Photos: Paulette Phlipot

One of the perks of being a food writer is that every few days or so a new cookbook lands on my doorstep. One of the burdens of being a food writer is that every few days or so a new cookbook lands on my doorstep.

Trust me: With these often unsolicited gifts comes guilt. There are the cookbooks that go straight in the bag destined for the public library sale. Sometimes a publicist doesn’t know my work well enough to surmise that I’m unlikely to cover, say, the latest in cupcake trends, or 101 ways to cook with lard, or a weighty tome on D.I.Y. butchering. There are audiences for all these books — and writers who want to cover them — but they’re just not for me.

Then there are the cookbooks destined to collect dust on a shelf piled high with many other food books, despite my best intentions. Some I won’t ever open. Sad but true. Eventually, these books will make their way to the public library sale pile as well. Many others, of course, I will reference in roundups, profiles, and reviews. And yet, even with some of these cookbooks, including well-written prize-winners in the mix, I still may never make a single recipe from their pages. My bad.

And then there are the cookbooks that turn up on my front porch and I couldn’t be more delighted to welcome them into my home like, well, a good friend. Ripe: A Fresh Colorful Approach to Fruits and Vegetables (Running Press, $25, 312 pages) is my kind of book. Not just because I write a blog with a pro-produce focus called Lettuce Eat Kale. Not just because the author, Cheryl Sternman Rule, is one of the first friends I made in the food writing world when I switched to that beat three years ago. And not just because, when I — a modest home cook — flipped through the book’s brightly-hued pages my first thought on many of those 75 recipes was: “I can do that.”

But there were, of course, people to interview, stories to write, and after-school schlepping to be done and still that color-saturated cookbook’s recipes had not found their way into my kitchen. I did sit down one afternoon with a cup of tea — and encourage others to follow suit — and read it cover to cover. Granted, that’s an unusual way to consume a cookbook, but Cheryl is a writer with a quirky turn of phrase and a pithy wit whose craft I admire. Consider: “You can also boil artichokes whole, but then you’ll need to deal with the choke after the fact, and the only thing worse than a hairy choke is a hot hairy choke, if you know what I mean.” Bada-boom.

Also, it must be said, I had a deadline to profile Cheryl for her hometown paper, the San Jose Mercury News.

Photographer Paulette Phlipot (left) conceived of the concept for Ripe (center) and convinced writer Cheryl Sternman Rule (right) to be her partner-in-crime on the cookbook.

The book includes bite-sized essays showcasing Cheryl’s signature style, familiar to many as the voice behind 5 Second Rule, which recently won top honors from the International Association of Culinary Professionals for outstanding culinary blog. Her partner in this produce lovefest, a cookbook arranged not by seasons or courses but rather grouped by color (with chapters titled red, orange, yellow, green, purple & blue, and white), is the award-winning photographer Paulette Phlipot, who gets credit for the book’s chromatic concept. The pair met at an IACP conference in the Big Easy in 2008 where Phlipot flashed Sternman Rule her portfolio via iPhone, and Sternman Rule, a smart-phone virgin at the time, was instantly smitten.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago: Cheryl had a soiree at her home, where neighborhood friends and food writer pals from around the Bay came to celebrate the release of Ripe, out just four weeks, now in its third printing, and picked up by Anthropologie, not too shabby for a first-time author. So I headed down to the Silicon Valley, home today, as Cheryl herself likes to say, “to Google, Yahoo, Facebook, and me.”

There’s nothing like seeing someone in situ to get a more complete picture of her life. Here is Cheryl’s kitchen where she makes all those artfully-photographed baked goods that feature on her blog like Double Chocolate Coconut Slice and Bake Cookies, Blueberry Corn Muffins, and Raspberry-Cardamom Tart in a Cocoa Crust. There is the grill where she tests recipes. Upstairs her office is piled with papers, downstairs the beaming author sports one of her vintage-inspired aprons.

Scattered throughout her home that night: A rainbow assortment of food stations featuring matching tablecloths and bouquets bursting with colors corresponding to recipes from the chapters of her book. At the yellow station, for instance, guests could nosh on Corn with Cilantro-Lime Salt or Grilled Five-Spice Pineapple Kabobs and wash it down with Agave Meyer Lemonade — leaded or sans spirits — while a big bunch of sunflowers stood watch. Red gerber daisies kept the beets company, while elegant iris shared the spotlight with slices of Blueberry Nutmeg Cake.

I thought it was a brilliant move: Every morsel on offer that night came straight out of that color-coded cookbook. All those dishes tasted so finger-licking good I made a mental note then and there to get cracking on some of those recipes myself.

And I have. Lots of them. Cucumber Halloumi Salad with Licorice Notes (recipe below). Avocado Tangerine Salsa. The aforementioned lemonade and the pineapple kabobs. Also the Carrot Soup with Garam Masala Cream (recipe follows too.)

On my to-do list: Kumquat Arugula Salad. Warm Fava Shallot Couscous. Toasted Nori Edamame with Garlic-Chili Oil. As well as Shaved Chioggia Beet Salad with Mixed Citrus Vinaigrette, Apricot Frangipane Galette, Miso Tofu Bok Choy, Eggplant Romesco Rigatoni, and Turnip and Yukon Gold Puree with Buttermilk and Chives.

Here’s what I learned that night at her house: The girl — who is appearing at Omnivore Books in San Francisco this Thursday and at a farmers’ market in San Jose on Sunday — has a serious thing for kumquats. These sharp, tart little beauties featured in a kick-arse drink, a Kumquart Sidecar (cognac + orange liqueur + fruit + ice + sugared rim), a salad, and a simple dessert with blueberries. While she clearly adores farmers’ market finds, Cheryl also knows her way around a spice rack — flavor pairings with herbs and spices make all the difference in many of her unfussy food ideas. For instance, it’s those licorice notes — toasted fennel seeds and tarragon — that make that Cucumber Halloumi Salad sing. I’ve subsequently tweaked it some: The side morphs into a satisfying meal served over spring greens, with quartered falafel, and a tad more dressing.

