Just a few short weeks ago, the world witnessed massive devastation in Japan. With heart-wrenching photos pouring in, first of a magnitude 9 earthquake, followed by a terrifying tsunami, then a nuclear meltdown, it's hard not to feel helpless, and so small.

Then again, a few small things really can add up. Around the globe, good people have been using the skills and resources they have to help in whatever way they can -- fundraisers, volunteering, even a Twitter-sourced charity book is in the works. Web designer Sabrina Modelle turned to her own skill set, and that of her fellow food bloggers, when she put out the Twitter call for an Online Bake Sale to aid Japan. Nearly 90 bloggers and bakers from 9 countries responded. The search for a corporation willing to match any part of the money raised was looking bleak. At the eleventh hour Andrew Sigal of The Uncarved Block stepped up to match the first $500 raised. Any other takers?

Modelle commented,

"While I am hell-bent on raising as much money as we possibly can for Japan, I find myself reflecting most on how grateful I am to be a part of a community that is so quick to graciously and generously give whatever they can to people in need."

So, how does it work? Today, for one day only, visit Modelle's blog, The Tomato Tart, to bid on delectable homemade goods from the blogger of your choice. Score the winning bid and you'll receive a shipment from your personal baker within two weeks. All proceeds will go to Second Harvest Japan, a food bank currently responding on the ground to the needs of people displaced by the earthquake and tsunami.

To whet your appetite (and loosen your purse strings), here are a few snapshots of items being offered by some Bay Area bloggers:

Photo from Kitchen Em

Emiko from Kitchen Em will be baking up a batch of her Matcha & Raspberry Flower Honey Madeleines. These pretty little cakes are infused with a subtle touch of pungent matcha tea, layered with the floral sweetness of local Napa-sourced honey.

Photo from Lemons and Anchovies

Jean from Lemons and Anchovies will be satisfying choco-chili addicts with her almost flourless Chocolate Chili Bites. The bites are rich and dense, and the deep choco-late flavor is spiked with just a touch of smoky spice to keep it interesting.

Photo from Eat the Love

Speaking of interesting, these Salted Exotic Bourbon Blood Orange Burnt Sugar Crème Fraiche Caramel Chews from Irvin Lin of Eat the Love may have a long name, but that's because they contain a powerhouse of pleasure flavors. Blood orange, bourbon, burnt sugar, salted caramel, Tahitian vanilla bean, grains of paradise...oh no, this is not the caramel candy of your childhood. Caramels just got grown and sexy.

Photo from Kitchen Corners

For the gluten-free crowd, have no fear, Damaris Santos-Palmer from Kitchen Corners, will be whipping up gluten-free Alfajore Pops, traditional Argentinian cookies filled with homemade dulce de leche and dipped in chocolate.

Photo from Rice and Wheat

If savory is more your bag, Angi from Rice and Wheat has you covered with her delightfully cheesy looking Cheddar-Chive Scones.

Photo from Lick My Spoon

And, yours truly will be making a stunner of a Blood Orange Marmalade Tart. I learned how to make this beauty from Joyce Goldstein, who adapted it from a recipe called Crostata di Marmellata delle Suore Trappiste, served at the Vineria Cozzi in Bergamo Alta, Italy. The tart gets its interesting name because it is filled with orange marmalade made by the Trappist nuns. In this version, we use blood oranges for a stunning presentation and floral flavor, “like an orange mixed with a rose.” It is divine…really, you should buy this.

We're rolling out the pastry dough…so you can help us raise the other kind of dough.

Go. Bid. Bid High.

Follow on Twitter: #OnlineBake4Japan
sabrina modelle @thetomatotart

Restaurants and bars with themes have always rubbed me the wrong way. I think of the first and only time I walked into Butter. It must have been 2003. While I was as well-versed in irony as any literary theory buff with a fresh diploma, the brown-bagged forties, snack stand carved out of the side of a trailer, and steaming tater tots seemed a bit much. I'm not a stickler for good taste, but I was instantly annoyed by a bar dedicated to aping the coarsest trappings of poor white culture for the amusement of privileged San Franciscans carousing through SoMa. I've seen it before around these parts: even politically radical non-profit workers who would rather poke out an eye than offend a person of color think nothing of throwing "white trash"-themed birthday parties for themselves. Plus, tater tots are actually really good -- without irony, just ketchup.

