The Exploratorium’s new digs boast stellar water views. Photo: Amy Snyder

The museum cafe, long a place of soggy sandwiches and mediocre meals, is getting a makeover in the Bay Area. Case in point: The recently reopened Exploratorium in new digs at Pier 15 in San Francisco, which offers creative fare tied to the mission of the museum, known for its interactive exhibits and playful approach, designed to encourage curiosity and experimentation.

Think seawater cocktails. Honeycomb with almonds and apricots. And living or fermented foods.

Visitors have three eating options: The 200-seat Seaglass restaurant, complete with panoramic views, a glass-topped raw bar, and open kitchen, which serves up familiar, family-friendly fare like tacos, pizza, and sandwiches — albeit with a sustainable pedigree — along with more adventurous eats such as marinated sardines, batter-fried green beans, and kelp salad with quinoa. There’s even a local riff on Welsh Rarebit (that’s gussied up grilled cheese to the uninitiated.) A full-bar serves cocktails promising a taste of the sea and in-vogue drinking vinegars known as shrubs. Near the museum’s Embarcadero entrance, the Seismic Joint offers take-away chow such as a chickpea-battered fish fingers, various spins on clam chowder, salads, and sandwiches. Mobile food trikes (built by Luigi Oldani and crew of CRO Cafe) roam the floors, peddling espresso Thanksgiving coffee, baked goods, and Strauss organic soft-serve ice cream.

The culinary duo behind the Exploratorium’s restaurant menu features acclaimed chef Loretta Keller of Coco500, a perennial Chronicle Top 100 restaurant, and her Coco500 partner, catering operations manager Clay Reynolds. The pair, who previously partnered with Charles Phan of Slanted Door fame to run The Moss Room at The California Academy of Sciences, have teamed up with Bon Appetit Management Company, known for its emphasis on scratch cooking with sustainably sourced ingredients, for the Exploratorium’s edible enterprises to form the Curiosity Catering Company.

Keller talked with BAB about her plans to feed people well and offer a side of education at the Exploratorium.

Clay Reynolds and Loretta Keller join forces at the Exploratorium. Photo: Gayle Laird

What got you excited about creating food for the Exploratorium?

What resonated with me about this project was a sense of place. The Exploratorium moved from this dark, cavernous space to a venue 800 feet over the water. Place is both a subject to explore and engage with at the Exploratorium. For me that means something in terms of food but also as a human being.

The environment and human experience, that’s everything to me. The importance of farming and where our food comes from is a very familiar mantra in the Bay Area. When you spend as much time as I do as a professional inside the food industry here you can get to a point where you’re in your own zip code. It can become precious and you can lose sight of the fact that our work is not done.

More than any other reason to be involved here, the museum offers a new and incredibly creative, intelligent and organic opportunity to do work on environmental consciousness, sustainability, and awareness around food and the planet. The Exploratorium is a great way to shake things up and have people engage with an exhibit in a hands-on way. That’s where the learning begins.

Is that where the honeycomb comes in?

Yes. The honeybee is in peril so by serving the honeycomb I’m hoping to help people stop and think and connect the bee with the almonds and the apricots — that’s why those things are always going to accompany the honeycomb. We want it to be a real exhibit and educational model that people will become intrigued by and realize how endangered bees are, which means your almonds are endangered, and all your stone fruit is endangered, and a whole way of eating is at risk. Bees are struggling with so many things right now; they’re overworked and experience bee jet lag. Bees want to winter in Florida, but instead almond growers in California pay exorbitant prices to have them flown or trucked here and put to work to meet demand. California is the biggest producer of almonds in the world, something like 70 percent, and people just take that for granted.

Japanese chef Sachio Kojima, who developed fervent fans for his sushi over the years, heads up Seaglass’s seafood and fermentation section. Photo: Gayle Laird

How are you incorporating living and fermented foods into the menu?

We are so lucky to have master chef Sachio Kojima, who had his own popular restaurant, Kabuto Sushi A&S, on Geary for more than 20 years, come on as our director of fermentation. He’s making seaweed and kelp salads, with kelp gathered from Marin, Mendocino, and Monterey counties, we’ll have algae on the menu too. And from our pickling program, we’ll offer traditional Japanese pickles, kimchi, and sauerkraut.

Visitors to the Exploratorium’s Seaglass restaurant can order from a raw bar full of sustainable seafood.
Photo: Gayle Laird

Where does sustainable seafood fit in?

We are doing an ocean bar, serving sushi, sashimi, and oysters that Sachio oversees as well. It’s all West Coast, Monterey Bay Watch-sanctioned seafood.

We missed the herring run this season but we’ll be serving herring next Spring. And we’ll serve anchovies in season too; these are really the last of the commercial fisheries within the bay. People have to understand that their choices are becoming so limited with regards to fish. There are very few wild fish that are sustainable. So we’ll be serving what people think of as bait and also serving whole fish. That starts a conversation in the U.S. because most people here are not used to seeing a whole fish or bait on a plate.

Sea grapes add a salty kick to cocktails at the Exploratorium. Photo: Loretta Keller

What about seawater and its connection to the new space?

My partner Clay Reynolds wanted to serve filtered seawater to drink, but the technology isn’t quite there. And then we wanted to run the dishwasher on seawater but it became clear that that was a whole project on its own. But the Exploratorium is using seawater to heat the building, which is quite extraordinary.

We’re using seawater in a cocktail. It turns out that the health department doesn’t recognize seawater as a consumable, so we’re not allowed to serve seawater per se. But there are kelps available that contain seawater, and there’s a Monterey County kelp called sea grape, that we add to our signature martini, which tastes great with a little bit of seawater. So we’re garnishing the drink with this kelp whose buds are full of seawater, when you burst them in your mouth you get a nice jolt of salt.

We’re including seawater in other ways in the restaurant too. The multi-hued glass tiles are based on a museum exhibit called “Color of Water.” To create the piece, a fixed-position camera took time-lapse photos of the bay, the color variations are caused by sunlight, tides, and microorganisms.

The piece in the dining room called “Thermal Mixing” also demonstrates the dynamics of the bay: It’s a triptych of panels of colored water of different temperatures that swirl like giant mood rings on the back wall. “Icy Bodies” is an exhibit where fragments of dry ice are pushed into a tank and spin around like comets across a sheet of water below a glass-topped bar. All these are nods to one of the most extraordinary places on the planet for moving water.

What role does food play at the museum?

By and large, with few exceptions, the food served at museums in this country is like prison food, just terrible. All this money was being spent on creating the new Exploratorium, which is a gift to residents and visitors of San Francisco, and so it’s critical that the food match the museum and its surroundings.

First and foremost we want to serve healthy, well-prepared fresh food to the museum goers, that’s our mandate. The challenge within that framework is to build in education, implicitly and explicitly, about sustainability. I get to be creative and think outside the box. We plan to do corn education tied to an exhibit and blind wine tastings at our adult nights. At the Exploratorium it’s not about looking at stuff, it’s about interacting with stuff. There’s an intimacy here that provides a direct way to get to people’s minds. And food has always been a great platform to reach people because it is so intimate and it’s a necessity; people have to eat every day. There aren’t that many mediums that offer that.

Details:

The restaurant is open during regular museum hours: Tuesday-Sunday 10am-5pm; Wednesday evenings until 10pm; every Thursday evening adults only (ages 18 and up) 6pm-10pm. It caters primarily to museum guests, but the public can access the restaurant from an exterior entrance.

If they grow it and cook it they will eat it Part One: Students at Willard Middle School in Berkeley. Photo: Matt Tsang

Berkeley’s beloved school gardening and cooking program, where public school children plant peas, cook kale, and chase chickens–all while discovering connections to nature, science, language, math, health, nutrition and other life lessons–is in dire straits due to pending federal funding cuts.

Come October, the Berkeley Unified School District’s (BUSD) edible education efforts will lose $1.9 million of U.S. Department of Agriculture financing (administered through the Network for a Healthy California) for 14 school cooking and garden programs, from the preschool through high school level. Unless replacement income is found, such cuts would essentially gut the district program, considered a model around the country.

