Bare Fruit Apple Chips: Betcha Can't Eat Just One

Nothing but apples in this bag

If I could only eat one category of food for the rest of my life, it would be fruit.  I'll take a barrel of any species, fresh or dried, and contentedly munch until my stomach feels like it's going to pop off of my body like a loose button on a tight jacket. Until recently, I only gorged on two forms,  fresh and dried, but now I've discovered a third contender -- baked-dried.

The organic apple chips from Bare Fruit are crispy and crunchy without any of that puffed airiness of the dehydrated kind.  I'm so hooked on both the sweet Fuji and tart Granny Smith varieties that I can down an entire bag in one sitting. That's equal to four apples.

In an effort to slightly curb my consumption to a more reasonable half-bag (aka two apples), I've been mixing the apple chips with other ingredients to create more complex snacks. Here are some of my latest creations:

PB and A
Dip the apple chips in peanut butter. Alternatively, you can spread peanut butter onto the apple chips, but that takes longer and the chips at the bottom of the bag are invariably broken. If I'm feeling decadent (or mad or sad or happy or tired), I add a flurry of chocolate chips.

Party Mix
Mix the red-rimmed Fujis with the green Granny's in a large bowl to make the base of your party mix. Add toasted walnuts, peanuts, and raisins. If you're feeling decadent (or mad or sad or happy or tired), add chocolate chips too.

Turkey, Brie, and Apple Chip Sandwich
You know those people who like to crush potato chips inside their sandwiches? This is a healthier version (the healthfulness is directly proportional to the size of your slab of brie). Roasted or smoked turkey, butter lettuce, and a little Dijon makes a nice combo, but chicken or roast beef would also work.


Find Bare Fruit apple chips at Whole Foods markets.

Yatsuhashi Cookies for (Green) Tea Time

The curved shape represents the koto, a Japanese string instrument

During a recent adventure in San Francisco's Japantown, I discovered some crunchy cookies that deserves a spot on your saucer. They're called "yatsuhashi," and they come from Kyoto.

According to one origin story, they were created to honor 17th century musician Kengyo Yatsuhashi and shaped to resemble his instrument, the koto. A different story claims they were made to look like a bridge, since "yatsuhashi" means "eight bridges" or "eight-planked bridge."

Basic yatsuhashi consist of rice flour and cinnamon. Toasted soybean flour adds nuttiness and a scatter of baked-in poppy seeds provide additional crunch. The cookies are crispy, delicate, dainty and a tad sweet. While you won't want to dunk one in your cup of green or oolong tea because it would muddle the balance of flavors, you should keep a plate alongside your pot for intermittent nibbling.

If you visit Kyoto, you'll also find the unbaked version called "yatsuhasi nama." These are triangles of soft dough  made from rice, spiced with cinnamon, and filled with red bean paste.  They're too perishable for export.

Find yatsuhashi at San Francisco confectionary shop Nippon-Ya in the Japantown mall. You'll also find green tea, coffee, and sesame varieties.

Chocolate Kale Chips, What?

Half-eaten bag of one of my other favorite flavors, Quite Cheezy.

It sounds absurd. Chocolate and kale?  But don't dismiss the latest incarnation of kale worship.

Alive & Radiant Foods, my go-to brand of kale chips, introduced Chokalet Chip Kale Krunch over a year ago.  Lately, I've been seeing it less and less on the grocery store shelf, so here's my pitch to save it from extinction.

Coconut palm sugar imparts a touch of sweetness, but don't mistake these chips for cookies. The kale's grassy flavor makes them taste more bitter than sweet, though chocolate saves them from being categorically savory. They're a legitimately healthy, kinda-sorta treat.  And while I was a fan at first munch, I know a couple of folks who had to try several bites before becoming devotees.

If you can't fathom a chocolate and kale combination, try one of Alive & Radiant's other flavors.  Cheezy Chipotle and Hibiscus and Pink Peppercorn are two of my favorites.  Whichever  you choose, you'll appreciate the following characteristics:

1. Crunch
Some kale chips taste limp. These ones are real noisemakers due to a low-temperature dehydration process. That process also helps the chips retain nutrients, the very nutrients responsible for kale's propulsion to produce fame in the first place.

2. Size
Too often, kale chips crumble in their packages leaving you with a bag of crumbs.  Alive and Radiant's are large, jagged shards that stay intact.

