Leave it to New York City to not only host one of the coolest foodie events ever, but also provide the backdrop for the ever-addictive “Top Chef” on Bravo.

But before we talk boob tube, let’s talk festival.

Thursday, October 9, through Sunday, October 12, The Food Network New York City Wine & Food Festival takes a bite out of the Big Apple.

The festival, presented by Food & Wine magazine, is the only festival in New York to bring together both legendary culinary icons from around the globe and America’s most beloved television chefs. 

Festival History
In 2002 the Food Network South Beach Wine & Food Festival made its debut in Miami. Seven years later it’s grown into one of the largest cultural events of the year featuring the best and brightest stars of the culinary world. This year the festival pays homage to one of the greatest restaurant cities in the world–New York City.

The Food Network New York City Wine & Food Festival mirrors the charitable component of South Beach, benefiting the hunger relief programs Food Bank for New York City and Share Our Strength (100 percent of the net proceeds from the festival will go directly to these community based initiatives).

Taking place primarily in the Meatpacking District and select landmark settings such as the DUMBO section of Brooklyn, the festival will seamlessly integrate into the pace and lifestyle of the city. This year’s talents include Rachael Ray, Paula Deen, Giada De Laurentiis, Tyler Florence, Alton Brown, Masaharu Morimoto, Guy Fieri, Bobby Flay, Ferran Adria, Patrick & Gina Neely, Alain Ducasse, Gordon Ramsey and Nigella Lawson to name a few.

For more informatino about the festival, or to buy tickets, click here.

Then, set your DVRs for Wednesday, November 12 at 10 p.m. ET/PT, as Bravo Television kicks off season five of “Top Chef” with “Top Chef: New York”.

“Top Chef: New York” will also feature guest appearances by several culinary and mainstream stars including Martha Stewart, The Foo Fighters, Jean-Georges, Eric Ripert, Rocco DiSpirito, Wylie Dufresne, Jean-Christophe Novelli and Natasha Richardson.

The 17 “Top Chef: New York” contestants are:
 
- Alex, a 33-year-old executive chef from New York who currently resides in Los Angeles.

- Ariane, a 41-year-old chef and restaurant owner from Verona, NJ.

- Carla, a 44-year-old chef and catering business owner from Nashville who currently resides in Washington, D.C.

- Danny, a 26-year-old executive chef from New Hyde Park, NY.

- Fabio, a 30-year-old restaurant owner from Florence, Italy who currently resides in Moorpark, CA.

- Gene, a 33-year-old executive sushi chef and chef consultant from Whitmore Village, HI who currently resides in Las Vegas.

- Hosea, a 26-year-old executive chef and restaurant owner from Taos, NM who currently resides in Boulder, CO.

- Jamie, a 30-year-old executive chef from New York who currently resides in San Francisco.

- Jeff, a 30-year-old chef du cuisine from Niceville, FL who currently resides in Miami.

- Jill, a 28-year-old executive chef from Latrobe, PA who currently resides in Baltimore, MD.

- Lauren, a 24-year-old chef tournant from Cincinnati, OH who is currently stationed at Fort Stewart in Georgia.

- Leah, a 27-year-old sous chef from Scarsdale, NY who currently resides in New York.

- Melissa, a 28-year-old sous chef from Maryland who currently resides in Boulder, CO.

- Patrick, a 21-year-old culinary student from Quincy, MA who currently resides in Hyde Park, NY.

- Radhika, a 28-year-old executive chef from Chicago.

- Richard, a 27-year-old executive sous chef from Long Island who currently resides in San Diego.

- Stefan, a 35-year-old chef from Tampere, Finland who currently resides in Santa Monica, CA.

I can hardly wait!

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Believe me when I tell you I so wish I was headed to the 24th Annual
Vegetarian Food Fair in Toronto. The Fair runs September 5 (4 to 9 p.m.), 6 (11 a.m. to8 p.m.) & 7 (11 a.m. to 6 p.m.) at the Harbourfront Centre (235 Queens Quay West, Toronto, Canada, for those of you lucky enough to be in the vicinity).