“BUSD schools are deeply committed to saving their garden and cooking programs and are working closely with their principals, PTAs, the school district, and the extended community to raise funds for the coming year and beyond,” says Marian Mabel, a parent at Malcolm X Elementary and member of a group called the Berkeley Schools Gardening and Cooking Alliance, which was launched last year when Malcolm X, along with two other schools, looked set to lose their federal funds. (The alliance successfully lobbied the school board for a year of bridge funding, which, ultimately, wasn’t needed when a one-year extension of federal monies was granted.)

Now, district officials, individual schools, and a core of parent volunteers are scrambling to try and save the program, which began as a community effort 15 years ago. And prominent local restaurateurs and chefs have stepped up to show their support too.

The cooking and gardening movement in Berkeley’s schools, documented in a series of short videos under the Lunch Love Community umbrella (featured in a 2011 BAB post), has received federal funds for 12 years. But recent changes in federal funding priorities and state administering of these monies, along with changing demographics in BUSD schools, has lead to a pending shift in the allocation of resources. Despite last year’s one-year reprieve from the feds, no such extension of support is expected for the next school year, given changes to U.S. government guidelines with the passage of the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act of 2010.

If they grow it and cook it they will eat it Part Two: Students at Le Conte Elementary School in Berkeley. Photo: Sophie Constantinou

The school district saw the cuts coming. So last November, the superintendent convened an advisory committee on garden and cooking to identify and secure both short-term bridge funding and long-term sustainable funding, through major donor and corporate giving campaigns, public-private partnerships, and other fundraising efforts, all of which are either in the works or being explored. At a school board meeting on Wednesday, committee members will make a case for a commitment of $300,000 a year for two years to help maintain the program, according to Melanie Parker, interim supervisor for the BUSD’s Gardening and Cooking Nutrition Program. (Last year the district pledged up to $350,000 for the three schools facing cuts to their programs for this school year.)

The committee has outlined four tiers of funding options for the immediate future. These range from a fully-funded program costing $2 million a year, to a worst case scenario situation of part-time staff offering limited instruction and charged with keeping the gardens alive at about $250,000 a year. The largest cost of the program, not surprisingly, is salaries and benefits for cooking and gardening teachers and assistants. While most of these employees work part-time, they are paid the full-time equivalent of between $25,000 and $50,000. Many of these instructors, adored by students, parents, and school officials alike, have been working in the schools since the start of this program and the thought of losing their educational experience and institutional wisdom is viewed as a potentially devastating blow to the program.

The BUSD committee is recommending funding at a reduced level, what they’re calling a “tier two scenario” or a 50 percent cut in program costs for a total of $1.04 million a year, which translates into fewer students receiving instruction and reduced staffing hours. “The committee felt it was important to be realistic about how much money we could raise — and raising $4 million over the next two years to maintain our current programs felt incredibly challenging,” says Parker, who noted a recent $100,000 infusion of state funds that has been committed to the cause courtesy of the City of Berkeley’s Public Health Department. Still, she acknowledges, there is a long way to go to secure full funding for next fall.

Fourteen of Berkeley’s 19 schools have gotten federal funding in the past, money designed to benefit schools with significant low-income populations. The programs slated to lose their funding come October include Berkeley High School, Berkeley Technology Academy, Longfellow and Willard middle schools. Seven elementary schools face cuts, including Emerson, John Muir, LeConte, Malcolm X, Rosa Parks, Thousand Oaks and Washington. Hopkins, Franklin and King preschools will also be impacted by the loss of income.

The community is gearing up to raise funds and awareness on many levels. A Change.org petition is gathering signatures in support of the campaign. Individual schools are writing grant proposals and holding plant sales, movie nights, and fun runs to support cooking and gardening instruction. Meanwhile, a city-wide Dine Out event is slated for May 30, with prominent local food businesses and restaurants in the mix such as the Cheese Board, Comal, Gather, Ippuku, La Note, and Revival Bar + Kitchen, who are all donating a percentage of sales to the classroom campaign.

For some who have signed on in support it’s both a professional and personal cause. “My three kids have benefited from the cooking and gardening programs at BUSD; my oldest daughter says the garden program at Willard was the only thing that got her through middle school,” says Christian Geideman, owner-chef of the critically-acclaimed Ippuku, featuring izakaya-style dining in downtown Berkeley. “And my youngest still talks about Farmer Ben and the chickens at Le Conte Elementary.” Geideman sees the benefits of such programs beyond the school years. “The restaurant industry is a major employer in our area, imagine how much teenagers could learn in four years that could prepare them for culinary careers,” he says. “I know that as a troubled teen I could have benefited from such a program; it should be expanded at Berkeley High, not cut.”

Geideman’s partner in work and life, Erinn Geideman, discovered first hand the positive effects of the program when she worked as an assistant to Washington Elementary’s cooking teacher Carrie Fehr. “At the elementary school age it’s mostly about giving them access to the process: peeling, chopping and handling food,” says Erinn Giedeman. “When you teach a small child how to cut their own food it gives them a real sense of accomplishment. And when they taste what they’ve created it’s exciting and fills the kids with pride.” Many students, Erinn Geideman also noted, mentioned sharing the recipes at home with their families, an important aspect of a program that emphasizes healthy, seasonal eating geared towards fruit, vegetable, and whole grain recipes, designed with obesity and diabetes prevention in mind. The value of such edible education programs are hard to quantify in terms of test scores but one measure in a UC Berkeley study found that young students routinely exposed to fruits and vegetables through cooking and gardening instruction ate 1.5 more servings of produce a day compared with kids with fewer opportunities to dig in the dirt and work the stove at school.

The best known cooking and gardening program in Berkeley schools, King Middle School’s Edible Schoolyard, is not impacted by the cuts, as its programs are paid for by the Edible Schoolyard Project, founded by Chez Panisse owner Alice Waters. But the ESP (formerly the Chez Panisse Foundation) project staff are working with the BUSD community to come up with a financial plan for the future of its imperiled programs. “The loss of federal funding to support BUSD’s garden and cooking programs is a tragedy and ample evidence, if any were needed, that the call for this transformational change–to bring kids in the public schools into a healthy and delicious relationship with food–needs to get still louder,” says Katrina Heron, executive director of ESP.

Kyle Cornforth, director of ESY Berkeley, is on the superintendent’s advisory committee and active in the Berkeley Schools Gardening and Cooking Alliance and the alliance’s Marian Mabel says Cornforth has been instrumental in providing assistance to help strengthen the curriculum components of the BUSD’s cooking and gardening instruction to make the strongest possible case that such programs are indispensable to students. To that end, the committee is re-envisioning the program at a district-wide level (for all schools, including four elementary schools currently ineligible for federal funds) and seek to integrate the program into Common Core State Standards and what’s known as 2020 Vision, Berkeley’s effort to end racial disparities in academic achievement.

If they grow it and cook it they will eat it Part Three: Students at Willard Middle School in Berkeley. Photo: Matt Tsang

Mindful of what is happening across the bay in Berkeley, Education Outside (formerly the San Francisco Green Schoolyard Alliance) is working hard to tie outdoor education in San Francisco public schools to core curriculum such as science, in a program launched three years ago. It’s also trying to keep costs in check, by hiring young, service corps members for $25,000 a year to run these programs, set to be in 21 K-5 schools this fall. “What is happening in Berkeley is instructive, it shows how easily these kinds of programs can be cut or lopped off, that’s why we’re focusing on making them an integral part of every student’s day,” says Arden Bucklin-Sporer, Education Outside’s executive director. “We never use the term ‘gardening’ or ‘cooking,’ which suggest that they’re extra programs not integral to curriculum.”

Back in the East Bay, another relatively new model for providing edible education is coming to Oakland schools this fall, via a national program known as FoodCorps, which places a service member in a school for a year to help tend or build a school garden, improve school cafeteria food, and talk up healthy eating with students. It costs FoodCorps about $32,500 to put a service member in a school, including a $15,000 stipend, a $5,550 Americorps award, and health benefits. FoodCorps has partnered with the Edible Schoolyard Project for a summer academy geared towards FoodCorps fellows, service members with one year of experience, who are training to become peer-mentors at sites around the country.

