One of the annual highlights in the food blog community is Menu for Hope - a fundraising event that raises money for the World Food Programme, a United Nations Food Aid Agency. Annually, the event is hosted by Pim Techamuanvivit from Chez Pim. Last year, Menu for Hope raised an astonishing $60,000.

The funds this year will be going to a school lunch program in Lesotho, Africa. According to Pim, the Lesotho program is focusing on "buying food locally to support local farmers and the local economy". (Do I have to tell you how excited I am about this program?)

Food bloggers around the world offer prizes -- everything from cookbooks to fully cooked meals -- that are bid on by donors who donate $10 per virtual raffle ticket. A full list of prizes can be found on the Chez Pim site. As of this morning, over $7,000 has already been donated to this year's event.

Each year, the Bay Area boasts some prizes that can only be claimed if you live in the area or if you travel here to get your prize. Here are some of my favorites so far (along with the prize code in parenthesis):

(UW08) Custom Mixology Service
Anita and Cameron from Married with Dinner often feature amazing drinks and spirits on their blog. Win their prize and they will work with you and come to your home to create delightful cocktails for you and 12 guests.

(UW32) English Afternoon Tea
This year, Sam from Becks and Posh is offering a tiered prize. If the total amount donated to her prize is over $2,500 and you live in or can travel to the Bay Area, she and June Taylor will host an English Afternoon Tea for you and your friends.

(UW10) Dinner for 2 with wine pairing and a private tour of Manresa's biodynamic garden with chef David Kinch.
Pim is offering this prize with her partner, David Kinch and it involves dinner at one of the most lauded restaurants in the country.

(UW04) Boccalone Boar Sacchetto of artisan salumi
Boccalone is a new entrant on the local salami scene, and the Bunrabs are offering this gift courtesy of Boccalone. Prize must be picked up at the Oakland or San Francisco Salumi Society gathering.

(UW17) Dinner for 8 prepared by Brett Emerson
Brett Emerson, owner of the soon to be opened Contigo, is offering dinner made for 8 people in his new Noe Valley home.

(UW18) Bento Box and Tour of SF Japantown with Lunch in a Box.
Biggie, the blogger at Lunch in a Box, is a person who I'd like to explore Japantown with. She's fluent in Japanese and could probably explain many of unidentifiable Japanese foods to me.

You can find other gifts donated by West Coast bloggers (including our own Amy Sherman) at Rasa Malaysia.

Nuts and Bolts of participating:

- Donating started yesterday and continues through December 21.
- To donate, go to First Giving. To specify a specific prize, follow the instructions on the Chez Pim website (scroll down to the instructions and screenshots).
- Check back on January 9 to see if you've won!

For the past couple months, I have been attempting to diet. I say attempting because I'm not really succeeding, but that's fodder for a different post. Anyway, I go to the meetings when I can. At one of the meetings, members of the group were advocating throwing away food so that you don't consume it. And I can see their point -- I would rather not have the tempting food in my house. But I have major issues with just throwing food away.

A few months ago, I noticed that Jocelyn linked to a San Francisco based website encouraging people to "replate" their food. By the website's definition, replate is:

To place unwanted leftovers, typically in a doggie bag, on top of the nearest trash can so that they don't go to waste.

So that's what I've started doing with my leftovers to avoid bringing them home and consuming them. For years, I've looked for someone to give my food to when possible. And I've always had good experiences doing this. But sometimes you can't find someone, or as a single woman in the city sometimes it's just too late or scary to walk around looking for a person to give food to.

Replate's founders, Axel Albin and Josh Kamler, don't claim this is a new idea. "We didn't invent the practice," Axel told me on Monday. In fact, Josh remembers his parents replating leftovers 20 years ago. But they have given some structure to the movement. "The purpose of our project is to start the conversation," said Axel. And start the conversation they have. Look around on the Internet and you'll see varying opinions about whether replating is a good idea.

While the practice may be debatable in rural areas where leftovers may spoil or become litter, many of us live in cities where we see people digging through the trash for food on a regular basis. And packages I have left near my home are gone within an hour. A post on Serious Eats garnered a suggestion that people write "EDIBLE" on the outside of a package before leaving it out.

