Image courtesy of Edible East Bay magazine.

Just back from the Sustainable Foods Institute, a media conference that accompanies the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s Cooking for Solutions events, which support the aquarium’s Seafood Watch program.

This is my second visit to this panel-based, fact-filled, food-for-thought confab, now in its 7th year exploring how the choices we make as consumers of food impact not only our own health but also the health of the land and sea.

Stories out of the conference — which features chefs, authors, restauranteurs, advocates, purveyors, scientists, and other experts in the sustainable food world — to come.

For now, I’ll leave you with a nugget from the very first panel presentation by Callum Roberts, a British marine conservation biologist and the author of the forthcoming The Ocean of Life: The Fate of Man and the Sea. Environmental crusader Rachel Carson published a pamphlet in 1943, “Food from the Sea,” advocating less waste of sea creatures and suggesting that people pick less threatened species for their supper.

Proving once again that everything old is new again: Almost sixty years later, sustainable seafood chefs, sellers, and activists are singing the same tune, albeit with different fish.

See for yourself in my most recent story for Edible East Bay magazine: “What’s Cooking with Sustainable Seafood?” Find cookbook recommendations, recipes, and advice on choosing sustainable seafood too.

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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.

Photo of Tracie McMillan by Bart Nagle

Tracie McMillan, who went undercover and worked with low-paid food and farm workers to pen The American Way of Eating, has had perhaps the wildest of rollercoaster rides since her book came out a few short weeks ago.

First came a less-than favorable review in the San Francisco Chronicle, which didn’t do much to calm those new author jitters. Then, mercifully, a glowing critique of the book, which documents her days embedded in a Detroit Walmart stocking produce, a New York Applebee’s restaurant prepping food, and California farms picking grapes, sorting peaches, and cutting garlic. Think hard, poorly-paid work and–ironically–no access to good food.

In the New York Times Dwight Garner called her “a voice the food world needs.” Other critics complimented her prose. “The best thing about this engagingly written tract is its excellent and sometimes moving first-person narrative of the author’s experiences sharing, albeit briefly and under false colors, the daily grind of workers at the bottom of the Great American Food Chain,” wrote Aram Bakshian Jr. in the Wall Street Journal. Not too shabby.

But there was no time to sit back and watch her book, which makes the case that everyone should have access to affordable, healthy grub, climb up the bestseller list. Because Rush Limbaugh decided to have a go at McMillan, who comes from a blue-collar background in Michael Moore territory near Flint, Michigan. The attack came hot on the heels of Limbaugh’s slagging off Georgetown University law student Sandra Fluke as a slut because of her testimony, intended for Congress, about the cost of birth control.

The controversial, conservative radio host with a huge following ranted that McMillan, who grew up eating unfancy food like Tuna Helper, was an overeducated authorette — young, white, and single too, as if these were shortcomings on the part of this gutsy reporter, simply because she asks in her book, which focuses on food and class: What would it take for everyone in America to eat well?

“It would never have occurred to me that Rush Limbaugh would go after me,” said McMillan, following a panel appearance at the recent Edible Institute in Santa Barbara. “Nobody would have paid any attention if he’d only talked about the book, but he just couldn’t help himself from saying something else really offensive and dismissive about women.”

Along with Nikki Henderson of People’s Grocery, McMillan was invited to discuss food justice concerns at the conference, a meeting of the publishers of the Edible Communities magazines which celebrate regional eats (locally these quarterly magazines include Edible San Francisco, Edible East Bay, and Edible Marin & Wine Country).

“Walmart controls 25% of the nation’s food supply,” McMillan told the conference. “In some parts it’s 50% or more,” she added, and explained that stocking food is a loss-leader for the corporation, but also a way to get folks into their stores. “I think it’s dangerous to trust something that’s as vital as our food supply to one massive institution. And particularly, to a private corporation whose only accountability is to its shareholders.”

Throughout it all, the 35-year-old investigative journalist with a penchant for covering poor people, has stayed on message, as she did in a rebuttal to Rush Limbaugh on The Rachel Maddow Show and in a first-person piece for The Atlantic, where she attempted to make sense of it all. “As a reporter, I take it as a point of pride that Limbaugh apparently found little he could challenge in my reporting; he does nothing to discredit the facts I found in my work,” she wrote. “And that likely explains why Limbaugh turned his critique away from my book, and aimed fire instead at me.”

As McMillan explained it, Limbaugh seemed to take umbrage at the central political point of her polemic: That both private enterprise and government have failed Americans when it comes to providing all of us with good, healthy food. “Food is not like the other things we buy. It’s not like sneakers,” she said. Everyone needs to eat, but as McMillan makes clear, many of the people who are feeding us can’t afford to.

An award-winning poverty and welfare reporter, McMillan is a current darling of the progressive food press. In the past couple of weeks she’s been featured on Civil Eats, Grist, and Salon, and her book has also caught the eye of online food sites such as Bon Appetit. (Find excerpts over at Slate, Gilt Taste, and Edible San Francisco.)

The Brooklyn-based McMillan, whom a conference colleague dubbed “scary smart,” is scheduled to speak in San Francisco this week at 18 Reasons, Omnivore Books, and CUESA.

It’s also clear she’s committed to covering a subject area on the edible beat that frequently gets overlooked: The plight of the people who grow, sell, and serve our food.
“We need to make it easier for people who want to get good food, who don’t identify with the food movement, to have that option,” said McMillan. “It’s hard to eat well when you’re earning less than minimum wage and your life is stressful.”

And she takes issue with the common assumption that people of little means are content to eat crap in this fast-food nation.