For now, in Berkeley the focus remains on saving a lauded program many years in the making. “What’s in jeopardy is losing the groundwork from developing a nationally-recognized program,” says Willard Middle School parent Cindy Tsai Schultz, who is on the school’s gardening and cooking committee. “In 1995 at Willard, Matt Tsang, our gardening coordinator, started with two small planter boxes. Today we have a model program with a flourishing garden, six chickens, and gardening and cooking classes that integrate nutrition education with math and science,” she adds. “Our garden produces enough food for cooking classes for over 500 children. The garden also provides a safe and peaceful place and offers students a sense of security. We can’t lose the last 15 years of hard work and kids’ strong connection with the program. We can’t let all that nurturing turn to weeds.”

Donations to the BUSD Garden and Cooking Program can be made through the Berkeley Public Education Foundation, when making a donation through BPEF, specify that the contribution is earmarked for the BUSD Garden and Cooking Program. For information on volunteer opportunities for the Dine Out fundraiser, to offer suggestions for major funders, or to donate email: berkeleyfundraiser@gmail.com.

If they grow it and cook it they will eat it Part Four: Students at Malcolm X Elementary School in Berkeley.
Photo: Rivka Mason

A thriving sanctuary at school. Photo: Rivka Mason

The proposed People’s Community Market is a 12,000 square foot supermarket about the size of a typical Trader Joe’s. Rendering: Lowney Architecture

The wait in West Oakland may finally be over: An innovative approach to funding for an ambitious full-service, mid-sized grocery store looks likely to pay off. People’s Community Market, slated to anchor a vacant lot at the corner of busy West Grand Avenue and Market Street, will serve a community that is home to more than 50 liquor stores and over a dozen corner shops but lacks a supermarket. (The nearby worker owned-and-operated Mandela Foods Cooperative offers some local residents access to fresh produce and natural grocery items but the small store can’t meet the needs of the entire West Oakland area.)

For many residents, especially the car-less and seniors, who can schlep two hours to get to and from a supermarket by bus, the new grocery store can’t come soon enough. If all continues to go well on the fundraising front the market is projected to open in the fall of 2014. It has high-profile supporters such as Oakland cookbook author-chef-advocate Bryant Terry, who has emceed “Front Porch” fundraisers for the project, and Sam Mogannam of San Francisco’s wildly successful Bi-Rite Market, and a leadership team that includes Bill Fujimoto, the beloved former Monterey Market produce whisperer.

The project is raising money for the much-needed store in a novel approach. It’s selling stock in the supermarket in what’s known as a direct public offering, a fundraising approach successfully employed by other Bay Area businesses like packaged mac & cheese maker Annie’s Homegrown.

Brahm Ahmadi, founder and CEO of People’s Community Market, checked in with Bay Area Bites about the status of the capital-raising campaign, how it ties into a food financing initiative designed to increase access to healthy, affordable food in underserved communities in California (previously reported on BAB), and the lessons he’s learned in his crusade to get good grub into a neighborhood long overlooked by supermarket chains.

People’s Community Market founder Brahm Ahmadi is confident the West Oakland store will get funded. Photo courtesy of Brahm Ahmadi

Why did People’s Community Market decide to go the direct public offering route and how is it going?

We launched it at the beginning of November 2012 and have raised $350K so far. We’re shooting to reach $500K by the end of May as that will ignite the next key stages of the project — securing a loan and a lease. We hope to capitalize on the growing public interest in supporting local economies and thriving communities through investment in local small businesses and mission-driven enterprises.

We first tried to raise the equity funding from foundations and private investors. The foundations couldn’t sort out how to make an investment into a for-profit venture. The private investors weren’t interested in the low-margins and timeframes for when they’d get paid back. These investors also preferred fast growth and eventually selling to a larger company — neither of which fits with our goals of focusing on West Oakland and retaining local ownership.

We saw that crowdfunding, as a means of public financial support for small projects, was taking off and that the Occupy protest movement was signaling a public desire for something other than Wall Street. We thought these trends presented new opportunities for raising money from the public. But we wanted People’s Community Market to be a real and sustainable investment and for our backers to become true shareholders.

So with the guidance and counsel of Cutting Edge Capital in Oakland, we launched a direct public stock offering (DPO) that enables California residents of diverse economic backgrounds to buy shares in our venture and earn a modest return while supporting West Oakland families to attain healthier and more socially connected lives.

Why not try Kickstarter, or similar crowdsourcing options popular with new food enterprises, instead?

It’s hard to raise a large amount of money (most projects raise $10K-$100K) through crowdfunding and it’s a very crowded and noisy space and, therefore, pretty hard to stand out.

Can you explain how the DPO ties into the California Fresh Works Fund?

The California Fresh Works Fund will proceed with a below-market-rate loan for two-thirds of our financing once we have secured the other one-third as equity. The DPO is how we’re raising the one-third equity we need to leverage the loan opportunity. What this means is that every dollar that someone invests into our project by purchasing shares will be matched by two dollars in debt financing from the California Fresh Works Fund.

People’s Grocery sponsored a program called the Grub Box as a short-term solution to getting fresh food to folks in a neighborhood with no full-service supermarket. Photo: Scott Braley

What kind of people have signed up as shareholders and what reasons have they given for investing?

The vast majority of people who have become founding shareholders are working class and middle class individuals and families. This is a very local- and small-investor based campaign. Unfortunately, most West Oakland residents can’t afford the $1,000 minimum investment. And we can’t afford to lower the minimum investment at this time. We’re planning a secondary offering that will launch in the summer that will enable West Oakland residents to contribute financially at a rate they can afford.

The most consistent theme I hear about why people invest is that people really care about the problem we’re trying to address – that 25,000 people in West Oakland don’t have access to a full-service grocer and that 48% of them are obese or at unhealthy weights. They’re drawn to the social impact we’re looking to make, as well as the economic impact in terms of job creation, tax revenue generation, etc. It seems like a lot of folks are just tired of the options of either donating to charities or investing in Wall Street. They want to be more locally engaged with their money and to do it in a more financially sustainable way that allows them to have a positive and meaningful impact.

What’s in it for the investor? What level of risk are people taking on?

Investors will receive a 3% compounded annual interest rate, which is better than a 10-year treasury bill currently offering 2% or less in annual interest. Investors will also receive a 1% annual store credit. Shareholders can choose to redeem their investment beginning at the end of the seventh full year of business.

Like all investments that don’t offer guarantees (including all stock investments on Wall Street), there is risk in this investment. If the business fails the investors will lose their money. That’s why this is an equity investment. The risks are covered extensively in our offering memorandum.

This project has taken more than a decade to get up and running, why so long?

One reason some people think it has taken so long is that our nonprofit sister organization, People’s Grocery, has been talking about opening a grocery store since we founded the organization back in 2002. The reality is that we didn’t really start working on creating a grocery store until I left People’s Grocery in 2010 and founded People’s Community Market that fall. So it has really only been 2.5 years. Most mid-sized grocery stores and supermarkets take three to four years from planning to launch. So we’re pretty much on target.

Between 2002-2010 we built a strong base and social capital in West Oakland, rallying the community together toward a vision for a community food system and getting first hand-experience and knowledge by operating and testing smaller food projects and enterprises. We took this long-term approach because we knew that a strong foundation of relationships and support had to be established in order for a larger business venture to succeed. Social capital and community engagement are key assets in the success of independent grocers.

People’s Community Market plans to provide education — like cooking classes — at its store. Photo: Scott Braley

How close does it feel to actually happening and how will you measure success?

I think we’re in the final stretch toward the store becoming a reality. Just opening a store founded on the model and principles we’re backing into it will be a success. Obviously, we’ll be measuring financial performance in terms of both traditional business metrics and local economic impacts like job creation, employee retention/training, contributing to the local economy, etc. We’ll also measure health impacts, dietary change and residents becoming more socially connected and increasing their community networks.