3. Cost
These are a few dollars cheaper than the other brands.  Price varies by store, but expect to pay between $4 and $6. Be on the lookout for frequent sales on one or more flavors.

Find the Kale Krunch line at Whole Foods, Real Foods, and other similar organic/health food markets. You can also purchase them online.

Product Alert: Worthy Granola Lives up to its Name

Reusable jars are a worthy idea

Once upon a time in the 19th century, granola was a health food. It consisted of whole grains  baked until crunchy.  It later became associated with hippie culture and the revived interest in natural foods. Now, most granolas are so saddled with sugar  it's hard to characterize a bowlful as anything but dessert.

Jeanne Norsworthy, creator of Worthy Granola, was fed up with the perversion of her favorite breakfast food, so she created her own. "At first I tried (unsuccessfully--and with good reason) to make it specifically oil-free or low fat," says Norsworthy. " I eventually created granola with the "it" factor I was looking for."

Agreed.

The granola is barely sweetened with molasses, coconut sugar, and maple syrup, all of which counter an otherwise pleasantly salty twang. The rest of the mix consists of oats, sprouted almonds, sprouted walnuts, sprouted pumpkin sweets, unsweetened coconut flakes, raisins, and flaxseeds. With an ingredient list like that, are you surprised it's also organic?  

Norsworthy produces the cereal in 1 pound jars. She currently only sells though special order but plans to make her granola available in select San Francisco stores starting in January 2013. Send her an email to buy or request more information.

Saigon Sandwiches for the Win

My winner on election day 

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Sunlight, 80 degrees, and a patriotic spirit propels me toward the Civic Center (though not before stopping at Whole Foods for a free cup of I-just-voted coffee).  City Hall looks the same as always, no last-ditch pro-Obama rallies or anti-Romney tirades, just a solitary table laid out with voter information and one man in a baseball cap holding a sign that said "vote" with an arrow pointing inside.  This lack of demonstration seems very un-San Francisco.

Bored, hot, and hungry, I continue toward UN Plaza for Tuesday's Off the Grid hoping to score a cheap lunch from some yet untried truck.  The daily options all veer toward meaty with brisket sliders from Old World Food Truck and pork belly buns from Chairman Bao, all of which feel too heavy for the weather.

This day warrants something fresh, something leafy, something light but still filling. This day demands a bahn mi.

Just a few seedy blocks north of the Civic Center lies Little Saigon. There, smack in the tenderest part of the tenderloin stands legendary banh mi shop, Saigon Sandwiches.

Joining the line of devotees crammed inside, I wait only 45 seconds to place my order, thanks to an efficient system consisting of one woman taking orders without collecting payment while two others speedily stuff and wrap the sandwiches. You pay upon receiving your sandwich. And what you pay is absurd.

$3.50 scores you a toasted baguette loaded with long flat sheets of fried tofu (or pork or chicken or meatball or pate), shredded carrots, jalapenos, cucumbers, and an overgrowth of cilantro all sticking together by the faintest spread of of mayo. The vegetables and tofu are left long rather than chopped, which helps the ladies save prep time. It also proves the superfluity of chopping vegetables for sandwiches, since you tear them apart bite by bite anyway.

Note that Saigon Sandwiches occupies a dinky space furnished with only two seats by the window.  However, because it is so small, everyone orders his or her sandwich to-go, which means at least one of those two seats is almost always empty.

Election day is about winners and losers, and Saigon Sandwiches is destined for a long and popular term.

560 Larkin Street (between Turk and Eddy)

(415) 474-5698

Product Alert: Graeter's Black Raspberry Chip

A shade for wearing or eating

Fruit-flavored ice creams often taste too little of fruit and too heavily of cream, but Graeter's knows what it's doing. Its Black Raspberry Chip is deep fuschia, reminiscent of 1980s prom dresses, but there's nothing immature about it. It's not too sweet, tastes of the berry, and is gashed with dark chocolate disks.

It's also incredibly creamy thanks to the company's signature French Pot technique that churns the ice cream by gently folding it onto itself. It's that process that turned Graeter's into the darling of the Midwest when Bavarian immigrant Louis Charles Graeter opened his Cincinnati shop in 1870, selling ice cream and chocolate. The company still makes ice cream the original way, two gallons at a time.

Raise your spoons to this "All-Time Bestseller," and find pints online or at Whole Foods.

