Editor’s Mixing Bowl

ABOUT OUR COVER
It was tough waiting for Scott Peterson to finish photographing this gorgeous
Extra Virgin Olive Oil Celebration Cake by master baker Alice Medrich so we could pick up our forks. Now it’s your turn to make the cake. Find the story and recipe here.

I love making things … always have. As a child, it was games, jewelry, cookies, doll clothes … by high school, it was purses, sandals, bread, jam, pizza, and all my own clothing. Early career, it was costumes, dances, and furniture, and more recently, it’s been stories, maps, guides, and magazines like Edible East Bay. For cakes, I’ll always defer to experts like baker extraordinaire Alice Medrich, whose olive oil and kumquat Celebration Cake graces this issue’s cover.

Not everyone is such a mad maker, and that might be just as well in an economy that runs on commerce. Keeping those wheels turning, as I was told sometime in my 30s, is what fuels the consumer economy, the engine that drives the American Dream.

But makers come in many forms, and in the celebration season, my admiration goes out to those who make their homes into places where family and friends can thrive and connect as well as to entrepreneurs who make stores with shelves full of goods or places where the public can gather around good food and drink, no small feat in this period when food costs keep rising and storefronts have become such targets for thieves.

It’s always with pride that we at Edible East Bay celebrate the culture of inclusion that so many have nurtured here on the east side of the San Francisco Bay, and so we are pleased to present you with an issue filled with opportunities to participate in that wide spectrum of experience, from the Indigenous tradition of tamales to bottle shops that present local BIPOC, LGBTQ+, and women makers, and surprises like the Berkeley South Asian Radical History Walking Tour!

I close with my annual invitation to get out and greet the people and places you find in these pages, especially the advertisers who support the creation of each issue. Tell them you saw them here, and also, please get in touch and tell us about your own experiences, creations, and discoveries. We are a community and recognizing each other in our differences and all that we share builds a path toward peace.

—Cheryl Angelina Koehler