Are there any lessons learned or advice you’d like to share with others launching a food business?

The only thing I might have done differently is not talk about the idea of opening a grocery store so early on because, in a culture of short-term thinking, most people can’t understand a long-term vision and plan. My advice to anyone who wants to open a community-based business is to make an honest assessment of the skills, resources and relationships they have in relation to what they need to succeed and then create a way of filling the gap. Give yourself time to hone your skills and networks and build your foundation. Don’t worry about the pressures of society to move at a faster rate than what enables you to optimize your project.

Behind the Kitchen Door reveals the real plight of many restaurant workers.
Photo: Courtesy ROC-United

Most self-respecting, food-focused, restaurant-goers can wax on about the provenance of their poultry, chat with their local produce farmer on a regular basis, or rattle off the names of several fine-dining restaurants, the celebrity chefs who run them, and their signature dishes. Some consumers are even on friendly terms with the waitstaff and bartenders at their regular haunts.

But few diners can tell you much – if anything — about the largely invisible army of restaurant workers who make eating out possible. With 10 million members in their ranks these employees represent the largest sector of the U.S. workforce. And yet these servers, bussers, runners, cooks, and dishwashers, who are the lifeblood of many restaurants, scrape by on some of the lowest wages in America, putting food on diners’ tables at the same time they struggle to make enough money to feed themselves and their families.

Up until the Twin Towers fell, Saru Jayaraman had never given much thought to the lives of restaurant workers. And then the young labor lawyer got a call from a union leader representing workers from Windows on the World, the restaurant that had graced the top of the World Trade Center. After the 9/11 tragedy some 250 workers were displaced (73 of their coworkers perished on the day) and they wanted their former boss to make good on his offer to hire them back when he opened a new restaurant. With the help of Jayaraman and one of the headwaiters from Windows on the World, Fekkak Mamdouh, the restaurant workers secured new employment for several former staffers, a victory that was covered by the New York Times. Jayaraman cofounded the nonprofit Restaurant Opportunities Center (now ROC-United) with Mamdouh, and she hasn’t stopped thinking about the working conditions and wages of restaurant workers ever since.

The daughter of Indian immigrants, Saru Jayaraman, represents disadvantaged restaurant workers. Photo: Sekou Luke

Jayaraman caused quite a stir in New York City, when she and her organization went up against several prominent restaurateurs, including Mario Batali, whose Del Posto restaurant settled for millions two lawsuits last year brought by ROC-United for unfair labor practices and abusive working conditions. (Irony alert: Batali’s restaurants have been lauded for their Slow Food sensibility and sustainable practices, as BAB has noted.)

Now the director of UC Berkeley’s Food Labor Research Center, Jayaraman has written a book, Behind the Kitchen Door, exposing the dirty little secret of exploited restaurant employees and the successful campaigns ROC-United has waged in securing a better work environment for these workers, many of whom are immigrants and people of color. Helping the disadvantaged is nothing new to Jayaraman: The Yale Law School and Harvard School of Government graduate was recognized by former President Bill Clinton while an undergraduate at UCLA for founding a mentoring program for women of color in L.A., where she grew up, the daughter of Indian immigrants, who worked hard to make ends meet.

Jayaraman, who lives in Oakland, returns to the Bay Area this week for book events including tonight at UC Santa Cruz and tomorrow night at the Disposable Film Festival’s Just Food Dinner Screening in San Francisco, with more Bay Area dates slated for later this spring. ROC-United’s Sekou Luke will discuss the book and accompanying video at the San Francisco Food and Farm Film Festival on Saturday, March 30. While back East last week Jayaraman talked via phone to Bay Area Bites about her recipe for change and the concept of sustainable labor practices along with sustainable food.

What was the catalyst for the book?
It’s really a call to action to everyone who eats out about what’s really happening behind the kitchen door in many restaurants around the country. People want to eat ethically — look at the impact brought about by books like Michael Pollan‘s The Omnivore’s Dilemma and Eric Schlosser‘s Fast Food Nation. Consumers spoke up and restaurants changed their menus. We’re seeking the same thing for restaurant workers in terms of working conditions and wages. It’s not enough for diners to care about the food they eat and how the animals were treated. It’s important to care about the well-being of the people who cook and serve the food too.

What don’t diners know about restaurant workers?
Since 1996, the national minimum wage for tipped workers has been frozen at $2.13 an hour. The National Restaurant Association has done a good job lobbying to keep the minimum wage for tipped restaurant workers low, and they want diners to stay in the dark on this score, it’s a very purposeful move on their part. For many Americans restaurants are their second kitchens; as a culture, we eat out more than any other country, and many of us celebrate significant milestones, like birthdays and anniversaries, in restaurants. And yet most diners really have no idea about the working conditions for these employees.

Few diners know that most restaurant employees around the country don’t get paid sick leave and since they can’t afford to take time off work, they come to work sick, which isn’t good for their health or that of the people they’re cooking for and serving.

The racial segregation in restaurants is real and plays out across the country and restricts opportunities for advancement for many people of color. Our research shows that generally speaking, lighter-skinned employees work in the front of the house and darker skinned workers are relegated behind the kitchen door or in less prominent roles. This situation is very stark in places like Miami, where light-skinned employees work as waiters, brown-skinned Latino employees work as bussers and runners, and hidden in the back are the darkest employees, typically Haitians working as dishwashers.

Photo: Courtesy ROC-United

How does California and the Bay Area measure up on restaurant workers’ rights?
California has a higher rate for tipped workers, its the same as for other minimum wage workers, a minimum of $8 an hour across the board. California is one of seven states that doesn’t have a lower minimum wage for tipped workers. But keeping the federal rate low for tipped minimum wages has the effect of driving down wages across the country; and most states pay under $3 an hour for tipped workers.

San Francisco was the first city in the country to require all employers to offer paid sick leave to their employees, so this area is a leader in that regard.

And several restaurants here do all the right things by their employees, including offering opportunities for advancement for its lowest paid staff members. Zazie in San Francisco comes to mind on that front, as do Pizzaiolo and Boot & Shoe Service in the East Bay.

Are you optimistic that restaurant workers will get their due?
There’s incredible momentum right now for our work. A number of states are passing laws that will transform the working conditions of restaurant employees. Philadelphia just passed an ordinance allowing restaurant workers to receive paid sick days, it’s the largest city in the U.S. to pass such a measure. [The measure is subject to pending mayoral approval.] President Obama mentioned raising the minimum wage, including for tipped wage workers, in his State of the Union speech. I’m confident this is our time.

Photo: Courtesy ROC-United

What can consumers do?
Spread the word about this book. Speak up when you eat out around the country. Ask restaurant employees about their working conditions, including wages and tips, and whether or not they have paid sick leave. Let the managers of restaurants you frequent know that the working conditions of restaurant employees is something you care about. If a restaurant is doing all the right things by its employees, let management know that’s important to you and you’ll keep supporting them for their efforts. We’ve created a dining guide (it’s also available as a smart phone ap) for consumers. Let Congress know you care; sign our petition. It’s not enough just to tip better, though that’s a nice thing to do, it’s not really the point. We’re trying to create industry-wide, systemic change in working conditions across the country for all restaurant employees.

Jessica Goldman Foung started eating for health after illness struck. Photo: Norbert von der Groeben, courtesy Stanford Hospital & Clinics

There likely aren’t many cookbooks out there that include a nod to the author’s kidneys in the acknowledgments. But in Jessica Goldman Foung’s Sodium Girl’s Limitless Low-Sodium Cookbook, she not only thanks these vital organs, she does so by name. She calls her kidneys Frank and Stein.

Given Goldman Foung’s health history — the woman nearly died during her college years, the result of an aggressive form of lupus attacking her kidneys and brain that required chemotherapy to combat — her fondness for her resilient kidneys is understandable.

