* Guest blog by Erin Thiem, owner of The Outside Inn, and author of the fabulous blog InnSide Nevada City!

The Gold Discovery Walking Food Tour by Local Roots Food Tours is a great way to explore downtown Nevada City.  The tour combines a combination of history, walking, architecture and fabulous food.

Sample menus from seven different downtown restaurants, each with their own unique flavor.  I was fortunate enough to tag along with the tour today and our pit stops included: The National Hotel, Lefty’s Grill, Elevensies Crepes, The Nevada City Chocolate Shoppe, Sopa Thai, Cafe Mekka and the Stonehouse.

I love the fact that I got to be a tourist in my hometown, learn some interesting history about the gold rush days and eat some delicious foods.

The 3 1/2 hour tours start at $52, a great value for the amount of food you get, click here for their schedule.  For photos from today’s tour click below, or click here to see additional photos on Flickr.

Here at home we go in waves of having really awesome, healthy and hearty breakfasts and then falling off that wagon and proceeding to have way too many bagels and coffee at our favorite cafes in town.

Sunrise from our windows. Time to get the water boiling!

Both have their place in our lives and hearts, but I know I feel better when we have more hearty breakfasts and fewer bagels, keeping mornings at the cafe for a once a week special treat.

The latest great breakfast we have been enjoying (and that has been keeping us ON the wagon!) is oatmeal with a generous serving of nutritional yeast, butter and salt. I had never been introduced to savory oats until a few months ago. It has changed my relationship with oatmeal. I prefer savory breakfasts so and classic oats with cinnamon, raisins etc doesn’t do it for me on a daily basis.

Ingredients for savory oats.

Making oats this way is so easy. Boil the water and cook the oats how you like them. I like mine on the slightly thin side. Add 1-2 tablespoons nutritional yeast and a pinch of sea salt. If you are not familiar with nutritional yeast, get to know it. It is high in B vitamins, a complete protein and has a delicious nutty, cheesy flavor too!

Felix calls them YUMMY OATS!

I serve a nice bowl of oats, with some Bengal Spice tea and milk, and some local mandarins and call it good.

What do you like to eat for breakfast? Do you have a morning ritual?

Joe and Felix, ready, full and launched for the day!

Eva Tobie will wrap up the final Educational Talk at In the Kitchen before the holidays. Look for more talks when we return in 2012!

Is there a specific topic you would like to see offered as an In the Kitchen Educational Talk? If so, please send me an email and I will do my best to track down the expert in that field!

Monday, December 12th

Educational talk with Eva Tobie on “Getting The Most Bang For Your Buck”
6 – 7:30 PM
$10

How to choose the choicest nutrient dense foods for the best value.
Examples of meals that give your family the best source of vitamins and minerals for the best cost. Some of the comparisons may surprise you! Come check out what to put in your shopping cart to make that dollar stretch and your health to soar!

Archimedes Kitchen @ In The Kitchen

ARCHIMEDES’ KITCHEN IS A TEST KITCHEN AND RESEARCH CENTER FOR COOKING. WE USE INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TO FOOD TO CREATE SOMETHING NEW, WONDERFUL AND MOST IMPORTANTLY DELICIOUS. WE EMPHASIZE AN UNDERSTANDING OF INGREDIENTS AND COOKING TECHNIQUES BOTH CLASSIC AND MODERN IN ORDER TO INCREASE SKILL LEVELS AND REFINE INDIVIDUAL COOKING STYLES. KNOWLEDGE IS POWER AND “WHY?” IS OUR FAVORITE QUESTION.

Most recently Archimedes Kitchen had a pop-up in San Francisco and here is what people are saying about it!

Menu

Join us as we sit down In the Kitchen and feast together enjoying a warming winter meal, celebrating the new year, good food and friends!

Friday Jan. 13th- Nevada City CA

7-10 pm

Winter beet salad- warm goat cheese, aged balsamic, smoked carrot, cress

Parsley Root Soup- fennel, coriander, ras el hanout

House made winter squash tofu- steel cut oats, fresh yeast, brown butter, forest mushrooms

Rabbit Porchetta- carrot polenta, fresh herbs, cranberry granola, timothy hay

Caramelized white chocolate and goat cheese cake- flexible chocolate, citrus curd, parsnip ice cream

$35

Sign up here.