Also: This food writer is going to keep surprising us with her ability to play with food, photography, and words. One to watch, read, and savor.

Recipes follow. Go make something simple, colorful, and ripe to jazz up tonight’s dinner. Enjoy.

Event Details:

Cheryl Sternman Rule reads from and signs copies of Ripe:
Thursday, April 26, Omnivore Books, 6 p.m.
3885A Cesar Chavez Street
San Francisco

Sunday April 29, Blossom Hill Farmers’ Market, 10 a.m.
Princeton Plaza Mall, 1375 Blossom Hill Road
San Jose

This post originally appeared on KQED’s Bay Area Bites.

You might also like:

Getting fresh with ‘Ripe’ author Cheryl Sternman Rule
Phyllis Grant: Not Your Typical Mommy Food Blogger
So You Want to be a Successful Food Blogger? Here’s How.

Recipe: Cucumber Halloumi Salad with Licorice Notes
Toasted fennel seeds and abundant fresh tarragon lend a licorice-y backdrop to this unique salad, which pairs cucumbers with seared Halloumi, a Cypriot cheese that can be browned or grilled without melting. You’ll find the interplay of textures, flavors, and temperatures irresistible.

Serves 4

Ingredients:
2 teaspoons fennel seeds
4 (1⁄2-inch-thick or 1.25cm-thick) slices Halloumi cheese, blotted dry
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
2 teaspoons sherry vinegar
1⁄2 medium garlic clove, smashed and minced
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 English cucumber, unpeeled, halved lengthwise
1⁄4 cup (10g) loosely packed chopped fresh tarragon leaves

Instructions:
In a small, dry nonstick skillet, toast the fennel seeds over medium heat, shaking the skillet a few times, until fragrant, 2 to 3 minutes. Transfer to a small dish. Crank the heat to medium high, add the Halloumi, and brown on both sides, turning once, about 4 minutes total. Set aside to cool slightly.

Whisk the oil, vinegar, and garlic in a medium serving bowl. Season with salt and pepper.

Run a small spoon (a serrated grapefruit spoon works well) along the length of each cucumber half, making a tunnel and scraping out the seedless membrane. Slice the cucumber into 1/2-inch-thick (1.25 cm) half-moons. Add to the vinaigrette along with the tarragon and toasted fennel seeds. Tear the cheese into irregular pieces and toss on top.

Toss gently to coat. Adjust seasonings to taste, and serve immediately.

Recipe: Carrot Soup with Garam Masala Cream
Here’s a creamy soup with a gentle kick from the spice mix garam masala, a warming combo of coriander, cumin, cinnamon, clove, pepper, bay, and several other spices. You’ll find it in any Indian market.

Serves 6

Ingredients:
1⁄4 cup (60ml) olive oil
3⁄4 cup (120g) diced yellow onion
4 to 6 medium carrots (about 1 1⁄2 pounds, or 680g), peeled, quartered lengthwise, and roughly chopped
1 small yam (about 7 ounces, or 198g), peeled and diced
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
3⁄4 teaspoon garam masala, divided
3 cups (725ml) vegetable stock
2 teaspoons fresh lime juice, or to taste
2 tablespoons sour cream, plus additional for garnish

Instructions:
Heat the oil in a large soup pot over medium heat. Add the onion, carrots, yam, 1 teaspoon salt, 1⁄4 teaspoon pepper, and 1⁄2 teaspoon of the garam masala. Cook for about 15 minutes, stirring frequently.

Add the stock and 1 cup cold water and raise the heat to high. Bring the soup to a boil, then reduce the heat to a simmer, partially cover, and simmer until the vegetables are tender, about 15 minutes. Remove from the heat.

If you have an immersion blender, use it to purée the soup. (Otherwise, allow it to cool slightly and then purée it in batches using a traditional blender. Return the soup to the pot.) Season with the lime juice, to taste, and adjust the salt and pepper.

Mix the sour cream and the remaining 1⁄4 teaspoon garam masala in a small bowl. Swirl into the soup. Serve hot, garnished with additional sour cream, if desired.

Recipes reprinted with permission from RIPE © 2012 by Cheryl Sternman Rule, Running Press, a member of the Perseus Book Group.

Photography © 2012 by Paulette Phlipot.

Latina power: Dominica Rice (left), Amelia Ceja (center, photo Amy Heiden), Maria Catalan (right, Bart Nagel)

In journalism the rule of threes rules. A story needs a beginning, middle, and end (or lede, nut graph, and walk-off, as they say in the biz.)

When an interview subject is illustrating a point it’s always good if they can give three examples, of, say, their favorite places to eat around town. One seems thin. Two is better. Three is best. More than that and you run the risk of overwhelming the reader.

And when you bump into a subject three times in a row on your beat, well you’ve got yourself the makings of a trend piece or a roundup article. That’s how my story in the San Francisco Chronicle today on Latina food entrepreneurs came about.

I’ve covered La Cocina, the non-profit incubator program that supports low-income edible enterprises, in earlier stories and these mostly Latina budding businesses were out in force, of course, at last August’s San Francisco Street Food Festival.

In October, I attended the Tedx Fruitvale Harvesting Change conference held in Oakland and hosted by the food service provider Bon Appetit Management Co., where the idea for this article was sparked as I listened to Amelia Ceja of Ceja Vineyards and organic farmer Maria Catalan tell their stories about working hard, doing well, and giving back.

The following month, in Oakland again, this time to attend the Community Food Security Coalition Conference, I checked out Cosecha, getting rave reviews from conference attendees, and witnessed chef Dominica Rice and her all-Latina crew in action.

(Heads up: Go eat lunch there. No need to just take my word for it.) I stopped by after the rush to talk with Rice about her cafe and her staffing decisions.

After that, I knew I had a story.

You can read the piece, “Latinas share the wealth,” in today’s paper, available online here.

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Phoenix sells pasta, pastries, sauces and that olive bread at several farmers' markets.