McMillan, who lived on food stamps while writing the book, which took three years from woe to go, knows firsthand just how exhausting — and demoralizing — low-paid food work can be. She wanted to nap, she said, after a long shift, not go home and tend a pot of beans on the stove. Work in the fields was back-breaking stuff, her Walmart gig included handling fruits and vegetables of questionable quality, and at Applebee’s little real cooking takes place in the kitchen. It’s enough, she implies, to make anyone lose their appetite for a nourishing meal. And it’s that hopelessness that McMillan believes needs attention. Lectures from the food elite to the food insecure to “eat more greens” just aren’t going to make a difference.

But McMillan doesn’t just lay out the problems, she also offers a framework for how our food system challenges might be solved. Enforce labor laws to protect workers, and pay them minimum wage, for starters. Address the lack of public infrastructure for food distribution. Offer adults and children access to cooking training; since kitchen literacy is a basic life skill in McMillan’s mind. “We need to think of learning to cook as a form of self-sufficiency,” she said. It’s as important as making sure people have access to affordable, healthy food.”

Such massive social change, of course, won’t happen overnight. And much of what McMillan exposes in her book is far from cheery. But like Barbara Ehrenreich (Nickel and Dimed) and Jessica Mitford (The American Way of Death, whose title McMillan’s book pays homage to) someone has to tell it like it is. Fortunately we have McMillan reporting back from the frontlines on the dark side of of the American way of eating.

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

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Self-described eco-chef Aaron French. Photo: Elizabeth Tichenor

Aaron French, a self-described eco-chef, has headed up the kitchen at The Sunny Side Café on Solano Avenue in Albany since it opened in 2004.

For the past two years he’s served up breakfast standards (think pancakes and eggs) and simple lunch fare (burgers, sandwiches, salads) at a satellite café of the same name in Berkeley.

French bounces between the two popular spots several times a day and jokes that the breakfast-brunch shift is the Rodney Dangerfield of cooking (it don’t get no respect).

Still, he’s proudest of his low carbon emissions menu options and his weekend food specials, a short, seasonal list that emphasizes local farms and calculates food miles.

French isn’t your typical chef. Before he cooked for a living he worked as a scientist. His interest in ecology led him to spend two years living among pygmies in Cameroon, where he studied seed dispersal by monkeys and birds.

An avid nature photographer, he’s also written about the relationship between ecology and food for the Bay Area News Group, where he penned the EcoChef column, as well as for Civil Eats and Fungi Magazine.

French, 40, is the author of The Bay Area Homegrown Cookbook, which reveals the partnerships between 29 local chefs and farmers, and features fellow Berkeley chefs Amy Murray of Venus and Revival, and Marsha McBride and Rick DeBeoard of Café Rouge, as well as local fungi foragers Mil Apostol and Lucy Collier of Gentle Giraffe Farm and Forage.

He is studying sustainability at the University of California’s Haas School of Business, lives locally, and is co-raising his preschool age daughter, who was adopted from Ethiopia.

Local mushroom foragers Mil Apostol and Lucy Collier. Photo: Aaron French

When did your interest in local food begin?

I spent part of my childhood on a small farm in Sacramento, where we grew all our own vegetables and fruit, and ate the eggs from the farm’s free-range chickens. Eating locally literally meant walking out the back door and harvesting dinner.

Where did the moniker eco-chef come from and what does it mean?

It was an insult by a co-worker at a hippie, student-run, super-crunchy, college collective called Che Café on the U.C. San Diego campus, where I worked when I got my undergraduate degree. One night, as we were cleaning up, I found myself separating the recycling from the trash. This was before recycling was routine. And my co-worker just wanted to get out of there and he said: “What are you, some kind of eco-chef?”

Years later, when I started cooking full-time, I decided to embrace the label as a positive thing. On the one hand, it means nothing really. But I’ve come to think of it as cooking in a way that supports local food systems and honors the people who raise our food sustainably and I incorporate those principals into everything I do, given the limitations I have.

I have to think about price point, so I don’t buy organic potatoes, for instance, I don’t pretend I do. I’m doing breakfast for about 10 to 12 bucks a plate per customer, so I have to work with that.

But Sunny Side was the first green-certified restaurant in Albany. We use quality local ingredients and humanely raised meats and eggs. My five-item food-miles menu, which makes up a third of our weekend business, calculates food miles, and is like my gateway drug to sustainability. I do as many things I can given what I have to work with.

Do you have culinary aspirations beyond being a breakfast chef?

The bar is pretty low for breakfast food so I actually find it’s really creative to work within the parameters of what you can do on a breakfast menu. I’m always looking for ways to increase the connections between ecology and food. That’s what keeps me going and inspires me. And the issues behind being “green” or “eco” or “sustainable” are all things I think about as I’m cooking on the line. I look forward to the day when none of us need to use these labels, which are buzzwords now, because they’re simply standard practice.

Aaron French and a panel of chefs and farmers featured in his book will discuss local, seasonal food at Berkeley’s Books Inc. tomorrow, Wednesday, January 25, at 7:00 p.m.

A version of this post originally appeared on Berkeleyside and was republished by Civil Eats.

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Illustration: Copyright (c) Maira Kalman 2011. Reprinted with permission from The Penguin Press from FOOD RULES by Michael Pollan.

Whether we call them goals or intentions, it’s human nature that when January 1 rolls around we vow to be our best selves in the year ahead, and that often means taking a look at what — and how much — we eat.

Frequently, by February, mantras to eat less and cook more have fallen by the wayside. But it need not be so. In his recently re-released book Food Rules, Michael Pollan offers loads of commonsense kitchen wisdom that can help any eater make better choices.

Find out more in my story “Michael Pollan Shares His Food Rules: Simple Rules for Eating Right” for Diablo, a web extra to the magazine’s January issue.