BYOB

ARCHIMEDES’ KITCHEN IS DEDICATED TO USING LOCAL, ORGANIC, AND CONSCIOUSLY SOURCED PRODUCTS.

To sign up and reserve your space email ARCHIMEDESKITCHEN@GMAIL.COM

Usually I would encourage making your own or enlisting a talented relative to make the ubiquitous Thanksgivings Pies…….but this year, I suggest checking out Humble Pie’s awesome pie service.

Place your order ASAP, I know they are filling up fast!

In their own words:

Welcome to Humble Pie! We are a family business and we love pies! We make at least five different pies for Thanksgiving and everybody has their favorite request for their birthdays. The business was inspired by the people we love. We live in Nevada City in the beautiful foothills of the Sierra. Luckily, there are many farmers in our area where we source most of our ingredients.

Today I spent the morning cooking with California cook and author Georgeanne Brennan in Winter’s Ca.

Georgeanne teaches cooking classes with a provincial French flair at her home. Her kitchen and home are basically my dream house/kitchen. I have included lots of great photos so you can see just what I mean.

I entered the kitchen at 10 am to a crackling fire in the FIREPLACE in the kitchen…….again, totally my dream set-up. The kitchen was small but well appointed with top quality range and the most genius sink/dish washing area. Keep in mind this is Georgeanne’s home but it was obviously very thoughtfully renovated to her specific needs as a cook and teacher.

The culinary topic of the day was Holiday Appetizers. As many of you know, I have eaten mainly (95%) a vegetarian diet for the past 3 years, this class was not vegetarian Our menu included Pate de Jambon en Croute with Mustard Sauce a la Creme, Dungeness Crab salad on Toasts, Potato Leek Soup with Black Truffle Oil, Bite Size Goat Cheese Souffles, Chickpea Crepe, Devils and Angels on Horseback and Duck Rillettes on Walnut Bread.

The class was geared towards people who LOVE food and have experience cooking, but certainly able to accomadate a novice. At the beginning of class after some brief intorductions, we were given recipes and partnered off to take charge of 1-2 recipes to be prepared and cooked for our lunch at 12 noon.

This was a very hands on class, though we each were only involved with 1-2 of the recipes directly. We cooked, picked herbs and lettuces from the garden, watched each other, asked questions and then finally ATE. Sitting down in the beautiful dinning room was a much anticipated treat. We feasted on decadent appetizers that came together beautifully as a meal and then toasted our efforts with a glass of champagne!

Georgeanne is a wonderful teacher and a delight to be around. I look forward to taking another class from her as soon as I can. The drive to her home near Davis and the time alone in the car was wonderful!

Jilan’s photos……….Jessica’s food

A quick inventory of what was left in the fridge at the end of the week left me with, a few red potatoes, the inner stalks of a bunch celery, getting soft, a few leaves of rainbow chard leftover from a cooking class…….things were getting sparse….thank god I had some butter and yummy flaky sea salt as well!

I began by boiling the potatoes, I cut them into quarters and started boiling them as the rest of the meal came into focus.

As they cooked, I melted butter in a pot and added some whole coriander seeds from the depths of the spice pantry. Next I thinly sliced the celery and added it to cook in the butter.

When the potatoes were barley cooked through, I added them to the celery and butter to finish up and to embrace the buttery goodness.

To add some color and to get my fix of greens, I tossed in the Rainbow Chard, also sliced very thin. I added the salt generously, potatoes and celery can take a lot of it.

After cooking for about 7 minutes together, my humble lunch was looking really delicious! I plated it and added a few toasted pine nuts I had.

It turned out to be so good, warming and hearty and it was made only with what I had one hand! Score! Here is to working with what you have!

We are now taking sign ups for our WINTER CSK! Some of the highlights from our fall menu have included Broccoli Cheddar Soup, Potato Leek Soup, Gypsy Wedding Soup, Millet and dried apricot grain salad, Macrobiotic brown rice and sea weed salad, quinoa and carrots with greens………for more info on how to sign up.