Heads up, green thumbs struggling to offload excess edibles: Aid is out there. A growing movement, designed to help people eat well, save money, and get to know their neighbors, is planting seeds in communities around the country.

Crop swaps – meet ups where people exchange surplus backyard bounty – are thriving from the San Francisco Bay Area to Boston in city and suburban enclaves and online, too.

Of course, there’s nothing particularly new about this phenomenon; who hasn’t been the beneficiary of the guy next door’s abundant squash plot or the woman across the street’s surplus spinach bed? Informal, low-key fruit and veggie trades have gone on since humans began cultivating crops.

But these days, with the economy and the environment on many people’s minds, bartering food in a systematic manner is making a comeback.

These weekly or monthly gatherings attract edible garden growers for different reasons. Some simply want to give away excess produce and, in exchange, get a little more variety in their diet. For others, including Transition Town movement members, crop swaps are part of a survival strategy, a way to build more resilient local communities to withstand not just financial hard times, but also energy shortages, climate change, and global warming. For some, it’s simply a positive way to socialize with fellow residents.

Transition Berkeley organized the city's first Crop Swap. Photo: Christina Diaz.

“We hope this will be a place for people to connect with others in the community who grow produce and exchange ideas about growing food and recipes, too,” said Carole Bennett-Simmons, co-organizer of Transition Berkeley‘s two crop swaps that started this summer, which attract about 30 to 40 locals. A retired public school teacher, she tends a plot at a local community garden, where she grows Swiss chard, bok choy, and beets.

Each local crop swap has its own way of working, but they all tend to run on a similar philosophy: No cash changes hands. Some spell out that produce must be homegrown, organic, or pesticide-free. Some are produce only, others include honey, eggs, and flowers. Still others, like the Boston Food Swap, accept prepared foods, such as pickles and preserves, along with foraged foods and backyard bounty.

Some crop swaps run just during the prime produce season, while others exchange goods all year. Since it’s high season for harvesting around the country, crop swaps are currently doing a booming cash-free business. During the winter and early spring, when crops are less abundant, some of these groups exchange seeds or starters.

At a recent Berkeley crop swap, people perused two folding tables and a couple of blankets loaded with freshly harvested produce, then filled their baskets and bags with plums and purple potatoes and gave away basil and beet greens. True to their roots – along with kitchen staples such as carrots, strawberries, and rosemary – Berkeley growers showed up with some less well-known produce including loquats, grape leaves, and angelica. It was all very civil and low-key.

The hour-long gathering seemed like a truly hyper-local affair with people walking or biking their fruits and vegetables over, visiting with friends and neighbors, and swapping recipes with fellow traders. “How do you cook beet greens?” asked one. Another, who took home a stalk of angelica, picked up a tip to add the herb, which has a flavor similar to cilantro, to the batch of ice cream she planned to make.

Eggs, lavender and rosemary in the mix at a crop swap. Photo: Christina Diaz.

Three years ago, the group behind the Oak Park Crop Swap of Sacramento, California, took back a blighted park that was a haven for negative activities like panhandling, drug dealing, and prostitution, and turned it into a positive gathering place where people feel safe, explained Kara Thomson, who organizes crop swaps there during the summer months.

Participants at Oak Park Crop Swap sign in, weigh their produce, listen to a featured speaker, and then start trading.This year, crop swappers have heard from a beekeeper, a worm composter, and an irrigation expert. “This was a challenging neighborhood, but now the crop swap and a farm stand that followed have turned it into a civilized social scene,” Thomson observed. About 20 local residents swing by each week, she said. Those with shady yards swap blueberries and leafy greens with residents whose sunny plots produce heirloom tomatoes and watermelons.

In the Internet Age, it’s not surprising that some crop swaps start out as virtual exchanges, the online food tool equivalent of Craigslist. “Tons of Leeks,” “Garlic Galore,” “A Bumper Crop of Beans” announce typical entries on such sites as the recently launched Massachusetts Food Trader and Portland Food Exchange, which allow produce suppliers and seekers to find each other online first before making their own arrangements to trade in person.

The Massachusetts Food Trader (which allows excess CSA or Community Supported Agriculture box trades) also promotes local real-time events hosted by Boston Food Swappers and the Somerville Trading Post. The site has 40 registered users since it started in July, though many more may check out what’s on offer.

Some come to website trading after limited success with classifieds and community bulletin boards. “I’ve been trading extra garden vegetables and veggie starts for a few years now and felt that we really needed an easier way to exchange food,” said Brian Connelly, on the Portland Food Exchange site. “This is a simple, yet very effective, means for people to barter food in our community.” And some people just prefer to swap with a local grower, Connelly maintained, than frequent a large supermarket stocked with produce from around the globe.

Comparing and sharing baskets of produce. Photo: Christina Diaz.

There are challenges – at the first Berkeley crop swap an overabundance of lemons comes to mind – to these local produce trades. Thomson said she’d like her events to attract a more diverse crowd, but hopes that word of mouth and flyer distribution will help with that. And, of course, few other parts of the country are blessed with as long a growing season as California. Consumers who opt to exchange with growers they find online are advised to meet in a public place, at least initially, for personal safety, though no issues have emerged on this front to date.

For those with concerns about food safety, it’s a “trader beware” situation, say swappers. This concern is raised more often in relation to preserved foods, where the liability lies between the two parties involved in the trade, according to Jake Benner, who co-runs MA Food Trader. Consumers should check preserved foods and produce for contamination and spoilage, he advised.

As interest in growing food increases around the country, crop swaps are likely to sprout in other locations. Some communities hope to take matters a step further, by running canning and preserving workshops in community kitchens so people can prepare for lean seasons and make full use of summer and fall’s abundance. Stay tuned.

This story originally appeared on Shareable and was republished on Civil Eats.

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Dafna Kory discovered the delights of jalapeno jam during pre-dinner nibbles at a Thanksgiving gathering. She went out to buy a jar, couldn’t find the mighty spicy condiment anywhere, so she began experimenting with making her own. It became an instant hit among her posse.