This event is free to the public and features over 100 exhibitors, plenty of cooking demonstrations, free food samples, workshops, music and performances, an all-veg world café and much more. It even encourages BYOR (Bring Your Own Reusables–plates & cutlery).

The event kicks off with Rock Out! featuring a fierce band. Saturday will be a day filled with a celebration of diversity. And Sunday ends things off with a little family time with children’s entertainment.

For more information, click here.

Please also note that for the month of September, I will be blogging here only once per week, every Tuesday. If you miss me, be sure to stop by ThatDogBlog, PetSavvy, SavvyCooking, and SavvyHalloween, where I will also be blogging once per week this month. See you there!

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Design Industries Foundation Fighting AIDS (DIFFA), one of the largest funders of HIV/AIDS service and education organizations in the U.S., launched Dining By Design (DBD), which pairs great design and food, earlier this year in New York before heading to Kansas City.

This year marked the debut of a new component of DIFFA’s DBD: the Student Design Initiative presented by Benjamin Moore. With the participation of top New York City design schools including FIT, NYU, Parsons, Pratt and SVA ,and mentors including Dalzell Productions, David Rockwell, Jamie Drake, Arpad Baksa and Miles Redd, the Initiative paired participating schools with mentors who guided the student design teams through the process of creating a design installation from inception to execution.

Working within a strict budget and the technical and logistical guidelines of DBD, each student design team had the singular opportunity to work with internationally renowned and cutting edge designers. These unique student designed installations are on view throughout all of the 2008 DBD events.

This event was dubbed the “Cannes of Tabletop” by filmmaker John Waters and is an opportunity for various corporations and designers to showcase their creativity and talents by creating unique dining installations to ultimately accommodate their dinner guests.

This year’s event stops also include Los Angeles, September 13 – 15; Dallas, September 26 – 27; Atlanta, October 12 – 13; Chicago, November 6 – 8; San Francisco, November 19 – 20; and Boston, December 5 – 6.

Click here to purchase tickets.

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Chipotle Mexican Grill is set to open four LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certified restaurants by year end. All four will have recycled drywall and nontoxic paint, as well as energy-saving windows, water heaters and lighting systems.

Already, every Chipotle uses naturally-raised pork and chicken, hormone-free dairy products, bowls made from recycled paper, unbleached basket liners and napkins, and bio-plastic gift cards.

In May, Chipotle became the first national restaurant company to serve exclusively naturally raised chicken.

Chipotle began serving naturally raised chicken at its restaurants in Washington, DC, in 2002 and has since been working with its suppliers and identifying other like-minded farms to constantly add to its supply until completing the goal of serving 100 percent naturally raised chicken.

All of Chipotle’s naturally raised chicken, pork and beef comes from animals that are humanely raised, never given antibiotics or added growth hormones (or drugs that act like hormones), and fed a pure vegetarian diet with no animal by-products.

Chipotle already serves more naturally raised meat than any other restaurant company in the world. In all, Chipotle will serve more than 52 million pounds of naturally raised meat this year. In addition to the chicken, all of the pork Chipotle serves is naturally raised, and nearly 60 percent of its restaurants serve naturally raised beef. Those 52 million pounds amount to more than 200 million meals made with naturally raised meat.

In December 2007, Chipotle became the first national restaurant company to serve only dairy products (cheese and sour cream) made with milk from cows that are not treated with the synthetic hormone rBGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone). And this year, 30 percent of all of the beans it serves will come from organic farms.

Chipotle opened its first restaurant in 1993 and currently operates more than 730 restaurants. For more information, visit www.chipotle.com.

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On a recent trip, my husband and I stayed at the MacCallum House for two nights, which included breakfast for both of us the following two mornings.

But before I get to breakfast, let’s talk about the MacCallum happy hour (of sorts). Each room receives two $7 dining credits for use in the Grey Whale Bar & Cafe or the MacCallum House Dining Room, which can be used towards dinner, desserts or for a house specialty cocktail, beer or glass of wine. (Three years ago, the happy hour included a nice spread of cheese and crackers, this time, no vittles to go with the libations.)