Speaking of simple, I want to cook at home more and feed more friends in 2012 without fanfare (think less dinner parties and more sharing a meal). I started the year right, making a modest rice bowl, filled with brown rice, red quinoa, pickled ginger, nori, pink onion, curly kale, avocado, and tamari. It was satisfying and went over well.

How about you?

Happy 2012!

You might also like:

Michael Pollan: New Food Rules, No Need to be Neurotic
Michael Pollan Talks Food Rules in San Francisco
11 Food-Related Goals for 2011

I’ve been so busy compiling “top food stories of 2011″ lists for KQED’s Bay Area Bites and Berkeleyside, I almost forgot to compile a similar list here. So, as 2011 comes to an end let’s take a trip through the Lettuce Eat Kale archives at, arguably, the year’s best blog posts (horn toot alert).

It’s been a different kind of year here at LEK, as regular readers may have noticed. I’ve had an abundance of paid freelance work (no complaints) and thus much less time to write original pieces for my own site. So, you’ll see some crossover on my end-of-year lists this year, as most of my working days have been devoted to turning stories for other outlets, which I reprint on LEK.

I do miss penning personal posts here, and I’d like to make it a goal for 2012 to try to do more such pieces, but given my lousy track record (see exhibit A) with New Year’s resolutions, consider it an intention rather than a guarantee, okay?

Some of this year’s LEK posts spurred lots of comments, others pointed to national trends or local enterprises, some profiled well-known people and their culinary pursuits, still others focused on little-known folks who worked without fanfare on worthy food causes. Some I picked for this list simply because something about the subject or person particularly resonated with me, and I hope it does with you too.

Feel free to check out a post you may have missed, chime in on your favorite piece, or comment on those featured in this list.

And don’t be shy about letting me know what you’d like to see more (or less) of on this site in the year ahead.

I am grateful to Berkeleyside, Civil Eats, and Bay Area Bites, for sharing my stories with a wider audience on a regular basis. Thanks, as well, to other outlets who have published my work this year, including AFAR, Bay Citizen, Eating Well, Edible East Bay, California, Diablo, Great Schools, Grist, San Francisco, and Shareable.

Here’s wishing you, my loyal readers, a healthy, well-read and well-fed 2012.

Top Ten LEK Highlights of 2011 (in no particular order)

1. Covering the business of food blogging: Two posts I wrote for Bay Area Bites struck a nerve with readers — or at least other food writers. Will Write for Food, Payment Preferable generated so much attention I was worried I’d win the underpaid, underappreciated food writer of the year honor (which, seriously, would be okay if there was a big check attached.) A post later in the year, So You Want to be a Successful Food Blogger? Here’s How., annoyed some male bloggers, spoke to others, and appeared in BAB’s top 5 viewed food posts of the year. Oh, and the irony of The Huffington Post (see Will Write for Food) choosing my seafood story as its first BAB feature was not lost on me.

Artisan preserver June Taylor. Photo: Sarah Henry

2. Interviewing dozens of food folks for Berkeleyside’s Friday food column: I’ve been so fortunate to have the chance to chat with some of the most enterprising people in my hometown who work in the food and farming world, as part of my weekly food series for Berkeleyside. Highlights this year (a baker’s dozen) include Q&As with gleaner Natasha Boissier, urban farmer Kim Allen, artisan preserver June Taylor, community activist Joy Moore, culinary couple Wendy Brucker and Roscoe Skipper, jam maker Dafna Kory, cooking instructor MikeC, pasta maker Eric Sartenaer, baker Eduardo Morell, cheese purveyor Cathy Goldsmith, ghee artisan Matteo Girard Maxon, and pop-up restauranteur Nigel Jones.

3. Having a whole lot of fun with Whole Foods Parking Lot: What can I say? Sometimes a story comes your way that is just a blast to write. That’s exactly what it was like with the viral hit Whole Foods Parking Lot in two stories also for Bay Area Bites, the first of which appeared in that site’s top 5 viewed food posts of the year as well. Bonus: The fact that Dave Wittman was a super sweet interview and the story earned me cool cred with my son and his friends.

These guys had fun at a vegan speed dating event. Photo: Karine Brighten

4. Going undercover to document the perils of speed dating with a food focus: Just as well I was on assignment for Berkeleyside for this one, because social anxiety might have prevented me from attending a speed dating event for vegans and vegetarians, if it wasn’t the subject of my food column for the very next day. As you’ll see, this night was not for the faint of heart — or the hungry.

Nikki Henderson of People's Grocery. Photo: Rick Gilbert

5. Continuing coverage of the food insecure: My social justice reporting roots had me ferreting out stories about people working to get affordable, healthy food to the hungry in our communities. I penned pieces on James Berk of Mandela Marketplace in Oakland who brings produce to his people, chef Andre Green, who feeds the homeless in Berkeley, and People’s Grocery executive director Nikki Henderson, who educates people in her community and beyond about food security matters. I also stayed on the school food beat and covered the opening of the first faith-based urban farm in my area, Urban Adamah, and reminded readers on Thanksgiving to give thanks for farmworkers, the people who pick our food, often under difficult and dangerous conditions.

6. Ongoing reporting of promising food phenomenons: This year saw the launch of several food swaps, crop swaps,  food book clubs, an heirloom produce resource sharing project, and community supported aquaculture, all of which were covered here.