At 21, Goldman Foung found herself on dialysis waiting for a transplant. She could have wallowed in the misery of it all, instead she opted to overhaul her diet and began a strict low-sodium, no-salt regimen. With that shift, and in concert with topnotch medical care, her kidneys began regenerating over the course of a year in such a way that not even her doctors at Stanford Hospital could fully explain. Fast forward to today and she’s officially been kicked off the kidney transplant list for nine years and has stayed healthy and active through diet and medications alone.

Given all she went through — and learned along the way — she sought to share her experiences with others who might benefit from a low-sodium way of life. In 2009 she began her blog, Sodium Girl, and ever since she’s been experimenting with creating tasty favorite foods and comfort fare sans salt in her kitchen. The self-taught cook champions finding alternative flavors through techniques like smoking and roasting, by drawing on the natural salty taste found in foods like beets and celery and in experimenting with spices. She’s also the queen of substitutions to create finger-licking food. Think: molasses for miso, cauliflower for cheese, balsamic blueberry sauce for BBQ sauce, and tamarind paste for soy sauce to create a teriyaki-like alternative.

The granddaughter of philanthropists Richard and Rhoda Goldman (perhaps best known for the Goldman Environmental Prize), this bubbly 30-year-old has worked in development for ODC Dance Company and is soon to sit on the board of CUESA, where she first had the chance to wax poetic about produce and other wholesome foods for the non-profit’s newsletter. The self-described foodlanthropist writes regularly for Edible San Francisco and lives in Noe Valley with her husband and 4-month-old daughter Nomi.

Goldman Foung will talk buffalo wings, pad Thai, and baked macaroni and peas — all whipped up without the addition of those addictive white crystals, at a reading at Omnivore Books on March 3. She’ll also hold cooking demonstrations at 18 Reasons on March 4 and at CUESA on March 30. Sodium Girl spoke with Bay Area Bites last week and shared recipes from her new book too.

Why did you start your food blog?

I was trying to figure out what kind of job was going to work for my health and my body. I wanted to be a writer — I was a creative writing major at Stanford — but I basically had to start my career from ground zero. The best advice I got at the time was start with a blog and write about what you know, and what I know about is living with lupus and eating a low-sodium diet.

One of my first posts — the black dress theory uses the analogy that losing salt from your diet is like not having black in your closet. It was the moment when I found my voice. I wanted to talk about a low-sodium life in a way people can relate to. It was a younger, fresher, more positive and playful way to tackle the subject with spirit.

Everyone had always told me to write about my experience being sick but I had never found the right vehicle. Food became the perfect way to write about overcoming challenges, making the most of things, and using your hardships to set sail on new adventures.

Are there many other low-sodium cookbooks?

There’s a good handful but what’s missing is the low-sodium cookbook that can be on anyone’s shelf that you can share with friends or take out when you’re having a dinner party, one that leaves you with the knowledge you can salt-free any recipe and make it work. That’s where my cookbook comes in.

Low-sodium cooking has been excommunicated from the culinary world because salt has been put on this flavor pedestal. We’ve got to change that so low sodium is seen more like vegan or gluten-free cooking. It adds to the culinary playbook versus being totally separate from it.

Say what? A kimchi umami burger with no added salt. Photo: Jessica Goldman Foung

How did you eat before you got sick?

I was a junk food eater. I think I would be in big trouble if I hadn’t gotten sick because I ate Taco Bell and French fries all the time. I grew up in a family where we used a microwave to steam our vegetables and we ordered out three nights a week; I ate a lot of Chinese food and pizza. I was also a very unadventurous eater: I was mostly just into traditional American comfort fare.

Do you miss the taste of salt?

I actually don’t even remember it. Some people ask me about salt substitutes but I’m like: ‘Why would you even go there?’ Salt is almost offensive to my mouth now because it’s so strong to me.

What are some of the myths about low-sodium food that you’ve dispelled by living without salt?

Low-sodium food is viewed as dull, boring, time consuming, and costly. Also: No eating out, no eating convenience or comfort foods, nothing canned, and no eating with friends. I discovered that none of those things have to be true. Now, if you just remove salt, a dish is going to be unappealing, because it’s just the food you love without salt and that’s not going to work. I joke about endangered spices: Because we’re so focused on only using salt other spices may become extinct. But celery seed is a great salt replacement, because it has so much natural sodium taste. Curry, cumin, and coriander seed are strong flavors you can use everywhere. I’m having a passionate affair with those three right now. But there are so many spices to play with — smoked paprika, dill, mace.

Sodium Girl’s salt-free version of the classic comfort fare buffalo wings. Photo: Jessica Goldman Foung

How is it dining around town with your dietary needs?

San Francisco has been so accommodating. I tell people in situations like mine: Don’t be afraid to strike up a relationship. If you have a restaurant you love to go to, call ahead, meet with the manager, and sit down and say: ‘Here is what I’m living with, what do you need me to do to make it easier for people? How many days ahead do you need me to call?’ If you make relationships you’re going to get food cooked the way you need it. And then you don’t feel like an outsider anymore; if anything you feel like a VIP diner. I probably get better meals than my friends because they’re usually made by the head chef, to order, with so much care.

Maverick was the first place where I received a salt-free meal that was cooked with as much flair as all the other plates coming out of the kitchen. Firefly is down the street from me, so I go maybe twice a month — frequenting a place definitely helps. The more they cook for me the more adventurous they get. I went to Nojo, the Japanense izakaya restaurant, with a last-minute reservation thinking I could get sashimi, which is easy for me. I took one look at the menu and thought there’s no way I can eat here I’ll just drink my dinner. But the chef Greg Dunmore circled on the menu what he thought he could do over for me salt- free. I had chicken neck, sautéed chicken liver, and food flavored with his personal stash of special chili peppers.

Why invite prominent chefs, including Traci Des Jardins (Jardiniere, Mijita Cocina Mexicana), Scott Youkilis (Maverick, Hog & Rocks) and Hubert Keller (Fleur de Lys), to contribute recipes to this book?

Chefs love to create new tastes and they love a challenge, this is what they do and why they cook. Their contributions are testimony that even top chefs can have fun and hold the salt, in dishes full of flavors, layers, and unexpected combinations.

Were there any recipe flops that didn’t make it into the book?

The one I wanted in there that didn’t make it was pho. I got it right on my first try but didn’t write anything down and I wasn’t able to replicate it again. I will have a faux pho on my website at some stage.

What’s your day-to-day life like living with lupus?

I deal with chronic joint pain, chronic fatigue, and I’m immune suppressed, so I don’t have a lot of reserves. I also have hypertension from my kidneys. I have to watch my fluid retention and all that fun stuff. And there are lots of aftershocks from chemo. For the most part, though, I’m busier and more active than most people I know. My condition has never stopped me from doing anything I wanted to do, I just have to be creative about it. I’m on a ton of meds and I have to check in with my doctors on a regular basis, but so much less so than when I was younger. When I was writing the book I was like: ‘Okay kidneys, don’t fail on me now because that would be really bad marketing.’

Are you always able to remain upbeat in the face of adversity?

My life before my illness prepared me for when I got sick. I was misdiagnosed with juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, which is what my mom has, so I have this amazing role model of a woman. You would never know she was sick. She’s always positive. Her theory is when your life is changed, change your life. When I got sick I had a rule: It was okay to be sad but you couldn’t do it in my hospital room. When I shaved my head, I invited friends over and we had drinks and played music. It’s not like I don’t break down, I do. Having a good three-hour cry is important, and then you eat chocolate and you call it a day. At a certain point it’s not useful energy and I have only so much energy.

Why have you chosen to donate a portion of your book’s royalties to Wholesome Wave?

Philanthropy has always been a part of my life. I’m a Goldman, I don’t usually talk about it much, but I’m embracing it as I get older. I never wanted people to think that I was spoiled or to judge me. I wanted to have a career for myself outside of my family, which is funny because I went into the nonprofit world. But I always wanted to be in a profession where I was giving back. I worked for the Arthritis Foundation and ODC, and while health and the arts are really important it never felt like I was touching enough people and having a big enough impact. I watched “Julie & Julia” and “Food, Inc.” on the same day when I was in the middle of funemployment and I realized that food was going to be it for me, that access point that combines social issues, education, the environment, and health.

