Food Matters! This is one of our mottos at CLIF BAR & CO. We talk about food all of the time—where it comes from, how it tastes, how nutritious it is... To bring this concept to life, we had a special event last Thursday. Chef Darius Somary, owner of SpringLoaf Catering and his assistant came to our Berkeley headquarters and performed quite an impressive cooking demo! The setup was just as you might see on a cooking TV show; there was even a camera pointing at their workspace so that a bird's eye view of their demo could be projected…

Read More…

Yesterday, a few of us kitchen-folk went on a community service outing.  Molly, Morgan and myself donated several hours with the East Bay chapter of Food Not Bombs. If you're not familiar with this organization, they focus on providing food to those in need—mainly the homeless. It was a great experience and I was amazed at the generosity of these people. The group cooks and serves food everyday!!! An extremely resourceful organization, they get food donations from local grocers and farmer’s markets that they then cook into a nutritious and filling meal. We sifted through huge bags of lettuce and…

Read More…

Kombucha (kom-boo-cha)—currently, my favorite drink. What the heck is kombucha? It's a fermented drink made from tea. A kombucha colony, made up of yeast and bacteria, is grown in the tea; much like making other forms of fermented foods, the colony lives on sugars present in the tea. Sometimes, it's referred to as “mushroom tea." The flavor of the tea is very unique. Due to the action of the fermentation, the tea is carbonated and has a slightly sour and zingy flavor—quite refreshing! When the tea is ready to drink, there's no sugar left so it's not sweet and has very…

Read More…

I'm fascinated by the history of various foods. Lately, I've been reading a lot about about dates… The date palm, Phoenix dactylifera,  produces a remarkable fruit—the date. These sweet little gems have been cultivated for so long that it's difficult to trace their origins. Depending on their sugar content, dates are classifed into one of three categories: soft, semi-dry and dry. If you've never tried one of the soft types, such as a Medjool, you don’t know what you're missing. They're generally large, plump, soft and the perfect sweetness (sweet, but not too)—a real treat. For some great information regarding…

Read More…

If you've never attended a trade show for the food industry, you don’t know what you're missing. There are all sorts of these things that happen all the time: poultry, organic foods, grocery chains, natural foods, seafoods, you name it, they've got it! Last weekend, I attended the Natural Products Expo. It takes place in Anaheim, CA, right next door to Disneyland. In the world of natural foods, this is the show. It's sort of like walking into a Whole Foods but instead of products on the shelves, there are colorful booths and people there to tell you about each…

Read More…