At first the self-taught preserver thought her D.I.Y. hobby would just make nice gifts for friends and families. The she moved from San Francisco to South Berkeley, saw the abundance of plums, apples, and lemons growing in her new backyard, and a jamming business was born.

She foraged fruit in a hyper-local fashion. She made batches of jam in her home kitchen. She personally delivered by bike. Demand for her jams grew by word-of-mouth.

Friends who had friends who owned stores began encouraging her to branch out beyond her inner circle. So she started shopping INNA jam (the name is, indeed, a playful pun) to local places like Local 123, Summer Kitchen, Rick and Ann’s Restaurant and The Gardener.

About a year ago, with orders coming in a steady stream, it became clear that Kory, now 28, needed to either gear up and focus on turning her after-hours pastime into a fully-fledged business or scale back and remain a hobbyist. She decided to take the plunge.

Photo: Courtesy of INNA jam

A freelance commercial video editor, Kory hasn’t looked back. She began working in a commercial kitchen in North Berkeley, selling her pickles and preserves at events like ForageSF’s Underground Market and the Eat Real Festival, and offering workshops for other D.I.Y.ers.

The UC Berkeley graduate now spends nine months of the year working full-time on her budding food business, and supplements her income in the winter months with editing gigs.

In a year she hopes to devote 100 percent of her work day to INNA jam.  Kory also pickles, though that product line is on hiatus while she ratchets up production to meet demand for her increasingly popular jams.  She delivers locally by bike, ships interstate, and offers an annual, seasonal subscription (a 10-ounce jar retails for $12).

Last year, Kory was featured in a photo spread of local food artisans in the New York Times Magazine Food Issue. Not too shabby for a relative newbie.

A child of Ukrainians who emigrated to Israel, Kory has childhood memories of playing in fields and picking fruits like pomegranates and apricots in the small village north of Tel Aviv she called home. Although she now considers herself a California girl, moving to Orange County at age 10 was a huge culture shock.

She went from being a straight-A student to dropping out of high school. She dabbled in community college down South, and eventually found her way to UC Berkeley, where she designed her own major and began making documentary films before graduating in 2004.  She feels at home in the Bay Area.

We met last week on an unseasonably balmy February afternoon chat in the courtyard at Local 123, where there was ample parking for her bamboo tricycle.

Photo: Courtesy of INNA jam

What do you like the most about preserving?

I like transforming raw fruits or vegetables into something totally different while maintaining their essential taste. I find most jams too sweet and most pickles too salty; I like to work with the essence of the produce itself.

There are several local preservers — June Taylor, Blue Chair Fruit, and Happy Girl Kitchen — come to mind. What’s unique about what you do?

I focus on single varieties sourced locally; other local jammakers tend to mix fruits with other ingredients. I’m really trying to pull out the complexity of a variety, whether it’s a Polka raspberry, Seascape strawberry, or Blenheim apricot, and let its uniqueness, natural subtleties, and bright flavors shine.

That’s why when I first started and I foraged a lot of my own fruit, I’d name the jars after their location, like Russel Street Meyer Lemon Jam. The taste of these jams reflected the locations they were grown in. I think you can taste the difference.

And locally I deliver by bike, either my bamboo tricycle or the road bike hitched with a cargo trailer. I think I’m the only one who does that.

It’s a coup to land in an outlet like the New York Times Magazine so early in your career. How has that impacted your business?

Well, let me say first that I just happened to be in the right place at the right time and was fortunate to be included in the shoot with all the other local food artisans the magazine featured. It was an awesome nod to up-and-coming Bay Area food producers. But it wasn’t like it was a profile of me or my jams.

So, in that sense, I see more of an impact on business when a magazine like Sunset features my product in a photo and write up that says “this is good, buy this jam, now.”

What challenges have you faced launching a business in Berkeley?

It was hard to find a commercial kitchen with enough space for what I do. Making jam takes up a lot of room; you need a place for all those jars, space to prepare fruit, and the pots are big. That’s why I work from 5 p.m. to midnight when I can have the kitchen to myself and spread out.  I found a place on the Ohlone Greenway, so I can bike there, which is key.

Do you have a local food hero or mentor?

I have a lot of respect for June Taylor, she really set the stage for the rest of us. She elevated the art of jam making and eating jam as something of value and importance in this community.

Where do you like to eat out around town?

I enjoy eating at the counter at Summer Kitchen; that’s my go-to place for a meal. Their dinners are so good, like their fried chicken. You get a complete meal for a good price and everything is balanced, there’s mashed potatoes and market vegetables with the meat. I probably eat there once a week.

My favorite hole-in-the-wall Taqueria La Familia on Shattuck at Ashby. It’s totally Baja-style beer battered fish tacos. There’s nothing glamorous about the place but the food is good.

My boyfriend and I like to go to Jupiter and sit out in the courtyard on a nice day. We have pizza, salad, and beer — they have good micro-brews on tap.

Photo: Courtesy INNA jam

Who are your favorite food purveyors here?

We shop at the Tuesday Farmers’ Market because it’s near home and at Berkeley Bowl. I like Berkeley Bowl East because it’s downhill on the bike on the way home. My boyfriend likes Berkeley Bowl West because there’s more space and no people with clipboards out front.

Acme is my local bread of choice; it’s airy, crust, and super fresh. I like the baguette, whole wheat seed, walnut, rye — all of it. I can smell the bakery when I’m cycling by late at night (or early in the morning) from work. It’s a great accompaniment to my ride home.

Kory will teach two Meyer lemon preserving workshops at Local 123. Learn how to make Meyer lemon jam and traditional Moroccan preserved lemons Friday February 25 or Friday, March 11 from 5:30 p.m.-8:30 p.m.

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

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North Berkeley Harvest volunteers Dan Alpert and Sarah Pyle with founder Natasha Boissier (far right).

Driving around North Berkeley with Natasha Boissier is an educational experience; where others see a quiet residential area she sees streets lined with potential pickings and delights when she spots prospective bounty or familiar fruit.

Boissier is a part of a growing movement of urban gleaners who pick fruit from people’s yards (with permission) and donate this surplus produce to food banks, senior centers, and schools who can put this fresh food to good use.

