still “digesting” my fabulous weekend – both mentally and physically. Check back for full details of my interviews with Iron Chef Cat Cora, Bon Appetit Editor-in-Chief Barbara Fairchild, as well as a review of Chicago Gourmet.

Filed Under: Food Tagged With: , ,

Warm Up With My Mighty Leaf Tea Giveaway!

September 19, 2010 by

The official start of Fall is just a few days away. You all know how I love the fall – especially for fall running. But the cooler weather is also a great time to start drinking my favorite teas again. I drink tea quite a bit in the Fall and Winter months, mostly because it keeps me warm on those cold days but also for the fantastic health benefits. However, I tend to slack off a little from April-August when the temps start to rise. I know that many people drink hot tea all year long (like this guy), but when it is warm outside, a cold Starbucks coffee just hits the spot.

A few months ago, on a rare occasion when I was drinking tea in the summer, I bought my first box of Mighty Leaf Tea. I had tried the tea at a restaurant a few days prior and just had to have a box for myself. The organic breakfast from Mighty Leaf has a classic taste – similar to an English Breakfast, completely full-bodied and delicious – particularly with a little cream.

Mighty Leaf Tea Giveaway

Fast-forward to the present where I am very excited to report that Mighty Leaf Tea has kindly sent me a few of their products to giveaway. Here’s what one lucky reader will get….

  • A stainless steel Tea Top Brew Travel Mug – (still in the box!) It’s awesome for drinking your tea in the car on the way to school or work!
  • 12 pouches of Mighty Leaf tea – 3 each of Green Tea Tropical, Orange Dulce, Organic African Nectar, and Organic Detox Infusion
  • A copy of Green Tea Living – This is a freebie from me! It’s an awesome book about the health benefits of tea and all the awesome things you can do with it!

To enter, you can either:

  1. Leave a comment on this post telling me what your favorite flavor of Mighty Leaf Tea is or which flavor you’d most like to try. OR
  2. Tweet/retweet this post over Twitter

You have until Tuesday, September 21, 2010, at 9 PM Central to enter the giveaway. I can’t wait to hear all your comments! You are seriously going to love these giveaway items!!

Filed Under: Food Tagged With: , , , ,

Top Foodie Towns in the US

September 15, 2010 by

Bon Appétit magazine has just named our nation’s top “Foodiest Towns” of 2010. To even be considered for this prestigious list, towns had to fit certain criteria including:

  • Small, fewer than 250,000 residents or a small town feel
  • Quality farmers’ markets
  • Concerned farmers
  • Dedicated food media
  • First-rate restaurants
  • Talented food artisans
  • Community of food lovers

With this strict criteria, standard top foodie cities, like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco, didn’t make the cut. However, by keeping this criteria to smaller towns, you’ll see that some true gems were able to shine. So who made the cut?

TOP FOODIE TOWN

Boulder, CO – Hands down, Boulder topped this list for many reasons. It is the home of innovative food companies, top-tier restaurants, and one of the best farmers’ markets in the country. Other runner-up cities included:

RUNNERS UP

  1. McMinnville, OR
  2. Big Sur, CA
  3. Traverse City, MI
  4. Louisville, KY
  5. Ithaca, NY

Surprisingly, I have actually been to one of these small town foodie destinations – Traverse City. However, the last time I was there, at least 10 years ago, it was really just coming into its own as a foodie town.

What top foodie towns have you been to? What’s your favorite?

Filed Under: Featured, Food Tagged With: , ,

Apple Pie: 6 Simple Ingredients

September 13, 2010 by

More often than not, the simplest recipes result is the tastiest dishes. Last night, Scott made an apple pie with the apples we picked yesterday. He used 6 of the most basic ingredients….

  • apples
  • sugar
  • cinnamon
  • nutmeg
  • flour
  • prepared pie crust

So essentially he went from this…

To this…

In about 1.5 hours. Voila!

Filed Under: Food Tagged With: , ,