Editor’s Mixing Bowl
Photo by Scott Peterson
“Would you like an adventure now, or shall we have our tea first?”
—J. M. Barrie, Peter Pan
Welcome to our 20th holiday issue of Edible East Bay. We’re pleased to still be here and to have you along on our quarterly local food adventure.
Would you like some tea?
Or would you first like to join our In Season columnist Barbara Kobsar on an adventure exploring ancestral citrus and its many descendants at your local farmers’ market? Since these fruits pop up throughout this issue, you might regard this page as your key to a treasure hunt.
There’s tea plus an adventure as writer Anna Mindess interviews Emeryville-based tea taster Milindha Morahela in The Best Tea in the World. Born into a tea family in Sri Lanka, Morahela grew up learning how Ceylon tea is grown, processed, and evaluated before finally joining the tea tasting profession. His new East Bay tea café is in the works.
‘Everybody Must Get Sconed’ takes you along a sleepy stretch of the Mendocino Coast north of Fort Bragg, where (with some advance planning) you can have an old-fashioned tea service in five courses on tiered trays at the cozy Westport Hotel. Proprietor Dorine Real shared her scones recipes, so you can even enjoy them at home with your own cup of tea.
There’s coffee instead of tea in our story What if an Olive and a Chili Pepper Got Married?, but this one is a different kind of adventure. We’ll take you into the colorful world of co-milling, where olives come together with citrus fruits, chili peppers, or other bright-flavored produce in luscious fresh olive oils that can perk up a dish with wonderful drizzled-on flavors. Scattered throughout the issue are recipes that use those co-milled olive oils. One is photographer Judy Doherty’s gorgeous yellow tea rose of a galette on our cover.
Perhaps you prefer a glass of wine? Mary Orlin’s Two Feet in at the Natural Wine Incubator takes you to Richmond’s Marina Bay to meet the Richmond Wine Collective. This group of small-scale natural wine makers actually take off their shoes and stomp the grapes. Take a seat at the Study Wine Bar (or at Mary’s tasting guide) to explore a selection of colorful, lip-smacking wines made by these collective members.
Camille Morgenstern introduced us last season to local Brazilian food, but this time she has a small tour of East Bay places with over-the-top holiday cheer. If you join her in Where to Spark Up Your Holiday Cheer, you’ll even find some tea!
Winter is when we put on the tea kettle and plan what to grow in our summer gardens, but while interviewing Temescal Open Edible Gardens organizer Kelly Cannon for the story Temescal Gardeners Open their Gates, writer Rachel Trachten learned that gardening can also be a great way to get to know neighbors.
One way we build community in these pages is by introducing you to a host of local businesses who are ardently doing their part to keep the Bay Area a uniquely vibrant place that values good food, creativity, tolerance, and free expression for all. Our advertising partners choose to join us because they believe in our readers’ commitment to supporting this special spot on the planet. We hope you will get to know them as you travel through these pages and then go visit them for all of your holiday shopping adventures. Please tell them we sent you!
As readers of this magazine, you know that a print experience like this is increasingly rare, and that AI is making it harder by the day to know if what you read is real. Researching and writing takes time and patience, but we truly enjoy talking to the people we write about and sharing their stories with you.
One easy (and free!) way you can help support our local journalism is to sign up for our e-newsletter. It’s how we stay connected with you week by week to let you know about upcoming events. We never share that mailing list with others.
May your holiday season be filled with love and light,
Cheryl Angelina Koehler
Editor
