From the category archives:

vegetables

Ripe for Action: Colorful Cookbook Encourages Cooking

April 25, 2012 baking

Ripe: A Fresh Colorful Approach to Fruits and Vegetables showcases Cheryl Sternman Rule’s pithy wit and Paulette Phlipot’s vibrant images. But produce — in all its weird and wonderful glory — gets top billing in this cookbook.

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FoodWorks: Canning Company Preserves Marin’s Produce

March 11, 2012 bay area bites

Canning queen Merrilee Olson lends her expertise to a new preservation project designed to help Marin farms — and county children fed by the Head Start program — by producing an artisan product from excess produce.

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Kickstarting and Crowdsourcing Heirloom Produce Project

November 9, 2011 fruit

For those who like to get lost in the vast world of heirloom fruits and vegetables, the first National Heirloom Exposition, held mid-September in Santa Rosa, Calif., didn’t disappoint. The three-day event — which drew seasoned farmers, seed savers, edible educators, and backyard growers — included an exhibition hall filled with an impressive array of [...]

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Growing Demand: Crop Swaps Gaining Ground

October 28, 2011 berkeley bites

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.

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Speed Dating for Veggie — and Animal — Lovers

August 5, 2011 bay citizen

Do a prospective dating partner’s dietary preferences matter when it comes to matters of the heart? My adventures in the meat-free world of vegetarian speed dating.

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Heads Up Homesteaders: Crop Swap Begins in Berkeley

July 18, 2011 berkeley bites

Urban homesteaders trade lemons for lettuces in the latest food swapping phenomenon in communities around the country, including Berkeley.

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Save the Spud: Negative Campaigners Plot Against Potato

April 17, 2011 food flotsam & jetsam

When marketing campaigns run amok: Coming to the defense of the humble spud.

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Urban Homesteader Challenges City on Sale of Edibles

April 15, 2011 berkeley bites

Berkeley resident Sophie Hahn wants to sell her surplus greens to neighbors. She’s challenging the city to change its zoning codes to allow for such urban agriculture.

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Produce for the People at Berkeley Bowl

March 18, 2011 berkeley bites

Berkeley Bowl produce picker Nick Christopher on the joys of kale salad, winter citrus, and Tokyo turnips — and why he doesn’t eat bananas.

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Jam Maker Dafna Kory Turns Hobby Into Thriving Business

February 18, 2011 berkeley bites

Self-taught jam maker Dafna Kory turned her hobby into a fully-fledged business, INNA jam, single-source fruit preserves delivered via bamboo trike.

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Cookbook Giveaway: Fast, Fresh & Green

February 17, 2011 food book giveaways

Cookbook contest: Win a copy of Fast, Fresh, & Green by Susie Middleton

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A Family Recipe Becomes a Business: Mamie & Makhi’s Sweet Potato Pie

November 5, 2010 baking

Lois Porter turns a favorite family recipe into a thriving small batch, sweet potato batter business in Berkeley.

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Berkeley Bites: Aaron Betesh, Blue Heron Farms

October 1, 2010 berkeley bites

Veteran farmers’ market vendor Aaron Betesh of Blue Heron Farms talks about what he loves about the Berkeley Farmers Market scene.

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Q&A With The Homesteader’s Kitchen Author

July 29, 2010 food book giveaways

I heard you. Help is on the way. This post is for all you artichoke, eggplant, beet, kale, parsnip, kohlrabi, rutabaga, celeriac, and (your veg of choice here) phobes. July’s cookbook giveaway sparked so much reader interest — and requests for help with veggie recipes in particular, that I felt compelled, compelled I tell you, [...]

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Fermented Food Fans: Meet The Folks From Cultured

July 9, 2010 bay citizen

Alex Hozven and Kevin Farley of the Cultured Pickle Shop talk up fermented food.

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Berkeley Farmers’ Market Man, Ben Feldman

June 18, 2010 berkeley bites

Find out what Berkeley Farmers’ Market program manager Ben Feldman loves about his job in this Berkeley Bites post.

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5 Meatless Meals Anyone Could Whip Up on Monday

June 14, 2010 meatless monday

Here’s part two in my Meatless Mondays series.  This week: Simple, nutritious, and delicious dishes anyone could cook for dinner. These are courtesy of the Sarah & Gabe kitchen (that’s me and my kid, peeps). Let me reiterate: I am a very modest home cook. A working single mum, who like many of you out [...]