Still, I've splashed around the Tonga Room, stomped into the Bigfoot Lounge, and knocked back a whiskey at Bourbon and Branch, that classy throw-back to San Francisco's speakeasy-riddled past -- appealing themed joints, all of them. The other day, I was talking themed bars with some buddies, one of whom manages a newish decidedly un-themed establishment in Russian Hill, on Polk, just above the Tenderloin. The topic was Manhattan bars, where drink costs soar to airport prices -- $6 for a bottle of beer, $10 for a well drink. We joked that someone should start a really, really expensive bar in San Francisco called $$$. There would be a $50 cover charge, and no music, karaoke, free food, pool, or pub quiz to account for the steep entrance fee. The drinks would not be made with fancy infused potentially illegal spirits or feature small artisanal producers. They would be perfectly plain and perhaps a little weak. Still, if you could afford to buy your way in, you could hang out with others who could as well, which might be reward enough. It'd be pure elitism, distilled -- as appropriate a theme as any.

My trip to Japan late last March gave me a new perspective on themed drinking establishments. I wasn't there long enough to deliver an exhaustive report -- I'm sure some late-night Travel Channel special has already tried. There was so much I did not see, particularly in Tokyo, where I only spent a few jet-lagged days. My home-base for most of the visit was Kyoto, Japan's old Imperial capitol. Still, after a week of bouncing around that city's bars and informal late-night eateries, my head was throbbing -- and not from too much single malt. Along Kiyamachi St., very close to the Kamo River, tiny izakayas and watering holes burrow into unassuming commercial storefronts and stubby office buildings. You walk up a few flights of stairs -- as if going to see a disreputable dentist -- and knock on doors that open on to strange, insular, fastidiously detailed worlds. They reminded me of levels in Super Mario Brothers: through one portal, a swanky, pocket-sized cool jazz club draped in blue curtains appeared, through another, fittingly, a red-and-white toadstool-themed "mushroom" bar no bigger than an apartment kitchen -- both in the same building, occupying suites on the same floor.

One night, I visited two establishments thoroughly preoccupied with Jamaica's most prominent (and cliched) cultural and artistic exports -- Bob Marley, an easy way with marijuana, Rastafarianism, ripe for the watering down, and the flag's black, yellow, and green color scheme. Despite being a huge reggae fan, in the United States, I wouldn't have had the slightest interest. Nonetheless, Rasta and Rub-A-Dub were a lot of fun. The first is a dark cave on the 4th or 5th floor of an office building. Muzak renditions of Rockers classics seep from hidden speakers. A weed leaf mosaic rises up out of the tiled floor. A shrine to Mr. Marley occupies the middle of the back wall, bathed in chartreuse light, overlooking the scene. When I was there, the crowd was typically diverse: bartenders with desperate attempts at dreadlocks, a few business guys enjoying an extended happy hour, a party of ladies on the heels of a shopping trip, and a couple hanging out along the side wall, with the lanky American gentleman trying not to look as absurd as the retina-burning blue "island" cocktails in his glass. Significantly older, Rub-A-Dub is located in a frond-filled basement. According to legend, the owner, a Japanese man, married a Jamaican woman, and opened the bar to continuously remind her of her homeland. In truth, theme aside, Rasta would be considered a pretty good restaurant in San Francisco, offering roast fish heads and Japanese riffs on jerked chicken and seafood. I didn't eat at Rub-A-Dub (too many fish heads at Rasta), but I did have a few drinks under bunches of bananas hanging from the ceiling.

I returned from Japan in April -- just ten days after I'd arrived -- but I started thinking about themes all over again last week, when I read an S.F. Weekly blog post about Hogs & Rocks. Set to open in May or June, this joint endeavor of Maverick chef Scott Youkilis and Eric Rubin of Tres Agaves will serve 45 different kinds of ham, along with pickles, salads, and oysters (the rocks, of course). Unlike, say Rasta, Hogs & Rocks will do food and drink first, letting aesthetics follow suit. If the bar sprang up in Japan, the floor cushions would be swine-pink and sewn up to look like plump hind legs. There'd be small chairs shaped like oyster shells. Albums by Badfinger (lead singer, the late Peter Ham) would boom on the stereo. Images of piggy pop culture's most prominent representatives -- Wilbur, Porky, Pooh's nervous little friend, and a rogue's gallery of notorious male chauvinists -- would line the walls. The atmosphere would be unsubtly rendered, but genuine, irony-free -- seriously silly, with excellent food. That's one distinction I can draw between themed bars and restaurants here and there: seemingly goofy joints in Japan actually tend to have good food, whereas in the United States, even in San Francisco, corny trappings (from tiki bars to Chuck E. Cheese) all but guarantee an indifferent kitchen.