Some residents view an abundant fruit tree as a problem but the 42-year-old clinical social worker sees a simple solution to excess bounty and a way to fill a community need.

Boissier grew up, in part, in Switzerland and remembers climbing her favorite walnut tree during her childhood. She’s turned her love of fruit picking into a kind of foraging philanthropy as the founder of North Berkeley Harvest.

Since the summer of 2007 Boissier and her loose-knit volunteer crew (about 30 in all, around 10 regulars) has harvested a cornucopia of fruit including apples, pears, Asian pears, oranges, lemons, limes, plums, peaches, figs, nectarines, apricots, persimmons, feijoas, grapefruits, sour cherries, walnuts, quinces, and loquats.

Word spread quickly about her gleaning for good effort after local media coverage and a nod in a New York Times story on backyard bounty finding its way to food banks. She has expanded her reach beyond Berkeley to include neighboring El Cerrito, Albany, Richmond, and parts of Oakland too.

Last year North Berkeley Harvest picked 3,602 pounds of fruit from 43 homes, many the group visit every year. During peak picking season volunteers meet about once a week.

Boissier delivers the bags and boxes of fresh fruit to several local non-profit organizations, including Berkeley Food and Housing Project, Berkeley Unified School District’s Central Kitchen at King Middle School, and the senior lunch program and after-school children’s program at Jewish Community Center of the East Bay.

She lives in North Berkeley with her partner and two young children. We met this week first for fruit foraging and later for lunch at Au Coquelet Cafe.

Foraged apples./Photo: Courtesy of North Berkeley Harvest

How did you get started?

I was walking in my neighborhood while on maternity leave with my newborn son and I was struck by how many fruit trees there are here, how abundant they are, and how much of their fruit is allowed to drop and rot. It was a light-bulb moment: Picking this unused fruit seemed like a natural way to address waste and deal with hunger. So I went home and wrote up a flyer. That’s how North Berkeley Harvest came into fruition.

Do you have standards for the fruit you forage?

I taste test and only pick fruit that I would eat myself. I harvest fruit that hasn’t been sprayed or fertilized with any chemicals. It’s perfectly fine if the fruit comes in funny shapes, that’s how it is in nature, but it has to taste good.

What’s the most unusual use for the fruit you pick?

We harvest grapefruits but the ones here in Berkeley don’t taste so good to humans. A woman from an animal sanctuary called PAWS collects them for her elephants. She says they eat them like bonbons.

How has this project impacted your life?

It has brought me tremendous satisfaction. I work at UCSF’s [University of California at San Francisco's] Memory and Aging Center, counseling families dealing with dementia in their elderly loved ones. It’s rewarding work but it’s often very sad.

I’m also the mother of two young children with all the challenges that come with parenting. So sometimes I enjoy just going to harvest on my own. It’s a meditative, contemplative time for me. A very restorative hobby.

I particularly like picking fruit for seniors, many of whom can no longer climb a ladder or aren’t able to do physical labor anymore. They come out and talk with me while I work and I appreciate and respect their wisdom and experience, and hearing about the ups and downs of having lived life. These moments of connection have brought me — and I hope them — a great deal of unexpected joy.

Have there been other unforeseen benefits of this work?

Serendipity. A friend I lost touch with, Sarah Pyle, read about my work and contacted me; now she’s one of my most regular volunteers. And sometimes a resident will recognize one of the volunteers — from way back — and they’re so happy to see each other again. I love it when these kind of things happen.

Meyer lemons harvested this week./Photo: Sarah Henry

Do you have a preference for where you pick?

If I have to prioritize during the busy harvest season I’ll choose to pick fruit from the homes of elderly residents, many of whom are treasures who have tended these trees for decades. There are some really old trees in town.

Do you have advice for others who want to forage fruit for donation?

Yes, it’s simple and straightforward. This doesn’t need to be a big, organizational undertaking. Write a flyer and put it in people’s mailboxes in your local area. Enlist family and friends for your initial harvest and start small. The only equipment you need is a ladder, a fruit picker — you can buy one at Home Depot for about $30 — clippers, gloves, and some bags or boxes for the bounty. Identify some local groups that could use the fruit and get in touch in advance to find out what and how much they can accept (sometimes more isn’t better).

Have a contact person for your drop-off days but keep in mind these organizations are often staffed by low-paid workers or volunteers and there’s high turn over. They’re also very busy; so don’t expect a lot of accolades. Just deliver and go and know in your heart you’re doing good. I remember one resident at a shelter yelling at me: “Why are you bringing us fruit?” We’re grown men–we need meat!” I thought it was funny.

Have you met any interesting people harvesting?

There have been so many. One elderly couple come to mind: He’s a retired UC Berkeley expert on moss, she’s interested in lichen. I’ve been picking their apple tree for the last few years. I call her the Lichen Lady because she showed me her notebook full of these watercolor sketches of all the different lichen she’s seen in her travels around the world. They were just exquisite.

This is a place that celebrates people’s uniqueness. This town is full of intense, quirky, opinionated, and passionate people. I come into contact with some of them picking fruit. I call them the Berkeley specials. They keep things fun.

What’s next?

I’d like to take young school children on fruit harvesting field trips. It’s an area ripe with educational experiences: Nature, growing produce, tasting food, and sharing abundance.

Do you have a preferred place where you like to donate?

My first stop is often the men’s shelter. I’m not sure why. They’re often last in line for services — I mean, of course, women and children first — but these men are often blamed for what’s wrong with them. I see them early in the morning standing out in the cold after enduring a night of who knows what and I want to give them a piece of fruit to offer a moment’s respite from their pain and suffering. That’s my hope: To provide something tangible, simple, and sweet in their lives.

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

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Food, glorious, food. It’s that time of year people: Bay Area Bites brings you the best in food news for 2010.

In this two-part package, we look at the national trends and topics that sizzled over the past 12 months and serve up some local flavor on the side.

Feel free to weigh in with your own edible highlights from the year that was.

In no particular order:

1. Food Safety

From previous years we’ve learned that what we eat can make us sick (tainted peanut butter, beef gone bad, and salmonella-laced spinach ring any bells?).

