Posts by Edible East Bay

Welcome to Wine Country It’s right here! By Tom Riley with photos by Stacy Ventura Over the past several years, the New York Times and a host of national glossies have chronicled the East Bay’s emergence as a national tourism hot spot. Much of this reporting has focused on the area’s burgeoning urban food and…

CCCFM celebrates 30 years of good food and community By Barbara Kobsar The longest-running nonprofit organization to operate a farmers’ market program in Contra Costa County is about to turn 30. Contra Costa Certified Farmers’ Markets (CCCFM) was brought to fruition by a small group of Master Gardeners and horticulture students from Diablo Valley College…

What’s Cooking with Sustainable Seafood? Getting hooked on best choices through fresh businesses, cookbooks, and practices By Sarah Henry Cathy Phillips wants to eat fish for health reasons—all those heart-healthy and brain-boosting omega-3s for starters—but like many ethical eaters she’s also eager to source seafood that is sustainable, caught close to home, and supports the…

Opportunity Sprouts at Buttercup Farms By Patricia Hayse Haller Central Contra Costa County residents looking for fresh locally grown fruits and vegetables are in luck. A new community supported agriculture (CSA) project is under way in Clayton. Once the summer harvest starts in June, project managers at Buttercup Farms Garden expect to be offering 25…

Incantations of a Spice Mistress: A review of  Quick-Fix Indian: Easy Exotic Dishes in 30 Minutes or Less by Ruta Kahate (Andrews McMeel Publishing 2012) Reviewed by Cheryl Angelina Koehler  I recall an especially poignant question Ruta Kahate posed at one of popular Indian cooking classes in Rockridge five years ago, right around the time her cookbook…

Notable Edibles Charcuterie on the Move: Scott Brennan’s Fifth Quarter By Stephanie Rosenbaum Photos by Nicki Rosario Everything is going mobile these days, so why not charcuterie? Scott Brennan’s Fifth Quarter brings all things fabulously meaty to the farmers’ market. “Fifth quarter” refers to all those nose-to-tail bits left over after the familiar steaks, chops, and roasts…

GMO LABELING: Do we have a right to know? By Kristina Sepetys Illustrations by Otto Thorsen Genetic engineering promises food crops that can resist drought, insects, and disease; crops that can produce more bountiful yields at lower costs while helping to address hunger across the planet. But as with many new technologies, there are unknowns and…

Sunday, April 29: It must be summer . . . or nearly so. After that rainy spell, everyone wants to be outdoors. This morning, my 119-year-old dog Pretzel decided to go stand in a patch of sun on the patio, where she was joined by a friendly doe. (You can see the the photo at…

Story and photos by Melissa Schilling (Pictured above: Samin Nosrat) “Pop-ups are over!” —Chef Samin Nosrat, co-creator of Pop-Up General Store Could it be true? It was only two and a half years ago that chefs Samin Nosrat and Christopher Lee held their first Pop-Up General Store sale in a borrowed West Oakland catering facility.…

Editor’s Mixing Bowl Notable Edibles The Fifth Quarter Buttercup Farms CSA Death of the Pop-Up The Inspired Vegan: An interview with Bryant Terry on publication of his new cookbook Incantations of a Spice Mistress: A review of Ruta Kahate’s Quick-Fix Indian Secret Recipes: Things kids know that we don’t What’s at the Market? Seven Stars…

An interview with Bryant Terry on food justice and inspired vegan cooking By Kristina Sepetys “I always go for flavor. If it’s not flavorful, I don’t eat it.” — Bryant Terry Piquant red beet tapenade crostini; butter bean and tomato-drenched collards with parsley; gingered black sesame brittle; or moist, rich ginger-molasses cake with walnuts .…

Ruby in her backyard with a newborn bunny (photo by Jess Watson).   K. Ruby Blume is in her element. Standing in front of a packed cheesemaking class, she waves her arms, jokes, asks questions, and calls for volunteers. She is all coiled energy and dynamic movement. Within the first 15 minutes, one student is…

Local Grain from Field to Plate: Part II (see Edible East Bay Fall/Winter 2010 for Part I) By Elizabeth Linhart Money Photo: Northern-California-grown grain going into the stone mill at Miller’s Bakehouse near Chico. (by Earl Bloor of Edible Shasta-Butte). It’s late autumn 2010, wheat-planting time in the Central Valley. The 600 loamy Yolo County…

Mien gardens and makeshift fences at Peralta Hacienda Historical Park Story and photos by Matthew Green On an early-spring afternoon, Mey Yan Saechao is standing among tall, yellow-flowering mustard in her small garden plot at Oakland’s Peralta Hacienda Historic Park. The six-acre park is in the Fruitvale district, and Mey Yan’s plot is behind its…

Evolving Views on Community Gardening By Cheryl Angelina Koehler, with photos by Nicki Rosario (top to bottom): Looking northeast to the hills from the Hayward Community Gardens (HCG), Jorge Nunez planting chile de arbol and some “really spicy” miura peppers at the HCG, Francisco Flores tending his bees at the HGC. There is no website…