Albin and Kamler are calling this movement "open-source activism" and are hoping that interested parties take the seed that they've planted and run with it -- creating stickers to put on replated items, changing the logo, or lobbying government for participation.

I find it refreshing, and can truly say that reading about replating changed the way that I act with my leftovers. And being able to plant an idea that results in a change in behavior is no small feat.

Before I was a food blogger, I was a Chowhound. This occurred out of necessity when I first moved to the Bay Area over seven years ago. I had come from Southern California -- a place where I had lived my whole life and where I knew numerous hole-in-the-wall, amazing restaurants. Once I got here, I had bad meal after bad meal. Add the fact that I was homesick and it was June and like 10 degrees Fahrenheit out, and you may begin to understand my despair.

Then there was The Day Of The Two Bad Meals. I'd already had a bad lunch and for dinner my friend Tricia and I decided to eat close to our new Richmond District apartment. I burst into tears as I tried to eat horrible spaghetti, and vowed that I had to find a better way. I had learned that even though there are some really fantastic restaurants in San Francisco, there are also some really vile restaurants out there -- and when you're new it can sometimes be a minefield.

So I found Chowhound. And that was the beginning of delicious meal after delicious meal. Seven years later, I have a love-hate relationship with Chowhound, but I will always be grateful to the members of the boards for showing me the ropes when I was still getting my bearings in this new town.

Early on, we had a lot of "Chowdowns" where members of the community would gather to have a meal at a restaurant. There were certain rules to these events, and one of them had to do with assigning one person to transcribe the menu for the boards. I think because he hated being the transcriber, Derek (now chowfun_derek on the boards) often plied us with egg tarts from Golden Gate Bakery. He'd pick them up from the bakery right before our Chinatown meals and we would eat them still warm. We always let him off the hook for the transcription -- in fact I think that gift of the egg tarts let him get away with a lot.

Derek once told me that he discovered Golden Gate Bakery on his first day in San Francisco in 1970. "I had my suitcases and was walking down Grant, and I spied a long line and decided to just get in it to see what everyone was buying." It was the first bite of food he ate in San Francisco, and he now uses it as a "culinary touchstone" in the city.

Golden Gate Bakery is a very small bakery on Grant Avenue in Chinatown. They have several sweet and savory items, and are famous for their holiday moon cakes, though I have to admit that I only have eyes for their macaroons and their egg tart -- a light, flaky pastry tart that is filled with a warm, sweet, eggy custard. The pastry is really the star of this hand held delight, and when it's filled with egg custard that is slightly firm and not overly sweet you bite into a delicious treat. The macaroons are on the small side, very crunchy on the outside, and very basic with delicious coconut filling. They're my favorite in the city.

Going to Golden Gate Bakery is an experience. I went there on Saturday night and got in line with the throngs. There were several tourists behind me who didn't understand the process. "I think that they're confused," said one tourist, referring to the many employees who were standing around seemingly doing nothing while customers behind the counter just stood and waited. "No, they're waiting for the new batch to come out," I explained, feeling a bit like I was trying to explain what Willy Wonka was doing in his Chocolate Factory. One employee busied herself by preparing a mound of pink boxes. "I think that she probably has enough," grumbled the tourist. I smiled to myself, knowing that all those boxes would be filled very soon. Sure enough, several trays of egg tarts came out at once and the pink pastry boxes were quickly filled.

The line always snakes out the door and when you finally make it inside, a consistent skit ensues. If the item that you want is available, then you're in and out in a couple of minutes. More likely, however, is that your item won't be available. Then you call out your order, and they use a walkie-talkie to talk to the kitchen. There's lots of conversation back and forth before the woman finally tells you how long it will be. I've waited up to 20 minutes for egg tarts to come out of the oven. There's no cooling period -- if you get them right out of the oven, they will be inedibly hot for a few minutes. If you order several, the ladies will give you the egg tarts in a pink box that is vented for the steam.

