3 food events you should know about: Evan Kleiman teaches you to can; macrobiotics with chef Lee Gross; Intelligentsia's Santuario dinner

Get canning: Angeli Caffe's Evan Kleiman is teaming up with the food preservation specialist Delilah Snell to teach the basic preservation and flavor-enhancing techniques of dehydration, canning and creating homemade spice blends.  Leave with know-how and many gifts wrapped and ready for friends.  The event lasts from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Saturday, Nov. 20, costing $125.  

7274 Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles, (323)-936-9086, www.angelicaffe.com.

Macrobiotic Food 101: Curious about what constitutes a macrobiotic lifestyle, let alone how to apply its eating principles to cooking? M Cafe's Lee Gross will lead a demonstration based on many of his macrobiotic holiday recipes, including maple-glazed acorn squash with brussels sprouts and chestnuts and a simple pan-braised seitan with herbed gravy.  The event costs $35, and will be held at the M Café in Beverly Hills from 7 to 9 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 11. Reservations required. Balancing yin and yang is advised.

9433 Brighton Way, Beverly Hills, (310)-858-8459, amy@mcafedechaya.com.

Eight courses, with coffee: Intelligentsia's Pasadena location will host Camilo Merizalde, coffee farmer and owner of Santuario Farm in Colombia, for a tasting menu dinner on Friday, Nov. 19. The menu will match various samples of Merizalde's coffee to each of eight courses from Heirloom LA (that's a lot of late-evening caffeine). Wine pairings will be provided by Matthew Kaner of Bar Covell. The meal costs $95 (including coffee and wine), beginning with a meet-and-greet at 7 p.m. and presentation by  Merizalde at 7:45 p.m.  Dinner at 8. Reservations required.   

55 E. Colorado Blvd., Pasadena, (323)-982-8878, www.intelligentsiacoffee.com/santuario-event. 

-- Max Diamond

Photo credit: Gary Friedman/Los Angeles Times

Buddhist master chooses to 'Savor' food

"Bear in mind that everything is impermanent, including your extra weight."

So now. Whose book about food might that come from? Buddhist scholar and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh. That's right, he's written a food book, "Savor: Mindful Eating, Mindful Life," with Lilian Cheung of the Harvard School of Public Health.

I am certainly of the opinion that food is everything -- nourishment, history, culture, family, industry, career. So I guess it makes sense that he also is concerned with food and with what the authors call "a worldwide crisis" of obesity.

So, they write, being truly mindful about what we eat can "help us avoid the external cues that trap us, avoid mindless eating, and focus in on the practices that keep us healthy."

Certainly there's room for another approach to weight loss than the ones that have not worked for so many people. Consider this approach to eating an apple: "Wash it. Dry it. Before taking a bite, pause for a moment. Look at the apple in your palm and ask yourself: 'When I eat an apple, am I really enjoying eating it? Or am I so preoccupied with other thoughts that I miss the delights that the apple offers me?"

Maybe the Slow Food Movement would like to get together with Hanh?

"Savor" also looks at our industrial food supply, the environment, media and other topics related to food.

-- Mary MacVean

Photo: Buddhist scholar Thich Nhat Hanh. Credit: Mark Bolster / Los Angeles Times

Sampler Platter: Fat is the new normal, Eating Valley Blvd, XIV's vegan tasting menu, protecting Kentucky bourbon

Food art, bourbon, red onions and fat acceptance lead today's food news roundup.

-- Alton Brown says he doesn't see "Good Eats" lasting much beyond next year. Show Tracker
-- Chef Michael Mina’s vegan tasting menu at XIV. To Live and Eat in L.A.
-- Fat as the new normal: Saying no to diets, fat acceptance and questions about whether extra pounds really equal extra risk. Los Angeles Times
-- If you like art with your food, don't miss Wayne Thiebaud's iconic cupcakes on display in a retrospective at the Pasadena Museum of California Art until Jan. 31. Eating L.A.
--New food blog, Eating Valley Blvd, devoted solely to 8 miles of Asian eateries on Valley Boulevard between the 710 and 605 freeways, goes live.
-- Congressman Ben Chandler urges his fellow Kentuckians to protect the state's signature bourbon and horse industries. Lexington Herald-Leader
-- Gourmet Pigs declares Spago one of dineLA's best deals.
-- What to eat at Tanzore's Diwali party in Beverly Hills this week. Grub Street LA
-- Ma'Kai (Santa Monica) may close and be replaced by a Red Onion. Eater LA

-- Elina Shatkin

Photo: Wayne Thiebaud's "Four Sandwiches" (1965) puts its own spin on the theme of uniformity. Credit: Hackett-Freedman Gallery

Hungry Girl, PopChips stage a potato chip intervention

 

When I was assigned to do a story about the Hungry Girl phenomenon, I had no idea it would help me break a long-standing potato chip addiction. Hungry Girl is Lisa Lillien, a Valley girl and former cable TV executive who parlayed her passion for calorie counting into a multimillion-dollar business and a role as Internet taste maker. (Her newest recipe book, "Hungry Girl: 200 Under 200," has hit the No. 1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list.)

