Editor’s Mixing Bowl
The artichoke
With a tender heart
Dressed up like a warrior,
Standing at attention, it built
A small helmet
Under its scales
It remained
Unshakeable…
—from Pablo Neruda’s “Ode to an Artichoke”
My daily walking companion was kindly indulging me in yet another round of Edible East Bay editorial ruminations when our route took us by a yard spectacularly overgrown with untamed artichoke and fennel. Stepping up to the lacy fronds and stalwart thistles, we recalled Neruda’s “Ode to an Artichoke,” a poem that from top to bottom offers a spirited horticultural and culinary adventure. I kept going back to the first eight lines you see above, though. They seemed so suited to my thoughts on this Summer 2026 issue.
Many of us know that one needs the unshakable courage and tender heart of an artichoke to launch and sustain a business or organization. I counted at least 98 food- or farming-related enterprises represented within these pages, and while I want to tell you how each is like the artichoke, there’s room here for only a few examples.
I’m thinking first of the epiphany voiced by organic strawberry farmer Roberto Rodriguez as he recalled the food supply disruptions of 2020. When he saw people desperate for food, he understood that a farmer carries out an essential mission: to keep the food coming. I’m thinking, too, of the East and South Asian farmers who our Moveable Feast columnist, Meredith Pakier, met at the Newark Farmers’ Market. The heritage produce varieties they grow provide fundamental sustenance for a sector of our urban population that craves their particular tastes of home.
At Urban Tilth in North Richmond, first-time contributor Madelyn Markoe delved into a nonprofit with a courageous vision for uplifting lives in a community with low incomes and poor health outcomes amid decades of industrial pollution. For the past 20 years, through a program of urban farming, education, and community engagement, residents here have been helping other residents learn how to assist the land’s recovery as they grow their own healthy, fresh food and share it around their tables.
When first-time contributor Jordan Novet interviewed molinaro (miller) Emmanuel Galvan, he uncovered the tender dream that sits at the heart of Galvan’s first business, Bolita Masa. It took some unshakable courage to expand that successful enterprise into a café. With weekend sellouts since the café opened, Galvan has had to figure out how to continue supplying masa to his longtime customers while protecting his staff from burnout.
Editorial associate Rachel Trachten learned that the new co-owners of Richmond’s Curious Flora Nursery saved quite a few jobs when they took courage and bought the business formerly known as Annie’s Annuals. Customers can still go to the same site for beautiful garden plants. She also met Fern Solomon, a champion for small businesses up and down the Albany–Berkeley Solano Avenue corridor who also supports small artisans at her own Fern’s Garden gift shop. Trachten also met Fern’s neighbor, Of All Places, where Celia and Joe Catalino grew a specialty food and wine market out of pandemic-era needs and friendships. Read those stories here.
Writers Mary Orlin and Camille Morgenstern learned how winegrowers and wine bar owners (respectively) are weathering the downturn in nationwide wine consumption. Orlin’s story tells of how Livermore growers are adapting and continuing to preserve land for agriculture by replanting with grape varieties best suited for the terroir. Morgenstern shows how wine bars are strengthening their identities as inclusive gathering places.
It’s hard to imagine the unshakable courage of our Indigenous populations through centuries of genocide, but as longtime contributor Anna Mindess spoke to Cafe Ohlone cofounders Vincent Medina and Louis Trevino and Crystal Wahpepah of Wahpepah’s Kitchen, whose restaurants she had covered at their inceptions, she found these leaders riding an ascending wave in their efforts to bring healing to their communities while revealing the deep, tender heart of tribal culture, history, perspective, and cuisine for us all to be nourished by.
May your summer be filled with peace, adventure, and deliciousness.
Cheryl Angelina Koehler
Editor