Sustainable agriculture has become my passion and my book talks about using fresh ingredients when so few people have access to good fresh food or the cost is prohibitive. It’s a bigger problem than I can solve and not my expertise, so the only way I could write this book and have it sit well with me is to have it help fund people who are addressing the issue of fresh food access for everyone.

Fresh food for all: Pickled beet salad Photo: Jessica Goldman Foung

Is there a takeaway from writing this cookbook you’d like to share with home cooks?

People freak out when they’re cooking a recipe and they don’t have an ingredient when that really is the moment when they should jump for joy. Don’t have a potato but have an apple? Go for it — that will automatically change the dish. Enjoy experimenting, don’t think recipes are set in stone, and remember that you have creative license when you cook. That’s one of my favorite ways to cook: To switch out an ingredient and make it your own, just different enough, say, using fennel instead of celery. It’s all good.

What’s next?

I’m teaching a writing class through continuing education at Stanford in April Writing Through Illness. I’ve been very lucky I have this platform where I get to share my experiences and it’s so empowering and I think that’s why I never see myself as losing out. I gained so much from telling my story. Not everyone realizes they can have that platform. It’s a five-week course and at the end we’re doing an open mic at the medical school.

And I’d really like to write an interactive children’s story for kids with kidney disease for while they’re in doctors’ waiting rooms. I think I’ll call it The Adventures of Frank and Stein. Frank and Stein really need their own book.

Time for a low-sodium Bloody Mary. We thought you’d never ask. Photo: Jessica Goldman Foung

Recipe: Quick Kimchi + Crispy Tofu Salad

Kimchi comes in jars. It’s bright red. It’s salty. It was once just a Korean side dish or topper for steamed rice. But now it can be found in pancakes, on pizzas, and in major grocery store aisles. And while you cannot make an exact replica without the salt—which is an essential part of the fermentation process—you can get close with similarly punchy ingredients like chili oil, nori, vinegar, sugar, garlic, and sesame oil. The cabbage takes at least a day to soak in all the good flavors, so prepare ahead for this salad. The rest is simple and easy to assemble. Oh, and before I forget, don’t skip the crisped tofu. It adds welcome firm bite to the otherwise slick greens.

Quick Kimchi + Crispy Tofu Salad. Photo: Matt Armendariz

Serves 2 to 4

Effort Level: Plan Ahead

Ingredients:
6 loosely packed cups chopped savoy or Napa cabbage
1⁄2 cup water
6 garlic cloves, smashed in a garlic press
1⁄2 sheet Pacific nori
5 tablespoons sesame oil
1⁄4 cup unseasoned rice vinegar
2 green onions, thinly sliced (everything but the bulb)
Juice of 1⁄2 lime
1 teaspoon diced ginger
1⁄2 teaspoon granulated white sugar
1⁄2 to 1 teaspoon salt-free chili oil
2 cups cubed firm tofu, 1⁄2 inch high and 1 inch wide
1⁄4 teaspoon ground turmeric
Toasted white sesame seeds
Red chili pepper flakes

Instructions:

Put the cabbage, water, and the garlic into a pot and bring to a rolling boil over medium heat. Cook until the cabbage is soft and wilted, 8 to 10 minutes. Meanwhile, using scissors, shred the nori into very thin 2-inch strips. Cut until you have about 1⁄2 cup of shredded nori; save any extra.

In an airtight container, whisk together 2 tablespoons of the sesame oil, the rice vinegar, nori, three-quarters of the green onions, the lime juice, ginger, sugar, and chili oil.

When the cabbage and garlic mixture has cooked, remove the pot from of the heat and drain out any leftover liquid. Transfer the cabbage and garlic to the container with the rice vinegar marinade. Place the lid on top, shake vigorously to coat. Place the tofu, 2 tablespoons of the sesame oil, and the turmeric in another airtight container, and shake it gently to spread the oil and spice. Place the cabbage and tofu containers in the refrigerator and marinate for 24 hours.

When you’re close to eating time, heat 1 tablespoon of the sesame oil in a skillet over high heat. Take the cubes of tofu out of their marinade and, working in batches, fry until their skin bubbles and turns golden brown, 3 to 5 minutes. Flip them over, sprinkle some sesame seeds on top, and fry the opposite sides, 3 to 5 minutes more. Repeat until all the tofu cubes are cooked. They are now yellow, crispy, and ready to be eaten.

To serve, place a serving of kimchi salad in bowls or on a plate and then layer the tofu on top. Sprinkle with leftover green onion slices, more sesame seeds, and chili pepper fl akes, to taste if desired.

sodium count:
Savoy cabbage: 20mg per 1 cup shredded; Cabbage (general variety): 13mg per 1 cup shredded; Tofu: 0 to 10mg depending on brand

Recipe: Coconut Dream Bars

This recipe for Dream Bars is from my wonderful grandmother, who I am sure pickpocketed it from someone else. But for the sake of legacy and honor, we will just go ahead and give her full credit.
These brookies (brownie cookies) are good. Really good. They are dense and insanely sweet, and the real surprise comes from the crunchy brown sugar crust (who knew you could make a crust from sugar?) and sweetened, sugar-soaked coconut (who knew coconut could get even tastier?). This is what makes them really addictive. So don’t be embarrassed when you find yourself picking at the caramelized pieces of dream bars that stick to the side of the pan. I do it, too, every time I make them.

This dessert is superchewy and it holds up well when given a deep dunk in a glass of coconut milk. To make them, you need only a few bowls, one pan, and 40 minutes of your precious time. So bake up a batch whenever you have a sweet-tooth craving and an hour to spare. And make sure to grab a few for yourself before daring to share with others.

To jazz them up, pair the bars with fresh strawberries or raspberries, or even a drizzle of melted dark chocolate on the top, because who says no to melted chocolate? These are sweet dreams come true.

Coconut Dream Bars. Photo: Matt Armendariz

Makes 12 to 16 bars

Ingredients:
1/2 cup unsweetened shredded coconut
1 cup sugar water (1 cup water plus 1 cup granulated white sugar)
1 cup plus 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, cut into small chunks and softened at room temperature
1 1/2 cups packed dark brown sugar
2 large eggs, beaten
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoons sodium-free baking powder
Powdered sugar

Instructions:

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Place the coconut into a small bowl, and in a small saucepan, bring the sugar water to a simmer over a medium-low heat. When it begins bubbling, pour the sugar water over the coconut and let it soak for 30 minutes. Drain the coconut from the sugar water.

In a separate small bowl, using your fingers to mix 1 cup of the flour, the softened butter cubes, and 1/2 cup of the brown sugar until it forms a crumbly dough. This is your crust.

Spread the dough evenly along the bottom of a greased 8 by 8-inch baking pan, using your fingers to press the dough onto the bottom and sides of the pan. Your crust should be about 1/2 inch thick. Place the pan in the oven and bake until the crust is lightly browned, 15 minutes. Remove the pan from the oven and let the crust cool for about 10 minutes.

Meanwhile, mix the remaining 1 cup brown sugar, the eggs, vanilla extract, remaining 2 tablespoons flour, the baking powder, and the drained coconut. Pour the mixture evenly over the crust.
Place the dream bars in the oven and bake for 25 minutes. When the top has turned a caramel-brown color and has hardened, remove the bars from the oven, sprinkle with powdered sugar, and serve warm.

sodium count:
Raw coconut: 0 to 15mg per 1 cup depending on brand; Eggs: 71mg per large egg

Recipes reprinted with permission from Sodium Girl’s Limitless Low-Sodium Cookbook

Danielle Alvarez cooks Dungeness crab downstairs at Chez Panisse. Photo: Naomi Fiss

When a contingent from Chez Panisse went to Cuba last December, their visit was duly reported in the press. A crew of Alice Waters devotees was poised to foment a food revolution in Havana — or at least feed people well for a few days. Steve Sullivan baked bread. Charlie Hallowell grilled pork on a parrilla in the streets of Havana. Jerome Waag plated polenta for Cuban dignitaries at dinners designed to showcase the Chez way of cooking.