This year’s food alerts: A massive egg recall and lingering questions about health risks associated with Gulf seafood.

Thankfully, late in the year Congress passed the Food Safety Modernization Act to protect consumers from food products hiding harmful poisons or pathogens like E. coli and salmonella, a food policy coup that greatly strengthens the Food and Drug Administration’s ability to keep unsafe food off supermarket shelves and restaurant plates by expanding the agency’s recall abilities and access to records.

Local angle: Bay Area-based media consultant Naomi Starkman kept the spotlight on potentially dangerous foods for sale in reports on Civil Eats and Huffington Post, including a story about a Consumers’ Report study that found packaged salad laden with fecal bacteria.

2. D.I.Y. Food

Age-old practices such as canning, jamming, foraging, fermenting, growing and gleaning are suddenly new (and cool) again. Chickens are the au courant backyard animal of choice. And classes in the Domestic Arts all the rage.

The New York Times Magazine traveled west to take pretty pictures of urban homesteaders from the Bay Area, The Washington Post chronicled the canning trend long strong here, and Vogue got down and dirty with city farmer Novella Carpenter, who donned a pink cardigan in a concession to fashion for a photo shoot with the stylish mag’s scribe Hamish Bowles. (Carpenter seemed to pop up everywhere last year, including on KQED.)

Local angle: In addition to Novella Carpenter’s Ghost Town Farm in Oakland, the Bay Area D.I.Y. brigade created a kind of cottage industry, hawking their homemade wares at venues like SF Underground Market and East Bay Underground Market, as well as the Pop-Up General Store.

And they wrote about it too; notable D.I.Y. books this year included Rachel Saunders’ tome The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook, Napa forager Connie Green‘s The Wild Table (featured on The California Report), and D.I.Y. Delicious by Vanessa Barrington. Online, San Francisco’s Sean Timberlake launched Punk Domestics, a curated space for D.I.Y.-driven cyber self-publishers.

Classes in baking, brewing, beekeeping, bottling, animal husbandry and more were in high demand at venues like 18 Reasons, Urban Kitchen SF, the Institute of Urban Homesteading, and BioFuel Oasis, a worker-owned cooperative begun by Carpenter and friends.

3. Food Politics

Obama Farmers: Photo collage by Roger Doiron at Eat the View

In an era of identity politics and culture wars, food fights join the fray. What you eat (and what you choose not to consume) speaks volumes about your political persuasions. First Lady Michelle Obama, dubbed America’s foodie-in-chief by The Atlantic, talked about ending obesity and increasing activity with her Let’s Move initiative. She also championed growing food and farmers’ markets — and brought to her kitchen top chefs like Sam Kass. On the other hand, Rush Limbaugh mounted a modern-day Twinkie defense (this time citing the fact that a man lost weight on a diet consisting mostly of the infamous junk food as evidence that all nutrition science is bogus). Sarah Palin showed up at a Pennsylvania school bearing cookies and dished up s’mores at a diner in a calculated countermove to a Michelle Obama dessert comment. Professional rager Glenn Beck even weighed in. Sigh…

The task of putting the food wars in context fell to ex-Washington Post writer Jane Black, who has moved to Huntington, West Virginia with new husband editor Brent Cunningham to see what happens to the community’s eating habits now that celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has skipped town.

Local angle: Taking the happy out of Happy Meals: Outgoing SF Mayor Gavin Newsom vetoed a Board of Supervisors ban on plastic toys in fast-food meals. But the supes struck back, ensuring that no child in the city will be tempted to eat junk food simply to get their hands on a cheap trinket that will likely break before you can say Big Mac.

4. School Food

Jamie Oliver Photo: Colleen Laffey for Food Revolution

For the majority of schoolchildren around the country school lunch sucks. Big time.

But change is coming. This year, Jamie Oliver brought his Food Revolution to the States, an anonymous teacher chronicled what she ate every day in her school cafeteria in her blog Fed Up With Lunch, and President Obama signed into law the much-anticipated Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010. The legislation bans some junk food, and gives a small, though historically significant, six-cent increase per child per lunch (the first such boost in the reimbursement rate in 30 years), and there may be more lunch money tucked inside the bill to boot.

Local angle: Veteran school food reformer Alice Waters claimed victory for her Edible Schoolyard model following the results of a study on Berkeley’s School Lunch Initiative from University of California at Berkeley researchers.

5. Street Food

Chairman Bao street food truck in San Francisco

Fueled by Twitter feeds, gourmet grub on the go continued to attract a growing following around the country as food trucks hit the streets in increasingly more legitimate ways, boasting inspired names and bright colors, to wit The Best Wurst in Austin, Big Gay Ice Cream Truck in New York City, and Chairman Bao in San Francisco.

Food trucks went a step further in size, too, with the introduction of bustaurants, stripped former public transit buses reconfigured as a mobile kitchen, and, in some cases, even offering eat-in seating.  In L.A. the double decker Worldfare dished up ethnic eats, while closer to home Le Truc in San Francisco served up gastro-pub fare, and Diamond Lil debuted to a small crowd and a camera crew.

Los Angeles officials announced it may regulate mobile carts, a move that could see other cities follow suit.

Local angle: With mild-mannered accountant Matt Cohen at the helm, the mobile food fest Off-the-Grid launched in Fort Mason and sprouted several neighborhood locations, including Golden Gate Park, McCoppin Hub, Civic Center, and UN Plaza. Officials in San Francisco passed reforms making it easier and cheaper for mobile vendors to serve street eats, while in the East Bay the city of Emeryville saw pushback from local brick-and-mortar businesses and Berkeley residents bemoaned missing out on most of the mobile food fun (for now).

Check back tomorrow for the rest of the best of 2010 food news.

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

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Let's Preserve volunteers/Photo: Agustin Gutierrez

Foraging with friends and gleaning for good is very much back in vogue.

Locally folks like Asiya Wadud of Forage Oakland and Iso Rabins of forageSF, as well as North Berkeley Harvest, PUEBLO Urban Youth Harvest in Oakland and Anna Chan (aka The Lemon Lady) in Clayton have that covered.