It’s one thing to run a successful food business. But to have two edible start-ups do well, even in a food-friendly town, is quite an accomplishment in an industry known for slim profits and fickle customers.

That’s the case for couple Eric and Carole Sartenaer, who started off with a little bakery in Kensington called Semifreddi’s — ring any bells? — sold that for a tidy sum three years later, then departed to Oregon for seven years to run their own bakery before returning to the Bay Area in 1993.

Eric worked for Fat Apple’s in El Cerrito for two years, but he was eager to start another food business. So, in 1995, he set up shop, and later a restaurant, on Shattuck Avenue turning out fresh pasta at The Phoenix Pastifico. The company also makes a line of baked goods — cookies, macaroons, and biscotti  — as well as its signature olive bread and pasta sauces.

Now relocated to a small storefront with no sign in Strawberry Creek Park (next to Café Zeste), Phoenix Pastifico has a loyal following among farmers’ market regulars and some 200 local restaurants including Rivoli, Lalime’s, Bay Wolf, 900 Grayson, and Rick & Ann’s. Much of their wholesale business is in San Francisco, with such high-profile clients as Greens, Boulevard, and Farallon. Several local shops, including Star Grocery (bread), Berkeley Bowl (bread, pasta, sauce), and Berkeley Natural Grocery (biscotti) carry their products too.

The artisan baker’s macaroons earn high marks and the olive bread — with its flour-dusted, thick, dark crust, springy interior, and plump kalamata olives — has legions of fans. Picked up warm at the market, it doesn’t always make it home. Fresh pasta comes in flavors familiar and not, including black pepper rosemary, orange fennel, squid ink, porcini, and sweet pea.

A couple of less-well-known Phoenix facts: the bakers turn out a few different pizzas on Wednesdays and Thursdays available only at the Strawberry Creek location from 3 p.m. – 7 p.m. And the owners trade or buy local residents’ Meyer lemons — a key ingredient for their popular lemon pastas.

A self-taught baker, 62-year-old Eric, who credits his Belgian grandmother for teaching him how to cook, took time out to chat in the park about his culinary career, which began with a six-year stint at the Cheeseboard from 1977-1983. In true team-player fashion, Carole, 61, filled in the gaps when Eric was called away. The couple live in West Berkeley with their son, 17, who attends Berkeley High School. Except for a short time caring for their then-infant, the two have worked side-by-side for almost 30 years.

Why pasta?

When I returned to the Bay Area I knew I wanted to start another food business but I wanted to do something other than baking. I had a lot of friends in the bakery business who I don’t think would have appreciated having me back baking. I’d tried some of the pastas around and I didn’t think that much of them, so I thought I could learn it, since it was basically combining flour and liquids.

Was it easy to switch from bread to pasta?

The learning curve for us — my sister who began the business with me and myself — took a little longer than we both expected. We made some bad pasta for a while and we had to throw it away, which was hard because we weren’t making any money and these were really quality ingredients. But eventually we got it. I started by learning how to make chestnut pasta, which is one of the hardest to learn. But that was the one that convinced me to take a chance on this business; the hand-made chestnut pasta I made practicing in my mother’s garage was that good.

Mike Detar sells Phoenix products -- and serves up recipe suggestions -- at the market

Was your pasta as big a hit as your bread at Semifreddi’s?

The pasta was not an overnight success. People weren’t initially convinced that they should pay more for fresh pasta over dry. At Semifreddi’s we had lines out the door and we often sold out. So we started baking as well because we needed to earn an income. We made Belgian Danish [pastries] for Peet’s, who were our first big client.

How did the restaurant come about and why did it close?

We bought the space next to us,  so we’d have another walk-in and storage space, because business was booming; at one point we had about 300 wholesale clients. But the expansion proved not to be necessary as it ended up being concurrent with the dot-com collapse. So then we thought we’d convert the space into a restaurant, to showcase our pasta. The restaurant was a beautiful thing, a labor of love for me. I’d always wanted my own place.

We opened in 2000 and we did well until we were kicked out in 2006, because one of the owners wanted to start a restaurant with one of his friends. But that venture only lasted four or five months. It was totally wrong for this area but they saw that we were busy and they thought they would be too. It’s now Corso.

What’s the back story behind the bread?

It came from someone who worked for me, who had learned it from a Sicilian baker in Seattle. He made it for us while he was here and, when he left, I asked if he would mind if I kept making it. He said: ‘I don’t mind but I’m not going to teach you how.’ So I made it myself, I changed it a bit, but I liked it well enough to learn how to bake it.

Do you eat dry pasta anymore?

Why? I don’t think I could go back to it, though I ate dry pasta for years. Dry pasta has been dry for a long time. Our pasta is a living food. And I think it’s fairly priced, given the cost of the ingredients, including organic flour.

Do you see yourself doing this for another ten years?

I like the business, always have, it’s exciting, it’s as close to theater as you can get, especially when you do a restaurant. It’s live entertainment, I like the open kitchen, I like the communication with the customers. I like to eat well. I’ll work with food for as long as I can. I’ll probably die on the job.

Is this a jointly run venture with your wife?

She’s as much the reason for our success as me, if not more. This is her story too. We wouldn’t be where we are today without her.

This post originally appeared on Berkeleyside. You might also like:

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Food Day, October 24th, highlights the good, bad, and ugly of the way we consume food in this country.

Can Food Day, on October 24th, do for the growing food movement what Earth Day did for the nascent environmental movement back in 1970?

The organizers, the Center for Science in the Public Interest in D.C., certainly hope so. A national, grassroots campaign, Food Day is designed to celebrate what we eat while drawing attention to the need to overhaul this country’s food system from farm to fork. In this way it is similar to Earth Day which sparked widespread interest in the fragile nature of our planet.

Events planned for Monday, including in Berkeley and around the Bay Area, will highlight the good, bad, and ugly of the way we consume food in this country.