There was recently a mini-crisis on the Chowhound boards, as Golden Gate Bakery closed inexplicably. When it was finally reported that the pastry maker had died, many speculated and wondered whether we had seen the end of the amazing egg tart. The store was closed for over a month, and the re-opening was delayed several times. "What I really hope they are doing is going back to their homeland ... to find a replacement egg tart chef who can replicate that signature flakey (sic) crust/exterior." said one person on the boards. Happily, the bakery re-opened last week and it's as good as it's always been.

If you're ever in Chinatown and aren't in a hurry, join the longest line on Grant Avenue to find your bliss. If you're going to Chinatown just to visit Golden Gate Bakery, call ahead first. They take a month off each summer, and are sometimes closed on random days.

Golden Gate Bakery
1029 Grant Ave (at Pacific)
415-781-2627

More on Golden Gate Bakery:
The Bunrabs on Golden Gate Bakery
Culinary Muse muses about the egg tarts

The cost of an American Thanksgiving dinner for 10 people is $42.26, according to the American Farm Bureau. This is up $4.16 from last year, when the cost was $38.10.

In 1986, the Farm Bureau invented a "survey menu" based on what the typical American eats for Thanksgiving, and then every year they send out volunteer shoppers to purchase these items to get the average.

While the cost of the Thanksgiving dinner has increased in real dollars, it has actually gone down from 1986 when factoring in inflation.

The AFB menu breakdown of costs is as follows:

16-pound turkey ........... $17.63
Cube stuffing, 14 oz. ........... $2.40
Pumpkin pie mix, 30 oz. ............ $2.13
Pie shells (2) ........... $2.08
Sweet potatoes, 3 lbs. ........... $3.08
Rolls, 12 ........... $1.89
Green peas, 1 lb. ........... $1.46
1 pound relish tray ........... $.66
Milk, 1 gallon ........... $3.88
Fresh cranberries, 12 oz. ........... $2.20
Cream, 1/2 pint ........... $1.56
Misc ingredients ........... $3.29

For more information, read the American Farm Bureau press release.

Photo from stock. Used with permission.

As Stephanie reported on Sunday, the largest casualty to our food chain due to the November 7 San Francisco Oil Spill seems to be the Dungeness Crab season.

As each day passes, more information is learned about the effects of the oil spill. While the focus of the fishing disaster has been on the Dungeness crab -- one of the Bay Area's most well known harvests of the year -- the Bay Area also depends on local waters for many other seafood crops. Most notably during this time of year the Bay Area also harvests:

• Mackerel
• Salmon
• Sardines
• Oysters
• Herring
• Squid

Oysters were one of the early victims of this oil spill.

Once oil drifted to the Pt. Reyes National Seashore, it arrived at Drake's Bay Oyster Company, an oyster farm that provides oysters to many Bay Area customers. Oysters, along with other types of shellfish, eat by filtering water. When that water is contaminated, the shellfish goes bad and is not fit for human consumption. "If we lose that part of the food chain, we'll lose the next in line," says Kathy Fosmark, the Co-Chairman of the Alliance of Communities for Sustainable Fisheries, referring to bait fish and krill. According to the San Jose Mercury-News, Drake's Bay Oyster Company has temporarily closed due to oil contamination.

I spoke to Ms. Fosmark and her husband, Steve Fosmark -- an owner/operator and fisherman from Monterey County, on Monday afternoon. "From what I am hearing, this is going to be catastrophic," stated Mr. Fosmark.

"Fishermen are coming down on the lean side of a salmon year. A lot of the people who salmon fish then do crab," said Ms. Fosmark, "This is the last thing that they need."

Herring is the San Francisco Bay's only commercially fished species. According to one source, a "possible recommendation to not open in December is being considered." Typically, herring season would be open by December and any delay in that season will mean a hit to the pockets of the fishermen.

Many of the fishermen don't even know any more than we do at this point. Mr. and Mrs. Fosmark were watching the same news that we have all been watching for the past few days, waiting to hear their fates from press conferences and the Associated Press and local news stations.

The frustration among fishermen is palpable. While news reports are of successful beach clean-ups and oil wrangling, the fishermen are frustrated that the real story of the effect on the environment and the fishing industry is not being told. "Excuse me but I must go puke my guts out," stated one anonymous email from a fisherman.