Talking Head David Byrne and a waiter wearing one of his designs. Photo: Christina Diaz

7. Chronicling the adventures of Alice: It was all about Alice in August. Alice Waters that is, the local food icon whose landmark restaurant Chez Panisse celebrated its 40th anniversary this year with a series of fundraisers for her edible education programs. Personal paparazzi moment: Greeting rocker David Byrne and immediately introducing him to a surprised waiter wearing a T-shirt he designed to support the Edible Schoolyard, all for a photo opportunity. Phew! (Those pics were taken by Christina Diaz, the wonderful photog I collaborated with on several occasions this year. Working with such a talented photographer was a highlight in itself.)

Scenes from the film Toast, released this year in the U.S.

8. Reviewing food films and books: There was less time for these posts this year than in 2010, but I still managed to sneak in a story about Serve Yourself author Joe Yonan and his solo suppers. I also covered an intriguing conversation between Gabrielle Hamilton, who penned the popular Blood, Bones, and Butter, and New York Times writer Kim Severson (so much left unsaid). And I had a chat with Food Rules author Michael Pollan. On the film front, I reported on screenings of the documentary Corner Store, the pilot episode of the TV series Food Forward, the couple behind The Perennial Plate online video series, and Toast, the theatrical release of British author Nigel Slater’s memoir of the same name.

Snapshots from a Wild Onion farm dinner. Photos: Heidi Gross Sandvoll

9. Turning the infrequent original post here: On rare occasion I wrote a post that just appeared here — whether it was an homage to the humble potato, a report on a visit from Michelle Obama or the U.S. Surgeon General, a reflection on the simple pleasures of a country dinner, or a reprint of a previous post (this time with awesome images of my grandmother attached) on the joys of listening and leftovers.

10. Winning an award: I was delighted, surprised, and honored to receive this year’s Karola Saekel Craib Excellence in Food Journalism award in recognition of my food writing on LEK and elsewhere. The San Francisco chapter of Les Dames d’Escoffier, an international philanthropic society of female leaders in the culinary world, established the fellowship in honor of Karola Saekel Craib, the San Francisco Chronicle reporter whose writing helped to define food journalism as we know it. Saekel Craib died earlier this year.

The $2,000 award was presented by Saekel Craib’s daughter, Anne Craib, whom I connected with over excess backyard citrus and local gleaning efforts designed to share that surplus with those in need. The award check, which came with no strings attached, was immediately put to good use: I updated my website and bought my growing teen a bigger bed. Speaking of beds, compiling this list makes me feel tired. Time to take a nap.

And that, dear readers, was the year in food over here at Lettuce Eat Kale. Let me know below if you have a favorite LEK story from 2011.

A workshop participant. Photos: Zenobia Barlow

Regular readers may think that the only person in town doing anything to fix school food in Berkeley and beyond is Alice Waters via her Edible Schoolyard Project.

But that perception would be wrong. Founded in 1995, the Center for Ecoliteracy has also long championed school food reform and channeled funding in the millions to garden programs, cooking classes, and nutrition-based curriculum in Berkeley public schools.

Along with the Chez Panisse Foundation and Berkeley Unified School District, the Center for Ecoliteracy also implemented the School Lunch Initiative, which kickstarted local, seasonal, and sustainable food for students here and connected the classroom and the cafeteria.

Currently, its Rethinking School Lunch program offers a planning strategy for revamping food service beyond Berkeley to rural and urban areas around the state struggling to improve the eating habits of school children, many of whom are hungry, nutritionally depleted, or hampered by diet-related illnesses such as obesity and diabetes.

Last week, the center introduced school nutrition personnel from around the country to its new cookbook-guide, Cooking with California Foods in K-12 Schools, which played a starring role in a hands-on workshop on creative school lunch menu planning, as part of the national Community Food Security Coalition‘s 15th Annual Conference in downtown Oakland.

On a sunny Sunday afternoon a stuffy, windowless Marriott hotel conference space was packed with about 60 school food folk from both coasts and the country’s center and south, all eagerly drinking the Kool-Aid — sorry, make that freshly squeezed lemon juice with a hint of mint — dispensed by renowned cookbook author, culinary teacher, and food policy consultant Georgeann Brennan and her colleague Ann M. Evans, former Davis mayor, co-founder of that city’s food co-op and farmers’ market, and a long-time advocate of sustainable food systems.

Participants, who left with renewed enthusiasm and ideas to try back at their own schools — along with a free guide and a nifty apron — formed small groups to turn out such salads as zucchini and feta; broccoli, raisin and walnut; tabbouleh; and Asian cabbage and orange with ginger. They also connected with kindred spirits in the school food world while they grated, chopped, and stirred.

Also on hand to talk transforming school food: award-winning Oakland Unified School District Nutrition Services Director Jennifer LeBarre — along with four of that city’s Lunch Ladies who shared stories about the pressing need and formidable barriers to bettering school food, as only those in the frontlines every day can do — and Zenobia Barlow, the Center for Ecoliteracy’s executive director and co-founder.

Barlow isn’t a celebrity chef and she doesn’t own a famous restaurant. Rather, she hails from an anthropology-sustainability-think tank-policy wonk pedigree. And her commitment to improving what children eat at school every day is clear and consistent. “The Center has quietly and steadily worked on improving school food and providing professional development and training to school food personnel for about 15 years,” said Barlow post conference from her office at the David Brower Center. “We helped bring about the changes in school food in Berkeley and we’ve moved on to other schools and districts to facilitate change there too.”

The cookbook is part of this plan. It is based on a simple yet clever 6-5-4 formula that consists of six dishes (salads, soups, pastas, rice bowls, wraps, and pizza toppings), five flavor profiles (African, Asian, European/Mediterranean, Latin American, and Middle Eastern/Indian) and the fresh produce available during the four seasons. The approach was developed in the Davis, Oakland, and Winters school districts over three years.

