So much work, so much travel. Since September, I’ve been to Ireland (fam trip for editors), Dallas (Les Dames d’Escoffier annual meeting), Austin (International Foodservice Editorial Council), Denver (new business), Chicago (client meeting) and the Napa Valley (Culinary Institute of America’s Worlds of Flavor conference) and I’ve just caught up on my expense reports.

So Thanksgiving , even if I cooked it myself, was a welcome respite.

At dinner, my son David’s girlfriend Lynn, who is from Thailand, asked an endearingly funny question: Who invented Thanksgiving? Was it the turkey farmers?

After we all chuckled, I realized what a sensible query it was from a bright young woman who just earned her MBA this year. After all, doesn’t food marketing try to insert itself into America’s food traditions at every chance? [more…]

Awhile ago, PC Magazine waxed poetic about the glories of the wired home. Hey, I’m all for wi-fi so I can be online throughout the house. And I need my TiVo. But don’t touch my kitchen.

I love electronic toys — podcasts on my iPod, music from my smart phone, games on my pda — even little Roomba to clean my house. But few of these come without frustrations. Like when I couldn’t get into iTunes to download “Wait, Wait don’t Tell Me,” before a business trip. Or when my smartphone stopped giving me e-mail when my mom was in the hospital. The last straw was when my Palm stopped making a bluetooth connection with my cell phone after the hours I spent configuring e-mail and Internet access. (Only little Roomba performs his little heart out, all the time.)

So I began thinking. As we harness technology in the kitchen, how are we going to connect to access all the services promised and how are we going to maintain the technology? What does a service contract look like for an Internet-enabled refrigerator? [more…]

I was food editor of the Honolulu Advertiser as the Vietnam war drew to a close. Having been exposed to the proliferation of Vietnamese restaurants in Paris, I fully expected an immediate onslaught of Vietnamese restaurants to blossom across the Hawaiian Islands. So I rushed out to do my Vietnamese food story, interviewing native food experts to give my readers a taste of the cuisine to come. I waited…and waited. I was young — in my 20s — and didn’t have enough seasoning or sense of history to realize that such anticipated bounty doesn’t happen overnight.

However, I have been intrigued by why Filipino food hasn'’t caught on. Preparing to speak at the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone’s first Worlds of Flavor conference on Asia in 1997, I researched demographic trends to gauge which Asian immigrant groups would likely have the biggest impact on American food marketing in the years ahead. I was surprised that in the period 1981 to 1995, the largest group of Asians immigrating to the U.S. hailed from the Philippines.

While we were seeing a proliferation of Vietnamese restaurants (second largest number of immigrants in this period) and Indian restaurants (fourth largest), where were the Filipino eateries? [more…]

My son David graduated with an MBA from the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College this past weekend. Our family gathered in Wellesley outside of Boston, for the commencement. A celebratory dinner plays an important role in any momentous event, so food was front and center of our weekend planning.

Surprisingly, food also played the starring role at the graduation ceremony since the commencement speaker was Gary Hirschberg, chairman, president and CE-Yo (that’s for yo-gurt), Stonyfield Farm. In addition to Hirschberg, an honorary degree was bestowed on Irving W. Rabb, former vice chairman, Stop & Shop Supermarket Companies. I was pleased to see that Babson, ranked #1 for entrepreneurial excellence, recognizes successful food entrepreneurs with the same respect it gives to achievements in science, technology and any other fields of business. [more…]

My kitchen and I were featured in a half page color photo on the cover of the House & Garden section of the San Francisco Chronicle last week. Chronicle design editor Zahid Sardar wrote, “It is easily one of the best San Francisco kitchens we’ve spotted because the story of food — from garden to stovetop — is clearly told.”

Zahid also found an interesting story angle. The remodel was the first for a young architect to springboard his career, while the remodel, the first for me, catapulted my new business, Sandy Hu Food Marketing. [more…]

Okay, it’s not about basketball.

February and March are the busiest months of the year for me as the run-up to St. Patrick’s Day, the ideal time to promote Irish butter and cheeses for my client, the Irish Dairy Board.

It’s hard to get the food media to mention brand names without a good reason. St. Patrick’s Day provides that reason. If you want to make a genuine Irish feast, you need genuine Irish dairy products. And how do you know which ones are Irish unless you know which brands to buy? While the promotional effort is timed to use St. Patrick’s Day as the news “hook,” truth is, once consumers aquire a taste for Kerrygold butter and cheeses, there’s no reason to wait until another St. Patrick’s Day to buy them again. [more…]

Sharon Tyler Herbst, passed away on January 26. Not everyone may know her name, but anyone who has a serious interest in food has a copy of her book, the Food Lover’s Companion, close at hand. It’s one of the references I recommend for any food newbie.

This compact paperback, a kind of dictionary-encyclopedia, is the source most of us go to when we want to ensure we have the right number of “cs” in focaccia or to find out what castor sugar is when translating an Irish recipe (superfine sugar). [more…]

And what did you do this past Martin Luther King weekend? On the spur of the moment, we drove up last Sunday to Healdsburg, about an hour away from San Francisco. Despite its proximity to home, we decided to stay overnight at a bed & breakfast as a special treat. Just spending two days in this picturesque town felt like taking a week’s vacation. It was relaxed and just lovely, surrounded by vineyards and the natural beauty of Sonoma County.

We found ourselves in the middle of Winter Wineland. A $25 ticket bought us a wine glass, an ID bracelet, and access to more than 90 participating wineries for wine tasting. [more…]

This week’s issue of TIME magazine reported the death of Momofuku Ando, 96, in Osaka, Japan. And why should his death be of consequence to Americans?

Mr. Ando invented a food product in 1958 that has touched the lives of struggling college students the world over: he is the father of instant ramen noodles. As an encore, he invented Cup Noodles in 1971. Today, instant ramen is a multibillion-dollar industry; 85 million packages were sold in 2005, according to the TIME article. [more…]

My sons and I have been debating whether the “You!” identified as Time magazine’s person of the year includes me and other Baby Boomers or just refers to Generation Y/Millennials (those 12 to 29 years old in 2006). Unlike my sons, I don’t have a MySpace or Facebook page, I’m not in starring in a video on YouTube and I haven’t rated a seller on ebay.

But I beg to differ. I do blog (not as often as I intend to) and I have contributed to a travel wiki and I have added a book review to Amazon. So I am exhibiting a bit of personal control on the Information Age in my own modest way.

While it’s true that most of us who are computer literate aren’t taking advantage of all the ways we could imprint our opinions and personalities on the great world, we are making our thoughts, feelings and ideas known. Even in the area of food. [more…]