A Last Hurrah at Sunset Magazine's Menlo Park Campus This Weekend. Come Celebrate the Best of the West!

Sign from 2014 Celebration Weekend

If Sunset Magazine is said to celebrate the life in the West, the sale of it's famed 1951 Cliff May-designed Menlo Park campus is the end of an era and this weekend's Celebration Weekend could be the public's last chance to experience the mid-century landmark.

The move represents not just a change for the home, garden and travel icon of the West but for the population it serves in the coastal and southwestern U.S. Ever larger homes and gardens in suburbia are in many areas being replaced by an urban lifestyle accented by chickens, sustainable container gardens and recycled, homemade artisan maker-style crafts and projects.

Perhaps that shift in interests is reflected by the magazine's planned move in December from it's seven acre suburban campus filled with indoor and outdoor test kitchens, test gardens, wine cellar and offices to Oakland's Jack London Square. A second facility with wine and garden facilities is also planned for Sonoma County north of San Francisco.

At least that's the take I get from talking to Sunset editors at a recent media preview of the June 6 and 7 Celebration Weekend and from Editor in Chief Peggy Northrup's blog post.

Editors at the magazine vow to continue its coverage for both suburban and urban sectors of its audience and their passion for helping their readers live better shone throughout my tour.

The public can come experience all Sunset has to offer during the magazine's 17th annual Celebration Weekend at its campus at 80 Willow Road in Menlo Park.  It is always well attended but Sunset is expecting upwards of 20,000 attendees this year, so I recommend buying tickets in advance. (Plus you'll save $10). Tickets to some tastings and special activities are already sold out.

I went to the weekend last year and thoroughly enjoyed the food samples, kitchen tour, gardens, special exhibits and vendors for home, garden and travel as well as the entertainment and food trucks.
(Here's my write up of last year's event.)  Check the Sunset website for a full schedule of cooking demos (from famed chefs and Sunset staff) as well as entertainment, gardening, decorating and travel presentations..

This year I attended a media preview of Celebration Weekend.  Some highlights of that are below.
Please watch for a separate post with a cocktail and a mocktail recipe from the event.

My Day at Sunset

A week ago Sunday I had a blast visiting Sunset Magazine’s Menlo Park campus and participating in the Time-Life publication’s celebration weekend.

Angela Brassinga

Elaine Johnson

A highlight for me was the opportunity to meet test kitchen head Angela Brassinga. The space she and her team of “home cook” recipe testers works out of looks like a home kitchen on steroids with multiple electric and gas cook tops and ovens and one very big refrigerator. (Plus Sunset also uses a commercial walk in fridge.) The pantry was huge. Everything is labeled and organized so testers can find what they need quickly. The testers shop for ingredients at local stores and make every recipe multiple times. I've always found Sunset’s recipes work well and it is this attention to detail that makes the difference.

It was also special meeting Food Editor Margo True and Associate Food Editor Elaine Johnson. I look forward to checking out Sunset’s latest cookbook, The Great Outdoors Cookbook. (Get a peek of two of the recipes here.)   Other highlights included touring the food, wine, travel and merchandise exhibits. (I especially liked the cute turquoise trailer and got very excited about the Alaska marine ferry information.)

There was an array of food vendors offering everything from paella to corn dogs, but I ate and drank so many free samples that I wasn't hungry. Among my favorite noshes were lamb pastrami (Wente brothers), grilled cheese with chutney (San Luis Sourdough Bread), and Torani syrups.  Below is one of my favorite attendees. Check out the Sunset website for living in the West travel tips, recipes, gardening advice and more.

Tea and Me

Several years ago the now no-longer published Veggie Life magazine asked its readers what childhood books inspired their imaginations, particularly if there was a connection to food. It seems I was the only reader that responded and they excerpted a large chunk of my letter and created some recipes to go with my remembrances.

I received pride of quasi-authorship and a few copies of the magazine. Not much, but I was out of the closet with my passion for teas.

Earlier today, I was channel surfing when I caught a bit of the 1994 movie version of A Little Princess and it reminded me of my letter to Veggie Life and I thought I would share it with you.

If you have a tea memory (or a recipe using tea or to accompany tea, please feel free to leave a comment below with the info and/or links).