Funded by TomKat Charitable Trust, the guide’s goal is to help school food service staff find ways to add more fresh, local, healthy foods to school meals (though the downloadable document offers recipes suitable for home cooking too). Some 8,000 guides have been downloaded since August, more than 1,000 have been shipped to school nutrition staff and all 40 copies got snapped up at last week’s workshop, according to Barlow.

Participants at the school food workshop at the recent Community Food Security Coalition's conference.

Each presenter stressed the importance of integrating California specialty crops — such as walnuts, lettuce, olive oil, strawberries, apricots, figs, citrus and more — into meal programs. “How can we expect our children to understand what food is grown in their area and how it tastes if it’s not on their plate?” asked Evans to a receptive crowd, who also noted California’s long growing season and diverse range of produce not available in most parts of the country.

Attendees from states such as Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Montana raised the challenges they face in sourcing affordable fresh produce at certain times of the year. “California is blessed with great soil and climate and has the capacity to grow for a population far larger than itself,” said Evans. “To share that bounty is great for California farmers and for consumers around the nation. This doesn’t have to supplant local produce in other states, but can compliment it.”

She also noted that schools in as diverse California locations as Davis, Riverside, Ventura, Winters, Santa Cruz, Los Angeles, and Clovis are all early adopters of the 6-5-4 approach to school menus, which allows for substitutions based on availability.

Barlow, who is currently working closely with the Oakland Unified School District, also pointed out the OUSD’s novel approaches to enhancing the edible experience at different sites — like the “Grab and Go” breakfast bags offered at high schools, the grant-sponsored fruit and vegetable snacks for elementary schools, the new supper program recently implemented at some schools, or the more than 20 afterschool farm stands on school grounds in that city, where many children live in food deserts.

“It’s been important to take what we learned in Berkeley and apply it on a larger scale in districts in more urban settings like Oakland, which benefits 40,000 children a year, more than 70% of whom are eligible for free or reduced lunch,” Barlow said.

“For some children who are fed five times a day at school, it’s the only place they eat. So we’re applying the best of Berkeley’s school food practices and sharing them with the rest of the state and even the country. This guide is part of the solution to the challenge of reinventing school food.”

This post originally appeared on Berkeleyside and was repubished by Civil Eats and The Bay Citizen.

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Author Michael Pollan. Photo: Fran Collin

Sometimes a spoonful of sugar does, indeed, make the medicine go down. Though you won’t find that catchphrase in the just-released hardcover edition of Food Rules, Michael Pollan‘s best-selling little eater’s manual.

Food Rules does sport the sweetly whimsical and witty illustrations of well-known artist Maira Kalman, however. And the new book also boasts 19 new rules — many gleaned from eaters around the country that Pollan wished he had thought of and included the first time around.

Take two is again full of commonsense kitchen wisdom such as If you’re not hungry enough to eat an apple, you’re probably not hungry; No labels on the table; and When you eat real food, you don’t need rules.

The takeaway message: food need not be complicated, and the act of eating is as much about pleasure and communion as it is about nutrition and health. In other words: lighten up a little and enjoy your food.

In case you’ve been living under a compost pile, Pollan is a champion of small-scale, sustainable farming, humanely-raised livestock, and access to real food for all. A foe of what he calls highly-processed, edible food-like substances, Pollan’s food philosophy is famously simple: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

He is the author of five previous books including the popular In Defense of Food, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and Botany of Desire, and he writes regularly about food matters for The New York Times. Pollan is also the Knight Professor of Journalism at UC Berkeley and co-instructor of the Chez Panisse Foundation funded Edible Education 101 at Cal this fall.

Time magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world last year and everyone from students and grandmas to Oprah and the Obamas listen up when the mild-mannered man speaks out about corporate food, Big Ag, school food, factory farming, eating culture, and food safety.

We talked, briefly, following an Edible Education lecture given by former Berkeley School Lunch Lady Ann Cooper, whom Pollan introduced before taking her to dinner at — where else? — Chez Panisse. And we spoke again a few days later, at length, via phone.

Pollan, 56, dedicates his latest work to his mother, former New York Magazine style columnist Corky Pollan, “who always knew butter is better for you than margarine.” He lives in North Berkeley with his wife, the artist Judith Belzer. His formerly picky eater son, Isaac, recently dispatched to Wesleyan, misses family meals.

Why Food Rules Two?

I wanted to work on a more visual version of Food Rules to reach more people and continue the conversation that the first edition started. My wife and I saw an exhibit of Maira Kalman’s work at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco and Judith suggested we collaborate.

When you look at Maira’s work — like a painting of a Snickers bar on a pink ground or a framed collection of onion rings — it often manages to be poignant, funny, and sad, all at the same time.

Eating is important to her but she doesn’t take food too seriously and is not politically correct about it in the least. We’re already neurotic enough about our eating; I wanted this book to be fun while it covered some serious ground.

Can you give us some insider insights into Edible Education 101?

It’s been an interesting experience for me personally because I’ve not taught undergraduates before, though I should note my co-instructor Nikki Henderson is carrying most of the load as I’m technically on leave. I’ve found the students terrific; they ask questions that are sharp but well phrased and polite. In a community meeting with corporate food people you might expect to hear the Berkeley hiss, but there’s been none of that. They’re an engaged and impressive group.

We’ve learned things too. We might have had a more effective dialogue in the case of the corporate food lecture, which included Wal-Mart, if it hadn’t been webcast. That had an inhibiting effect on the conversation. I’m also used to three-hour classes; these 90-minute ones go by really fast. I think they work best when we have just one guest so we can really drill down and expound on the issues. At this stage of the semester I wouldn’t be sorry if one of our guests had to cancel just so we had some time for reviewing and contextualizing the material with the students.

