Every six months or so, San Francisco chocolatier Michael Recchiuti adds a new Bay Area artist to his Artisan Collection, an “edible chocolate gallery” of limited edition chocolates. The artist creates four representative images, and both the chocolatier and his customers have a new way to support the arts! A new collection has just debuted, featuring the work of Michele Carlson, an Oakland-based artist whose ink drawings and collages investigate the intersections of history, memory and popular culture. They’ve been screened onto the surface of Recchiuti’s most popular chocolate, Burnt Caramel. Send some to your favorite art and chocolate connoisseurs. Candied Orange Peel, hand cut and enrobed in dark chocolate, is also available, through the end of the month.
Michele Carlson’s edible art.
Eight pieces, 3.5 ounces, are $18.00 at Recchiuti.com. Previous artists in the Collection include Brian Barneclo, Sherry Olsen, Paul Madonna, Rex Ray, Kelly Tunstall and Beth Weintraub. Pieces from the most recent collection, Liz Saintsing, whose work features eccentric images of birds, insects and other creatures, are still available. Read our full review of Recchuiti Confections.
“Chile heads”—people who can’t get enough hot habañeros in their daily diets—are on a healthier road than the rest of us, according to new medical research. Capsaicin, the heat component in chiles, is an antioxidant and a proven anti-inflammatory just like Aleve and Tylenol. It also kills cancer cells, prevents sinus infections, provides gastric relief like Tums and even oxidizes fat like Ephedra.* While some people may feel pain when eating hot chiles, those who enjoy it will feel less pain, breath easier and burn more calories. Unlike OTC pharmaceuticals, capsaicin has no side effects. It is a myth
that hot chiles cause stomach irritation and ulcers (although they may aggravate existing conditions). The spicier the chile, the stronger its health effects. (See our Chile Glossary for the Scoville Scale of comparative chile heats and a listing almost 40 different chiles.) According to Medill Reports, if you don’t like spicy food, keep trying. The report states that it can take up to 14 exposures to get used to a new food. Try using ground cayenne red pepper, by sprinkling it on popcorn, mixing it with lowfat frozen chocolate yogurt (or regular chocolate yogurt) and adding it to spaghetti sauce. More than 200 placebo-controlled studies, such as the recent study at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles on capsaicin’s ability to halt prostate cell replication, are underway. By the way, chile “peppers,” members of the Capsicum family, originated in Mesoamerica and are not botanically related to true pepper, Piper nigrum, the black peppercorn, which originated in India. Chiles were misnamed by none other than Christopher Columbus who, when tasting chiles for the first time in the New World, equated their heat to that of peppercorns and assumed they were related. *Don’t get too excited. Preliminary research suggests that adding a teaspoon of cayenne pepper to each meal can cause the body to burn an extra 15 calories.
When Native Americans and European immigrants hit the trail and needed energy, they carried the original energy bar, pemmican—a mixture of meat, fat and dried fruit.
Now, The Pine Ridge Indian Reservation Company has gone back to its ancestral roots for a healthy, natural alternative to the energy bars now on the market: the Tanka Bar, made with South Dakota bison and Wisconsin cranberries. (If you remember “Dances With Wolves,” tanka means bison in the Lakota language.) The bar is a spinoff of a centuries-old Lakota food called wasna that sustained Great Plains Indians during long trips. Based on traditional wasna and pemmican, it combines high-protein, prairie-fed buffalo and tart-sweet cranberries that is slow-smoked to a jerky-like texture. If you’re a nomad on the go, try it next time you hit the trail. At TankaBar.com.
Not a harmonica—it’s a Banana Guard, to protect your fresh fruit.
Love to bring a banana for a workday snack (or send the kids to school with one), but hate to find it brown and beaten up when you remove it from your bag? Have no fear—Banana Guard is here! The banana protectors are designed to fit most banana sizes and have ventilation holes to allow the banana to ripen at its natural rate. Banana Guard comes in several different colors including a glow-in-the-dark variety—perhaps for spelunkers and theater ushers. It’s $6.99 for a single Banana Guard, $12.99 for a 2-pack and $29.99 for a 5-pack at BananaGuard.com. Let’s hear it for healthier snacks, and the folks who invent ways to carry them.
Just in time for Halloween, McCormick’s has introduced black food coloring. While it’s been easy to make orange from the standard yellow and red food colors, black has always represented a challenge. Now, thanks to spooky food technology, cakes, cupcakes and cookies can be decorated in true Halloween spirit. Check out McCormick.com for a recipe for a black cat cake, purrfect for kids or adults! The food coloring is available nationwide for a suggested retail price of $2.80 for a one ounce bottle. Also new are Italian Tabletop Spices and Traditional Tabletop Spices, single shakers with four sections of different spices.
McCormick’s new Tabletop Spices: at left, Italian spices, at right, Traditional.
The Traditional shaker offers sea salt, black pepper, garlic salt and an Italian seasoning blend. We’re not keen on pre-ground black pepper (piperines, the fiery compounds we love in pepper, start to fade within 20 minutes after grinding). But the Italian shaker, with oregano, sweet basil, garlic powder and crushed red pepper, seems perfect for Pizza Night. If you also like salt and pepper on your pizza, get both and shake away! Each has a suggested retail price of $3.99, at grocery stores nationwide.