Edited excerpts from my letter:

Thanks to an English cousin, I developed quite a thirst for English literature and tea, both the beverage and the meal. One birthday she gave me copies of Jane Eyre and A Little Princess. The books were different than any others I had read and the people in them different than those in my suburban experience. My fascination began with the simple, nourishing teas of Jane Eyre and the tea and suppers that appeared as if by magic in the attic of Sara, the Little Princess.

The affection for and restorative powers of tea intrigued me and as I read more of English literature and contemporary British novels, I began to be fixate on what the characters had at tea. I felt let down if it was just beans on toast, which, if you ask me, the characters wouldn’t want either, if you could ask them.

I have to admit in the beginning I didn’t quite “get” tea. One memorable teen-age attempt at sophistication ended up with me curdling my own tea after adding both lemon and cream. Unfortunately there were witnesses.

But tea soon became a way of life for me. At college in New York City I discovered “loose” teas and a world of tea flavors other than Lipton’s. With a tea ball, mug and an illegal heating coil to boil the water in my dorm room I felt quite the sophisticate and discovered the delights of Russian caravan, fine oolongs and herbal blends.

My mother and I also began a tradition of having teas wherever we traveled. With her I had some memorable “cream teas” at Harrods and other British institutions as well as throughout America. Tea became another way to bond with my mother and later my mother-in-law.

Return visitors to my house know better than to ask what kind of tea I have. They just go to the cupboard and make their own selection -- caffeinated to the right and herbal to the left.

I’ve also begun to use tea as an ingredient in other recipes. Some favorites: Moroccan Mint sorbet, herbal tea spritzers, tea “gelee” and recipes using an infusion of tea for flavoring.

I even celebrated more than one important birthday with tea at local cafes. I’ve been trying my best to interest my two sons in my passion for the beverage. The older one seems immune, but younger one has on more than one occasion asked me to buy him his own tin of a favorite tea. Now if I can only get him to read Charlotte Bronte and Frances Hodgson Burnett.

Note: To read Jane Eyre or A Little Princess on line for free from the wonderful non-profit Project Gutenberg, please click on the links.

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About the photo: At the last Fancy Food Show in San Francisco I met the owners of TeaSpot, a tea distributor and manufacturer of this nifty tea brewing cup. No bag needed, put your loose tea in the ceramic basket and brew. When the tea is ready, you can rest the basket on top of the upside down lid to prevent a dripping mess. Or use the lid to help keep the tea warm. TeaSpot gave me one on the spot and I use it all the time. The company refers to this product line as "steepware" and also offers covered mugs and teapots. I especially liked their Meditative Mind tea (white tea with rosebuds and green jasmine pearls). The company donates a percentage of its profits to various causes and buyers can select where the money is to be donated.

Eat My Words -- And My Roasted Garlic and Tomato Soup

“So Little Gold for So Much Work” – Gary, Blog Appetit husband, when he realized there would only be two and a half servings of soup.

I like making soup. My husband likes eating soup. Any soup product that results in less than eight servings with something left over for the freezer (the frozen soup is henceforth somewhat confusingly known as “liquid gold”) is considered unfortunate.

This soup was designed to use my “use it or lose it" veggies: a bit less than a pint of tired cherry tomatoes; two very soft large tomatoes, and a beginning-to-wrinkle red bell pepper. I decided to make a roasted garlic and tomato soup and served it with grilled cheese and avocado sandwiches made in the panini grill. There were just enough veggies for soup for two with a bit left over, which Noah, the future pastry chef, slurped down.

(By the way, this soup was very easy to make, so Gary was a bit inaccurate in his assessment of the soup-to-work ratio.)

Roasted Garlic and Tomato Soup
2-3 Servings

This recipe can be easily doubled. The roasted garlic is a predominant taste, so if you are not garlic fiends like us you may want to use significantly less.

Olive oil spray or olive oil
6-8 peeled garlic cloves, whole
Pint basket (more or less) of cherry tomatoes
2 large tomatoes, sliced in half
1 red bell pepper, seeded, cored and halved
Quart of chicken or vegetable stock
Salt and pepper to taste
¼ cup chopped fresh basil and/or parsley

Preheat oven to 450 degrees
Spray baking tray with olive oil spray or grease lightly with oil.
Spread garlic and vegetables on the tray. Large tomatoes and pepper should be cut side down. Spray or lightly grease tops of vegetables.
Roast, stirring garlic and cherry tomatoes occasionally until tomatoes and peppers are softened and blistered and the garlic is browned, about 25 minutes.
Remove from oven and let cool a bit. Put into a large pot with any juices from the baking pan, add stock and salt and pepper. Cook over a medium heat until vegetables and garlic are cooked all the way through and are very soft.
Take off the heat and puree with an immersion hand blender or in batches in a regular blender.
Add chopped herbs and reheat. Serve topped with some fresh chopped basil or perhaps a bit of chopped ripe avocado.