Seven Stars of Summer 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…

 An interview with cookbook author Marie Simmons By Cheryl Angelina Koehler with photos by Robin Jolin It’s a recurring question posed to those of us with large cookbook collections: “Why do you need so many?” These days, when a few key words typed into a search engine will quickly yield several good recipe options to…

Out and About with The Field Guide to California Agriculture By Paul F. Starrs and Peter Goin, University of California Press, Berkeley 2010 Reviewed by Kristina Sepetys, photos by Peter Goin In a recent conversation with a food-savvy friend, she described taking an afternoon drive in which she passed some cows grazing on rain-soaked green…

Cookies 2.0 Alice Medrich’s Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy: Melt-in-Your-Mouth Cookies (Artisan Books, 2010) Reviewed By Anita Chu There are countless cookie cookbooks out there these days. Pick one off the shelf, check its table of contents, and you are almost certain to find the usual suspects listed: chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, sugar, peanut butter, and…

A Portuguese Family History in a Bottle Story and photo by Katie Rose Yen   Food is always at the heart of any family holiday gathering, and more often than not certain dishes are there, prepared again and again, preserving longstanding traditions. For Portuguese American Burt Amaral, it’s his grandmother’s carne de vinha d’alhos that…

How Ms. Amanda Yee and Mr. Aland Welford Invented Cranky Boots Pops Story and illustrations by Robert Trujillo I’ve known Aland Welford for more than 15 years. I know his passion for food firsthand from eating with him at countless tables both big and small. Whether it was at a local hole in the wall…

In a Pickling Habit: Studebaker Pickles By Stephanie Rosenbaum, with photos by Stacy Ventura Kate Hug, briner-in-chief of the recently launched Studebaker Pickles, taught herself how to pickle while she was attending college in Portland, Oregon. “It rains a lot up there, so everyone knows how to knit and preserve things,” she laughs. When she…

Cool Blue: Skylite Snowballs By Stephanie Rosenbaum with photos by Aya Brackett On that hot August day two years ago, elbow-to-elbow with the sweaty crowds at Oakland’s first Eat Real Festival, all photographer Katie Baum wanted was a sweet, icy-cold snowball. Not the kind you’d throw at the back of your brother’s head, but a…

In spite of all the reports about our nation’s dwindling farmland, here in the East Bay we can still go out to Brentwood in early summer and pick fruit. It’s a fairly straightforward activity and appeals, as it has for decades, to families looking for something fun to do together. The ready-mix trucks may outnumber…

Story By Andrea Pflaumer photos by travis smith Commenting on what he perceived as a decline in political activism, satirist Mort Sahl once said, “These days, the bravest thing people do is go to a restaurant that hasn’t yet been reviewed.” These days one of the most political things we do involves where and how…

Bon Appétit Management By Tim Kingston Herb Polenta topped with Pesto and Mushrooms, Ginger Glazed Tilapia, Potato Cakes, Jasmine Rice (tasty in every grain), followed by Lemon Curd Pastry Squares—all made “from scratch”—are not the kind of mouthwatering vittles this scribe remembers snarfing down in his college cafeteria some decades back.  But such was the…

CSA and the Value of Meaningful Work By Sage Dilts There’s no doubt that we’re seeing renewed interest in the arts of homemaking these days, with many people rediscovering the benefits of working in the kitchen and garden. That trend has come as people awaken to the reality that the industrial food system, with its…

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 best bets for the summer season. You can learn more about the Local Foods Wheel and the group’s other ventures at localfoodswheel.com…

By Barbara Kobsar, Illustrations by Wendy Yoshimura Once the signs go up at the farmers markets, I’m on high alert, since some of our local berries appear for only a few short weeks.   Strawberries   California accounts for an astounding threequarters of our national strawberry production, and this popular berry now seems to be…

East Bay cookie lovers reach for more than chocolate chips story and photos* By Anita Chu Looking for a local cookie of quality? The East Bay has plenty to offer, from virtuosic versions of international classics to inspired originals. Memorable Madeleines   With their distinctive fluted seashell shape and famous role as memory-jogger for Marcel…

Saul’s Deli asks Itself Some Picklish Questions story By Matthew Green illustrations by margo rivera-weiss In New York City, where I was born and bred, the Jewish deli has long been an institution as inviolate as any formal religious sanctuary; a place of solace, familiarity, and tradition in a town well known for its furious…

As some readers know and others don’t, Edible East Bay is a member of Edible Communities, a large family of magazines sharing a commitment to reporting on the local, sustainable food movement. As of August, when our Harvest 2010 issue comes out, Edible East Bay will have been publishing under that mission for five full…

CONTENTS SUMMER 2010 6 EDITOR’S MIXING BOWL 8 EDIBLE EVENTS 18 LESSONS IN CORNED BEEF SUSTAINABILITY By Matthew Green 20 O COOKIE BELOVED By Anita Chu 22 BUGS IN THE BALANCE By Helen Krayenhoff 26 WHAT’S IN SEASON: Berries By Barbara Kobsar SEVEN STARS OF THE SEASON By Jessica Prentice with Maggie Gosselin and Sarah…