Missing from the coverage: Any word from either of the Chez Panisse line cooks on the culinary diplomacy mission who are of Cuban-American heritage. Danielle Alvarez and Melissa Fernandez both have roots in the island nation and Alvarez, who set foot on Cuban soil for the first time, spoke with Bay Area Bites about her recent visit. The 28-year-old says she went on the trip with an open mind and exploratory spirit, wanting to learn more about the land her family calls home, despite bittersweet memories common to a generation of exiles in the aftermath of the revolution. She came away, though, with an overwhelming sadness, she says, for what has been lost from Cuba’s culture and cuisine, despite encountering a few bright spots on the food and farming front and hope among besieged residents for better times ahead.

Let’s be frank: Nobody goes to Cuba, widely regarded as a culinary backwater, for the food. And nothing about growing, selling, buying, cooking, or eating food — whether at home or in restaurants — in Cuba is easy. The lack of variety of fresh ingredients alone would make a farmers’ market-loving Northern Californian cry. Food is still rationed in Cuba and much of it is imported (about 70 percent) or frozen, the result of a survivalist mentality born out of scarcity. An agriculture exchange which sprouted in 2011 after the Cuban government loosened up restrictions on a range of small businesses would suggest greater freedoms on the farming front. But such shifts are both an indication of just how much the country has changed, according to a recent New York Times story, and the political and practical limitations that continue to thwart this Caribbean country flirting with capitalism. By most measures, Cuba’s free-enterprise farm experiment has failed, writes journalist Damien Cave, with many Cuban residents actually seeing less locally-grown food at private markets.

Still, Alvarez was encouraged by first-hand accounts from Waters’ personal assistant, Varun Mehra, a man mad for all things Cuban, who was instrumental in organizing the recent “Planting Seeds” edible expedition, the first of what he hopes will be an ongoing U.S.-Cuba dialogue around food and farming. “Havana’s food scene is changing rapidly and the Cuban government is phasing out its system of rations and cautiously allowing private restaurant ownership,” Mehra notes in his recent travelogue for Paper Magazine. “As a result, the population is rediscovering its own pre-revolution culinary history — a delicious mix of Spanish, African, and Caribbean influences.” Mehra refers in his piece to paladars, home-based private eating establishments popping up in Cuba in recent years, that some say could revolutionize — and spice up — Cuba’s dining options.

Snapshots from Cuba’s farm and food scene. Photos: Varun Mehra

Alvarez was eager to see for herself. She grew up in Miami, dining in on the vivid stories her relatives told about a magical place they left behind. Her mom’s family owned a sugar plantation in Cuba’s eastern Oriente Province, her father’s family hailed from Havana; they both moved to the U.S. as young children shortly after the revolution. Alvarez grew up eating Cuban food: White rice, red or black beans cooked with sofrito (aromatics like garlic, onions, and peppers) and a little sugar and apple cider vinegar, which, she says, made her mom’s version special. Her mother and grandmother cooked peasant food that could feed many, Cuban classics like ropa vieja, (shredded skirt steak stewed in a tomato sauce) and Moros y Cristianos (“Moors and Christians,” a rice and beans dish elevated in flavor by the addition of pork fat or bacon.)

She was dismayed by what she encountered on her ten-day trip. “The food culture has largely been lost there, they just don’t have a lot of ingredients,” says Alvarez, who has worked at Chez Panisse for more than two years. “We were told we couldn’t get seafood, which is incredible to me because it’s a Caribbean island surrounded by the sea. My mom has stories about live crab walking around the kitchen but now there’s no fishing industry to speak of.”

Back in Berkeley, Alvarez finds an abundance of seafood. Photo: Naomi Fiss

And Alvarez was stunned by the limitations in the kitchen — from a lack of oils, vinegars, and spices to a narrow range of fresh food. “There’s no variety in what type of produce they have – they have one type of lettuce and it’s really beautiful, but it’s all they have. One lettuce, one type of tomato, and one type of eggplant. We asked the farmers and were told that the state supplies the seeds and that’s all they have to work with. Since there are no seasons a lot of the plants don’t even go to seed, so it’s not like they can harvest their own.” Likewise, while beef might be on the menu at many local restaurants, it was never available to order during Alvarez’s stay; pork was the only meat of choice on offer at most places.

Raw ingredients weren’t the only limited resource on the island. “It broke my heart because at the culinary school and other restaurants we visited they had so little equipment,” says Alvarez, a graduate of Johnson & Wales University’s College of Culinary Arts in Miami. “I found it difficult just to do what we do, as simple as it is, not having pots to cook in or basic equipment like spoons.” Everyone she encountered asked if they could have a pan or a knife, including the tour group’s guide and driver. The Chez Panisse team brought pots and pans with them with the intention of leaving them with local chefs. Dinners were held at Old Havana’s El Patio restaurant, a state run enterprise, and at Le Chansonnier, a popular paladar. Mariela Castro, daughter of Cuban President Raul Castro, made an appearance at both events and State Senator Loni Hancock and her husband Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates also attended the dinners, as part of the “Planting Seeds” entourage.

Chez Panisse chefs foraged fresh food for their trademark salads served at Cuban dinners. Photo: Nina Wolpow

Alvarez observed other hardships that aren’t typical in North American kitchens. One of the restaurants the contingent cooked at didn’t have electricity or running water until the afternoon. “I couldn’t tell if that was a regular thing or just happened once in a while, but it seemed like they knew it would come on at four,” explains Alvarez, a native Spanish speaker, who has done stints at Boulette’s Larder in San Francisco’s Ferry Building and landed an internship at the Wine Country’s French Laundry straight out of cooking school. “We lost electricity several times while we were there in different places. Just very basic things that make things difficult that we take for granted here.”

One trip highlight: A sourcing excursion to a farm to find pigs and rabbits for the dinners. The family who ran the farm gathered for a big pot of boiled yucca, a root vegetable similar to potatoes, and the visitors were brought a bowl of steaming yucca to share, accompanied by mojo, a local marinade of garlic, onion, lime juice, and spices. “I grew up eating yucca, it’s a favorite, and that was probably the most delicious thing we ate on our trip,” says Alvarez, who made yucca ceviche for one dinner cooked by the Chez Panisse chefs.

Danielle Alvarez gives plates a final look before sending them out to Cuban diners. Photo: Nina Wolpow

Overall, though, Alvarez found the local food disappointing. “So much of our philosophy at Chez is about fresh food that’s cooked very little. But in Havana much of the food we encountered was frozen, canned, and cooked a lot,” she says. “I realized, too, that the limited fresh produce they have doesn’t really make it to the people because they can’t afford it.” She did pick up some tips, however, from a local chef on the fine art of braising pork belly in an oven that crisped the skin to perfection while keeping the meat tender and moist.

Fellow Cuban-American Melissa Fernandez plates dishes before serving Cuban dignitaries. Photo: Nina Wolpow

She also discovered that pizza and pasta (local chefs made pasta from scratch at a cooking demonstration at a local cooking school) are becoming go-to foods in Havana, which intrigued the visiting chefs, known for cooking such dishes to critical acclaim in the Bay Area. “A lot of people have these little businesses now where they sell pizza out of a window in their homes,” explains Alvarez. “It’s not like it’s great pizza – it’s just doughy, oily bread with I don’t know what kind of cheese, and a smear of tomato sauce.” Still, such scenes — residents dispensing savory pies out of decaying colonial buildings — would have been unheard of even a few years ago. But as the New York Times notes in recent Cuba coverage: Havana’s growing pizza peddlers are one indication of the entrepreneurial spirit of a country long schooled in socialism and the state. These government-sanctioned edible entrepreneurs are viewed by some as a desperate move by the ruling party to kick start the country’s flagging economy. Could culinary endeavors be a pathway to prosperity for some Cubans?

