Sum It Up Sunday-Moving Day!

WE HAVE A NEW HOME!

We have moved the Something About Food? Blog to a new website!

All of our new posts will be here (and an archive of our old ones too):

https://www.somethingaboutfood.com/something-about-food-blog/

You will also be able to find episodes of the podcast, information about our guests, restaurants we love, and everything else Something About Food? related at:

https://www.somethingaboutfood.com/

Come join us at the table and dig in!

Good Food News-Shabu Shabu Anyone?

The New Yorker magazine has a review of  Chef Mako Okano’s new place in the lower east side of Manhattan.  The review of Shabu Shabu Macoron is glowing, and what really interested me is that the eight-seat place has a small staff made up of only women.

And that’s not even the most unusual thing about it: according to Okano, it’s the world’s only restaurant to serve an omakase, or tasting menu, that centers on shabu-shabu, or Japanese hotpot. The restaurant accommodates just eight people at a time at an L-shaped counter and offers two seatings each night. A little Shabu Shabu, anyone?

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Always Choose Cake!

I was waiting for Huffman! Typical of Dave Huffman, we started our interview a few minutes late as he was pulling vegan cupcakes out of the oven. Nothing wrong with that AT ALL!

He may go by the alias Bitchy Vegan Homo on his YouTube channel, but he is pure fun to chat with. We talked pastries, traveling while vegan and getting everyone to the table on “Always Choose Cake”, Episode 36 of the Something About Food? podcast. And by the way: yes, yes you should.



Dave Huffman (aka Bitchy Vegan Homo) is the host of the Cleveland, OH-based YouTube cooking show "Bitchy Vegan Homo". He lives with 4 cats, 1 giant dog, and his handsome fiancé. He would eat cake for every meal if it wouldn’t immediately lead to diabetes. Find him on Twitter  @bitchyveganhomo and on Instagram @bitchyveganhomo

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Here is a pic of the wonderful cupcakes Dave was making before we chatted. They look good enough to eat, don't they?!

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Sum It Up Sunday-Too Hot To Eat

"Too hot to eat!" is not something I say very often. My stomach has ruled my world ever since I can remember. I don't usually miss meals because my stomach will have none of that nonsense.

But right now the record hot temperatures here in Colorado (and all across the country) are stifling. It is affecting our forests, our food supply and us. So what is there to eat when it gets so hot?









Fruity beverages, like watermelon agua frescas, are a staple. Sometimes I'll use coconut water in them for added nutrients without being too heavy                   

I'll grill up some vegan dogs for a quick meal. The ones from Field Roast are a favorite of mine as they replicate the meat filled frankfurters quite nicely. I will often throw some kimchi on as a condiment to shake things up.

Salads are ok but can be boring if you don't keep changing up the flavors. I'll never tire of a 3 Bean Salad, especially when you keep adding in more beans! Perhaps the vinegar pickley flavor helps to cool me off? Don't know, don't care. It just tastes right to me.

Cold soba noodles are a favorite of mine. The Japanese were onto something when they created this simple dish. The word "refreshing" doesn't do this dish justice; "invigorating" is more like it.














It is very hard when it's so hot you don't want to even move to even think about food. The one thing I will always move for is ice cream. Almost every shop now has a vegan flavor or two, going beyond the usual boring fruit sorbets. In Albany, CA, just outside of Berkley, Mr. Dewie's Cashew Creamery is all vegan all the time. Every single flavor. Thank you Mr. Dewie, thank you so very much.

Stay cool out there!







PS. Public pools are amazing too. Be a kid again, jump off the diving board or go down the slide! Got refreshed at the Eldorado Springs Pool today. Lovely!

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Good Food News-The Bautista Family Date Ranch

I love this sticky sweet Civil Eats story. The Bautista Family Date Ranch is in the desert town of Mecca at the edge of the Salton Sea, in the middle of Southern California’s desert. This organic, family-run operation relies on numerous by-hand processes and 100+ free-ranging animals to produce seven varieties of the sweet fruit for their mail-order operation, 7HotDates, that has developed a fanatical following of date-lovers from around the country.

The family lives and works on the 14-acre property of 1,000 date palms, each of which produces 200 pounds of fruit every year. Their dates are a staple at farmers’ markets from Santa Monica to Palm Springs, and their online store regularly sells out for four months out of the year. The Bautistas begin climbing their trees in August to hand-pick individual fruits at peak ripeness.

This attention to variance in flavor and texture has earned them a cult following. As a certified organic operation, the Bautistas use free-ranging goats, cows, sheep, chickens, and even peacocks—known for killing snakes—to manage the property. “We have a zoo,” says Bautista patriarch Enrique, of the more than 100 animals that do their part to eat pests, trim weeds, graze on the cowpeas cover crop, and fertilize the soil with organic matter. The animals’ manure alone accomplishes 80 percent of the soil building.“[When] everything you do is for the trees, they’ll produce more,” says Enrique. “The more you invest, the more they give."

Who is ready for a sweet date?

A Feast for the Eyes

Tom di Maria is a world traveler and an art and food lover. He is also an advocate for artists with disabilities as director of Creative Growth Art Center in Oakland, CA.

We talked about Buffalo, Sunday Sauce being started on Saturday, and how art can give the artist more than a voice. And as always, pastries came up in the conversation (why is that?). Enjoy "A Feast for the Eyes", Episode 35 of the Something About Food? Podcast.



Tom di Maria has served as director of Creative Growth Art Center since 2000. He has developed partnerships with museums, galleries, and international design companies to help bring Creative Growth's artists with disabilities fully into the contemporary art world. He speaks around the world about the Center’s major artists and their relationship to both Outsider Art and contemporary culture. Prior to his current position, he served as Assistant Director of the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive at UC Berkeley. He received his MFA from the Maryland Institute, College of Art, in Baltimore, and a BFA from the Rochester Institute of Technology.

Listen in here:
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Sunday supper anyone? Pull up a chair, eat and get ready for some lively conversation.

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Sum It Up Sunday-Burn or Ignite

It's hot, like hellaciously hot. It was 100 F yesterday here in Boulder. It's too damn hot. The climate is telling us something.

The political climate has risen to unbearable temperatures as well. Again, we are being told something.

This blog and podcast are meant to be a positive, welcoming place where all of us can find our connections through food. I hope you find them to be so, even when the world around us feels as if it is literally burning to the ground. Igniting relationships through what we eat is a tasty way to discover what binds us to humanity.

Share with me, if you will, the latest thing you had to eat that made you smile and feel connected to family, friends, or even just those who were around you at that moment. It doesn't matter how simple or complex it was, I want to know.

For me, it was this tiny plate of Italian cookies. What I had set out for, as I wandered through Chinatown in San Francisco, was some pastries in the most highly rated bakery in the city. There was a line- no problem. Then I found out the line was only for preorders. So I wandered some more and found this place, Stella Pastry not far from City Lights Bookstore.

Two day's later I heard that the matriarch of the family of the first restaurant I worked at had passed away. She and my late mother probably did and would have loved to share this little plate of deliciousness. As a matter of fact, the pine nut encrusted beauty was one of my mom's favorites.

These bits of pastry reminded me of a sweeter time when those two strong women would have cackled over this plate as they commiserated about how weird and wonderful their families were and are.

Connect with me, fill me in on what filled you up.

If you send pics I'll add it and your notes to the blog here, so others can share and connect.

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