Side Dish

HOMEROOM EXPANDS TO MEET DEMAND BY SARAH HENRY  •  PHOTOS BY DAN JUNG Homeroom proved an instant hit with local diners when it opened in February 2011. Who would have predicted that a single-themed restaurant run by two women with no formal culinary training serving a comfort classic most Americans are raised on would be…

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Spiced Sweet Potato Bundt Cake

The recipe below, from Brown Sugar Kitchen: New-Style, Down-Home Recipes from Sweet West Oakland is published by and used with permission from Chronicle Books; text copyright 2014 Tanya Holland; photographs copyright 2014 Jody Horton. Sweet potatoes and chocolate chips seem like an unlikely combination, but they work really well together. I like to tell myself…

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Side Dish….

STANDARD FARE RAISES THE BAR FOR TAKEOUT FOOD, MINUS THE TRASH BY SARAH HENRY • PHOTOS BY STACY VENTURA Kelsie Kerr has the Chez Panisse pedigree: A former downstairs chef at the Berkeley restaurant institution, she’s also co-authored Alice Waters’ cookbooks The Art of Simple Food and The Art of Simple Food II. Not surprising, then,…

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Garden to Glass

The Bay Area’s Extraordinary Contributions to America’s Craft Cocktail Movement BY SHANNA FARRELL • PHOTOGRAPHY BY JOHN MORTIMER In the Bay Area, we are surrounded by an abundance of farms that grow high-quality produce and chefs who embrace the use of diverse seasonal ingredients. It’s easy to understand how bartenders, who frequently work alongside these chefs,…

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Lessons Learned from 4-H

BY KRISTINA SEPETYS Early in the school year, hundreds of teenage runners and their families descend upon Hayward High School for the annual Farmers Invitational Cross Country races, an event that has come to be known simply as “Farmers.” Some attendees might know that “Farmers” are the Hayward High School mascot. Fewer still may realize…

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Side Dish..

NEWS FROM THE FARMER-VETERAN FRONT BY JILLIAN LAUREL STEINBERGER On screen, a soldier drives a tank through a war-ravaged neighborhood in Iraq. Cut to the next scene: We see a farmer driving a big orange tractor through a woodsy field. The film is Ground Operations: Battlefields to Farmfields, a documentary that highlights the work of…

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Seven Stars of Winter

  The New Year’s Good Luck Foods BY JESSICA PRENTICE  Line drawings by Sarah Klein (sarahklein.com) with coloring by Maggie Gosselin. 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 seven of Jessica’s…

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Editor's Mixing Bowl

This morning as I was getting ready to engage with the writing of this message, I fell prey to a ruse known well to expert procrastinators: I headed to the kitchen for something to eat. There on the counter was a fat pomegranate. It looked so much like the one on page 2—painted by our…

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An Excerpt

Reprinted from Raise: What 4-H Teaches Seven Million Kids and How Its Lessons Could Change Food and Farming Forever with permission from University of California Press If I had undertaken this project eighty-five years ago, I wouldn’t have had to venture far from Oakland to find farm kids. From the archivist at a local historical…

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CONTENTS Winter Holidays 2014

EDITOR’S MIXING BOWL SEASONAL WHIMSEY SIDE DISH Mac ’n’ Cheese Grows Up at Homeroom News from the Farmer-Veteran Front Takeout Without the Trash SEVEN STARS OF WINTER A FEAST OF LOCAL TITLES LESSONS LEARNED FROM 4-H DIGITAL DINING Online ordering A to Z GARDEN TO GLASS MEDICINESHED Ancestral Apothecary Two recipes from Spinster Sister Pet…

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What’s in Season?

WHAT’S IN SEASON? BY BARBARA KOBSAR • ILLUSTRATION BY MARGO RIVERA-WEISS Choosing produce harvested at its peak is your sure bet for flavor and freshness. NOVEMBER In season now, pomegranates and sweet potatoes are two must-haves during Thanksgiving month. Pomegranate seeds enhance the appearance and taste of many dishes, and the juice is great in…

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Seasonal Whimsey

A SEASONAL SCAVENGER HUNT FOR THE SENSES BY ANYA SOLTERO There is always some special magic afoot around the time of the winter solstice. Last year I found it at the historic Beltane Ranch, a B&B on a working ranch in Sonoma Valley—the golden light, a crackling fire, smoke mingling with fog, music of birds,…

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A Feast of Local Titles

Whether you’re looking for gifts, ideas for holiday meals, or a good book to curl up with this winter, the titles below from local writers should provide plenty of inspiration!   Brown Sugar Kitchen: New-Style, Down-Home Recipes from Sweet West Oakland  By Tanya Holland with Jan Newberry Chronicle Books, 2014 Tanya Holland is chef and…

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Ancestral Apothecary

Atava Garcia Swiecicki has her feet in a few worlds. She is a Western clinical herbalist and also a folk healer, who reaches back through her lineages—particularly Mexico and Poland—to find answers from the ancestors. She teaches Indigenous Medicine at California Institute for Integral Studies in San Francisco and has helped revive curanderismo, a shamanic…

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Sister Spinster

Two Recipes from Sister Spinster Liz Migliorelli is the owner of Sister Spinster Apothecary in Oakland. A graduate of Ohlone Center of Herbal Studies, Migliorelli teaches herbal medicine at both Ohlone and Ancestral Apothecary. Her products are available at Homestead Apothecary. A Winter Elixir Share this lovely wine with friends and family during the winter…

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Pet RX

PET RX! Elokin Orton-Cheung of Shooting Star Botanicals grows herbs at Sustaining Ourselves Locally, her community garden in the Fruitvale District, Oakland. All of the herbs she mentions here as remedies for animals are easy to grow. “Plant medicine has profound effects on animals, both physically and emotionally,” she says. “When treating animals injured in…

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ONLINE ORDERING A TO Z

AmazonFresh: Same-day online ordering and delivery of fresh grocery and everyday essentials. fresh.amazon.com Blue Apron: Brooklyn-based digital platform for dinner kit delivery with national reach. blueapron.com Caviar: trycaviar.com Cover: App that allows diners to pay at restaurants without waiting for the check. paywithcover.com DoorDash: Restaurant delivery service similar to Caviar, for the South Bay, online…

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Digital Dining

  BY SARAH HENRY// ILLUSTRATIONS BY JACK PERTSCHUK In the dark on digital dining options? Don’t know the difference between AmazonFresh and Zesty? Curious about how to source local seasonal foods online? Welcome to the newly disrupted food chain, where groceries, meal kits, and takeout, from fast food to fine dining, are available with just the…

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Recipes from Ohlone Herbal Center

Tony Siefert’s Herbal Boost Bon Bon Tony Siefert, medicine maker at Ohlone Herbal Center, offers this sweet treat for holiday parties. 1 cup raw honey 1 cup nut butter (almond, hazelnut, or walnut) 1 cup tahini 1 cup mixed dried fruit, minced 8 ounces “powered” herbs (or 2 ounces per cup of first 4 ingredients);…

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Medicineshed

The Not-So-Slow Herbal Economy By Jillian Laurel Steinberger   The herbal economy is vital. Viable. Brisk even. “Herbal” seems too positive a word to stick next to “economy,” given the latter’s tarnished associations. Yet, the existence of a thriving “right economy” enables people to freely pursue jobs they enjoy; that sustain them; that don’t take…

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