Editor’s Mixing Bowl

Photo courtesy of Artisan Seeds

This issue opens with a BLABT—a bacon, lettuce, avocado, and Benevento tomato sandwich—and closes with much clatter and chatter: those sounds in the room as friends linger around the table at the end of a meal. When artist Laurie Caird contacted us in July to see if we might present “Digest,” her yearlong offering of gratitude to the local restaurant community, it seemed so fitting, as I had just learned of yet another beloved restaurant in Oakland that had decided to close. It brought back memories of many savored beginnings and endings of meals shared with friends at favorite spots. 

Caird’s project also had me reaching for the ancient-but-recently-popularized Japanese philosophical term—ikigai, which refers to that passion or mission that gives one’s life a sense of value, joy, and purpose. Personally, I find my own ikigai in creating Edible East Bay, and I’m drawn to contributors who can bring that spark to our pages, both in their writing and imagery creation, and in the subjects they choose to cover.

Ikigai flashes like a marquee from writer Mary Orlin’s story on Kristie Tacey, a scientist who followed her daydreams and favorite songs out of the lab and into her newly opened Tessier Winery in Berkeley.

And there’s that ikigai flare again  as writer Rachel Trachten covers Kelly Carlisle’s Acta Non Verba Youth Urban Farm Project. Carlisle launched that initiative 15 years ago out of her newfound passion for farming as she realized she could share that pleasure and purpose with the young people of East Oakland. Her truly remarkable project—which now spans Oakland from east to west—simultaneously teaches youths how to grow food for their neighbors while they gain skills for leading other youths toward their passions.

You will find that ikigai spark in writer Anna Mindess’s interview with Richmond-based Kristina Cho. This young and successful author wrote her newest cookbook—Chinese Enough—as she discovered that she could fully embody her cultural identity through sharing her family’s Chinese home-cooking traditions in the very ways they live them here in their local diaspora community.

In “A Tomato Hall of Fame,” we learn how Fred Hempel, the geneticist-inventor (plus photographer) of that Benevento tomato blazing out from our cover, was driven by ikigai. “Fred liked meeting new plants,” says fellow Sunolian grower Diane Dovholuk, one of many friends-of-Fred interviewed for our story about a visionary of our eastern Alameda County food community, whom many will surely miss.

I could go on telling of all the spots in this issue where I feel those ikigai vibrations, but I seem to have learned that there’s no way one cannot feel this essence while regarding the vitality that energizes every lustrous achievement in the human endeavor. It’s a much brighter view than the one that seeks hate and division as unifying principles.

In closing, I want to bring your attention to new contributor Laura Kaufman’s spunky Halloween project. We can all remember that moment when as mere tots we were first thrilled by the magic that creeps about in the “spooky” world of Halloween. It’s a serial delight to revisit those first October 31st thrills as well as the creepy ghost stories told on childhood campouts, yes, even as the veil is thinning.

Lastly, for we grown-ups who can’t seem to get enough of those prime opportunities to fine-tune our taste buds, we extend you an invitation to meet us on September 21, 2024, at Sabio on Main in Pleasanton, where together we will taste tomatoes through two hours of delicious clatter and chatter. I truly look forward to meeting you there!

Here’s to the harvest season!
Cheryl Angelina Koehler
Editor