And D.I.Y. canning is also au courant, with Bay Area cookbook authors like Vanessa Barrington encouraging urban homesteaders to put up provisions in their pantry.

Now comes canning for a cause. The Sonoma County, Northern California group Let’s Preserve is a community effort to continue old-fashioned (now newly chic) food traditions, make good use of excess produce, and help those in need.

This past harvest season in Healdsburg, Santa Rosa, and Petaluma thousands of pounds of gleaned apples, tomatoes, and quince were preserved and donated to local food pantries, in an effort, says one organizer, to close the gap between waste and want.  Apples and tomatoes were canned for sauce, the quince became filling for empanadas that were frozen for future use.

Merrilee Olson, Let's Preserve co-creator/Photo: Agustin Gutierrez

Merrilee Olson, who runs her own Sebastapol-based food business PRESERVEsonoma, didn’t grow up hungry but her family needed help to put food on the table. Her single mother, who was raising three kids on a state salary in Lincoln, Nebraska, frequently used food stamps to provide dinner for her children.  Now a professional chef who works with local farmers and artisan food and wine clients, Olson wanted to find a way with food to give back.

She teamed up with Judy Christensen from Slow Harvest in Healdsburg and Elissa Rubin-Mahon of Artisan Preserves in Forestville and last summer offered a training workshop for volunteers who want to galvanize their community to preserve gleaned, surplus fruits and vegetables.

Last month, she led a group of volunteers who peeled, cut, cooked, and canned 300 pounds of apples to benefit the COTS Petaluma Kitchen.

Food pantries will accept preserved products that have been processed in a commercial kitchen under the supervision of someone who is food-safety certified, says Olson.

Nobody doubts the need is out there. NPR reported this week that the number of people on food stamps hit a new all-time high; as of September nearly 43 million people were using the program, according to data released last week. “Food insecurity is reaching frightening levels,” says Olson. “We believe we can make a difference in our communities by preserving and making healthy food available where it’s needed.”

Last month, KQED’s Forum addressed hunger in the Bay Area. In San Francisco, one of every five children is at risk of going hungry and the numbers are similar in other Bay Area counties. During this holiday season, food bank and soup kitchen operators are reporting a spike in the number of families that are seeking food.

Let's Preserve apple sauce on its way to needy homes./Photo:Jennie Kimmel

“I’d love to see every community in the Bay Area doing its own preserving and feeding their neighbors in need,” says Olson, who notes that groups as far away as Minneapolis have been inspired by their model to can food for the needy. She also points to Anya Fernald‘s Commando Canning events, Yes We Can Food, in Oakland as a local example.

In the future, Olson would like to include other preservation methods — such as curing, pickling, and drying — to ensure that good produce finds its way to the underserved. She’d also like to reach out to families in need to teach them preservation techniques so they can more affordably feed themselves.

Clearly, community canning events do good. They’re also fun. “We get volunteers from 18 on up — at our last event we had eight young adults from the Coast Guard — and everyone had a good time sharing stories in the kitchen and around a table at a potluck afterwards,” says Olson. “There’s nothing like food to build community.”

To learn more about how to start something similar in your area or to sign up for future community canning events, visit the Let’s Preserve website.

Do you know of similar efforts in your area? Let us know below.

Thanks to Jennie Kimmel and Agustin Guiterrez for sharing their photos.

[This post originally appeared on KQED's Bay Area Bites.]

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A former ad sales rep for Gourmet magazine (R.I.P.), Lisa Rogovin had what she calls her Eat, Pray, Love moment in 2005, meaning she left an unhappy marriage, sold the house, and embarked on a food-fueled journey around the world, visiting 14 countries (yes, India was in the mix) in seven months.

Before she left on her edible adventure, though, the food enthusiast sewed the seeds for her future happiness, both personally and professionally. She met the man who would become her second husband and she led a group of hotel guests on a culinary expedition of the San Francisco Ferry Building’s fine-food emporium.

Buoyed from her travels, she took up where she left off when she returned. The Venezuelan golf pro became her hubbie, and she launched her own business, In the Kitchen with Lisa, leading intimate food forays around the Bay Area’s culinary epicenters. Her field trips include the Ferry Building’s Marketplace and Farmers’ Market, West Marin food and wine top spots, and, more recently, the city’s Mission District’s eclectic eats.

And for the past two years, every Thursday between 11 am and 2 pm, Lisa or one of her team of seven tour guides, they call themselves epicurean concierges, walks a group who plonk down $75 a pop for the privilege around the Gourmet Ghetto in North Berkeley, arguably the birthplace of California cuisine and the growing food movement.  All while noshing on samples at eight different eateries and getting an insider’s perspective from the area’s food purveyors, restaurant owners, and chefs.

Last Thursday her tour began at Saul’s Restaurant and Delicatessen where, over local pastrami on ACME rye with house-made celery seed soda, co-owner Peter Levitt gave an impassioned overview of the demise of the Jewish deli and Saul’s controversial efforts to provide sustainable, yet authentic, Jewish foods.

Next stop, around the corner to Walnut Square for a quick primer on the evolution of Peet’s Coffee + Tea, (it took an immigrant from Holland to bring decent coffee to the States way back in the 1960s, though Alfred Peet would likely turn in his grave at all the frou-frou coffee drinks his brewing revolution spawned). Something savory? Check. Something bitter? Check.

It’s time for something sweet, so we head upstairs for mini cupcakes at Love at First Bite (what’s not to like?), a quick nod to The Juice Bar Collective (this being Berkeley, food politics are never far away) and then it’s time to don our bon vivant hats as we head into Vintage Berkeley wine shop for a tasting of good drops that cost less than 25 bucks.

Turns out, we’re just getting started.

We take a spin through the Epicurious Garden, Berkeley’s genteel version of a food court, for samples of artisanal offerings from neighborhood newbie Lush Gelato and Alegio Chocolate — and a celebrity sighting to boot — there’s author Michael Lewis, disguised as a dad, buying pie with one of his kids.

I’m entering food coma territory at this stage, and I suspect the group of mostly out-of-towners appreciate the short walk past Cesar, and Chez (photo op!), and other restaurants before experiencing something completely different, culinarily speaking, at the raw food temple Cafe Gratitude.

