Food for Thought
Meet the Harvest Made Market Cart
No more aching arms and squashed strawberries By Rachel Trachten Have you seen someone like me at your local farmers’ market—a bedraggled shopper with an overloaded bag on each arm and a bulging backpack bringing up the rear? Even as I’m leaving the market, I can’t help making one last impulse purchase, stuffing…
Read MoreYou Mean Fish Have Seasons?
Two local architects depict seasonality through food, flowers, and whale migrations By Rachel Trachten Brian Friel and Meghan Dorrian of Young America Creative (YAC) put their skills to work on a set of posters that depict seasonality of food, flowers, and whale migrations. (Photos courtesy of YAC) It was the summer of…
Read MoreEditor’s Mixing Bowl | Spring 2021
When our Spring issue went to press a year ago, nobody was imagining we would spend much of the next 12 months in some degree of pandemic lockdown. Since that time, home has been the safest place to be. It’s where we have learned how to wait, be patient, and make a better practice of soothing…
Read MoreZero-Waste Warriors and Art Activists Do Battle with Plastics
If Wishes Were Fishes Untangling the plastics problem during the pandemic An interview with Martin Bourque, Executive Director of the Ecology Center No amount of wishing has made the pandemic depart our shores, nor will it do away with the plastics polluting our planet. Can the East Bay, a stronghold of environmental action, make headway…
Read MoreEditor’s Mixing Bowl
The Sweetness Inside the Oyster Even during this difficult time, our editors’ experience creating this holiday issue of Edible East Bay has been sweet. Certainly, much of that has to do with all those recipes for pies, candied yams, cookies, truffles, and fruity drinks. But the true pleasure has been in all the connections…
Read MoreAlmond, Lemon, Poppy Seed Bites
One Calm Cookie Nerve-Soothing Almond, Lemon, Poppy Seed Bites Story and Photo By Alexandra Hudson As a certified clinical herbalist and holistic educator with a passion for combining therapeutic and pleasurable experiences, I like to find ways to make recipes more nutrient dense. To start, I note which parts include a fat or liquid,…
Read MoreEditors Mixing Bowl
It’s been five long months since we last met on this page. During the early weeks of the pandemic shutdowns, it was hard to see how to continue making a magazine. Would our stories be relevant? Would our advertisers—who provide 99% of our operating funds—remain in business? How would readers find their free copies?…
Read MoreBerkeley’s Perfume Museum
A Visit to the Aftel Archive of Curious Scents Mandy Aftel wants you to get to know your nose. Smells—both pleasant and unpleasant—are all around us, but we often take them for granted. Opening our senses to the world of scents can heighten our awareness and bring daily pleasure. This was Mandy Aftel’s midlife…
Read MoreEditor’s Mixing Bowl Spring 2020
Whether we realize it or not, we live in a designed world. The question is: Will this be a design for destruction or for a sustainable new world that we can safely hand down to our children and our children’s children? —from brucemaudesign.com/work/massive-change The times may feel particularly dark and challenging right…
Read MoreLast Bite
Fellow Artists Honor Margo Rivera-Weiss in Words and Imagery Margo was a friend and supporter of my work, both as a teaching artist and illustrator. Last year I did a project with my first graders based on Margo’s food illustrations in Edible East Bay. They will be sorely and deeply missed. —Dawline-Jane Oni-Eseleh…
Read More