And, it has to be said, what a gift this is from the Chez Panisse Foundation to the community as well as the students. The list of speakers and the subjects covered is impressive.

Has interest in the food movement peaked in the popular culture?

It’s hard to know where we are right now but I don’t think so. I remember when I was trying to finish The Omnivore’s Dilemma, published in 2006, I thought I was coming to the subject a little late. It took me forever to finish that book. I do feel a sense of urgency to keep writing about food. We’re just beginning to see the impact of our food choices on health care and insurance costs — obesity, diabetes, and heart disease are soaring — and we need to keep the pressure on the government and corporations for change. If anything, I only see the conversation deepening, and that’s especially encouraging given the economic situation since 2008.

Do you ever want to write about something other than food?

I haven’t always written about food but I find it’s a good place to talk about other things like the environment, the economy, health, culture, and politics. Food is a very big tent as subjects go. That’s why it’s held my interest.

How — and what — do you cook?

I make simple food. I grill more nights than I don’t and my wife and I typically cook together. We work well in the kitchen together. One of us makes the main and the other the sides. We’re fortunate to work from home so we’re able to make dishes that require slow cooking like braises and soups.

Some of our readers view you as an elitist foodie and roll their eyes at such stories as your New York Times Magazine piece, The 36-Hour Dinner Party. Is that unfair?

I reject that characterization while I’m sensitive to the fact that not everybody has access to good food. I appreciate that food and class are intimately tied: that story is set in Napa, which implies a lot of leisure in certain circles. But I don’t think Americans should be afraid of aestheticism; as a culture some times we can have an aversion to pleasure.

To eat healthily in this country — by which I mean consuming food that contributes both to the eater’s health as well as to the health of the environment — costs more than it does to eat poorly. That situation is a public policy problem. We need farm policies that will correct this imbalance, so that healthy calories can compete with unhealthy ones.

There is no question that there is an elite strand within the food movement, but a lot of social change movements in this country — I’m thinking of abolitionists, women’s suffrage, and civil rights as examples — have been started by the affluent because they have the leisure and resources to do so.

#76: Place a Bouquet of Flowers on the Table and Everything Will Taste Twice as Good. Illustration: Copyright (c) Maira Kalman 2011. Reprinted with permission from The Penguin Press from FOOD RULES by Michael Pollan.

As a recognized leader in the food movement how do you handle the rock-star status?

A sense of humor helps, so does remembering that this type of attention is fleeting. And regardless of what people say about my books, the next morning I still have to get up and face the page and come up with sentences I like. All that other stuff, doesn’t help with writing, which can be incredibly hard.

What’s the subject of your next book?

It’s about the transformation of food through cooking methods such as baking, fermentation, and cooking with liquids or heat. So it focuses on the science of cooking, the classical elements; I’ve been doing research about fire, for instance. It should be out in early 2013.

What gives you hope on the food front?

I see movement happening all around the country, like grass-fed beef in supermarkets and young people taking up farming. I’m asked to speak in places like Troy, New York, Cleveland, and Lubbock, Texas, that’s new. They aren’t your typical food towns. People in their 20s are as engaged with this issue as their parents, whether it’s for their health, the environment, or both. I have a lot of faith that as consumers we can change things by voting with our forks.

This post originally appeared on Berkeleyside and was republished on Civil Eats.

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Gabrielle Hamilton can write, there’s no doubt about that. Craft infuses her recent bestseller, peppered as it is with references to both body and kitchen fluids.

Still, this writer was reluctant to read the memoir of this reluctant chef.

When a book like Blood, Bones & Butter gets so much advance praise it’s hard to believe it can live up to the hype.

Let’s review, shall we? There was the excerpt in The New Yorker, a New York Times profile and laudatory reviews from the paper of record by Michiko Kakutani and Frank Bruni, along with glowing accounts in the Washington Post and Wall Street Journal. Of course, the womens’ glossies weighed in with pleasure, as did the blogosphere, including the Times (again), 5 Second Rule, and Bay Area Bites.

Top chefs chimed in too: Her book boasts bubbly blurbs from Bourdain, Batali, and Boulud.

Curious to find out what all the fuss was about, this reporter went to hear Hamilton speak at Omnivore Books in March, when she swung through town on book tour, and again last Thursday, when she appeared on stage in conversation with Kim Severson as part of the City Arts & Lecture series. Oh, and in between this reporter devoured her almost 300-page coming-of-age story.

The book is an indisputable page turner, but let’s dispose of one major beef up front: The last section — “Butter” — feels rushed and not ready for prime time, in large part because the central concern — the unraveling of her lonely marriage — was not resolved in real time. No matter, the publisher wanted that memoir hitting the shelves pronto and mass marketing waits for no one. (Hamilton said Thursday that she’s since addressed the marriage matter — in life and on the page in an epilogue for the paperback edition, available in January.)

Clearly, the woman has a talent with pots and pens. The owner of Prune, a wildly popular little bistro in Manhattan’s East Village, (the restaurant’s title comes from a childhood nickname), Hamilton recently won a James Beard Award for best New York City chef after receiving nominations for the coveted title three years running. (Though some grumbled that the gal who serves Triscuits and canned sardines at the bar won more for what she represents than what she cooks.) She’s written about the chef’s life for Bon Appetit, Food & Wine, and Saveur, where her sister Melissa Hamilton was an editor, and appeared in six volumes of Best Food Writing.

Hamilton has worked hard and overcome obstacles to get to the top of her game, in two creative fields no less. She survived a largely feral childhood followed by a drug-fueled, unsupervised adolescence, turned to cooking to find family, home, hope, structure, and salvation and wound up, on a whim, running a restaurant of her own.