Chances that the average Bay Area consumer will notice a difference in their fish counter are slim. "We get oysters from all up and down the coast," said Brian from Swan Oyster Depot on Monday. He went on to say that they had to change their source from Drake's Bay to other oyster companies from farther afield this week. "But we're always going to have oysters."

I selfishly asked about the local anchovies and sardines, as they are my most common purchase from Swan Oyster Depot. Brian told me, "the anchovies and sardines come from the Monterey area, and as far as I know that hasn't been affected." Swan's buyers will purchase Dungeness crab from Oregon until the local harvest starts to come in.

The main lesson of the day is that more will be revealed. At this point, we know very little, but the chances that this oil spill could prove catastrophic for local fishermen are high. The main thing that we can do is to keep on top of the story, and support local fishermen with our dollars when they are able to bring healthy, abundant fish to our fish counters.

Updated, 11/13, 3:00 pm:

The Governor has suspended fishing and crabbing until December 1 at the earliest. From the Chronicle article:

"Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger issued an executive order late this morning suspending all fishing and crabbing for human consumption in areas affected by the Cosco Busan fuel spill until at least Dec. 1. The ban includes all of San Francisco Bay, along with affected shorelines, coastlines and waters of San Francisco, Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, San Mateo, Solano and Sonoma counties."

This post today is going to consist of several tidbits that I have to report -- all a bit too small to warrant individual posts.

King Corn Challenge. Meghan published an interview with Aaron Woolf, the director of the movie King Corn. Curt Ellis from the movie is taking a challenge which involves not eating any corn products for the month of November. He's challenged others to take the challenge as well, and so far six brave souls are joining him. This would be difficult for me (as I'm eating a corn tortilla as I type) especially because it would basically eliminate eating any meat products at restaurants apart from a few specialized restaurants featuring grass-fed beef, but I certainly admire those who are trying it. Learn more about the challenge at Culinate.

100-Mile Thanksgiving. If you're interested in taking a one-day Eat Local Challenge, check out the 100-mile Thanksgiving Challenge that is being hosted by Alisa Smith and James MacKinnon, authors of the book Plenty. I'll be participating to the extent that I can, taking local dishes to my family's potluck Thanksgiving dinner.

De Afghanan Kabob. It was a sad day when one of my favorite neighborhood restaurants, Meditteranean Spirit on Polk street, closed in September. Happily, the restaurant has been replaced by a Fremont favorite called De Afghanan Kabob House. I can't give a full restaurant review as I've only tried a couple of things on the menu, but the entrees I've eaten have been delicious. De Afghanan's specialty is their Chapali Kabob -- an Afghani dish that is made of ground beef, green onions and spices. De Afghanan makes a delicious rendition and the restaurant is worth stopping in if you are in the neighborhood. Entrees are around $10. De Afghanan Kabob, 1303 Polk Street (at Bush), 415-345-9947.

Redwood Hill Crottin. Congratulations to the local cheesemakers at American Dairy Goat Association. Redwood Hill's Crottin cheese was the award winner (via Serious Eats).

Photo by the author. Capay Canyon Ranch (pdf) almonds, currently available at the Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market (Saturdays).

When two longtime friends decided to come to San Francisco for the weekend, the first thing I did was plan our meals. I had approximately a day and a half with them, and I wanted their food experiences to be memorable. I had an added benefit of knowing my audience very well and being able to customize the trip to their taste.

When I first heard they were coming, I made back-up dinner reservations at A16 and The Slanted Door. In the end, however, I ended up scrapping both of those reservations (and calling to cancel!) a few days before my friends came. The weekend came together very nicely and we went to the following places:

SPQR. My love for this new restaurant has already been documented, and I've been back three times since that initial report. This trip was fun, as I got to watch Anna as she tasted beets with ricotta, chanterelles and sunchokes, and the panino dessert -- which was groan-causingly good.

The Alembic. After dinner, we cabbed it over to The Alembic so that Anna could share in my love of this wonderful bar. I've been talking up the emphasis on amazing mixology that has been happening in San Francisco, and the Alembic is the perfect example of this. My fellow bloggers agree -- the Alembic is a destination bar.

Saturday morning, Amanda arrived and it was off to ... where else?

The Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market. A must stop for any visitor staying at my house. When we were through, we met up with a couple friends for wine. The Ferry Plaza Wine Merchant was busy, so we lounged in the Slanted Bar lounge very comfortably for a couple of hours. On Saturday afternoons, there is not table service in the lounge until 2 pm (though you can eat at the bar). No bother, we ordered bottles of wine at the bar and by the time table service arrived, we ordered some delicious SD snacks. My friends had a good time wandering the Ferry Building afterward. Anna bought a lot of cheese to take home with the help of our favorite cheese expert.

Then it was home to rest before heading off ...

To Bodega Bistro. This was the dinner originally planned as The Slanted Door. But the girls were insistent that they wanted to experience San Francisco the way that I usually live it. And the truth is that you are much more apt to find me at Bodega Bistro than The Slanted Door. Bodega is known for some of the best Vietnamese food in the city, and the Cha Ca Hanoi there -- a dish of fish with dill and spices and peanuts -- is more to my taste than the Cha Ca Hanoi that I ate in the most famous place in Hanoi.

Happily, the Bodega Bistro dinner went over very well and we went home full and sated. The weekend was a great mix of different bites, tastes and meals and both Anna and Amanda are talking about the trip weeks later.

Last month, Catherine posted her recommendation list for visitors which I will likely refer to in the future. And a while back, Michael posted his visitor list.

The San Francisco Zen Center is a rich part of this city's history. With their City Center on Page at Laguna, the Green Gulch Farm Center in Marin, and the Zen Center at Tassajara, the Zen Center has helped thousands of visitors further their Zen practice. In addition to meditation, the Zen Center has a large focus on food with organic farming at Green Gulch Farm and the successful creation of Greens Restaurant at Fort Mason, which has been a premier vegetarian restaurant in San Francisco for over 25 years. Home bakers will be familiar with the Zen Center due to their publication, in 1970, of The Tassajara Bread Book.

Ed Brown, the author of that book, is the subject of a new movie, How to Cook Your Life. Brown is an ordained Zen priest who was Tenzo, or head cook, at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. But this is not your ordinary Zen priest -- Brown is tempermental, goofy, and altogether human. "You get to watch me being me. Oh well." Brown said at the San Francisco preview of the movie last night.

How to Cook Your Life is a documentary that uses Brown to explain how integral food is to the guiding principles of Zen Buddhism, and how we can all go about using these principles in the way that we approach cooking. "When you cut the carrots, cut the carrots," Brown says. In this world of media overload and processed foods and going through the motions in the kitchen, Brown asks us to stop and pay attention to what we are doing. "People ask me, 'How are you doing'," said a baker in the Tassajara kitchen. "I say, 'I'm baking.' It's what I'm doing and how I'm doing, through and through."

But it's not all roses and meditation. In the movie, we watch Brown struggle to rip into a store-bought package of cheese, raging the entire time about why a company would choose to subject consumers to such awful packaging. We watch him try to contain his temper through breathing after almost exploding at a student to be quicker about adding an ingredient to a soup. This humanness makes Brown all the more relatable, as he comes across as one of us.

This movie really resonated with me. I find peace when I am cooking, and I am able to ground myself in the kitchen more than anywhere else. And that's what this movie is about -- the essential place that the kitchen holds in many of our lives.

How to Cook Your Life is beginning Friday at several Landmark Theatres throughout the Bay Area. It will open in more cities in the coming month.

Here is the preview:

As we near Halloween, my seasonal fruit larder is changing. Gone are peaches, plums and nectarines replaced by pomegranates, apples and persimmons. Hamada Farms and Twin Girls Farm supply my pomegranates, and I choose apples from Hidden Star Orchards, Devoto Gardens and Flatland Flower Farm. As usual, I turn to my fellow bloggers for recipes and creative ideas about this fall fruit.

Elise's Simply Recipes is normally my first stop on the Internet for recipes. "Try the recipe from Elise's site," I often tell friends asking how to make pork this or beef that, "I trust her recipes and they've always turned out for me." I've had the pleasure of tasting Elise's apple butter, and am looking forward to trying the recipe for myself this year.