On the first eve of our two-night stay, we used our tokens for locally-brewed beers before heading down the street to The Moosse Cafe, a restaurant we discovered and fell in love with on our last trip.

I started with the cream of broccoli soup, and my husband had the Caesar salad. Both were delicious.

The entree I selected, the pan-roasted Petrale sole with rice pilaf, wilted spinach, shallot confit and a tarragon-tomato brown butter, was perfectly proportioned and tasted amazing.

My husband selected the brined and seared pork chop with herbed-creamy polenta, braised Swiss chard, caramelized garlic and piquante sauce, which featured a unique yet pleasant taste (brining leaves the meat salty and not very pork tasting).

For dessert, we shared the house-made espresso chocolate chunk ice cream with sugar cookies, which our server kindly brought with a lit candle stuck in the middle, as we were in fact celebrating my husband’s birthday.

The next morning, we ate at MacCallum, where we both had the fresh-squeezed orange juice and I had the Buckwheat Crepes with Niman Ranch ham, Cypress Grove Lamb Chopper cheese, grilled green onions and Mornay sauce, while my husband had the Eggs MacBenedict, consisting of two poached eggs, house cured Canadian bacon and heirloom tomatoes on a house made English muffin with hollandaise sauce.

The crepes were out of this world good, and my husband raved about the Eggs MacBenedict (which I did not try because of the undercooked eggs).

That evening, we were back at MacCallum for dinner, where Russ spoiled us with glasses of N.V. Roederer Estate sparkling wine and a wonderful duck and gnocchi appetizer.

I enjoyed a mixed berry daiquiri while my husband had the Seasonal Field Lettuces salad with spiced hazelnuts, honey mustard vinaigrette, and Cowgirl Creamery Red Hawk cheese on hazelnut croûte.

For dinner, I had the Grilled Niman Ranch Pork Loin with fig port sauce, creamy mascarpone polenta and (the best) braised greens (I’ve ever had!), and my husband had the Roasted Rosie Organic Chicken with tarragon sauce and scalloped Yukon Gold potatoes with ham and leeks.

For dessert, we shared the Banana Split, made with three scoops of ice cream, chocolate and caramel sauces, whipped cream and candied hazelnuts (we chose the house-made chocolate malt, caramel-chocolate macadamia bark and peppermint-chocolate chunk flavors, all good, but the caramel-chocolate macadamia bark by far the best).

The next morning, we were back for breakfast, where we again started with the fresh squeezed orange juice.

This time, I had Lupe’s Breakfast Burrito, made with scrambled eggs, sausage, white cheddar, roasted red bell peppers, red onions, cilantro, (hold the) sour cream, hand rolled flour tortilla, guacamole and salsa, and my husband had the Cornmeal Pancakes with wild Mendocino blackberry jam and whipped hazelnut butter. My burrito was good, but not as good as the crepes I had the day before. The pancakes must have been good, because my husband devoured them before I had a chance to try them.

The abundance of fresh, local ingredients at both MacCallum and Moosse Cafe were amazing and delicious, making this trip one of the top dining experiences I’ve had in quite a while.

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Beginning in early 2010, California will be the first state to ban restaurants from using trans fats, which have been linked to coronary heart disease, strokes, diabetes and obesity.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a new law, Assembly Bill 97, recently that directs restaurants to stop using trans fats by January 2010, and for bakeries to follow suit one year later. Those in violation of the law will be subject to fines ranging from $25 to $1,000.

AB 97, which was proposed by Assemblyman Tony Mendoza, D-Artesia, does not apply to trans fats in packaged goods sold in stores.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administratino says that trans fats are created when hydrogen is added to vegetable oil, a process called hydrogenation, which also increases the shelf life and flavor stability of foods.

Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Taco Bell, Burger King, Red Lobster, Olive Garden, Applebee’s, El Pollo Loco and Denny’s have all proactively committed to fully or partially eliminating their use of trans fats.

