Hi Diane, in some cases brown sugar is refined sugar that has had varying amounts of molasses added back in - of course effecting flavor. Miriam Morgan wrote an in-depth article on processed sugar variables a few years back - def. worth reading. Click here to read the article.

Love your site. Its beautiful. I have a question. If brown sugar is just white sugar with coloring, why does it make my pumpkin pie taste differently than when I use white sugar? I'l keep watching your site.

Really enjoy checking in on your site to see, what's cooking! The recipes and visual appeal of your site is hard to beat, a very classic layout which adds so much to the recipes being featured. I myself am a vegetarian cooking instructor and author and am well aware of how much work goes into excellent photography and recipe crafting. Keep up the great work Heidi!

Hi Heidi, I'm just writing to say that you've done a fabulous job with this site and I feel extremely lucky to have discovered it. Now I feel compelled to check in regularly and see what culinary capers you're up to. I envy you for living in the Bay area. I was there last year for a holiday and fell in love with the place. I have travelled around, but have yet to see any place as magical as San Francisco. I didn't have a lot of time to explore any food shops, but from what I've heard , it is a food-lover's paradise. Thanks again for inspiring someone miles away in Europe with your wonderful blog. Good luck in everything you do! FTS

I only use Wholesome Sweeteners' or Florida Crystals' Natural Cane Sugar ... it's an ash blonde color b/c it is minimally refined and is not bleached. It has a wonderful taste, too--unlike bleached sugar which tastes like nothing but cloying sweetness--that is shown to great advantage in brittle. I also use light and dark muscovados instead of light or dark brown, for the reason you explained above. The extra expense is well worth the health and taste benefits, I believe.

i too loved roxannes and was quite sad when it closed although with the prices and the fact that it's across the water i only ate there a couple of times....... There is apparently a new raw foods restaurant opening on post and taylor - Parawdise (www.rawinten.com) - don't know anything about it or when is set to open but perhaps worth checking out...

Oh! Not to ignore all the other interesting bits you posted, but I am so glad you got your camera and equipment back safe and sound! My toes went cold when I read you'd left your bag under your seat. Whew, you were lucky. Derrick did a similar thing on a trip, and that camera was long gone within the 5-10 minutes it took for him to realize it was missing.

Heidi - I actually had it as part of I am Abundant like you. Mine didn't have any mushrooms either despite their mention on the menu. I think they had just remade a batch because initially they said they'd run out. Maybe they whipped up another batch too hastily. I don't actually like the Abundant plate. After a while it is too rich for me, which is a problem I find with a lot of raw food when it uses heavy grains, oil and nuts, avocado, garlic and coconut to make stuff tasty. I like it initially, but can't take too much of it, that's all. I do find the raw movement interesting, but couldn't do it too often. Plus - because the preperation is time consuming - it seems like raw food can be a bit on the pricey side. By the time I visited Roxanne's the tasting menu was $100 pp as I recall. Myabe I am remembering wrong. I used to be a vegan - so I am kind of into the idea of making something fabulous from vegetables alone. Have you checked in on Culiblog? http://www.culiblog.org/ She has been doing some amazing experiments with food and art, sometimes vegan. Stunning stuff.

Hi Sam :) Did you order a whole bowl of the soup? I didn't even think of it until you mentioned it - the last two times I've been to CG I got the soup as part of the big sampler platter, "I am Abundant"... I just assume they have one curried coconut soup, and you can get it as part of the sample platter or on its own - but it is possible we had different soups? Both times I got a tiny cup filled with a sweet curry -kissed coconut milk broth. It had a bit of kick and had a generous helping of various vegetables swimming about, including really nice mushrooms. It was the perfect amount to balance out a plate of nut pates, crackers, live nachos and the like... I loved Roxanne's too - I had a great meal at Roxanne's before it closed, and wrote about it here: https://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/000099.html As far as the raw thing goes. I realize a lot of people don't get it...some of my friends audibly groan when I suggest going to raw restaurants, but I find it exciting, and I'm very curious about the culinary techniques being explored and developed in raw kitchens. It is a too restrictive for me to embrace as an everyday diet (and incorporates an awful lot of nuts, avocado, and coconut), but I certainly look forward to many raw meals in my future. The people who go in and insist on comparing a Cafe Gratitude pizza to say, Zachary's are going to have a hard time. I like to eat a lot of fresh raw vegetables in general - I like how they taste, the brightness of their flavor, and how I feel afterwards - but I do shift the way I think about a meal when I go into a living foods establishment. I don't go in looking for my coconut cream pie to be the pie I remember from when I was a kid, and last week when I had meatballs at Juliano's the didn't have the taste or texture of any meatball I can remember, but they were SO tasty....

Hi, Wife does the same thing with a 2qt. bowl, one of everything! Great stuff...

I really really wanted to love the spicy coconut curry soup at Gratitude, it sounded delicious, but when I had it, it tasted like they had used a brash Indian madras curry powder. In my experience curry powders need to be cooked in order to release their true flavours. In my mind's eye I had expected a thai style curry which I think would have suited it much better. I tried to ask the waitress some questions about this decision but she realy didn't have a clue what i was talking about so I gave up. Did you ever eat at Roxanne's? That was an amazing experience but talk about pricey. My mother and I paid $100 each before a glass of wine! My mum is quite into raw food and I am interested in it too. Would love to see some of your raw recipes one day. So glad you got your camera back. Lucky girl! The sushi ran experience sounds good too - ooh - you have so much to share with us in the coming weeks. -Sam