After sampling I Am Insightful (chard wrapped spring rolls) and I Am Thankful (coconut curry soup)  — one local wag once wrote of the labor intensive eats here “I am hungry and impatient” — we made our way to the grand finale, a swing through the kitchen of The Cheeseboard Collective, where cheese, sourdough bread, pizza, and huge chocolate chip cookies are eagerly devoured.

As a local, it’s easy to take for granted all the gourmet goodies we have in easy reach. But seen through the eyes of this group of 16 or so food fans, who hailed from Canada, Utah, Arizona, coastal California, and the Eastern States, I’m reminded, yet again, of the abundance of delicious fare in town.

Well fed, I sat down post tour to talk food with Rogovin, 40, who lives in San Francisco’s Noe Valley neighborhood with her husband and young son.

What do you enjoy about your job?

I love to give people, whether they’re from the Bay Area or somewhere else, an opportunity to experience great, authentic, local food. And I like to demystify the experience. I want visitors to see the food world through the eyes of the people who run these businesses. It gives people an intimate and informative view of the food scene and access they couldn’t get on their own. People who are interested in food want to know the background and the stories behind the food businesses they visit.  And, of course, they want to taste what these purveyors have to offer. It’s like showing people an artichoke, you want to peel back the layers to get to the heart of the matter.

What kind of skills do you need for this line of work?

You have to do a lot of leg work in advance, both in terms of research and coordinating the logistics on the day. During the tour you have put out a lot of energy and have good time management skills. You have to give people firm directions and tell them what to do and where to go.

You also need to be adaptable, depending on everything from the weather to the composition of the group, to what’s going on with the businesses you visit. You need to assess pretty quickly who your audience is and cater to it accordingly.

And you need to make people comfortable and feel welcome, by interacting with them around interests, such as food and travel. Being an epicurean concierge definitely has a performance aspect to it. You need to be on for the entire three hours, even though most peoples attention span starts to wan around the 30 minute mark. That’s why we keep things moving.

Describe the typical demographics of someone on your tour?

Our tours draw 60-70 percent Bay Area people, mostly women, ranging in age from 30s-70s. But today, as you saw, we had lots of out-of-towners, a mix of men and women, as well as some moms with daughters, and a couple of family groups with teenagers who are interested in cooking.

What do you bring home to eat after a tour?

I always pick up a Cheeseboard pizza. My husband is a big fan, so Thursday is pizza night in our house. I also really like the soups at SOOP, they’re wholesome and satisfying. If I’m feeling a bit under the weather I’ll get matzo ball soup from Saul’s.

How would you describe the difference between the food scene in Berkeley versus San Francisco?

It’s a little slower paced here, there’s a little more rustic natural elegance. The city is a bit slicker in comparison.

Readers: Where would you want to eat on a Berkeley food tour. If you’re a local — or know the town –where do you take visitors to eat here?

[Photos: Robert Durell]

This post originally appeared on Berkeleyside.

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Have been mulling over just what to say about forageSF founder Iso Rabins ever since I attended one of his underground dinners back in February.

The meal was a big hit and, as billed, featured plenty of wild foods plucked from local woods, parks, and seas to keep a trend-spotting foodista happy.

Plus my galpal and I felt vaguely au courant showing up for supper at an unknown Folsom Street location.

We shared a communal table with a gay couple who sung the praises of their forageSF CSA box, Asian-American friends from the outer SF neighborhoods in search of something a little edgier to celebrate Chinese New Year, and canners and jammers from Pacific Heights, of all places. Go figure.

And, as previously noted, the wild mushroom ice cream, rocked. Seriously.

In a relatively short amount of time, Rabins has developed a devoted culinary cult following for his off-the-grid, gourmet venture, which includes a CSA box (correction: Rabins calls it a “CSF” as in Community Supported Forage) filled with gleaned goodies such as miner’s lettuce, ramps, and nettles, secret seasonal feasts like the one I attended, and local wild food walks. Rabins says he hopes his foraging forays help city folks get in touch with the wider, wilder world. A worthy goal, for sure.

Rabins is also the driving force behind another clandestine city culinary event, the Underground Farmers Market, a monthly meet held in San Francisco’s Mission District that exudes more of a party vibe than a venue for earnest produce lovers  — with long lines snaking around the block filled with inner-city, health-conscious hipsters in search of pork belly buns (Rabins specialty), baked goods, homebrews, pickles, and preserves, all for sale by DIY home cooks.

Stephanie Rosenbaum did a nice job conveying the scene in a post for Bay Area Bites. (This writer did swing by a recent farmers’ market but didn’t queue to get in. I gather since the market moved to a bigger space, the crowd control issues are a thing of the past.)

Vendors happily flog their foodstuffs sans city approval or permits — which can prove prohibitive for urban-homesteading types trying their hand selling on a small scale. (Rabins does his own, informal quality control, tasting every item for sale.)

The frequently plaid-clad Iso Rabins is a king of inner-city cool and in high demand in culinary circles. He writes an occasional column for CHOW, speaks at food panels like a recent Kitchen Table Talks, and gathers lots of press for his projects.

His events typically sell out, and when he’s not foraging, cooking, or penning posts for cyberspace, he’s contemplating the contents of a book project about bringing wild food recipes to urban home cooks.

What most impresses me about Rabins is his quiet intention to make a living out of doing what he loves. He’s the sole proprietor of forageSF and while he’s hardly bringing in the big bucks — he tells me he’s now able to pay the rent without stress each month for the first time in a while — he’s doing what all those corporate big shots suggest: Building his brand, diversifying his portfolio, and expanding his franchise (an underground market is set to open in the East Bay in June).

His advice? “Just go for it, the worst that can happen is that you’ll have to move back in with your parents,” says the 28-year-old aspiring chef, who has done time toiling in brick-and-mortar restaurants. “Beyond that, think of something that you wouldn’t mind doing seven days a week for a year, and craft your business around that. If you enjoy doing it, you’ll keep doing it, even if money doesn’t come in immediately. Sooner or later it will support you.”

