"SFGate" news and stories

Have you ever gazed out at your backyard and wished you had the time to install and tend an organic vegetable garden (but your busy life prevents you from making the initial investment of energy)? If you're in the Bay Area, you can now outsource your vegetable gardening needs. A new business has started recently, called MyFarm, which will come out to your house, scope out your available space and amount of sun and create a personalized vegetable garden to suite your needs.

The initial installation runs between $600 - $1,000 and then you pay a weekly service charge for maintenance (depending on the size of your yard). They'll also leave a basket of freshly harvested veggies on your doorstep for you (that will often include produce from other, abundantly producing backyards). For those folks who don't know where to begin in creating their own organic vegetable garden, I can see how this could be a valuable service, especially in these days when it's important to know just where your veggies are coming from (they'll even manage your compost pile for you).

[via SFGate.com]

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The feature story this week is on the Bay Area's small-batch coffee roasters.

Spring-time calls for salads made of young greens. Recipes are for: Parsley Salad with Green Onions, Cherry Tomatoes & Spicy Lime Dressing, Truffley Salad of Arugula, Buffalo Mozzarella, and Salad with the Herbs of Spring.

The Working Cook turns to cous cous, coming up with two recipes with three kinds of cous cous: Warm Salad with Couscous & Grilled Coriander Chicken and Sea Bass with Seared Asparagus, Little Pasta & "Beurre Blanc".

East to West lets out the seaweed secret with a recipe for Wakame Cucumber Salad.

On a Chef's Night In, Jamaican is comfort food: Jamaican Curry Chicken and Jamaican Rice & Peas

Taster's Choice this week tests multi-grain waffles, and Van's eggless, dairy-free waffles come out on top.

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Increasingly, the under-10 crowd is showing up at Bay area restaurants, and the restaurants happily accommodate.

The Baja meets the Bayou with fish tacos and accompanying fiery salsas, beets get an undeserved bad rap, the Roving Feast goes to Berlin for Potato Salad and Big Meatballs, and a Hae-muhl Pah-jun, Korean seafood "pancake," pairs well with wine.

The liquor of the moment is absinthe, with recipes for Sacred Heart, Sazerac, and Death at Dusk.

Flatbreads are the most consumed bread in the world, whether eaten plain, or as part of a dish: Thyme Bread (Manaqish bil-Za'atar), Moroccan Flatbread (R'ghayef), Turkish Meat Bread (Etli Ekmek), Yemeni Fried Bread (M'lawwah), and Yemeni Cilantro Chutney (Z'houg).

The Working Cook keeps within the Mediterranean theme with Chicken and Eggplant Kofte with Bulgur, then does an Asian Spicy Shrimp with Lemon-Peanut Kale & Rice. The Moveable Feast also does Asian with a Mu Shu Vegetable Wrap, and Vijay Bist, owner of Amber India restaurants in Mountain View and Santana Row, shares his recipe for Konkan Steamed Mussels.

There's a whole slew of new restaurant openings around the Bay.

There's a new wave of artisan chocolatiers, and the Bay Area is at the forefront.

Recipes and stories this week are: Grandmother's Oven-Baked Chicken, Almond Milk Curd (Hung Yun Dow Foo), Cojondongo (Gazpacho Salad), Mrs. Hyder's Mango Gazpacho, and Mango-Cucumber-Jicama Street Food.

All kinds of news-y tidbits: a soymilk maker, north Berkeley's old Bendean is now Bui, and kids' cookbooks from Williams-Sonoma.