Spring 2010
Weedy Greens
The Great Recession’s Latest Crop By Jillian Steinberger, M.A., BFQL | Illustrations by Bonnie Borucki Um . . . Did someone say, “Free food”? After six years developing an edible test garden for my landscaping business, I’ve come to regard weeds as crops. In times like these, you just can’t let a great—and super-local—source of…
Read MoreContents Spring 2010
CONTENTS SPRING 2010 EDITOR’S MIXING BOWL LOCAL HERO AWARDS 2009 City Slicker Farms Taco Grill Barlovento Chocolates Blue Bottle Coffee Merritt College Landscape Horticulture and Permaculture Design Programs FOOD FOR THOUGHT SUPPLYING LOCAL CHEFS AND SUSTAINING LOCAL RANCHES Biagio Artisan Meats WHAT’S IN SEASON Asian Vegetables Recipes using Asian vegetables from The Asian Grandmothers Cookbook…
Read MoreFARM JOURNAL
In Praise of Compost By Thaddeus Barsotti In my early days of farming I went through a phase of harvesting crops and immediately planting new ones without amending the soil. The results were decreasing yields and declining crop health. It was a good lesson, and helped me understand that the true challenge of organic…
Read MoreThe Road to Zero
From Farmers Markets to Supermarkets, Rethinking What We Throw Away by Rachel Trachten Covered from head to toe in plastic bags, a hideous creature lumbers slowly through the farmers market in Jack London Square. The monster stops to chat with shoppers, complimenting them on their reusable bags or asking why they haven’t brought any.…
Read MoreLeave No Scrap Behind
A Tale of Dim Sum story and photos By Mia Buchignani and Melissa Schilling “The flavor is incredible. It’s just hard to get past the texture”—Shawna Dim sum. It’s a recessionista’s Champagne brunch fantasy: The flavors and textures of Chinese cookery pair perfectly with sparkling wines, and most dim sum joints in…
Read MoreKoda Farms
Koda Farms: a Family History in Rice By Elizabeth Linhart Money In late 2003, Martha Stewart told her viewers what Japanese and Japanese Americans already knew: Koda Farms, situated in the dusty heart of California’s Central Valley, produces the best sushi rice on the market. Far from the Asian river deltas where rice…
Read MoreWHAT’S IN SEASON
Asian Vegetables By Barbara Kobsar and Cheryl Angelina Koehler | Illustrations by Zina Deretsky When the popular summer crops, such as corn, beans, and tomatoes are nowhere in sight, our East Bay farmers’ markets are overflowing with leafy greens. Hand-drawn signs that say bok choy, choy sum, gai lan, gai choy, mizuna, or tatsoi indicate…
Read MoreSUPPLYING LOCAL CHEFS AND SUSTAINING LOCAL RANCHES
Biagio Artisan Meats By Rick Mitchell Chefs like to feed the romantic myth that they personally pluck their eggs fresh from the nest and shake the morning dew from their produce, but in reality busy urban chefs have little opportunity to get out to the market, let alone to the farm. Instead, the…
Read MoreFOOD FOR THOUGHT
Beyond “Museum” Gardens By Jesse Kurtz-Nicholl With so much news coverage of Michelle Obama lately, you would think that gardens are the answer to all of our public health problems. In addition to the “White House” garden, you’ve got the new “People’s Garden” at the USDA building in Washington, DC, and Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack…
Read More2009 local hero award winners
The results are in. Here are the Edible East Bay faves from our 2009 poll. Local Hero: Farmer/FarmCity Slicker Farmsby Max Cadji In 1943, Americans planted more than 20 million Victory Gardens, growing one-third of all the fresh produce consumed in the U.S. The emerging movement to bring home food production back into the mainstream…
Read MoreEditor’s Mixing Bowl
During January, as I was putting together this issue of Edible East Bay, I fell into the habit of taking a daily hike at Oyster Bay Regional Shoreline in San Leandro, a semi-wild peninsula of parkland that was created on landfill right behind the dump at the end of David Street. The park is a…
Read MoreSeven Stars of Spring
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 spring season. You can learn more about the Local Foods Wheel and the group’s other ventures…
Read MoreRecipes from our Asian Grandmothers
The Asian Grandmothers Cookbook by Patricia Tanumihardja Photography by Photo by Lara Ferroni Sasquatch Books, Seattle 2009 If this gorgeous cookbook fulfills the author’s quest for extended family, we are all the beneficiaries! The warm-hearted profiles of 10 seasoned cooks add a rich personal history to the recipes. Each of the profiles is displayed…
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