All You Need is Love and Cupcakes

The Rooster Returns with the 2nd Annual LA Sriracha Festival

Right off the heels of the San Diego Sriracha Festival friend of Edible Skinny Randy Clemens (author of The Sriracha Cookbook and the Veggie-Lovers Sriracha Cookbook) is bringing the rooster sauce festival back to LA with his 2nd Annual Los Angeles Sriracha Festival happening Sunday October 19^th at Chinatown’s historic Central Plaza. 

This chef-driven, all-inclusive, 21+ event from The Sriracha Cookbook and Food GPS spotlights the world's most iconic hot sauce at a unique, historical venue. Multiple stations allow guests to enjoy a variety of Sriracha-themed dishes, including desserts, at their own pace. Local craft beer, cocktails, sodas, iced coffee and iced tea help tame the heat while a live DJ set helps create a fun and unforgettable food and drink experience.

 

Special Sriracha-spiked dishes from some of LA’s best chefs and restaurants participating in this year’s event include:

- BEACHWOOD BBQ Gabe Gordon –Top 10 Orange County Barbecue Restaurant, Gayot

- EAGLE ROCK BREWERY PUBLIC HOUSE Jerry Su – Opening This September, Los Angeles Magazine, 2014

-  EASTSIDE MARKET ITALIAN DELIVito Angiuli –Featured on Food Network’s “Diners, Drive-ins and Dives”

-   EGGSLUT Alvin Cailan & Johnny Lee –Best Thing We Ate, Zagat, 2013

-   THE GADARENESWINE + SCRATCH BAR Phillip Frankland Lee –Featured on Esquire Network’s “Knife Fight,” Season 1

-   GREENSPAN'S GRILLED CHEESE Eric Greenspan –Grilled Cheese named #3 Comfort Food in America, The Food Network

-  JITLADA Tui Sungkamee + Jazz Singsanong –Jonathan Gold’s Best Los Angeles Restaurants, Los Angeles Times, 2013

-   KOMODO Erwin Tjahyadi –Voted one of the 10 Best Food Trucks in America by GQ Magazine, 2009

-   LITTLE JEWEL OF NEW ORLEANS Marcus Christiana-Beniger –14 Things You Need To Eat In LA This Fall, Thrillist, 2014

-   MEI LIN Mei Lin –Featured on Bravo Network’s “Top Chef,” Season 12

-  MENDOCINO FARMS Judy Han –Best Sandwich Downtown, Maybe Anywhere: Mendocino Farms, Eater LA, 2010

-   MUD HEN TAVERNKajsa Alger –6 New LA Restaurants You Need To Book A Table At Immediately, Thrillist, 2013

-   SHOPHOUSE SOUTHEAST ASIAN KITCHEN Nate Appleman – Rising Star Chef Award, James Beard Foundation, 2009

-   SQIRL Jessica Koslow –Top 10 Restaurant in Los Angeles, LA Weekly, 2014

-   WILLY B's Christian Page –The Best of LA, “7 Local Hot Sauces for Spice Lovers,” Los Angeles Magazine, 2014

“The response from our first Sriracha festival in L.A. was absolutely amazing,” says Randy Clemens, co-organizer of the Sriracha Festivals, as well as author of The Sriracha Cookbook and The Veggie-Lover’s Sriracha Cookbook. “We knew right away we had to host another. I’m excited just looking at the line-up of people we’ve got participating!”

A portion of proceeds from the Los Angeles Sriracha Festival will directly benefit Food Forward; a Los Angeles-based 501.c.3 nonprofit whose mission is to rescue fresh local produce that would otherwise go to waste, connecting this abundance with people in need. Over 5 million pounds of fruits and vegetables have been gleaned and donated to local food pantries since 2009, helping feed over 100,000 food-insecure Southern Californians each month.

General Admission tickets include all food and drink, cost $59 per person in advance, and $69 per person at the door, if still available.  Tickets are only available for people 21+ and are for sale at http://sriracha.nightout.com

The Colors of Nature!