As for the rest, 2010 is right around the corner.

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To me, cherries are the best fruit ever. They’re fun to eat, good for you, and sweet enough to be considered a dessert. In fact, one cup of cherries is only 87 calories, and is a good source of choline, a nutrient in the B vitamin family.

Other stone fruits are equally tasty and offer their own unique benefits.

According to the USDA National Nutrient Database, one cup of sliced apricots is 79 calories and had both vitamin A and beta-carotene. One medium nectarine is only 62 calories and a good source of potassium. One medium peach is a mere 58 calories and also contains potassium and vitamin A. And one cup of sliced plums is 76 calories and contains vitamin A.

Stone fruits are everywhere right now–at the grocery store, at the Co-Op, and even highlighted on some restaurant menus.

Now that you know my stone fruit obsession (cherries)…what’s yours?

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Matcha (pronounced ma-cha)  is a fine, powdered green tea used in Japanese tea ceremonies, and to dye and/or flavor foods (mochi, soba noodles, ice cream).

While I prefer a less hearty green tea (one that I can see through), I do like a cold, creamy Peet’s Matcha Green Tea Freddo in the summertime. Peet’s makes theirs with the highest quality Japanese matcha green tea and milk (I substitute soymilk), and tops it with whipped cream (I take mine without).

More along the lines of a hot chocolate is Trader Joe’s Matcha Latte (pictured above), which contains cane sugar, nonfat milk, Whey protein, green tea, matcha tea, maltodetrin, tricalcium phosphate, carrageenan, natural flavors and salt. Although you can drink this hot (think a “green” hot chocolate), I’ve taken to adding a tablespoon or two to my morning smoothie lately.

Lastly, when I’m feeling lazy, or I just want the real deal, I head to Jamba Juice for a Matcha Green Tea Blast™, which contains soymilk, sorbet, nonfat frozen yogurt, ice and matcha green tea. It’s perfection.

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Seafood Watch is a program of Monterey Bay Aquarium designed to raise consumer awareness about the importance of buying seafood from sustainable sources.

It recommends which seafood to buy or avoid, helping consumers to become advocates for environmentally friendly seafood.

Seafood Watch History
Monterey Bay Aquarium developed a list of sustainable seafood as part of their 1997-1999 “Fishing for Solutions” exhibit anticipating visitor questions about making better seafood choices. Their Portola Cafe restaurant and husbandry department also adopted a “sustainable seafood” policy. The list evolved into the Seafood Watch pocket guide for consumers.

Today, they have a dedicated staff to create and distribute regional Seafood Watch pocket guides across the United States and Canada.

Seafood Choices Matter
The choices we make as consumers drive the seafood market place. Your purchasing power can make a difference by supporting those fisheries and fish farms that are better for the environment, while at the same time relieving pressure on others that are not doing as well.

Some of the key problems that help experts evaluate whether a fishery is sustainable include the level of bycatch observed, the fishing methods and their impact, if it is farmed—how it is farmed, and how well the fishery or aquaculture operation is managed. With nearly 75% of the world’s fisheries either fully fished or overfished, these issues are more important than ever.

Using the Seafood Watch pocket guide allows you to make choices based on the best available information and supporting environmentally friendly fisheries and aquaculture operations.

To browse all seafood, click here.

To find regional seafood choices in your area, click here.

To get a free, printable pocket-sized guide, click here.

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Whether you’re a vegetarian, or you just want to get your daily dose of the good stuff, there’s no reason you have to relegate yourself to eating meat on the road.

Websites
There are several good websites that will help you plan where to eat when you’re on the road, whether you’re sticking close to home or venturing into a new city.

vegdining.com
happycow.net (I used this one when travelling cross-country!)
vegeats.com
veganfriendly.com

There are also stand-bys at a few major fast food chains that will see you through in a pinch.

Subway Veggie Delight
Burger King BK Veggie Burger
Taco Bell Fresco Bean Burrito

Isn’t it nice to know that no matter where you go, there’s something good (for you) to eat?

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