Summer 2011

The Urban Homesteading Movement Comes of Age Story and photo by Jess Watson Original art tiles by K. Ruby Blume   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.…

Editor’s Mixing Bowl Notable Edibles: Skylite Snowballs Fist of Flour Studebaker Pickles Cranky Boots Pops Five Star Marinade Notable Reads: Chewy, Gooey, Crispy, Crunchy Field Guide to California Agriculture Why Do You Need So Many Cookbooks?: An interview with Marie Simmons Pick It!: What’s in season at the Brentwood U-picks Seven Stars of Summer: Jessica…

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…

Pick It! By Barbara Kobsar, with illustrations by Zina Deretsky and Helen Krayenhoff Every year in May, the passion to pick my own fruits and vegetables resurges faithfully. My backyard garden offers a smattering of baby carrots, potatoes, early tomatoes, and herbs to pick in early season, but that doesn’t usually suffice. I know it’s…

Why do you need so many cookbooks?: 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…

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…