Menu for Hope 4

Today marks the kickoff of Chez Pim's Fourth Annual Menu for Hope fundraising event, benefiting the UN World Food Programme. In the words of Pim,

"It's that time of year again, when food bloggers from all over the world join together, taking leave from our usual frivolity. Throughout the year, we celebrate food as a source of joy, but for two weeks every December, we ask you, our readers, to help us support those who are not so lucky, to whom food is not a mere indulgence but a matter of survival. This Menu for Hope is our small way to help. Please join us."

For the next eleven days, food bloggers around the world will be working together to host an online raffle for a vast assortment of culinary prizes. For every $10, the donor will receive a virtual raffle ticket. This year's fabulous list of prizes include a tour of El Bulli with Ferran Adrià, dinner for two with wine pairing and a private tour of Manresa's biodynamic garden, and a private lunch with Harold McGee.

Last year, Menu for Hope raised $60,925.12 to help feed the hungry though the UN World Food Programme, the world's largest food aid agency, working with over 1,000 other organizations in over 75 countries.. Proceeds from this year's fundraiser are earmarked to benefit the school lunch program in Lesotho, Africa.

For additional details, including how to donate and a complete list of prizes, check the home of the fundraiser at Chez Pim.

Taste of the Nation: San Francisco

Join Traci Des Jardin, chef/owner of Jardinière, as she hosts a fundraising dinner for Share Our Strength's Taste of the Nation event in San Francisco. The dinner will take place on Thursday, June 21, 2007 at her Acme Chophouse restaurant located at AT&T Park and will feature cuisine conceived by Des Jardin, Tyler Florence (newly settled in the Bay Area), and April Bloomfield of The Spotted Pig restaurant in New York City (and a Food & Wine Magazine Best New Chef in 2007). Also attending will be Chris Cosentino of Incanto, Citizen Cake's Elizabeth Falkner, Loretta Keller of Coco 500, and Acme Chophouse chef Thom Fox. The event will honor Chuck Williams, founder of Williams-Sonoma.

Proceeds from the dinner will be donated to benefit the Foodrunners and Sports 4 Kids charities in the Bay Area. Tickets for the dinner can be purchased online from the Taste of the Nation web site.

In Case You Forgot Your Sack Lunch...

For those of you who missed out on the feeding frenzy at Mama's Place Bar and Grill, you're in luck. The Black Gold Cattle Company will be holding its 7th Annual Testicle Festival next month in Woodruff, Utah. Brenn Hill will be among the entertainers at this event, which is held over three days spanning two weekends. Proceeds from last year's event, totaling $4,500, were donated to charity to help children with medical problems.

On a related note, Chris Cosentino recently updated his blog with additional information on duck fries. Note that duck fries are not French fried potatoes cooked in duck fat, as the name might lead you to believe.

You Can't Have Too Many Grills, Can You?

Every so often, Karen's employer holds a silent auction at work, with the proceeds benefiting local charities. This past Thursday marked another such occasion. Knowing that the money would be going to a good cause, Karen took a quick break from work and went downstairs to check out what was available. Among the items up for bid was a MasterBuilt 7 in 1 Smoker and Grill. Seeing that no one had yet bid on this, Karen put down an offer. She figured that if she won this, she would just give it to me. (Aww, that's very nice of you, sweetie!)

Well, guess what? She won the smoker, along with every other item on which she bid. (And she bid on a lot of stuff!) We're going to be over in the neighborhood for a birthday party this weekend, so we'll probably drop by the office to pick up that 50 pound box.

With the acquisition of the smoker, we now have four grilling/smoking/BBQ apparatuses between the two of us. In addition to the smoker, we have:

• A Black Weber 22 1/2-Inch One-Touch Silver Kettle Grill: a gift from Karen's mom and dad which she hauled back from the Poconos a few years back


• A Blue Weber One-Touch Gold Kettle Grill: a 5 year anniversary gift from my employer; I actually have the 18 inch version


• A Char Broil Quickset EvenFlame 30,000 BTU Grill: not exactly this model, but one of its predecessors

Good thing that I haven't pick up one of these Brinkmann electric smokers as I have been thinking about doing...

Dining Out For Life

I didn't get a chance to blog about this earlier, but I hope that some of you were able to visit a local restaurant tonight in support of Dining Out For Life, a national project seeking to raise funds in the fight against AIDS. Participating restaurants are donating 25% of the food bill tonight to benefit HIV prevention programs of the STOP AIDS project.

Karen and I chose to dine out at Moose's, a restaurant located in North Beach featuring American cuisine with an emphasis on local ingredients. We started out our dinner with the tuna tartare, which was accompanied by toasted quinoa. The quinoa had a hint of citrus that added a nice layer of complexity to the dish - a very fine appetizer. For our main courses, we had the carnitas risotto, which was an odd-sounding, but tasty blend of Mexican and Italian cuisine, and the porterhouse pork chop, which was flavorful, tender, and cooked to a nice medium doneness. We had a nice dinner which was made even better by the fact that we helped raise money for a good cause tonight.