Simply put, how we grow, transport, process, market, and eat is not sustainable for the environment or our health, said Michael F. Jacobson, executive director of CSPI and the creator of Food Day in a recent piece for The Atlantic. Dietary diseases such as obesity, diabetes, and heart attacks are rising at alarming rates. Industrially raised meat sucks up energy, pollutes the land and water, and is cruel to beast and worker alike.

Even in places like Berkeley where local, seasonal, organic, sustainable, and fresh food is available in abundance, too many people lack access to good grub and/or go hungry or malnourished.We are a nation, to quote UC Berkeley visiting scholar Raj Patel, of the “stuffed and starved.”

Food Day, whose advisory board includes Michael Pollan and Alice Waters, local heavy hitters on the edible revolution front, seeks to mobilize citizens to step up efforts to reform what’s wrong with our food system (hello Farm Bill). The campaign has six admirable goals:

1. Reduce diet-related disease by promoting healthy food.

2. Support sustainable farms and cut subsidies to agribusiness.

3. Expand access to food and end hunger.

4. Protect the environment and animals by reforming factory farms.

5. Promote health by curbing junk-food marketing to kids.

6. Obtain fair pay and safe conditions for food and farm workers.

The Berkeley City Council voted to proclaim October 24th Food Day, and to adopt the Seattle Farm Bill Principles. This is a set of six guiding principles that could serve as a framework for policy discussions around the renewal in 2012 of the federal Farm Bill, the primary piece of legislation that determines the nation’s food and agriculture policy.

“Sometimes it takes action at the local level to help to create change at the federal level,” said Ecology Center Executive Director Martin Bourque. “This may be a case — as with the Kyoto Protocol and climate change — where cities lead the way with innovative government strategies. We need a Food Bill not a Farm Bill.”

On Monday, the Ecology Center will mark Food Day with a tour of local women-owned farms for its members, as part of a series of activities in honor of what many hope will become an annual event.

Food Day activities will get major play in and around the UC Berkeley campus on Monday, said Kristen Rasmussen, a workplace wellness dietician for faculty and staff at Cal who serves as the university’s Food Day coordinator. Highlights include a BYO Lunch Picnic. (Read the full list of events.)

Speakers include Food Day co-organizer and UC alum Lilia Smelkova and Appetite for Profit author Michele Simon. “This is an excellent opportunity to talk about what’s wrong with our broken food system,” said Simon. “But we don’t want to do a lot of complaining. We also want to talk about solutions and what individuals can do to improve food for themselves and their communities, both locally and nationally. The time is ripe to organize around this issue.”

The Berkeley Student Food Collective plans on hosting a sandwich-making event during the day (11 am-4 pm) at its storefront at 2440 Bancroft across from campus, and in the evening will co-host Edible Occupation 101: Careers in Sustainable Food and Agriculture, a panel discussion featuring Sprouts Cooking Club founder Karen Rogers, local farmer Esperanza Pallana, and urban agriculture planner Nathan McClintock.

Every Monday the student stand The Local sells fresh organic produce on campus. Photo: Courtesy The Local

The Local, the student-run organic produce stand that is on campus every Monday (Upper Sproul Plaza, 10 am-2 pm) will be open for business as usual and will also distribute free samples of Cheese Board wholegrain bread.

“Though the food movement is growing, many still see it as exclusive,” said The Local’s Mickey Davis, a 21-year-old senior in the Nutrition Sciences Department. ”Not everyone is aware of the peril our food system is in, and a dangerous number of people do not understand the severity of the situation we are in health-wise, environmentally, or economically, and how the food system is closely related to that. It is important to invest time, celebration, and awareness to these issues on Food Day, to help spread the word to others who may otherwise not know.”

While Berkeley has much to celebrate on Food Day, there’s still plenty of work ahead on the food front, even in this food-focused and food-forward town.

“We can take pride in being early adopters as far as farmers’ markets and CSAs, and for being leaders on school food reform, and on the forefront of community gardens and urban agriculture,” said Bourque at the Ecology Center. “But even in Berkeley, with its very advanced alternative food system, we have large numbers of people dealing with diet-related illnesses and huge disparities still when it comes to access and affordability. We need to keep fighting to make good food available to every person in our community.”

This post originally appeared on Berkeleyside. You might also like:

Berkeley Student Food Collective: Education Through Eating
Sprouts Cooking Club: Growing the Next Generation of Chefs
Author Raj Patel’s Food Revolution: From Crisps to Salad
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Berkeley Farmers’ Market Man, Ben Feldman
Cheese Board Collective: 40 Years in the Gourmet Ghetto

Would you buy a box of bread, cheese, chocolate, wine, olive oil or jam from a local artisan on a regular basis?

In Berkeley and beyond, budding food producers are incorporating the community food model in their business plans. But they are having mixed success. Indeed, whether this concept can become financially feasible outside of the fruit and vegetable box remains to be seen.

“The jury is still out on if this is sustainable, long term,” said Cindy Tsai Schultz, co-founder of Fresh Bite, a baked goods start-up that began with a community supported approach, but has since put the idea on hold.

Community supported food began with CSAs or Community Supported Agriculture, which has proven mutually beneficial for farmers and consumers. It’s a popular way to buy local, seasonal, organic, sustainable vegetables, fruits, and herbs directly from a small-scale farmer through a subscription or membership system, and it offers a direct connection between producer and purchaser. From an economic standpoint, a CSA provides growers with upfront funds and a known demand, an important buffer in the risky and unpredictable business of farming. (Subscribers pay a regular weekly fee, typically in the $20-$55 range, depending on the size and mix of the box.)

Full Belly Farm was one of the first farms to offer a CSA in Berkeley. Another farmers’ market regular, Riverdog Farm, also offers a subscription veggie box program. Eatwell Farm and Terra Firma Farm are also popular CSA programs offering weekly pick-up at central locations. Capay Organic Farm (whose CSA is known as Farm Fresh to You) delivers to your door.

Other perishable CSA purveyors include Soul Food Farm (chicken and eggs), Marin Sun Farms (meat) and Massa Organics (rice), which partners with produce CSAs to provide its products.  Bellwether Farms and Cowgirl Creamery have cheese clubs, which essentially work in a similar way to CSAs. (Find a long list of CSAs that deliver around town here.) Berkeley also boasts the community supported kitchen Three Stone Hearth.

