Cherry Barbecue Sauce Recipe & Giveaway!

I’m happy to once again be participating as a Canbassador. I received some sweet dark red cherries that are as delicious as the season is fleeting. Preserving them is the best way to savor them a little bit longer. Last year I canned some cherries with bourbon. I can’t find the recipe I used and frankly I put the jars so far back in my pantry that I forgot about them until a couple of weeks ago. I just opened the first jar and they turned out to be delicious. I probably got the idea from SweetPreservation.com . This year I used my cherries to make one batch of cherry pie filling and jars of cherry barbecue sauce. I looked at a couple of recipes, but mostly my recipe is adapted from a recipe from Taste of Home magazine. While the technique is the same, I switched up the seasonings, decreased the sugar and blended it smooth. The sauce is really good on pulled pork. You can try it with this super easy  recipe I developed for preparing it in the slow cooker. But it would a......

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Pintxos Party! A How To Guide

Grazing is my favorite form of eating. I would happily give up meals in favor of all day snacking. That’s what's so great about pintxos. The Spanish tradition of eating little bites and sometimes larger “raciones” of food to go with drinks is perfect for a snack or a meal or even a party. If the idea of lots of cooking for a party doesn’t appeal, that’s another reason to consider pintxos. These nibbles, often piled on little slices of bread or speared on toothpicks, use a variety of ingredients that for the most part, don’t need to be cooked. Thanks to a care package from Donostia Foods , I put together a little pintxos party of my own. I relied on a variety of conservas, or preserves. In Spain they preserve olives, fish, seafood and vegetables. Combined with fresh vegetable, cheeses, fruits and a few other things, you can whip up party fare in no time. While we often wax poetic about fresh ingredients, preserved products add another element altogether. Think succulent cann......

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Hashiri Restaurant San Francisco

No matter how much I learn about Japanese food and culture, there is more, much more that I keep learning. Nowhere more is this exemplified than at the latest Japanese restaurant to open in San Francisco, Hashiri . I knew that the changing of the seasons is very important and celebrated in Japan, but it was only at the restaurant that learned that every season has three ingredient phases. Hashiri is the word for first of the season, shun is the peak of season, and nagori is the end of the season. Not surprisingly this restaurant will change their menu with the seasons. In Japan not just the ingredients, but even the tableware changes with the seasons. The porcelain dishes at Hashiri come from Kyoto, known for ceramics.  Hashiri, which just opened in what was Chez Papa Resto in Mint Plaza is a very unique restaurant for several reasons. Hashiri serves just one menu that is a kaiseki meal (a seasonal tasting menu of small dishes) with nigiri sushi ($250 per person in th......

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My Salami Story

In my parent’s kitchen there was a hook near the door. It pretty much always had Columbus Italian dry salami hanging from it. It never occurred to me that this was not the case in every house in America. When I was growing up it was my sister who had the sweet tooth, not me. I loved all things savory. I remember asking my mother if people could choose to be vegetarian, could I be a carnivore? I didn’t hate vegetables, I just loved salty foods. I still do. Some of my favorite things when I was young were thick cut potato chips, corn chips, smoked salmon and salami.  California style Italian dry salami was an integral part of my childhood. I ate fat slabs of salami and thin slices. I ate the crusty ends, peeling off the white dusty paper. I ate it in sandwiches for lunch and for dinner when it was too hot to cook. We used to sit at a picnic table in the Summer on the deck with a big plate of cherry tomatoes, slices of cheese and salami. Take what you want, my mother would say......

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