Food tips

The beginning of this year I went on a diet. I know! A food writer on a diet, it sounds crazy. But I had gained a lot of weight and it had to be done. My diet is really simple and I’ve lost almost 20 pounds. A number of people have asked me how I did it, so I shared the story on my friend Dianne's blog .  When I'm dining at home, I generally follow The Day Off Diet from Dr. Oz. I do take a day off. Sometimes two days! It just depends on the week and my schedule. If I can order something on my diet at a restaurant I do, if not, I don’t sweat it.  Here’s the diet in a nutshell—Every day I try to eat two servings of complex carbohydrates, two servings of foods high in monounsaturated fatty acids (olives, avocados, nuts or seeds) and six ounces of lean protein a day. I eat all the non-starchy vegetables I want and just a little bit of olive oil.  It’s a fairly low carbohydrate diet, so I eat much smaller portions of pasta but I mix in a ton of vegetables, I eat pureed caulif...

Remember the Campbell’s soup jingle, Mm Mm good? That’s kind of how I feel about Merlot. It’s velvety tannins, plum and blackberry flavor and soft character make it easy to enjoy and very popular. It’s one of the “noble grapes” of France or cépage noble and is used as a blending grape but also as a single varietal. It's planted all over the world and of course its character varies depending on the region. In France where it's a primary grape in Bordeaux Merlot tends to have more acidity, in Italy it can be lighter and more herbal, in the US it was so lush and delicious it led to a craze in the 90’s and the quality dropped as winemakers scrambled to plant it everywhere. It's still the second leading variety planted in California, just behind Cabernet Sauvignon. Fortunately today it's better than ever. I particularly like Merlot from California and Washington where the best examples combine the fruitiness you expect from a New World wine and yet the structure of an Old Wo...

So I was going to review the dark chocolate coconut GFB Gluten Free Bites I received in the Must Have Box I was sent by Popsugar but I’m sharing a recipe I created of my own version instead. I’ve noticed a lot of healthy products and raw foods use dates as a sweetener. Because I have a food sensitivity to dates and can’t eat them, I sometimes adapt recipes and use prunes in place of dates.  Even if you have no issues with dates, there’s good reason to choose prunes instead. While prunes and dates are about the same in terms of iron, fiber and protein, when it comes to sugar, carbohydrates and calories, prunes are lower. Prunes are also significantly higher in antioxidants including vitamin K and vitamin A.  A  number of studies  show consumption of prunes not only helps prevent osteoporosis but actually reverses bone loss thanks to a combination of bone building calcium, magnesium, phosphorous and copper.  I’ve always loved dried fruit, it’s high in calories s...

I've enjoyed some very special dinners lately, but it was an unpretentious lunch at Americana Grill   Eat Americana that I’m most excited to tell you about. But first, a little background. It was several years ago when I first discovered Broken Record , a restaurant in the back of a dive bar in the Excelsior, a part of the city so far off the beaten track that you have to get on the freeway to get there. The kitchen was run by James Moisey and Shane LaValley. Their food seemed like pub grub on the surface but it was so much more than that. There were burgers, sandwiches, salads and some Southern things like crawfish and grits, buttery biscuits and mac and cheese. They also served a walnut pie that I miss to this day. The food was inexpensive and sometimes a little over the top, like a burger with bacon ground into the mix, but always good.  Chef James Moisey at Americana Grill The two chefs went on to great success at Rickybobby in the lower Haight for three years. And then ...

A few years ago I received a shipment of SweeTango apples courtesy of the growers and used them to make an individual apple crisp . This year, I was contacted to be a SweetTango blog ambassador, and was also hired to create a couple of extra crunchy recipes using raw apples. One of the recipes I suggested wasn’t chosen, but I was eager to make it anyway and it turned out to be a real keeper.  The SweeTango was developed at the University of Minnesota and is cross between a sweet Honeycrisp and a tangier Zestar! apple. It’s grown in New York, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Washington, and Nova Scotia, Canada. While it’s fine to bake SweeTango apples, they are particularly good raw. In addition to being juicy and sweet with a complex flavor that’s sweet, spicy and tangy, these apples are really known for their crunch. And there’s a reason for that. The apples have cells twice the size of most other apples. How crunchy is the SweeTango? It's acutally the Guinness Book of World recor...

Earlier this year I was avoiding caffeine and drinking only herbal tea. Herbal tea is really a misnomer, there is no such thing. Tea is made from leaves of the tea plant, camellia sinensis . Black tea, oolong, green tea and even white tea is made from the leaves of this plant. The different styles and colors come from how it’s processed. Herbal teas are more properly tisanes, a French term coined in the 1930’s. It can contain herbs, flowers, spices or other plant material. It is generally caffeine free.  I’m always trying to find tisanes that taste like something, anything. Often they are too bland or one strong flavor like licorice or rose hip takes over. Recently I discovered two fantastic blends from a small company called Tocha Tea . They were created by Venus Tsui, who was struggling with getting enough sleep as a new mom, and turned to a book of old Chinese remedies. The teas were inspired by her experience with herbs and are packaged in biodegradable sachets so you can see t...

There is chile and then there’s chili. Chiles are sometimes called peppers, but that’s not really accurate. Pepper comes from peppercorns. Confusing things even further there is chili which is short for chili powder, made from powdered chilis and chili short for chili con carne, a stew made with fresh chilies or chile powder. The reason I bring this up is that when I received a carton of freshly roasted Hatch green chiles, I set out to find a recipe for chili con carne, made with Hatch chiles and let’s just say Google and I found it rather challenging.  Mostly I found recipes for pork chili verde but a request was made for beef. Lisa over at Homesick Texan has what looks like an amazing Chile Verde Con Carne made with beef, but it has 17 ingredients, which is fine if you’re making a big batch. But if you’re making a small batch during the week, my version is much simpler with a lot fewer ingredients.  As with all chili, you should let your taste be your guide. This year I got...