But a review of recent start-up community supported food initiatives reveals the challenges of making such a model cost-effective.

Pandora’s Box, a community supported bread seller, had short but sweet success before calling it a day. Fresh Bite began as a baked-good community supported business, but quickly morphed into providing complete meals, following consumer demand.

Cindy Tsai Schultz and Terry Betts of Fresh Bites.

The new business is the brainchild of two moms, friends Terry Betts and Cindy Tsai Schultz, who have six kids between them and so know just how challenging it can be to get a healthy dinner on the table. But building a membership base proved too onerous for the nascent company, which opted to put the weekly subscription on hiatus to concentrate on its wholesale line of baked goods, available at Monterey Market and Star Grocery. Their seasonal, savory and sweet eats will also be available at the new farmers’ market opening in May on Wednesdays at San Pablo and Solano Avenues.

Another local business that tried a community supported element up until recently was The Xocolate Bar store on Solano Avenue, where once-a-month members received handmade chocolates and truffles featuring seasonable, sustainable organic ingredients. The effort has also been discontinued. “Even in Berkeley there’s still a lot of education you have to do with eaters around a subscription,” said Malena Lopez-Maggi, co-owner of the chocolate shop. “It’s a really hard sell. I’d suggest other businesses interested in this kind of model partner with an existing CSA instead of starting their own.”

Some local businesses have made the model work. At Vintage Berkeley, wine buffs can walk in and pick up a monthly six-pack (six mostly red wines for $60), curated by owner Peter Eastlake and Vine Street store manager Brent Fraker. A more traditional subscription wine club is also available, and the store has about 200 wine lovers signed up, which helps the staff negotiate better rates with wine distributors. And in a new, symbiotic relationship, Vintage on Vine Street has just begun serving as the East Bay CSA pick-up spot for the Fatted Calf Charcuterie.  “We just figured it was a good fit,” said Fraker. “People who like artisan salumi, duck confit, and pork terrine are probably going to want to drink some wine with their meat. It’s working out really well.”

Dafna Kory, maker of the popular preserves INNA jam says that 25-30% of her business comes from people who sign up for her seasonal subscription (starting at $60 for six jars). Kory, like others who provide this option to their customers, likes to include something special for folks on her subscription list, this spring it’s a limited edition organic kiwi jam. “When it works, the community supported model can really help you plan and grow your company,” Kory said. “It’s an important part of my business and it’s a show of support from customers who invest in you when you need it most.”

This post originally appeared on Berkeleyside and was cross posted on SFGate.

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Oakland Fresh coordinator Christine Cherdboonmuang (center) with program volunteers.

Regular readers of this blog know I’ve written a number of posts on school food in Berkeley.

Now comes news about that town’s near neighbor, Oakland, which has been rolling out an innovative program to ensure that students and their families have access to healthy food.

Photo: Courtesy of the Oakland Unified School District

The Oakland Fresh School Produce Markets, a partnership between the Nutrition Services Department of Oakland Unified School District and the nonprofit East Bay Asian Youth Center, offers fresh, local fruits, vegetables, nuts, eggs, honey, grains, beans, and other whole foods sold at affordable prices in weekly markets at 12 elementary schools.

Another 13 schools are scheduled to begin the program next school year. Oakland Fresh may well provide a model for other school districts across the country.

Read the whole story in the current issue of Edible East Bay.

You might also like:

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Berkeley’s School Lunch Program Flawed, Say Insiders
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Feed a Family, Fund a Farmer, Support a School

June Taylor crafts the kind of conserves and fruit confections that make food writers swoon.

Case in point: Amanda Hesser‘s description of Taylor’s preserves. “They are unlike any commercial preserves, not simply because she uses esoteric — virtually all organic — fruits like bergamots, kadota figs, and Santa Rosa plums, but also because she cooks them in such a way that underlines their essence,” wrote Hesser a few years ago in a New York Times Magazine piece. “Sugar is used not as a crutch but a tool. Her silver-lime-and-ginger marmalade has a sting to it; her grapefruit-and-Meyer-lemon marmalade is bright, concentrated and vigorously bitter.”

But don’t just take a food scribe’s word for it. My son is partial to Taylor’s candied peels — Rangpur Lime, Oro Blanco grapefruit, and Citron — popped into porridge (oatmeal), granola, or directly into the mouth for a bitter-sweet treat.

Taylor has practiced the art and craft of preserving for more than 20 years. An avid researcher, she also steeps herself in scholarly works on food preservation history. The 59-year-old runs her business from The-Still Room, a light-filled kitchen and storefront space on the industrial end (not the chi-chi shopping end) of 4th Street in West Berkeley.

All her products are hand-cut, cooked in small batches with minimal sugar and no commercial pectin, and then poured, packed, and labeled by humans. (Taylor has two kitchen assistants, Magali Hernandez and Dianey Jimenez.) Color and a connection to nature is important to Taylor, who cites environmental artist Andy Goldsworthy as an influence. She’s also enamored with a Japanese aesthetic and The Still-Room, dotted with reminders from the outside world, has a distinctly Japanese feel too.

A working-class Brit, raised in government-subsidized housing, where her father grew redcurrants, blackcurrants, and salad vegetables in the summer, root vegetables in the winter, and potatoes in the driveway, she met an American in her travels and packed up and moved Stateside following a whirlwind romance. She recalls arriving and wondering where she’d buy underwear in this unfamiliar place.

A self-taught cook — Home Economic classes in her native England, where she learned fundamental culinary techniques, followed by brief stints baking at Berkeley’s since shuttered Santa Fe Bar and Grill (where Jeremiah Tower was the top chef) and Oakland’s acclaimed Oliveto‘s — she decided she wanted to work for herself and turned her attention to jam making in 1987.