Hmmm. That’s the kind of advice we writers — the ones caught between the demise of the dead-tree-media and the advent of the don’t-pay-media — may do well to follow.

Rabins is one of the budding new food entrepreneurs buzzing around the Bay Area, reinventing how to build a culinary career in these post-recession, social-media savvy times. I’ve profiled two high-end confectionery makers who found their sweet spot in the marketplace while holding onto demanding day jobs. I’ve also showcased a successful non-profit cooking program for kids run by a recent graduate. Future posts will highlight other Bay Area edible entrepreneurs finding creative ways to pursue culinary work in a crowded and competitive field.

If you’re local, don’t just take my word for it, you can get a taste of Rabins’ foraging finds by attending a Wild Kitchen feast (tonight’s secret supper is sold out) but check out previous underground eats and sign up for email invites for future events.

Or take a wild walk (an amble, really) in San Francisco or the East Bay. I attended a recent such meet-up in a modest park in Oakland led by a gregarious guide who goes by the moniker FeralKevin. The guy knows how to glean goodies like nobody’s business and was full of handy tips about how to incorporate wild weeds into home cooking.

Find out when the next SF underground market is slated by becoming a member. (To date, the city’s health department has given forageSF room to grow by making market goers sign up for his “club,” though Rabins suspects it’s a matter of time before he gets cited.)

What say you, readers? Share your thoughts about taking a walk on the wild side below.

This post also appears on Civil Eats.

Regular readers may recall that every so often I get a bee in my bonnet about a particular kind of produce.

Persimmons come to mind. Brussels sprouts too. No surprise that a blog named Lettuce Eat Kale showcases a certain dark, leafy green, whether roasted or dehydrated.

Today, mushrooms get their due. Recently, I’ve become a tad obsessed with these forest favorites as they show themselves, post-rainy season, in my neck of the woods.

First, I felt compelled to make Mushroom Risotto. Compelled. So at a farmer’s market I stocked up on a big, brown bag full of crimini, shiitake, and oyster mushies. And I made a big, brown batch of risotto, its inherent creaminess offset by the earthy flavors of the three fungi.

My recipe is similar to this one, sans cream, from Simply Recipes. But I have nothing against cream, cream and I are firm friends, so I’ll definitely give Elise Bauer’s version a go. And I encourage you to, as well.

Then I read Barbara Kingsolver’s love poem to the mighty morel in Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, her lyrical account of a year living off the land.  This exotic edible, which defies attempts at domestication, sells for a small fortune during its short season.

With a little local help, Kingsolver uncovers the mystery of where Molly Mooches (morels to the rest of us) pop up on her very own property and her family set out to hunt and gather this prized wild delight.  She finds a perfectly good home for them in Asparagus and Morel Bread Pudding, from Deborah Madison‘s Local Flavors (downloadable here).

Next up, the forageSF Wild Kitchen Chinese New Year dinner, where fungi was featured in not one but two of the seven courses, made up of mostly sustainable, foraged, local, wild ingredients, natch.

The communal dinner kicked off with the smoky subtlety of Black Trumpet Mushroom and Wild Radish Dumplings and ended on a high note with Ginger Candy Cap Ice Cream. The candy cap mushrooms offered a deep, rich, maple-syrup like sweetness to this delish dessert.

I know, mushroom-infused ice cream. Who knew it could be so good?

Then just last week, I was wowed by the dreamy creaminess of Scott Howard’s reinvented macaroni & cheese, at his restaurant Five, in downtown Berkeley. This mac&cheese only marginally resembles the American classic mama used to make. And that’s a good thing.

Little ramekins of loveliness ooze with orzo, cream, and smoked gouda, topped with sliced, braised morels, a dollop of tomato jam, and a smattering of bread crumbs. A decadently divine dish.

Ready for a recipe?

Today’s offering, Chanterelle Pate, comes courtesy of chef Mary Kuntz, whom I met while reporting on the Sprouts Cooking Club.  Kuntz has worked in many acclaimed local restaurants and taught cooking to teens in Richmond public schools for about a dozen years.

She recently ran a four-week cooking class for Sprouts attended by Kaiser Permanente employees and their families at the Westside Cafe in Berkeley.  The mushroom pate was a big hit with her students.

For a primer on choosing, caring & cleaning mushies, whether wild or cultivated, start here.

Enjoy experimenting with these woodsy wonders.

Mary Kuntz’s Chanterelle Pate

Ingredients:

1 lb. cleaned, sliced chanterelle mushrooms

1 stick butter

3-4  finely chopped shallots

2 cloves minced garlic

½ cup finely chopped Italian parsley

2 Tablespoons chopped fresh thyme (or lemon thyme)

1-2 cups dry white wine

2 cups peeled almonds (blanch & slip skins off)

salt and lots of freshly ground black pepper

Method:

1. Sauté the sliced mushrooms, shallots, garlic, parsley and thyme in the butter in a large frying pan.

2. When tender, pour over the wine, add almonds, and simmer till most liquid is absorbed.

3. Pureé in a processor in batches, add salt and pepper to taste, and some more soft butter to make richer, if desired.

4. Place in serving terrine and sprinkle with a little more minced parsley.

5. Cover and refrigerate for at least a few hours (or overnight) to allow flavors to develop.

6. Serve with toasted baguette, dark rye bread, or wheat crackers.

The Lemon Lady needs a new nickname, methinks.

Anna Chan, 37, has outgrown the title, which doesn’t begin to describe the difference this anti-hunger activist has made in less than a year in her one-woman campaign to get fresh produce into the mouths of people in need in her community.

This stay-at-home mom from Clayton, in Contra Costa County, has (almost) single-handedly harvested, by her own estimates, 12,000 pounds of local produce from neighbors’ front yards. She’s also collected more than $60,000 surplus fruit and veg from local farmers’ markets, which she hauls in the back of her SUV to food pantries in her area. And she’s donated hundreds of seedlings and helped plant veggie gardens in her county in the hope that she can inspire others to grow their own row — and feed their families whole food.