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Cookbook Giveaway: Mixt Salads

June 6, 2010 food book giveaways

Want to win a copy of Mixt Salads by Andrew Swallow, co-owner of the boutique salad bar Mixt Greens? Tell me about your favorite salad.

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Meatless Mondays: A Handy Primer, Part One

May 17, 2010 food organizations

Every Monday is meatless in my home. Most Tuesdays-Sundays as well, as regular readers of this blog already know. Okay, there’s one notable exception, which you can read all about in a recent post, A Culinary Confession. But for the purposes of this blog entry: I’ve essentially been a veg head for the past three [...]

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A Culinary Confession

March 23, 2010 civil eats

Confessions of a lapsed vegetarian. Blame it on Bakesale Betty.

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Mickey Murch and Gospel Flat Farm

December 14, 2009 growing greens

Photo: courtesy of Sarah Warnock It’s a great time to be a farmer. So says Mickey Murch, who tends his family’s farm in beautiful Bolinas, an eclectic coastal enclave in West Marin, California. He hasn’t always felt this way. Mickey grew up running bare foot through fields but he didn’t want to dig dirt to [...]

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In Praise of Brussels Sprouts

December 9, 2009 recipes

Flickr photo by cbcastro courtesy Creative Commons attribution license. Since I spent two hours Monday outside in the freezing cold chatting with a couple of West Marin farmers as they cut, cleaned, and boxed some bodacious-looking brussels sprouts (more on the growers at Gospel Flat Farm later this week),  I thought it timely to weigh [...]

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Grow Your Own Row

December 2, 2009 fruit

Meet my friends Leigh Raiford and Michael Cohen, typical nomadic academics who put down roots in Berkeley six years ago with their children Maya and Maceo. (Maya is in the same class as my son.) These two transplants passed on their recipe for roasted kale and inspired me to start my own little backyard raised [...]

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What's for Dinner? Find Answers on the Web

November 4, 2009 comfort food

How many of you have found those email chain letters in your inbox asking you to share a recipe with a dozen or so others? How many of you actually respond? I’m not entirely sure why, but I never seem to reply to these recipe requests (sorry Anne, Katherine, Ellen, et al.) and wind up [...]

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Organic Food Fight

August 6, 2009 food politics

Mulling over whether it’s worth spending more on organic greens, nectarines, or milk? You’ve got company. The assumption that organic produce tastes better and is better for you than conventionally-produced fruit and vegetables is as bruised as an organic farmers’ market peach brought home on a bike. Photo by Flickr user Auntie P used under [...]

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Kale Chips: Giving Thanks for Greens in a Snack Pack

July 30, 2009 food businesses

Last Friday was the day I was supposed to meet Blessing Horowytz, creator of Kale Chips, my current favorite snack food. Here’s what happened: Multi-tasking mama that I am, I decided to quell my cravings for Kale Chips (not to be confused with roasted kale) and satisfy my curiosity about the brand new Berkeley Bowl [...]

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Eat Food, Cook Food, and Don't Forget the Salt

July 29, 2009 comfort food

Perhaps the best thing about Cook Food: a manualfesto for easy, healthy, local eating is that it’s a slim little volume. That’s not some snarky reviewer comment. Writer Lisa Jervis aims to demystify how to eat well and cook simple food by keeping her book brief. She includes 20 recipes of the beans, greens, grains, [...]

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Go Green: White House Vegetable Garden

July 27, 2009 food politics

Image: Syracuse Cultural Workers Inspired by everyone I know growing their own (including the President’s family, my neighbors, friends, & urban homesteaders) — and this postcard, picked up at a pre-Point Reyes hike at a special little store Spirit Matters — I finally planted some seeds & seedlings in my new planter box this weekend. [...]

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Eat Your Greens

March 27, 2009 recipes

It’s been a stellar week or two for the good food folks. Alice appeared on 60 Minutes espousing her delicious revolution. (What took CBS so long?) Michelle Obama broke ground on a White House victory garden. (But why doesn’t Barack like beets and how can we convince him these root veggies are divine?) And, where [...]

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