Today, Taylor is one of the country’s most respected artisan preserve makers. In the winter she focuses on citrus and marmalades, in the summer production shifts to stone fruit and berry conserves. She also makes fruit cheeses (a fruit paste that pairs well with cheese or green tea), fruit syrups, and other specialty items, which are sold at her shop, online, at select stores, and the San Francisco Ferry Plaza Farmers’ Market.

She strives to revive heirloom and forgotten fruits, sources from local, organic farmers, and creates flavors by infusing flowers and herbs from her own garden, in a nod to earlier preserving traditions. Little is wasted: Fruit seeds and citrus membranes are used to make pectin, citrus peels are candied. All this attention to detail and effort is reflected in the price of her products: Marmalades run around $14 for an 8-ounce jar, conserves $13, a 3.5-ounce bag of peels $12.

Taylor, who also teaches hands-on preserving classes, lives in Rockridge with her photographer husband Perry Small. We chatted this week at The Still-Room while a big batch of Meyer lemons bubbled away on the stove.

What’s behind the name The Still-Room?

It’s the term used for a pantry in old English manor houses where beverages were made and preserves stored.

How would you describe your approach to preserving?

Minimalist, clean, fruit-forward. Experimental, playful, with a modern sensibility but rooted in tradition and history.

What do you think of the new generation of jammers making a splash right now with the D.I.Y. trend?

I’m delighted. After 20 years of preserving I’ve developed my own style and I’m thrilled that so many women — and I’d like to see more men — are starting to develop their own. I applaud their support for small, local family farmers. There’s nothing new about preserving, it’s an age-old craft that people have practiced for centuries, often out of necessity.

When you first arrived in America what did you notice about the food?

The portion size and the waste. It stunned me.

Why did you move from the Berkeley Farmers’ Market to the San Francisco Farmers’ Market?

I started in Berkeley with just three products and I was here for eight years and people were tremendously supportive.

But since it was Berkeley there was also a lot of “shoulds.”

People would offer their opinions — about sugar, eating raw, the price of my preserves, whatever it was — and there was no way to escape.

I thought I’d find a sophisticated crowd in San Francisco with the disposable income to buy my products, which have a European sensibility, and I have.

Do you have local food artisans and purveyors you admire?

Alex Hozven, around the corner from me, at the Cultured Pickle Shop, and Minh Tsai of Hodo Soy Beanery, who sells at the farmers’ markets, are kindred spirits. My friend food stylist and painter Pouke Halpern brings an artist’s eye to her work, which is unique, beautiful, and can be seen here and abroad.

I like Star Grocery, it’s a lovely place to buy food — it’s a real shop not a store — and they carefully choose their products and display them thoughtfully. It’s a family run business and I’m happy to be part of that family. I enjoy stopping by Far Leaves Tea; I’ll drink tea with anyone, it’s a wonderful way to relax, and this is a peaceful place to visit. And I like Crixa Cakes, it has a European feel; they bake goods with rose water and nuts.You won’t see a chocolate-chip cookie in sight.

What’s next?

I visited Japan last year. I’d like to go back. I admire how the Japanese translate nature into their fabric, fashions, paper, pottery, tea, and cuisine. I eat a mostly Japanese diet now. I love what they do with confectionery and how they work with sugar and I want to learn more about that. I’m segueing into a a new phase, I’m at a juncture right now. I’m not sure what’s next but I love to explore.

The Still-Room Shop: 2207 4th Street, open Tues.-Sat. 11-4. Taylor’s marmalade making class for January 15 is full, find out more about her classes here.

This post originally appeared on Berkeleyside and was cross posted on SFGate.

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Here’s a notion that hardly seems radical: Longtime Berkeley resident Dr. Preston Maring thinks physicians should prescribe healthy eating along with dispensing drugs to their patients.

Maring, associate physician-in-chief at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland, believes doctors should also walk the walk about the preventive health benefits of sound nutrition.

He’s so committed to the good food cause he’s willing to show other medical professionals how to mince garlic and whip up vinaigrette from scratch for a home-made salad.

This doc has worked for Kaiser for almost four decades. During his tenure he’s delivered babies as an obstetrician, worked in hospital administration, and spearheaded the creation of its new pediatric neurosurgery unit.

But Maring, who learned to feed himself at a young age with a nudge from mom, may be best known for starting an organic farmers’ market at his hospital in 2003.

Since then, 35 markets have sprung up in Kaiser facilities in five states, serving employees, members, and the greater community.

A former W. K. Kellogg Foundation Food and Society Policy Fellow, Maring came late to food advocacy in his career. But he’s making up for lost time. He has worked to get more fresh, local food into Kaiser hospitals and forged ties with sustainable farmers, including the nonprofit Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF), where he is on the board.

In October he hosted a Food for Health Forum for health professionals in San Francisco.

Improving food at Kaiser, which runs the largest nonprofit health care system in the country, has the potential to impact a lot of eaters. The provider and insurer has about 8 million members, 15,000 doctors, and 165,000 employees, mostly in the western states.

As reported on Lettuce Eat Kale previously, the Bay Area is a hot-bed for hospital food reform. Still, the good doctor knows that encouraging folks to eat better may be as big a challenge as improving hospital food.

He’s had some experience dealing with adversity: An accident when he was 6 left him blind in one eye, but that didn’t stop him from becoming a surgeon.

On the food front, the physician knows he’s fighting an uphill battle. Obesity rates are on the rise around the country, lifestyle diseases such as diabetes and hypertension are skyrocketing, recent data suggests that most American barely eat any fruits and vegetables — let alone the recommended “five a day.”

But to Maring, who, along with his medical-student chef son, was the subject of a recent New York Times profile, this just means there’s work to be done.

To that end, the enthusiastic home cook shares recipes on his blog, offers kitchen wisdom in short Web videos, sends cooking tips via Twitter, and conducts a culinary road show of sorts, teaching new hospital employees basic cooking skills.

Maring, 65, lives with his wife near Berkeley’s Rose Garden and has called this city home for 40 years.

We spoke via phone the day before Maring hosted the recent Food for Health Forum.

Why this issue?

