Fall/Winter 2011

By Mike Madison, illustration by Helen Krayenhoff If you grow rice or wheat or corn or cotton, the price is set in the commodities futures trading markets. When you’re ready to sell, just check on your computer, and there’s the price. But if you grow specialty crops for sale at farmers markets, setting the price…

By Jessica Prentice Jessica Prentice, Maggie Gosselin, and Sarah Klein created the Local Foods Wheel to help us all enjoy the freshest, tastiest, and most ecologically sound food choices month by month. Here are Jessica’s seven summer favorites. You can learn more about the Local Foods Wheel and the group’s other ventures at www.localfoodswheel.com .…

For the past year, I’ve had on my kitchen table the beautiful piece of pottery pictured at left. It’s of a size that suggests it could be used to hold a freshly baked batch of cookies, but so far, there have been no cookies in it, nor anything at all for that matter. Instead it’s…

By Cheryl Angelina Koehler Photos by Robin Jolin “In certain villages in France, a light rain can be felt around noon in the narrow streets when people are shaking their lettuce dry out on their balconies.” Ariel is telling me this as I reach for her “French salad spinner,” an old wire basket that I…

Community Milling at the Olivina in Livermore By Cheryl Angelina Koehler In Chianti, warmly dressed locals arrive at the communal mill in trucks and station wagons with plastic containers or sacks filled with olives and with stainless steel vessels or wicker-covered glass jugs for transporting their oil home. Sometimes there is a little pushing and…

At Edible East Bay, we spend a lot of time perusing the two East Bay counties for things we find worth writing about, so when it comes time for holiday gift shopping, we know right where we want to go. We especially like supporting the local economy with our purchases. GIFTS MADE BY FARMERS .…

Story and photos by Melissa Schilling Praise cheeses! They taste so good. But how much do we really know about the significance of cheese in our daily diet? If you really want to know cheeses, whether as a taster, a cheese maker, or an affineur (a specialist in the curing and maturing of cheeses) you’ll…

By Stephanie Rosenbaum Photos by Stacy Ventura Vegans love their coconut oil. Omnivores swear by lard (from pasture-raised local pigs, of course). Isn’t it time for butter to get some praise in the kitchen, too? But some butter is better than other butter, and thanks to Ancient Organics in West Berkeley, you can butter up…

By Sarah Henry They’re the hottest tickets in town and they’re not for any music, theater, or sporting event. The 700 seats for Edible Education 101: The Rise and Future of the Food Movement at the University of California, Berkeley—400 for students and 300 for members of the general public—were snapped up within minutes. The…

By Stephanie Rosenbaum A photobioreactor on every windowsill! It might not roll off the tongue like the 1928 Republican campaign slogan promising a chicken in every pot, but according to Aaron Baum, artist, scientist, algae evangelist, and founder of AlgaeLab, growing your own spirulina is the key to personal health and vitality, and the next…