Jocelyn blogs about food at her site Brownie Points in Portland. I found a great recipe for Apple Spice Pancakes with Pomegranate Syrup on her site that I'd like to try. Local food blogger Fatemeh has an interesting recipe for Cocoa-Pomegranate Roast Chicken with Eggplant Stuffing that looks like it would be great to serve to guests. And wrapping up the pomegranate recipes, Stacey at Just Braise has a delicious looking recipe for Bourbon-Pomegranate Molasses Beef Short Ribs with Broccoli Rabe

Here on Bay Area Bites, Shuna gave us her persimmon pudding recipe a couple of years ago that looks tempting.

Other fall fruit recipes from the blogosphere include:

Persimmon Bread from David Lebovitz
Curried Apple Couscous from 101 Cookbooks
Cinnamon Vanilla Applesauce from the Eat Local Challenge blog
Apple and Cumin Lentil Salad from Chocolate & Zucchini
Tarte Tatin from Orangette
Roast Pork with Braised Fennel, Apples and Onions from Too Many Chefs
Quince-Pomegranate Cranberry Compote from Seattle Bon Vivant
Pomegranate, Pear, Fennel and Arugula Salad from Cook Sister
Monkfish on Wild Rocket & Pomegranate Seeds from Delicious Days
Fuyu Korma from Sourdough Monkey Wrangler
Persimmon Mint Salsa from Habeas Brulee

"I thought we did the frozen yogurt thing 15 years ago," my friend said to me recently. We had fond memories of calling the Malibu Yogurt hotline on a daily basis while in college to find out the flavors of the day, always hoping for peanut butter.

Frozen yogurt, it seems, is back in Southern California. With the entrance of the wildly popular Pinkberry into the culinary scene in the past couple of years, the area has seen over 20 Pinkberry stores and many Pinkberry imitations sprout up.

Pinkberry is not the frozen yogurt of my college days. Though there has been a dispute about whether it is "real yogurt", the yogurt is a more sour, less sweet version of the sickly sweet frozen yogurts that I used to eat. I personally like it -- really like it -- but I wouldn't stand in super long lines for it as happens in some Los Angeles locations. The Pinkberry yogurt comes in two flavors, plain and green tea, and can be adorned with fruit or other toppings.

In a series that Eater San Francisco (have you added Eater SF to your RSS feeds yet? You must.) is calling "The Fro-Yo Wars," the editors are tracking the new yogurt stores that are coming to San Francisco, presumably because of their success in Los Angeles and New York.

The first yogurt store to open in this style in San Francisco is Yogurt Bar on Octavia at Union in Cow Hollow. Reviews on Chowhound and Yelp are mixed for Yogurt Bar. While some say that the Yogurt Bar "serves up some pretty decent frozen yogurt" one Chowhound writes, "My Girlfriend is from LA and we just went this past weekend. She's a Yogurt Whore and loves Pinkberry and says that Yogurt Bar is crap. It leaves a sour cream after taste and she won't go back."

Jubili menu

The next yogurt store to open just opened this past Saturday. It's called Jubili and it is on Fillmore at O'Farrell right around the corner from The Fillmore Auditorium.

Jubili calls itself a "Frozen Yogurt & Cereal Bar." The menu includes frozen yogurt with toppings and several types of cereal that can be served with milk or soy milk. The yogurts come in three flavors: original, peach, and strawberry sorbet. I tasted the original flavor yesterday, and will be back for more.

Sizes come in small or "mi", medium or "my" and large or "mo". I ordered a medium. "You mean my," the guy said laughingly. "Do you really think people are going to order them like that?" I asked cynically. "I'm going to try to have them do that," he said optimistically.

Due to the cereal portion of Jubili's menu, they are open early in the morning, starting at 6 a.m. on weekdays and 7 a.m. on weekends. Also a note for you dieters: though Pinkberry's yogurt is non-fat, Jubili's is low-fat.

The next store to open will be Honeydoo in North Beach. Eater San Francisco is on top of the opening, and reported this morning that they are caught up in some paperwork that is precluding them from opening quite yet.

Jubili
1515 Fillmore Street (at O'Farrell)
San Francisco
(415) 292-9955