If people had a few key tools in the kitchen and some simple techniques to use them they’d be much more likely to eat better and be healthier.

What’s your public health message?

A couple of cutting boards, a sharp knife, and a salad spinner are the best public health tools we have.

Where do you shop for healthy food?

The Thursday Berkeley Farmers’ Market — I stand there and marvel at all the abundance. I know a lot of the farmers now, like Judith Redmond from Full Belly Farm. I have tremendous respect for what they do. Also Monterey Market, even though it’s a crazy, crowded jungle of people. There is so much good food. The place is bonkers and I love it.

Do you mostly eat in or out?

We tend to eat at home. My wife cooks, I do a little more in the kitchen. I make a little of everything. My son has taught me a lot of tricks but I’m basically a self-taught cook. I make my own pizza crust. I cook simple, seasonal fare like roasted chicken with a side of rainbow chard. There are lots of foods I haven’t attempted. You never run out of opportunities to try new kinds of food because you usually eat three times a day.

Where do you like to eat out?

When our son, who lives in New York, comes to visit we go to Sea Salt. It’s a bit of a ritual now. The restaurant is friendly and the food is tasty. You can get a big bowl of steaming mussels or squid with gigante beans. I love what they do with eggplant, they puree it and deep fry it.

Any local gourmet guilty pleasures?

I was a diehard Peet’s drinker for years. I was introduced to Blue Bottle Coffee at a farmers’ market. I’ve been having an illicit relationship with it ever since. When I go past Peet’s now I try to avert my eyes.

Are there any local food folks you admire?

Michael Pollan and Mollie Katzen, of course, both of whom I invited to speak at the Food for Health Forum.

Also Brenda Eskenazi from UC Berkeley for her research on the effects of pesticide exposure on farm workers and their children. Her work can really open people’s eyes to the true cost of pesticides. If people fully understood the health dangers associated with conventional farming they wouldn’t complain about the cost of organics.

Any final advice doctor?

My mantra is: If a guy like me can do it, you can do it.

[This post originally appeared on Berkeleyside.]

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Photo: Michael Pollan

Today, the man who encourages us all to eat food, mostly plants, and not too much will bring his prescription for a healthier population and planet to a group that, surprisingly, he hasn’t spoken to before: Doctors and other healthcare professionals.

The man, of course, is Michael Pollan — who talks about the importance of eating and growing sustainable food to folks as diverse as urban ag advocates and Oprah fans. The best-selling food book author will address physicians, dieticians, hospital food service staff, and others at the Food for Health Forum in San Francisco sponsored by HMO giant Kaiser Permanente.

Rather than rehash the sorry state of hospital food in many parts of the country, Pollan sees this as an opportunity to rally a new audience.  In an email prior to the event, he writes that he wants to encourage doctors to help drive change in this country’s food system by talking about food with patients, pressuring hospitals to serve better meals to both employees and the sick, and supporting national reform by getting involved in farm bill politics.

Whether docs heed his Rx remains to be seen. Of course, this being the dollar-driven healthcare world we’re talking about, there’s always the bottomline to make those in the business of medicine sit up and pay attention. In the past, Pollan has noted that “the less we spend on food, the more we spend on healthcare.” He cites statistics which reveal that in 1960 the U.S. spent 18% of its income on food and 5% on healthcare nationally, while now it spends 9% of its income on food and 17% on healthcare.

Hosting a food health forum in San Francisco makes sense. As reported here previously, the Bay Area is a hot bed for hospital food reform. And the driving force behind today’s event is a high-profile player in the movement, Dr. Preston Maring, associate physician-in-chief at the Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Oakland.

Maring, 65, who is relatively new to food advocacy, has worked for Kaiser for almost four decades. During his tenure he’s delivered babies as an obstetrician, worked in hospital administration, and spearheaded the creation of its new pediatric neurosurgery unit.

Photo: Dr. Preston Maring

His most recent work for the organization, though, has been all about what people eat.  In 2003, Maring started an organic farmers’ market at his hospital.

Since then, 35 markets have sprung up in Kaiser facilities in five states, serving employees, members, and the greater community.

He has worked to get more fresh, local food into Kaiser hospitals and forged ties with local, sustainable farmers, including the nonprofit Community Alliance with Family Farmers (CAFF), where he is on the board.

Improving food at Kaiser, which runs the largest nonprofit health care system in the country, has the potential to impact a lot of eaters. The provider and insurer has about 8 million members, 15,000 doctors, and 165,000 employees, mostly in the western states.

In his hospital rounds Maring urges docs to vote with their forks and choose organic, sustainable food for their families. He wants employees and patients alike to eat more fruits and veggies. To help them do that, this enthusiastic cook shares recipes on his blog, offers kitchen wisdom in short Web videos, and conducts a culinary show on the road, teaching new hospital employees basic cooking skills.  “A couple of cutting boards and a sharp knife are the best public health tools we have,” says Maring. “My mantra is: If a guy like me can do it, you can do it.”  (Maring and his medical student-chef son were the subject of a recent New York Times profile by Civil Eats co-founder Katrina Heron.)

Pollan and Maring will be joined on stage by acclaimed cookbook author Mollie Katzen, who is used to talking with physicians, through her work as a member of the Harvard School of Public Health Nutrition Roundtable and at events Harvard sponsors aimed at hospital food personnel at the Culinary Institute of America.

She plans to give healthcare professionals a gentle nudge to head into the kitchen and cook something simple, for themselves, to eat. “I want to give people a little pep talk — not wag my finger at them and talk about how we’re all getting sicker and fatter,” says Katzen, who will demo cooking techniques (think dicing, mincing, and macerating) as she talks. “My mission is modest: I want to help people reclaim the lost art of cooking by learning to make one or two dishes.”

Photo: Mollie Katzen

Katzen says she’d like to obliterate the imaginary line in the sand that puts delicious food on one side and healthy food on the other (and, as an aside, notes that most hospital food is neither.) She adds that Maring, who waxes euphoric about salad dressing made from scratch, is just the kind of visionary needed to overhaul hospital food.

