Pantry Clean-Up: What to do with Garam Masala

When visiting Cape Cod, one of my favorite pilgrimages is to the Atlantic Spice Company, a wholesale distributor of high-quality herbs and spices. The deceptively stark warehouse is, on the inside, a Mecca for foodies. It is also the prime culprit of my pantry mayhem.

Whether it’s stocking up on discount staples, like salt and pepper, snatching up an item I’ve heard of, but never tried (this year it was bee pollen!), or shopping for a recipe-specific ingredient, I can’t get out of that place without an armload.

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A Taste of the Fancy Food Show

By Sandy Hu

With 206,000 square feet of exhibition space spanning the North and South Halls of San Francisco’s Moscone Center and 1,300 exhibitors, you need a plan to walk the Winter Fancy Food Show. If you don’t focus, it’s easy to overindulge, sampling sauces, pickles, cheeses, salumi, oils, vinegars, cookies, crackers, chocolates, frozen desserts, juices, teas, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, chutneys, pickles, honeys…. Your stomach will not thank you for it.

Anything you would find in a specialty food store is here, multiplied many times over, available for tasting. So yesterday, walking the show, I looked for specialty foods I thought would help you make meals easier or more delicious. And I only sampled those things that qualified in my quest (except for the Hudson Valley Foie Gras and a few other indulgent foods too irresistible to pass up).

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Coleslaw – a Great Winter Side Dish

By David Hu

Most people think of coleslaw for summertime, but it’s an excellent salad year-round, since cabbage is one of the few vegetables in season during fall and winter. Cabbage is a highly nutritious vegetable and it makes a hardy and delicious salad. California raisins add color contrast and tangy-sweet flavor. This side dish should take no more than 10 minutes to assemble. Allow a half hour for flavors to blend and mellow.

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Rediscovering Pimento Cheese

“What’s this stuff?” Nicky asked, holding up a giant tub of pimento cheese at our neighborhood market. “Oh, it’s just a Southern thing.” I said. “I used to carry it in my school lunchbox.” Then Andrew added, “Well, it’s actually a Midwest thing too.”

Almost everyone has a dish they remember from childhood or family gatherings of years past. I don’t know exactly when I had my first taste of pimento cheese, but if I had to guess, I’d say it was a lunchbox sandwich. As memory serves me, my childhood sandwiches were often pimento cheese, PB&J, olive loaf or bologna on white bread.

Andrew even remembers pimento cheese balls coated with slivered almonds and a maraschino cherry on top from Schuler’s Steakhouse every Thanksgiving and Christmas. In fact, it was a part of almost every holiday buffet spread we could remember.

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Eating Healthy? Punch up Flavor with These Ingredients

By Lori Powell

I have missed you all and hope you feel the same. Happy New Year!! Now begins a new year full of what I hope will be blogs that inspire you to cook and eat super-delicious healthy food in 2012.

I have never been a fan of New Year’s resolutions but for some reason I am into it this year and hopefully that enthusiasm will linger long enough to get me back on track and make me feel stronger.

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