You can treat your sweetheart to breakfast, lunch or dinner on Valentine’s Day.

Rosemary Kowalski, who has fed San Antonio for decades through the premier catering company, The RK Group, will join SA Youth for an announcement to come this Wednesday (July 18) evening at an invitation-only event at the Mission Verde Center.

Their goal: to give underprivileged young people throughout San Antonio an opportunity to pursue a career in the culinary arts.

The announcement event will feature gourmet-style, “cafeteria” food that we all remember being served from the lunch line at school. The delicacies will be created by a few of the Alamo City’s top chefs, and include nine chefs from RK Group.

SA Youth is a nonprofit organization that keeps at-risk, urban youth off the streets and in school while offering young adults, 16 to 24, the opportunity to complete their high school education while receiving workforce training in construction, computer technology, the green jobs sector and now culinary arts. For more info about SA Youth, visit www.sanantonioyouth.org.

Today’s edition of USA Today spotlights Hyatt Hotels’ new children’s menu being unveiled this week in all North American properties. — it’s healthier and children, ages 5-12, were the test group that gave the thumbs up — or down — during a taste test in Scottsdale, Ariz.

There’s more than salad on Hyatt Hotel’s new children’s menus.

Eleven-year-old Haile Thomas, for example, said her love of healthy food began “when I was a little girl. My mom involved me in cooking, introduced me to great, interesting food,” she says.

Gone are fatty, salty items, burgers and fries. The new menu is low fat, low calorie, low sodium. It offers more fruits and vegetables as default side items. There are free refills on low-fat milk, lots of natural beef and sustainable fish, and healthy twists on kid-friendly favorites, such as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

This is also a menu that encourages interaction – for example, kids can order tacos, then put them together at the table with a setup of ingredients for them to choose from.

As the USA Today article points out, says the chain is also trying to build brand loyalty, especially at an early age.

And if it means giving them a menu of healthy items, their parents are likely to get on board, too.

To read the USA Today article, check out this link.

Cabbage-Beer Soup

When I was in Prague more than 15 years ago, I had a soup made of cabbage and beer that has haunted me ever since. Of course, it helped that there was plenty of country-style sausage in it to add to the flavor.

Several times I’ve attempted to recreate its rustic beauty. Most of the time I used pilsner, which originated in the Czech Republic, with cabbage in various forms, including sauerkraut.

I thought of that soup recently when a friend gave me a ham bone with plenty of meat on it. So, I used what I had on hand in a pantry to whip up the simplest version I’ve made yet. It wasn’t  quite what I had all those years ago, but it was perhaps the closest version I’ve made yet.

I really was limited with what I had on hand, which did not include the onion I thought I had picked up at the market. Don’t you hate it when you think you have something like an onion in your pantry and can’t find it? Still, here is a simple yet flavorful soup that filled the house with the sweet smell of cooked cabbage and the wheat in the beer. Serve this with a thick slab of sourdough rye covered with a bit of butter.

Cabbage-Beer Soup

1 medium onion, minced (optional)
Olive oil (optional)
1 ham bone
3-4 bottles Shiner Wild Hare Pale Ale or other pale ale, pilsner or IPA (see note)
1 head green cabbage, shredded
Cooked ham, diced, to taste
Water
Salt, to taste
Crushed red pepper or smoked paprika (optional)

Cabbage-Beer Soup

If using onion, soften it in a splash of olive oil in the bottom of a 1-gallon stockpan. When the onion is translucent,  add ham bone and beer and let simmer for about 20 minutes. Add cabbage and ham. Fill the pot to the desired level with water. Bring just to a boil and lower immediately to a simmer. In 30 minutes, taste to see if the soup needs any salt. (I also added a dash of crushed red pepper to give it a slight kick of heat.) Let cook for another hour. Remove bone and remove any meat still stuck to it. Separate the meat from the fat, and return the meat to the soup. Serve.

Note: Boiling the beer will cook out the alcohol, but the flavor will still be strong. The addition of water tempers the beer flavor somewhat, so use as much or as little as you like.

Makes up to 1 gallon soup.

From John Griffin