Rocking the Namaste with a #YogaNightIn

Namaste Bitches!  Edible Skinny was lucky enough to score an invite to a post NY Fashion Week #YogaNightIn at Bollare this week! 

The event was held courtesy of Designer Whey and was lead by Designer Whey ambassadors and yoga instructors Marissa Rose and Lacey Calvert.  Rose and Calvert focused the class on the concept of balance and finding time for everything to happen when it's supposed to happen.  As Rose noted "there is no right way, you are the right way."  Boom!

This event was held as a coming out party for Designer Whey's reformulated Protein Powders.  For those seeking lots of protein (18 grams) with a low caloric intake (100 calories) Designer Whey might be the perfect fit for an active lifestyle.   Many of their customers had been asking them over the years to make their entire line of protein powders natural.  Initially, only their French Vanilla and Double Chocolate protein powders were naturally sweetened and flavored with natural sugar from a leaf-extract called Stevia.  The remainder of their line used sucralose (not the greatest of sweetners...).  After months of work, they found a way to replace sucralose and other sugars with a natural sugar.

And in jubilation they had a night of yoga in because that's how fun loving active adventurous people celebrate with some rest and relaxation in the form of Down Dogs and Eagle Poses! 

As one of my favorite yoga teaches Joell LanFrank says, "Namaste Bitches!"

 

Why Raspberries Are So Pretty!

Shiver Me Timbers! Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day!!!

Shiver Me Timbers!  Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day everyone!

If you are a matey with a sweet tooth, you can score a dozen of free glazed doughnuts if you visit a Krispy Kreme Doughnuts store wearing at least three non-weapon “Pirate Academy approved accoutrements" (which include eye patches, bandanas, hooks and hats).  If you just talk like a pirate you still get a glazed doughnut!!!

And if you need brush up on pirate speak Time has a great article on how to do so (Hints: Use me when you would have used my and Don’t be afraid to slur your words!)


So Have a jolly the hour whatver ye choose to do!!!

Huitlacoche: Welcome to the Delicacy of Corn Smut!

Huitlacoche! 

This funny looking word was on a menu at Laurel Hardware and I had absolutely no idea what it meant.  And being a Vegan (most of the time…) I had to make sure it wasn’t meat or dairy related when I was introduced to it, which is how I fell into the weird and delicious world of Corn Smut (and yes, you read that right, corn smut)!

Huitlacoche  (pronounced WEET-LA-KO-CHEE) is a plant disease caused by the fungus Ustilagoo Maydis that causes smut on maize and is known in Mexico as a spectacularly popular food delicacy.  It is eaten, usually as a filling, in quesadillas and other tortilla-based foods, and soups.

The consumption of corn smut originates from Aztec cuisine.  Although it can infect any part of the plant, Huitlacoche usually enters the ovaries and replaces the normal kernels of the cobs with large, distorted tumors analogous to mushrooms.  These tumors, or "galls", are made up of much-enlarged cells of the infected plant, fungal threads, and blue-black spores.  The spores give the cob a burned, scorched appearance.

 

For culinary use, the galls are harvested while still immature. The immature galls, gathered two to three weeks after an ear of corn is infected, still retain moisture and, when cooked, have a flavor described as mushroom-like, sweet, savory, woody, and earthy.  The name Huitlacoche comes from two indigenous words: cuitlatl (excrement) and cochi (sleeping).  

The fungus has had difficulty entering into the American and European non-foodie markets as most farmers see it as blight, despite attempts by government and high profile chefs (including the James Beard Foundation) to change this perception.  Here in the US of A, they have tried renaming it the “Mexican Truffle” to an attempt to give it better street cred. 

Along with its awesome woody truffle-y taste, Huitlacoche was found by the food journal Food Chemistry to contain more unique proteins, mineral, and other nutritional goodies than the corn it originally started as.

Corn has no lysine contained within its husk; Huitlacoche is loaded with it. It also is packed with more beta-glucens, the soluble fiber that gives oatmeal its well-known cholesterol-cutting power than oatmeal.

So if you see Corn Smut on the menu, worry not it’s delicious, nutritious, and Vegan!