In Kyoto, the most unassuming bar I visited was in many ways the most revealing. To launch a long night of drinking, my girlfriend and I wandered into Color, an elegant, stylish lounge decked out in handsome modern furniture and classy vintage appliances. This was a nice place to drink. It reminded us of countless bars we'd patronized in the States. We discerned no theme, which, obviously, didn't surprise us. We'd seen plenty of regular bars around. This one just felt cozier than most. Then, we grabbed a card on the way out and read the finer print. The bar did in fact have a theme. It identified as "New York-style," which explained why it struck us as so familiar -- right down to the $10 cocktails.

Although I couldn't attend this past weekend's Maker Faire, with its inaugural section dedicated to food, I did have a chance to learn a few new tricks for the kitchen.

It's not a recent phenomenon for cooks to hack their utensils and ingredients—Homo "Handy Man" habilis figured out that meat on the stick thing, Mongol horsemen multitasked by salting and tenderizing and cooking their meat under their saddles, and my mom catches plump frogs with her pasta colander—but the DIY movement has inspired a whole new generation to explore simple, cheap, ingenious ways to accomplish everyday tasks.

Anyone who stocks up on vinegar and baking soda already knows many of the old ways. On the glossier and quirkier end of the spectrum is Ito-ke no Shokutaku (The Ito Family Dinner Table). A wildly popular series, one of those only-in-Japan variety shows in which celebrities demonstrate useful tips contributed by its viewers, it once held the regular attention of nearly 30 percent of households in Japan. Websites, social clubs, and obsessions ensued. These tips are known collectively as urawaza, which deftly applies the word for "unmapped shortcut" to a secret trick.

Local writer Lisa Katayama bundled some of her favorite urawaza into a book, Urazawa: Secret Everyday Tips and Tricks from Japan. My copy (kindly sent to me by Chronicle Books just in time for this posting) has a few pages marked for testing later: drink green tea after a garlicky meal to prevent a stinky mouth, scrubbing with eggshells to remove scorch marks on pots, tucking chile peppers in your socks to keep your toes warm. Others leave me scratching my head, like the suggestion to add olive oil to a glass of beer to reduce its foam; a spoon seems a much more respectful and easy way to remove unwanted head from a well-crafted brew. Still, Urazawa was a quick and fun read as well as a wonderful reminder to think creatively about life's little challenges.

The interwebs, of course, has many pages dedicated to everyday life-hacking. Googling "food hack" taught me how to peel mangoes quickly and cleanly and how to start a fire with a Coke can and chocolate bar. Here in San Francisco, Mark Powell, a self-described hacker chef of the "anarchist food aesthetic," has set up his kitchen lab at the Unicorn Precinct XIII in Bernal Heights. Chefs, of course, are famous for their trucs of the trade, though these days, nitrogen tanks and pressure probes seem to be more the thing than paper clips and flame-throwers.

I'll leave you with a few of my own kitchen tricks, absorbed from my visits with aunties from Missouri to Malaysia.

• After soaking dried tamarind in water, use the strained fruit and fibers to polish your copper pans and bowls.
• Use the edge of a small spoon to peel the crooks and crannies of knobby ginger.
• After harvesting a crop of onions or shallots from your garden, drop them into the legs of clean but run-ridden pantyhose. Knot the hose to separate the bulbs and then hang in a cool, dry place to last throughout the winter. When you need some allium, just snip a knot. The more colorful your hose, the more festive your cellar.
• Clean out the fragrant cardamom and cumin powder from an electric spice grinder by following your garam masala with a few small pieces of bread. The resulting breadcrumbs soak up all the powdered spice. If you're especially dedicated, you can then use those crumbs in a nice filling or gratin.