She’s not interested in glamorizing either pursuit. If anything she has a tendency to martyrdom: Hamilton recounts cleaning human excrement off the restaurant stoop and deposing of a dead rat riddled with maggots found on the back steps. She turns hundreds of eggs on the breakfast line, while major-league pregnant and, later, with babies clinging to her breast.

Her autobiography, a decade in the making, is scribbled on brown paper between services, on subway rides, and while putting those babes to bed. There is never enough time or sleep.

Professionally, Hamilton is a big talent and a huge success. Her personal life, as she reveals in her book, is a bit messier. Estranged from her mother for decades, she identifies as lesbian but ditched the sisterhood for a clandestine affair with an Italian man she ends up marrying. He is the father of her two boys, though from the beginning of their coupling trouble is brewing. For starters, Hamilton seems more in love with his mother and summer visits to the Italian clan’s compound than her actual husband.

These personal revelations would seem meaty subjects for seasoned interviewer Kim Severson in her City Arts & Lectures discussion with Hamilton. But Severson — now the New York Times’ Atlanta bureau chief who appears to keep her hand in the food beat and her heart in San Francisco — was in a tricky situation. Just days before Hamilton landed in town the New York Post had dropped a bombshell about the celebrity chef’s love life.

Of course, who Hamilton sleeps with is really nobody else’s business, except that her memoir includes revelations about her adventures in the sack as well as an apron. And Hamilton talks a lot about the value of being honest and authentic in the kitchen and on the page. To top it off, the New York Post item on Hamilton was recycled in the local food media the day before her appearance.

Severson gave a nod to the matter early on in the chat: “I’m going to ask you the question on everyone’s minds, [theatrical pause] How do you keep your skin so dewy?” That set the tone for an evening of mostly softballs from Severson, who made a running gag about not being “bitter” that Hamilton’s memoir was a better read than her own, Spoon Fed.

The Times staffer did try some shock value, noting the book’s unusual intimacy, which a friend described to Severson this way: “I feel like I know every fold in her vagina.” But she quickly found herself in the role of comforting colleague, after an earthquake literally shook the subdued Hamilton, who looked like she wanted to bolt from the stage when things started rocking.

A few sips of wine later, however, Hamilton regained her composure and temporarily shut down Severson, as she meandered through her self-described cliched questions. Case in point: “What’s the last taste you would want in your mouth before you die?” Surely not the first time Hamilton’s fielded that query.

“I thought we were going to have an intelligent conversation about writing and you want to know if I keep lube in my bedside table,” Hamilton scolded at one point. Note to Linda Hunt: Not all KQED subscribers may be amused by the repartee between these two, who wondered if any couple, regardless of orientation, can keep sex alive in a long-term relationship — though, it must be said, the crowd at Herbst Theater ate it up.

During the audience Q&A fans gushed about how much they loved Hamilton’s book, even if they hadn’t finished it, and her restaurant, even if they hadn’t eaten there yet. In such an environment, this reporter felt it would have been a hostile act to ask the writer-chef if she cared to comment about the recent allegations in the press. Instead, she opted for the more discreet email follow up to both Hamilton and Severson, neither of whom jumped at the opportunity to explain why the subject wasn’t broached on stage.

Hardly surprising. Hamilton made it clear at her book signing at Omnivore that she’s selective about what aspects of her private life the public get to know about through her writing. Her mantra: If it’s not in there, it’s not tellable — readers don’t get all of her. Fair enough.

It’s this kind of contradiction — the tell-all that keeps secrets — that makes Hamilton such a fascinating creature. She’s full of inconsistencies — aren’t we all? — only hers are on display for all the world to see and hear. Hamilton often says she loathes being called “a female chef” and yet when TV came calling looking for just such a demographic, she jumped at the chance to take one for the team.

Similarly she thinks the term “food writer” is demeaning; she’s simply a chef who is also a scribe and cooking is what allowed her to come to the party. Yet, when asked what readers can expect next from the literary writer she responds: A cookbook.

During the talk Hamilton mentions the moms at her sons’ school, who she says look at her disdainfully as she drops off her kids. Her children eat poorly and often in the car on the way to school, she confesses. And yet, one can’t help but get the impression that the 45-year-old looks down her nose at them. Severson counters that perhaps the other moms are intimidated or awed by the successful chef with the best-selling memoir but Hamilton dismisses this notion out of hand.

And the Beard Award is silly, Hamilton says, until she wins it, and then it’s the most important culinary honor a chef can earn. Thankfully she has a sense of humor about all this flip-flopping.

One gets the sense that Hamilton doesn’t give a hoot if you like her, agree with her opinions, or want to read her book. It’s what makes her intriguing and may well be an essential part of why she’s so talented on the page and in the kitchen. She’s just doing her own thing and not seeking anyone else’s praise or approval.

During the course of the 90-minute City Arts & Lectures dialogue she laments the fetishization of food (the cult of farmers’ markets, home cooks with sous vide machines), discussions of gender issues in restaurant kitchens (snoozeville), and the plethora of social media around food culture. Reading about food online, she says, is like eating at McDonalds. “You end up feeling hungry, undernourished, tired, and full of self loathing.”

She’s also down on the rise of reality TV cooking shows, even though she’s had her own turn in front of the camera. (She slayed Bobby Flay on “Iron Chef”). “It’s starting to suck for all of us, since TV isn’t about cooking it’s about entertaining,” says Hamilton. “It’s impossible to be quiet or subtle with food on television because actual cooking is really quite dull and repetitive.”

Plans for a movie based on the memoir are already in the works, Hamilton told fans Thursday. She jokes she’d like to see Robert Downey Jr. play her.