A Commonwealth of Magazines

One of my secret passions is British and Australian food magazines. After reading and/or subscribing to most of the popular and some of the more esoteric American foodie bibles, I was hungering for some new perspectives and new traditions to explore.

My first exposure was to BBC Good Food, a publication of the television network and featuring personalities from its food shows and an emphasis on the foods and regions of Great Britain. Most of the recipes were appealing, and it was kind of fun to have to “translate” the ingredients and measurements from British to American.

But BCC Good Food is hard to find, so once when I needed a fix I picked up Olive, a bit more “American” in style with more feature length articles and a bit more of a gourmet/gourmand feel. (It is also published by the BBC, though).

Olive had more travel articles and fancier photo spreads but still shared its sister magazine’s “sense and sensibility;” its recipes and written directions were clear and direct, and it shares an appreciation of the senses that cooking and eating good food entails.

After reading these magazines I began to understand a bit more the Nigella Lawson phenomena. The British food seductress’s sensual word choice and cooking experience seems a like an exaggeration of the British way of writing recipes and describing food. Not that the British food magazines recipes aren’t straight forward and the directions complete, but some how they often seem to veer from the clinical, almost scientific recipe writing we Americans have come to expect ever since Fanny Farmer weaned us off our teacup measurements.

(An aside – One of Nigella’s products is actually a set of measuring cups designed to look like teacups.)

One of the reasons these magazines are my secret passion is because the reaction I get from fellow food lovers and food writers when I mention them. At first, they thought it was a joke. “Ha, ha,” they’d snort. “You. Reading. British. Cooking.” They couldn’t even get the words out.

I’d try to explain how the recipes were really, really good and the emphasis is on locally grown and sustainable seasonal cooking and how much fun they were to read, but their eyes were beginning to water from laughing so hard that I don’t think they heard me or my explanation that British cooking has drastically changed since the days of a meat and two vegs.

Once I had already read the available issues of both magazines and still wanted the thrill of a foreign food writing experience, so I explored the magazines down under with my first issue of Delicious, produced by the Australian Broadcast Company as an offshoot of its food programming. Delicious is absolutely one of the best-looking food magazines I have ever seen – photos, design, layout are, well, delicious. Again, I had fun translating recipes into American tastes with American ingredients and American measurements (Some Australian measurements differ from both American and European). Luckily, the magazine includes a conversion guide on the back cover.

Donna Hay's Magazine is also good looking, but there are so many photo spreads and the like that there seems to be fewer things to cook. Donna Hays is the Australian Delia Smith who is the British Martha Stewart, give or take.

One thing about the Hay's magazine I find off putting is that it is not marked with the month of publication, just a volume and issue number. I expect that way they can market a winter issue in July down there and not turn off buyers here when they offer it up for sale in the states in December.

I especially like the articles in Delicious showcasing regions and cities in Australia I might not have otherwise known about and the articles about Australian wine in both magazines.

I’ve read some others from both countries, but none of them regularly make my shopping whim list. These magazines are pricy in America because of their import status ($8-$9 each at larger independent bookstores and selected Borders and Barnes and Nobles stores). They have really helped me lose an American provincialism and superiority about food I wasn’t even aware I had and given me a good dose of armchair adventure. Although I am not quite ready to host a cricket party no matter how appetizing the recipes seem.

Some resources:

www.bbc.co.uk/food/ is a great site with lots of info on the shows and recipes, although not articles from the two BBC food magazines themselves.

Nigella Lawson’s website, http://www.nigella.com/, has info on her products, books and shows. It also has recipes.

ABC’s site has subscription information for Delicious and not much else about the magazine or food. However, it is a comprehensive news site. http://www.abc.net.au/

Donna Hay has her own website at http://www.donnahay.com.au/
While there is no online access to the magazine or sample recipes to try, there is a recipe conversion feature to help you figure out your grams into cups and your silver beet into Swiss chard.