Carrot Muffin for a Good Morning

Showing off a blistered cream cheese cap 

I have a thing for muffins. No matter the bakery, no matter the time of day, I compulsively gloss over the croissants, Danishes, and scones and settle my hungry gaze on the muffin selection. I also have a thing for cream cheese baked into muffins, so when I started perusing the collection at Sandbox Bakery and glimpsed the cream cheese carrot muffin, I slapped my $2 on the glass countertop and looked away from the case.

This muffin is easy to love.  A golden crown of baked cream cheese burrows into an interior crammed with shredded carrots, chewy golden and purple raisins, and walnuts. It's a model for Morning Muffins everywhere and stays just as moist the next day.

Located in Bernal Heights, Sandbox is a favorite amongst ladies in yoga pants who sip their lattes on the sunny bench outside the shop.  The bakery plans to serve sandwiches and pizzettas soon.

Ghirardelli Chocolate Festival

Photo: Bryan Siders (btsiders) via Flickr

This year's 17th annual Ghirardelli Chocolate festival was a letdown. There were so few vendors handing out samples that I struggled to use my fifteen pre-purchased tasting tickets.  Portions were also dinky. The hot fudge sundae that used to come in a small styrofoam cup was downgraded to something only slightly bigger than one of those plastic salad dressing cups stacked at the end of the Whole Foods self-serve bar.

There was an upside -- Cater2U's bread pudding. Private chef and caterer Rhonda Plummer served portions of her creamy and intensely cinnamony chocolate bread pudding.  And thanks to an inordinate amount of sunshine this weekend, the chocolate chips that studded it were deliciously half-melted.

The other best treat of the day came from Fairytale Brownies. One brownie featured swirls of peanut butter, and the other had swirls of cream cheese. Both were dense and fudgy but not too rich for absentminded snacking.

Will the 2013 festival return to its glory days of inducing stomachaches and cavities? Let's hope so.

Yam it up

Once you split it open, the puffed top will deflate in a few hours

Chinese bakeries may seem odd to the uninitiated. The lighting is fluorescent, cakes are always sponge, and baked buns pay homage to lard or margarine while encasing fillings that range from custard to mashed taro to hot dog.

Sheng Kee is one of the Bay Area's dominant Chinese bakery chains with two stores in San Francisco (oddly just 11 blocks from each other), and outposts in Daly City, Milpitas, Cupertino, Richmond, Foster City, and Union City.  In San Francisco, the one on 21st and Irving is twice as big as the one on 9th and Irving and carries a proportionally more diverse selection of pastries, including the fresh yam bun.

The bun itself tastes like buttery, softer version of challah, the way challah tastes when you roll up a piece until it turns into a doughy ball. The filling is mashed sweet potato that's brilliant orange and sweetened just a smidgen too much.  Counter it with a cup of strong black tea.

Consider the bun for breakfast in lieu of your usual cranberry scone.  At around $1.60 each, you can try a different flavor every day.

Find Bay Area  locations.

Red Rabbit has a few Tricks

The bar is hopping like a rabbit come nighttime. Photo: Red Rabbit

It's obnoxiously loud inside Red Rabbit, the restaurant and bar that opened earlier this year in midtown Sacramento. It's also dark. So dark that you can barely make out the skin-sucking tank tops and towering neon heels that outfit the crowd at 8:30 PM on a Tuesday. But stick around, because the service is courteous and prompt, and the food is very good, sometimes stellar.

Start with the refreshing "watermelon 'three ways.' " Single-bite pieces of three different varieties of watermelon -- red, yellow, and black -- form a line across the plate, each with a different preparation.  Red gets Greek treatment with feta, cucumber, and tzatziki; yellow goes the caprese route; and black is most interesting with its triangle cap of creamy manchego and spicy tomato vinaigrette. A toothpick speared into each one makes for easy eating but difficult sharing. You won't want to share them, anyway.

You must order the smoked St. Louis-style pork spare ribs massaged in tangy barbecue sauce. Succulent and appropriately messy, they're easily some of the best in the city.  Sides include roasted potatoes whose skins should have been a bit crisper and a hefty portion of sweet braised kale that tastes faintly of cola.
  
Two large trout fillets crisscross each other while a gribiche (basically a mayonnaise sauce) crammed with capers and corn is mounded onto the intersection. Too bad the tousle of mixed greens and slender tongues of summer squash droop in pools of vinaigrette.

At least "dressing on the side" is an easy enough request for next time (Red Rabbit demands a "next time"). Perhaps lunch or brunch will provide a quieter visit when the tube top crowd is either at work or in bed.