Brown Bagging? Try a New Take on Tuna

By Sandy Hu

David says dad’s tuna salad sandwiches are good, but with mom’s, you can feel the love! So I’m sharing how I put the “love” in every bite.

Canned tuna is the go-to sandwich filling in our house because it’s convenient and versatile. While the fillings below are meant for sandwiches, you could spread them on crackers for a quick snack or appetizer, or spoon some on dressed salad greens for a main dish salad.

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Ode to Crunchy

By Marilyn Hunter

People often ask me what my favorite food is. Truth is, I don’t have one. I have a thousand. I’ve known very few people who loved one food so much they couldn’t get enough of it. My uncle was one of those people. He loved crunchy peanut butter so much he ate it straight out of the jar with a spoon.

Uncle Gerald was a bit of a connoisseur of peanut butter. In just one bite, he could tell you the type of peanuts and where the crop came from. He was a man of true grit and true love…a pillar of strength and calm. He lived life passionately. And when I think of him, I remember a happy blur of celebrations, storytelling, guitar playing and good food.

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Rutabaga, My New “Butternut Squash”

From Lori Powell

Rutabaga is that funny-looking, waxy thing that you see in the root area of the supermarket produce section. It really doesn’t feel good to the touch but underneath is a globe of delicious goodness!

I must say that I was among the doubters, thinking it really can’t be that good and it’s probably woody and dry underneath the rind. Now rutabaga is my new butternut squash with lots more dimension – the adult version of butternut squash.

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Use Your Bean

By Katie Barreira

Cooking with dried beans requires minimal effort and begets peak results. Why haven’t I been using them all along?

Canned beans tend to be overly soft and bland, when compared to their recently re-hydrated counterparts. I’ve taken to incorporating canned beans into a dish only during the last few minutes of cooking, to maintain their texture. While it’s unlikely that I’ll ever banish the canned variety from my pantry, a dried bean is a terrible thing to ignore.

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At the Winter Fancy Food Show in San Francisco

By Sandy Hu

Many shows ago, I gave up on trying to make trend sense out of what I saw and tasted at the Winter Fancy Food Show. A trade show for gourmet retailers, the show covers 196.000 square feet at Moscone Center in San Francisco, embracing 1,300 exhibiting companies and attracting more than 17,000 attendees.

There’s simply too much real estate and too many disparate offerings to conveniently pigeonhole. So instead of trying, I just walk the show, see what I see, taste what I taste, and refuse to be overly ambitious in what I take away from the experience. Yesterday, I enjoyed the company of @JustinMcNeil of Delin8ted as I walked the show. He’s a new friend I met on Twitter, tweeting about #NASFT and #FancyFoodShow over the weekend.

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