Anneli Rufus

Ice cream is a blank slate. Like its old pal cake, ice cream is fine plain but can be adapted endlessly with every flavor and texture you can think of -- and some you can't.

Take comfort-food classics, refract them through the health-O-meter, and what do you get?

If it's done well, you get crisp pizza, hot noodles and gooey brownies, say, whose pure ingredients and lack of allergens let you eat them...

It was a blazing blue-sky day one week after my first birthday after my mother died. I set out to walk two miles across town. Reaching a treeless stretch where logically one would select the shady side, something else made me pick the sunny one.

A new study suggests that eating three bananas a day could cut your risk of having a stroke by 21 percent.

"This risk reduction would be translated into a reduction of as many as 1,155,000 stroke deaths per year on a worldwide scale," write the authors of this...

When I first came to Berkeley, everyone told me that Jack Kerouac could no longer be my favorite author because he was a sexist pig.

What do you get when continents collide?

Durian truffles and curried caramel corn.

Do I love thick white toast, pillowy-soft inside and only barely perceptibly golden outside, because something in its chemistry ignites something in my chemistry, or because its look/flavor/texture are matters of aesthetic taste, like dubstep vs. Rascal Flatts; or because I loved thick white toast in a previous life, before...

It's dark, chewy and protein-packed. It's fruity-sweet and studded with nuts. Sticky on the inside but smooth on the outside, it travels well.

It's that time of year again when, for many, comfort comes in cocktail glasses. And while too much is definitely too much, a surprising number of new studies suggest that moderate alcohol consumption can actually benefit our health and help us live longer than drinking no alcohol at...

Nominees have just been announced for the third annual Taste Awards, and it looks like Gordon Ramsay Alton Brown, and Jamie Oliver might have to slug it out.

Vegans might think they're safe at bars as long as they don't order anything containing cream, honey or egg whites. (That means no Grasshoppers, no Black Russians, no Drambuie, Brandy Alexanders, no Pisco Sours and no eggnog.) Actually, it's not that easy.

During a cooking demonstration last Friday in San Francisco, TV "Top Chef" Yigit Pura shared his best strategy for baking while unemployed.

A recipe for SPAM Breakfast Pie won first place in a SPAM cooking contest sponsored by Hormel Foods at the recent Minnesota State Fair. Its creator, University of Minnesota student Megan Turak, can now compete in the Great American SPAM Championship; its grand prize is a ticket to...

I visited someone in the hospital yesterday. Having survived a car accident, he sustained multiple fractures in major bones. This hurts. He was prescribed Dilaudid.

If you could eat only one kind of food forevermore -- just one kind, all day every day -- what would it be?

When you've seen a lot of life and...

Are any guilty pleasures guiltier than deep-fried food? In the face of obesity and heart disease, defending glazed donuts and fish-and-chips feels like defending child abuse.

Your first birthday after the death of your last parent is weird. We're not supposed to brood about this, because Mom and Dad have died and went through whatever hell it was that got them there, and we're like, Boo hoo, who will bake my birthday cake? As adults, we're...

I haven't sampled all the desserts in San Francisco -- yet. Last night I made up for lost time at the Sugar & Spice Party, a feature of the week-long annual food-and-drink extravaganza known as SFChefs.

Held in two retro-glamorous rooms at...

TV dinners have evolved. These days, they're no longer embarrassing, just for kids, or synonymous with loneliness or junk food ... or TV.

Attending a launch party for the third annual Tasty Awards in San Francisco last Sunday, I met some local vintners and chocolatiers and sampled napoleons, clafoutis, creampuffs, cheesepuffs and cinnamon crispies that might very well have been baked by felons.

But...