I spent the day with Lillien and a handful of her team members at their Woodland Hills "office" -- it's really a unit in a posh apartment complex, chosen for a spacious kitchen that accommodates recipe testing. If you read her daily e-mail blast you won't be surprised to hear that a day in the candy-colored Hungry Girl headquarters feels like one big slumber party. That's because much of their "work"-day is literally spent dreaming up yummy low-cal recipes, crafting them and testing and re-testing them until they're good to go. (On the day I was there, they were working on their fourth try at perfecting peanut butter oatmeal "softies." Not quite cookies, they're not quite muffins either, hence the name.)

Lillien considers it her personal mission to find more healthful -- or at least lower-in-calorie -- substitutes for the foods that people crave most. She asked me about my weakness. Potato chips, the saltier the better, I told her. She told me I should try PopChips. I'd never heard of them, and I jotted it down in my notebook just to be polite. On my way out the door that day, Lillien handed me a bag of PopChips -- turns out they are a staple in the Hungry Girl kitchen. 

This week's recipes from the L.A. Times test kitchen

 

All recipes that appear in the L.A. Times' weekly Food section are tested and perfected in our test kitchen before they're deemed fit to print. (That means you don't have to worry about a trial run before serving one of our recipes to company.) Rest assured, it should work the first time out of the gate.

Here's a look at this week's recipes:

AM Punch

Bacon-bundled BBQ shrimp

H-o-t hot boneless buffalo wings

The Kaya Toast at Susan Feniger's Street

The Lily Dew

Philly cheesesteak lettuce cups

Red velvet insanity cupcakes

The Pickled Pig

-- Rene Lynch

RECENT & RELATED

Hungry Girl delivers to diet-conscious fans

A new calling for a bold band of bartenders

Sending out an SOS

More recipes from the L.A. Times test kitchen

Photo: Ricardo DeAratanha / Los Angeles Times

 

Junk food and schools: Readers respond

A story about junk food and schools prompted several readers to write about their experiences. One said he had seen vendors for years near one school.

"There are lines of overweight children buying unhealthy snacks from these vendors daily. LAPD and LA County Sheriff patrol cars/motorcycles constantly drive by these vendors without stopping to prevent this form of child abuse," he wrote.

A reader named Dan reacted to the school officials who told auditors they were unaware of the Los Angeles Unified School District's policies about selling food. "I don’t work for LA Unified and I live in Orange County but I knew about the no junk food policy just from the press reports and yet they allowed the school administrators get away with saying that they did not know about it. Give me a break."

Mark L. Friedman, who chairs the science department at Animo Leadership Charter High School, says his school has "battled the junk food issue for three years and have finally won through a concerted effort by staff, administrators, parents and student government active involvement.

"There is no soda nor junk food sold at school- and most teachers model this. ... We KNOW that student comportment and academic prowess is partially determined by the food students eat!"

--Mary MacVean

Photo: Mealtime at Cesar Chavez Elementary School. Credit: Rick Loomis / Los Angeles Times

 

Dodger dogs in the dog house as ballpark fare turns healthful

I never thought I'd see the day that Dodger Stadium started serving Greek salads and yogurt parfaits. What's next, sustainable farmers' market dinners? OK, probably not, but Sunday's paper ran an interesting story on the ways that the stadium is trying to class up its act and help its fans stay on their respective health kicks, rather than falling face-first into a 1,000-calorie plate of nachos by the second inning.

It's good news for sure, but it makes me just a touch sad. Going to Dodger Stadium meant that I had no choice but to eat poorly. And to be truthful, I kind of liked having a fail-proof excuse for why I spent my evening gorging on mega cups of crummy beer, fistfuls of peanuts and day-glo cheese. (A girl needs her vices.) Now that a low-fat turkey wrap will be part of my game-time menu options, I'll never be able to shake the fearsome anxiety of opting to order something less, well, sensible.

When big box movie theaters start offering air-popped corn with brewer's yeast alongside their gut-busting buckets of buttered sin, I'm taking my ball and going home.

--Jessica Gelt

Bacon: Key to longevity?

 

Forget an apple a day. The world's oldest person loves her bacon . . . and she wants it crispy.  According to today's Huffington Post, Gertrude Baines, who turned 115 this past Monday, "owes her longevity to the Lord, that she never did drink, she never did smoke and she never did fool around." Oh, and she likes crispy bacon.

Well if it's good enough for Gertrude Baines, it's good enough for me.  This comes in as No. 30 on my list of 1,001 Things to Do With Bacon. For the rest of the list, follow the jump.

— Noelle Carter

Photo credit: Ken Hively / Los Angeles Times

Sampler Platter: Jelly molds, marshmallow Peeps & bizarre diets

      Midweek food news from around the webosphere ...

• How marshmallow Peeps are made. Chicago Tribune
• From tapeworms and ear stapling to cavemen and bibles, the 10 craziest diets in history. Neatorama
• Eat Food With Me gets stuffed on the never-ending salads at Itzik Hagadol in Encino.
• Domino's is NOT giving away free pizzas after all. Sorry. The Consumerist
• How two young Eton and University College grads have quickly become England’s kings of the jelly mold art scene. New York Times
• Whole Foods makes an in-house knock-off of Amy's frozen roasted veggie pizza, but it doesn't hold a candle to the original. To Live & Eat in L.A.

-- Elina Shatkin

Photo: Faceless marshmallow Peeps being hatched on the conveyor belt at the Just Born Inc. facility in Bethlehem, Pa. Credit: Mike Mergen / Bloomberg News