In September I spent several hours watching Anna in action. We met at one of her many pet projects, a modest but thriving veggie patch in a low-income neighborhood of Concord. (Anna got involved with the garden after being approached by Kathy Gleason,  corporate donations coordinator for the Food Bank of Contra Costa and Solano, who sewed the seeds for this edible effort on her own time by getting to know the neigborhood and seeking out other volunteers.)

Out of one of the apartments popped a proud mom who gave me a spontaneous tour of the garden before Anna even pulled up. Begun with seedlings tended and donated by The Lemon Lady, the summer bounty included tomato, eggplant, pepper, and squash. When Anna arrived, the three of us chatted about the challenges of raising corn and the ease of growing Asian greens such as mizuna. We were just three moms, one Japanese, one American, one Australian, talking about the joys of making tomato sauce from scratch with homegrown produce to feed our hungry kids.

Before we left, Anna gave the grateful woman a seed catalog, with the promise of more seeds to come for a fall crop. Next stop: The lively Concord Farmers’ Market, where Anna distributes cardboard boxes and chats with vendors when they’re not serving customers. Farmers such as the pear purveyors from Alhambra Valley Farms and the Bautista Ranch veggie peddlers willingly pack up leftover produce for her to cart away at the end of the market to take to local food pantries, including the Salvation Army, SHARE Pantry, and Monument Crisis Center.

While the market was in full swing, I sat down with Anna to get a sense of what drives this former office manager to spend hundreds of hours volunteering for the greater good, one piece of produce at a time.

Reading between the lines, I suspect that a challenging childhood, made a little less rough by the kindness of strangers and community volunteers much like herself, serves as a constant reminder of the importance of giving back.  That’s not some pat charitable phrase for this petite and pretty woman; she knows what it’s like to encounter tough times and deal with health concerns. Now, blessed with a thriving toddler, a supportive dentist husband, and a happy home life, she wants to help others less fortunate than herself. Plus, the gal has a big heart, a passion for nutritious home cooking, and energy that doesn’t quit. (Typically she does a farmers’ market surplus run four days a week.)

Anna’s efforts add a public service spin on the au courant activity known as fruit foraging. She combines two old-fashioned concepts: gleaning and doing good, and in a time of great need (one local food pantry recently closed for a day; demand is so high it ran out of food) she simply cannot stand to see perfectly good produce go to waste.

Not surprisingly, those she comes in contact with sing her praises. “She’s a local gem,” says Jessie Neu, the director of the Contra Costa Certified Farmers’ Market. “She’s a life saver,” says one food-distribution volunteer from a local food bank. The California Garden Clubs recently honored Anna for her community service and her efforts to promote growing greens and getting fresh, nutritious food to hungry people.

And it all began way back in February, when this suburban mom was simply trying to find a way to soothe her colicky child to sleep. Anna resorted to driving her fussy, nap-fighting toddler, so Ava would drift off to the Land of Nod. (Oh, boy, do I remember those car rides from my own sleep-resistant son’s early days.)

As Anna tooled around her neighborhood she saw trees laden with luscious lemons ready to drop and rot. Where others saw potentially fallen fruit, Anna saw good food needing a way to get to the hungry.

So she worked up the courage to knock on strangers’ doors to ask homeowners if she could collect their excess fruit for local food pantries. And she left fliers letting her neighbors know that she’d noticed their bounty and wondered if they’d be willing to share their surplus by leaving a bag or two for food bank donations, or allow her to pick their extra produce. The response? Overwhelmingly positive. People have happily donated lemons, as well as oranges, apricots, plums, peaches, tomatoes, beans, and zucchini.

Anna’s on a mission to spread the word that many food banks gladly take fresh produce. “Many people don’t know where their local food pantry is located and don’t realize that food banks will gladly take fresh produce,” says Anna. A lot of people, she points out, incorrectly assume that only canned goods or government surplus food is acceptable in such places. Not so.  (Check out a revealing New York Times Magazine article for the back story on why food banks are now accepting more fruit and veg in the recent Food Issue.)

To learn more about The Lemon Lady, visit her blog, where she champions the work of food banks and farmers, shares the joy of growing food with her daughter, and encourages others to follow her example in their own communities.

Check out one of her favorite baking recipes: lemon bars, of course.

And if you have an idea for a more fitting moniker for this food advocate, please share it below.

Images courtesy of The Lemon Lady blog.

This post also appears on Civil Eats.

A roasty toasty day by the bay and foodie folk swarmed Jack London Square in Oakland to sample cheap-yet-chic street eats dished out of food trucks and pedal carts at the Eat Real Festival, an outdoor event where small bites sell for five bucks or less. Thanks, in part, to Twitter, grabbing good food on the go that won’t blow the budget is all the rage in the streets of San Francisco and beyond.

Last week, SF held its own street eats event. This weekend, it’s Oaktown’s turn, led by Anya Fernald, who headed up last year’s Slow Food Nation soiree. In the mix: Farmers, foragers, canners, cooks, chefs, and civilians, who stood in line to sample some of the best of the Bay Area’s mobile food. The mood on the street wasn’t preachy or political but more like a party, with wee ones running through a water fountain, grown ups lounging on the lawn listening to hot licks or, later, watching foodie flicks. And lots of adults sipping local brews out of jam jars as an antidote to the blazing sun.

What’s not to like?

It was a tad too hot for moi to queue for tacos, pizza, or even the Sexy Soup Cart Lady. On a friend’s recommendation, I made a beeline for the sweet treats at Aisu Pop, where handcrafted popsicles in flavors such as kaffir limeade & avocado and honeydew wasabi were moving like hot cakes. Too late: Sold out! Not to worry, I moseyed down to the next ice- cream peddler, where I tasted the subtle charms of sweet corn ice cream before settling on a scoop of Mexican chocolate from the good people at Pepito. Delish. Also refreshing, a Latina pushcart vendor’s watermelon spears doused with lemon juice, salt, and a few shakes of chili for a little kick along with the cool.

Cardum Harmon and Cid Williams made a picnic in the shade as they noshed on sustainable barbecue and burgers. Their take: Why not bring the street eats back every week?

Live locally? Swing by Sunday from 10-5. Go hungry. Bring cash. Eat real.

Photos: Sarah Henry