That seems about right. Hamilton has balls. And a muscularity to her convictions and craft that the actor could convey handsomely. Audiences with a taste for Hamilton’s contrarian ways might just go for such gender-bending casting. Stay tuned.

Listen to the conversation between Gabrielle Hamilton and Kim Severson broadcast on KQED Sunday, November 27 at 1 p.m.

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

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Toast: A Slice of Nigel Slater’s Life Comes to the Silver Screen

Gosh the Brits know how to do misery, don’t they? Miserable weather, miserable class distinctions, miserable food, circa 1960s at least.

(The Anglophiles among us need not get their knickers in a twist: Word that there’s now fab fare to be found in Britain has leaked out.)

But the grim, gray food of an earlier generation is on full display in the autobiographical film “Toast,” based on the memoir of the same name by popular English cookbook author, food writer, and TV show host Nigel Slater.

(Regular readers may recall a recent review of his latest tome, Tender, an homage to the humble veg, in a delightful Stephanie Rosenbaum post.)

Victoria Hamilton as Nigel's beloved Mum and Oscar Kennedy as young Nigel, who fancied cooking early on.

There’s no sugar coating it: Slater’s early years were incredibly sad and lonely. The untimely death of his beloved mother, a simply awful cook who adored her boy and he her. Her only culinary saving grace: Toast with lashings of butter served up for dinner after another canned-food failure. Slater had a difficult relationship with his father, who made cheese sandwiches for days on end after the death of his wife. Something of a bully, the father also made it clear his son was a huge disappointment to him. Add to this equation the evil stepmother, played with trollopy gusto by Helena Bonham Carter, who wormed her way into their lives, first as an obsessive cleaner and then with her culinary (and, we’re given ample evidence to believe, sexual) prowess.

The woman may have been cheap as chips but she knew how to cook — and bake. Oh my, that lemon meringue pie!

In the film, with screenplay by Lee Hall who wrote “Billy Elliott,” the adolescent Slater (Freddie Highmore) is locked in a culinary clash with his despised stepmother for the attention and affection of his father. He loses, of course, and blames his stepmother for the early death of his father. Moviegoers will get the sense she literally fed him to death; the cakes, pies, and roasts just keep coming out of the oven.

The role of food in families — as both a comfort and a weapon — is at the heart of this movie, which makes great use of the anguished music of Dusty Springfield for its soundtrack. Dinner time in the Slater household was a desperately unhappy affair. Still, the young Slater finds refuge in food, sneaking cookbooks under the covers to read up on recipes, excelling in his Home Economics class, and triumphing over his stepmom by perfecting his own lemon meringue pie, which pops off the screen as a bright yellow gelatinous mass with a mound of white peaks expertly browned on top.

Nigel's father (Ken Stott) and his son face another nightly feast.

As in many children’s fairy tales, his stepmom also provides his liberation: Following his father’s death he simply walks out of her life and flees to London, where a future in food is his for the taking, and he never sees her again.

In a sweet end note, Slater appears in a cameo as himself, reassuring his younger self, who is desperate to find a kitchen job (at the Savoy Hotel, no less) that everything will be fine.

Fortunately for the food world, it is. Slater is the author of ten books, many bestsellers, including Real Fast Food, Appetite, and The Kitchen Diaries. A food columnist for The Observer for almost two decades, Toast the memoir, which won several major awards, including British Biography of the Year, began marinating as a column.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the adult Slater is not fond of fussy food, he prefers simple suppers made with care and thought, using quality ingredients. And despite his upbringing, he believes that making something good to eat for yourself or for others can lift the spirits in the way little else can.

(In an interesting twist, the daughters of Slater’s now deceased stepmother denounced his portrayal of her in the British press earlier this year. The very different accounts of their childhood years serves to remind us that every person’s version of the truth can vary wildly. On this much, though, all parties seem to agree: Slater’s early years were full of rejection and loss. Indeed the subtitle of his book “A Boy and His Hunger” is both a nod to his need for real, nourishing food and genuine, nourishing love.)

When asked what’s missing from the movie, Slater responds without missing a beat: The sex. “Toast is a sexy little book, there’s a lot of adolescent sex in those pages and they form an integral part of the story,” he said in an interview yesterday. “It doesn’t really matter in the movie but honestly I would have liked to have seen a bit more of it. “Toast” was made for prime-time viewing in Britain at Christmas, and I think they wanted a film that the whole family could watch, not something adolescent boys might squirm at.”

The movie only hints at the teenage Slater’s emerging sexuality; it reveals his crush on a family gardener and a first kiss in the woods with a local boy.

Fans of the food writer’s memoir should not hold their breath for Toast: The Second Slice. Here’s why: “I’m a very private person and tend to keep to myself, in part because I don’t think I’m that interesting,” Slater said. “That memoir was the most intimate of memoirs and to this day I don’t really know why I did it. But I was writing as a little boy and I was somehow able to differentiate it from my adult self. I stopped at 18 and I’ve protected myself ever since, I went back into my shell.”

There’s more. “In practical terms, if I were to do a second book, it would be more a conventional memoir,” he said, adding, “and I’d have to write about other people’s lives, people who are still alive, and I don’t want to intrude on their privacy.”

At a time when many of us wax on about the pleasures of the table (this writer included), “Toast” reminds us that food can cause major misery in many people’s lives. Audience goers will likely find themselves reflecting on their own childhood food memories while watching the film. Thankfully, this being a decidedly British film, there’s a lot of black humor amid the sorrow.

Just as well, too, because this writer, who wanted to rush home and bake her teenage son a cake after seeing the film, found herself wincing at the pain of it all at times.

“Toast” opens in Bay Area cinemas this Friday.

This post originally appeared on KQED’s Bay Area Bites. You might also like:

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