Rounding out the line up is Brenda Eskenazi, a UC Berkeley researcher who will discuss the effects of pesticides on farm workers and their children, organic farmer and CAFF member Judith Redmond of Full Belly Farm, and several hospital food folks, who will chime in with reports from the inside.

Attendee Alison Negrin, executive chef of John Muir Health, which operates hospitals in the East Bay, says she hopes panelists will recognize the work that has been done to improve hospital food.

Negrin thinks doctors are beginning to understand the key role food plays in health. As an example, she recounts an exchange she had with a physician at her hospital who, while heartened by healthy choices in the cafeteria, questioned why fried foods and sodas were still on the menu. (These items now come with signage about calorie and fat content.)

“People like myself and others on the Bay Area Hospital Leadership Team have been talking about these issues and working hard to improve hospital food for some time,” notes Negrin, speaking of a group coordinated by the SF Bay Area Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR), while conceding that change can move at a glacial pace in such institutional settings. “But I think many of us hope to come away from this forum reinvigorated with new ways to fix hospital food and fresh ideas we can incorporate into our own settings.”

Others who have toiled on the hospital food reform beat for some time are particularly interested to hear what Craig Watson, who works for the SYSCO Corporation, has to say. SYSCO is a major hospital food distributor.

“Hospital farmers’ markets are fabulous, but we all know that improving the quality of food served to employees and patients is a slow process,” says Lena Brook, senior program associate for PSR. “Preston Maring would be the first to acknowledge that Kaiser is a bulky facility to move in terms of improving food. I hope this forum gets people thinking big and helps us all find ways to make change faster.”

This post also appears on Civil Eats.

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For 10 years, Blue Heron Farms vendor Aaron Betesh has been selling organic vegetables to customers at all three Berkeley Farmers’ Markets.

Betesh is part of the Blue Heron crew which, for much of the year, hawks salad greens and Asian greens, herbs, and flowers, along with carrots, kale, and broccoli.

The produce comes from a small, family farm in Corralitos, near Watsonville. It’s owned and run by Lori Perry and Dennis Tamura.

Farmers’ market customers don’t always realize that not all sellers at the markets are farmers. In fact, Betesh hasn’t been to the farm for a couple of years. He’s too busy working, he says.

Still, the 29-year-old — who grew up in the San Fernando Valley, decamped to Santa Cruz, and then headed to the East Bay — enjoys his job because it’s a way for him to stay connected to the land, especially as an urban dweller.

He lives on the Oakland-Berkeley border.

We talked at the Thursday market while he helped set up the Blue Heron booth.

What do you like about Berkeley customers?

They’re into community; they want to get to know the farms and the vendors. They’re really knowledgeable and care about food and where it comes from. But, even though they’re serious about food, you can have a joke with people here — and I do. It’s a fun crowd.

We have die-hard, loyal customers who have been coming to us every week for years. Some of them show their appreciation by bringing us food. We get homemade jam, cheese, and baked goods. It’s pretty great. Some people tell us that they believe our greens have literally kept them alive. That’s gratifying.

Is there anything challenging about serving people here?

Some customers come to the market with the attitude that they want to get in and out as quickly as possible. They’ll actually try and shove food in your face. We just explain that there is a system to the madness back here. We have a check-out line, people wait and take turns. It’s definitely a minority who do this; we try to deal with it in a polite way.

What’s good about working for Blue Heron?

Their philosophy about giving back to the land. They give the farm a break a few months every year and plant cover crops so the soil can replenish itself, instead of trying to suck as much life out of the ground as possible.

The owners, Lori and Dennis, don’t have kids; their employees are their family. They’re generous; full-time staff get benefits and all of us get bonuses if we have a good market day. The owners work really hard. All the guys and girls who work the farm work hard, and there’s not a lot of money in it. It’s definitely a labor of love.

Can you tell us about your favorite Blue Heron produce?

Sprouting broccoli and the Chinese green Gai Lan are two. I love good food but I’m lazy, I don’t want cooking to be a big production. I just saute these greens up in some olive oil with garlic and seasoning — and not for too long. I like my greens crunchy.

We’re well-known for our little gem lettuces, which are ready to eat as is, in salads.

I’ve really gotten into kale chips after customers who bought bunches and bunches of kale from us shared some of their homemade chips with me. And my roommate bought a dehydrator. With three bunches of curly kale for $3 and a couple of hours in the dehydrator I can keep myself in kale chips for a while.

Do you have favorite foods from the market?

Olive bread and chocolate chip cookies from Phoenix Pastificio and the pretzel-topped croissants from Octoberfeast;  heirloom tomatoes from Happy Boy Farms; apple cider from Bernie, the guy who’s usually next to us. [That's Bob Bernstein of Pomo Tierra Ranch].  Oysters from the Hog Island Oyster Company.

Our employers give us a certain amount of produce that we can use to barter with other vendors. It’s a great perk of my job.

Where do you eat in Berkeley?

Cheeseboard Pizza. Pizza is high on my list of foods, they’re right near the Thursday market, and they do it right — thin crust, tasty toppings, and good cheese. I don’t even bother to look on the board to see what’s on the menu. I know I’m going to like it. I like the little fish tacos from Tacubaya. They’ve got great flavor. Mostly, I eat at home. I have chickens, so I cook up eggs, add a bunch of Blue Heron cilantro, and chorizo from the folks at Fatted Calf — they’re farmers’ market vendors too. I eat that for breakfast almost every day.

Do you have a local food hero?

Novella Carpenter for her radicalness. She has this cool philosophy about farming in an urban environment that is so natural and instinctive. She just went with it and it worked out.

What keeps this gig interesting?

You never know what you’re going to get here.  The belligerent drunks barreling down the middle of the market, oblivious to everyone around them, the young families with kids in tow, and the people who look like they just got back from Burning Man on fuzzy bikes cruising the stands.

In the decade I’ve worked in Berkeley I’ve seen it all.

[This post originally appeared on Berkeleyside.]

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