Tutto Tutti

Rated by LAist.com as the best Frozen Yogurt in LA I just new I had to try it. A friend and I visited the creamery this past Friday and to our surprised we both loved the Double Wonder- sea salt and caramel, sounds gross/weird but it's actually really good, tastes more like vanilla than salt or caramel. The Super Bee flavor that LAist mentioned, with ginseng and honey, was too gingery for our taste.
As LAist mentions, the yogurt is organic and all the toppings are homemade. My swirl of Double Wonder was topped with the raspberry-basalmic sauce which complimented the salted sweet taste of the yogurt perfectly.

The servers at Tutto Tutti are super nice and don't mind letting you try any flavor you'd like. So out of curiosity I tried almost all of them! Their 6 flavors include: Virgin (plain), White Velvet (vanilla), Seven (with seven grains blended into the yogurt), Freckle Snow White (plain layered with black sesame seeds), Double Wonder and Super Bee.

Tutto Tutti is located at 6803 Melrose Avenue at the corner of Mansfield.

"What's In Store?" Seminar in NYC

I am currently sitting among food and nutrition gurus listening to the speakers at the "What's In Store?" seminar in NYC hosted by Fleishman-Hillard. There are some fabulous speakers who are all discussing the future of food and nutrition- sustainability vs. organic, rising food prices, genomapping, etc. Fleishman is blogging and Tweeting live from the event

You can follow me on Twitter as well!

OMG! Ellie Krieger from the Food Network's "Healthy Appetite" is sitting a table away from me!
Within her question to the panel she included an interesting statistic: currently in the U.S. we waste 27% of available food is wasted, that's 1 pound of food per person per day!

Favorite speakers from today's seminar- Alan Rambam from Fleishman-Hillard's Youth & Mobile Marketing practice and Kathleen Zelman who is the Director of Nutrition at WebMD.

Candle 79

I'm always impressed with vegetarian restaurants like Candle 79. The chefs use organic produce to create the most unique dishes. we started our meal with a glass of organic white wine. After giving us the wine the waiter placed 2 flat silver spoons with a spicy fruit medley. We ordered the heirloom tomato avocado tartar as an appetizer. For our entree we both ordered the chickpea cake- it was delicious and completely satisfying. With an array of organic desserts we chose the fruit pie. The featured fruit changes seasonally- this time of year it was apples with cinnamon and topped with a small scoop of dolce de leche ice cream.

*Plus Alanis Morissette sat right behind us!

Sundaes and Cones

After having dinner at The House and champagne at FLUTE my friend and I walked to Sundaes and Cones (10th St. near 3rd Ave.) where we had some fabulous ice cream!
With tons of flavors to try- some organic, some sugar free, and even soft serve frozen yogurt- it was hard to choose but I finally went with the fat free raspberry soft serve and the cookies n' cream ice cream. It was so good- creamy and smooth, just the way homemade ice cream should taste. I wasn't brave enough to taste the truly unique flavors like ginger, red bean or lychee even though they are recommended by Gothamist. A perfect way to end a casual night out in NYC.

Grocery Shopping in NYC

Today was my first visit to the Trader Joe's in Union Square and I have to say for how much people rave about it, I was not that impressed.
What I liked about it: they had a ton of gourmet frozen foods, a great trail mix section, reasonably priced tomatoes, and friendly staff.
What annoyed me: I wanted to buy 1 zucchini and 1 yellow squash but they they only sold them in packs of two, the grapes were sold in plastic crates- I couldn't choose my own bundle, the same was true with broccoli, they only sold it in pre-packaged bags, and the space was very small with too many people (typical in NY but especially annoying in this setting).

Leaving Trader Joe's a bit annoyed I treated myself to a visit to Whole Foods! Where I tried a new type of cheese from Canada- Oka, it was soft and very flavorful (I put it on my sweet potato tonight for dinner, so good!) and stumbled upon products from the raw food restaurant I wrote about a while back, Pure Food and Wine. I bought a bag of the company's organic snacks- Cinnamon Crispies, made from organic buckwheat, organic mayple syrup, organic cinnamon, vanilla extract, Himalayan crystal salt. I know buckwheat doesn't sound like it would be anything special but it seems to be a pretty amazing "fruit." Buckwheat is not actually a "wheat;" it's the fruit of Fagopyrum esculentum. Since it is gluten free therefore much easier to digest than grains, and full of high quality protein. Plus buckwheat has been shown to prevent the accumulation of fat in the body, reducing blood pressure and slowing the aging process! Sounds pretty great to me... I'll keep munching on this snack for sure.

Pure Food & Wine
(54 Irving Place- NYC) I love raw food restaurants, I find them incredibly interested. I love hearing all about the creative ways raw food chefs use veggies to make “noodles” and nuts to make “cheese.” While dining at Pure Food & Wine be sure to try their organic cocktails.
Entrees to try:
- Zucchini and Heirloom Tomato Lasagna with basil-pistachio pesto, sun-dried tomato sauce and piginoli ricotta
- Chilli Lime Tortilla Wraps with avocado, tomato-lime salsa, and cashew sour cream
There were so many great sounding dishes. If you have recommendations please let me know!
The crowd was interesting and definitely picked up around 8pm. This place will be wonderful in the summer time when the outdoor patio opens up!