It’s tough for Alvarez to consider such questions, since her family was doing well before the revolution. At the end of her trip, Alvarez added on a couple of days to visit with the few remaining relatives who never left the island. “I went to the family farm and that was just hugely emotional for me. I was sobbing. I got to see the daily struggles of every day life,” she says. “I had pictures with me about how it used to be; buildings that were once there are now just a pile of rubble. The old houses my family lived in were gone. There were just little wooden, thatched-roof shacks on the property.”

Alvarez is still processing her visit and how to make sense of it to her family in the States, none of whom have returned to the homeland in more than 40 years. And she wants to focus on the positive things she encountered in a country that bombards newcomers on the ride from the airport with billboards covered in socialist propaganda. True to country stereotype, two in the Chez Panisse crew who needed health care — Jerome Waag badly burned his hand behind the stove and Cosecha’s Dominica Rice endured an inexplicably swollen ankle — reported that they received excellent medical services, at the same hospital where Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez was receiving cancer treatment.

Mostly, Alvarez was drawn to people’s enduring spirit in the face of adversity. “I’d be such a miserable person if I had to live there. Cubans just persevere and try so hard in difficult circumstance,” she says. “And still it’s hopeful. People feel change is coming, little by little. As bad as things are they love their country so much.” (Proving, perhaps, where one person sees a prison another sees paradise.) “One of the consultants on our tour who went to the University of Miami, as I did, has come back to Cuba and says there is nowhere else he would want to live,” says Alvarez, who adds: “I understand, it’s home.”

Sara Miles. Photo courtesy of Sara Miles.

She’s not your stereotypical Christian do-gooder: Former hardcore foreign correspondent Sara Miles, a self-described Jesus freak, also counts lesbian, activist leftist, author, and former atheist among her handles. Oh, and she’s the mom of a 23-year-old too.

The Food Pantry Line.

Today, this former line cook and current director of ministry at the church finds herself helping to feed up to 600 hungry people in the city every week. Over 1,400 people are registered at The Food Pantry and come alternate weeks to get groceries. And for the past dozen years Miles has pulled this feat off without any funding from the church or government agencies. (The non-profit food pantry, while housed inside the church, is not a church-run program.)

Instead, Miles runs the operation on the generous support of community members and through fund-raising events like the New Taste Marketplace, the most recent of which was held December 1 and raised around three thousand dollars. The event was hosted by occasional BAB contributor and SF Examiner restaurant critic Jesse Hirsch, who lined up some 30 edible vendors including food trucks, local food artisans selling take-home gift items, and on-site gourmet grub (this writer welcomed the arancini on a cold day).

Miles’ efforts have spawned more than 18 other food pantries around the Bay Area. Every Friday the author of Take This Bread: A Radical Conversion and Jesus Freak helps transform the church’s main sanctuary into a sort of free pop-up farmers’ market for the poor where this city’s most needy pick up produce, pantry items, and other edibles. She welcomes everyone — ex-cons, meth heads, former heroin addicts, the elderly and the infirm, pensioners, those with dubious immigration status, and others without homes, gay, straight, and transsexual. Unlike some other food programs, nobody has to prove they’re poor either.

Volunteering at The Food Pantry.

Along the way, Miles, an avid cook, has encountered the powerful connection people make when they enjoy a meal together — whether it’s in the home she shares with her partner, at church with the 50 volunteers at The Food Pantry, or in unfamiliar territory in her former war reporter life when strangers took her and a group of guerrilla soldiers she traveled with in and shared their supper.

Miles believes everyone deserves to eat and the desire to nourish others is a universal phenomenon that transcends class, race, and economic status. She shared her food philosophy during this season of giving.

Are there skills from your journalism days that come in handy in your pantry work?
I love hearing people’s stories and at The Food Pantry there are a million of them!

What are the biggest misconceptions about hunger in our community?
San Francisco is foodie heaven for people who have money. But rents are so crazily high in this city that if you’re working at a low-wage job (or even two low-wage jobs) it’s hard to earn enough to buy basic groceries, never mind wood-fired artisan pizza.

Who are your clients and your volunteers and where do they come from?
We give groceries to all kinds of people, from all over San Francisco: elderly and disabled people living on Social Security; parents with young kids; minimum-wage workers; immigrants from Latin America, Russia, and China; families who’ve lost their homes, runaway teens, the newly unemployed. These same people run The Food Pantry: almost all our volunteers are folks who came to get food, and stayed to help others.

How does the “new face” of hunger play out at The Food Pantry?
Over the last two years, we’ve had more people show up who’ve never been to a food pantry before, but are in trouble because they lost their jobs or have had their hours cut back.

What have you learned from your clientele and your volunteers?
That poor people are incredibly resourceful, smart, and generous. That everyone has something to give–and wants to give it.

101 year old Russian woman client at The Food Pantry.

Has anything in particular touched you during the dozen years you’ve fed people at the pantry?
It always means a lot when someone who’s hungry and has come to get groceries brings food to share with others. Over the years we’ve been given homemade tamales, dumplings, cakes, lumpia, soup, carrot juice, pies, chili — you name the food, people want to share it.

When people come to stock up on food, what are some go-to items everyone seeks?
Fresh fruit is a favorite: we usually have several varieties, thanks to the growers who supply us with oranges, grapes, mandarins, strawberries, pears, melons, apples and more. The Russians are very happy when we have yogurt. We always offer rice, beans, cereal, bread, and potatoes.

Why have people pick their own food?
Each week, there’s something for everyone. We let people choose their own groceries: It’s more dignified, and there’s far less waste.

The Food Pantry.

Can you sum up your self-described preoccupation with food?
I worked in restaurants for years, as a line cook. I still cook a lot for people. I had a religious conversion, midlife, when I ate a piece of bread at my first communion.

How does your faith, activism, and need to feed the hungry intersect?
On the St. Gregory’s altar there’s an inscription from the 7th century bishop Isaac of Ninevah: “Did not our Lord dine with publicans and harlots? Therefore, make no distinction between worthy and unworthy: all must be equal in your eyes to love and to serve.” After all, Christianity is a faith that connects God with human beings through eating. A few years ago, we were honored to have Bishop Desmond Tutu come visit The Food Pantry, and he told the volunteers, “Thank you, because when you feed the people, you’re feeding God.”

What’s the idea behind the New Taste Marketplace and how did Jesse Hirsch’s first event pan out?
We created New Taste as a way to connect people who are passionate about food with people who are hungry and to deepen everyone’s understanding of the ways food can build community. Elianna Roffman [now Elianna Friedman] was NTM’s fabulous founding market director, and when she stepped down Michael Davidson (the great GrilledCheez Guy) ran it for a while. We took a break, and then Jesse Hirsch organized the December NTM, which was a huge success. Jesse is just wonderful to work with: he’s completely unflappable, and a genius at bringing together the most interesting foods and the most interesting people. We’re discussing another market sometime in the spring.

What do you need most to continue with your outreach?
Working with the San Francisco Food Bank and Food Runners, we can provide fresh groceries for a family for about $1 a week, and we feed about 500 people a week. So financial gifts go a long way–fifty bucks will buy groceries for one family for a year.

All photos courtesy of The Food Pantry

Catherine McCord. Photo by Jonathan Gordon

New mom Catherine McCord didn’t set out to become a food blogger. But after her son was born she had a hard time finding healthy homemade baby food recipes. So she started doing research and recipe testing and began posting her own creations on the web. Fast forward five years and McCord is the voice behind the popular site weelicious, which focuses on family-friendly dishes that are quick and easy to prepare, nutritious, and packed with flavor too.

“Even though I’d been to culinary school, worked in restaurants in New York, and cooked for myself and friends from a young age, when I had my son I wasn’t sure where to start,” says the Institute of Culinary Education graduate who has a crew of in-home taste testers: son Kenya, 5, daughter Chloe, 3, and husband Jon. McCord, who recently taught a “picky eater” cooking class for Sur La Table in Palo Alto, plans on returning to the Bay Area in early 2013.

McCord’s food philosophy is simple: She favors recipes that use just a few wholesome, fresh ingredients and can appeal to a range of ages — from toddlers to teenagers — and adults as well. “As a parent you don’t have to be a short-order cook preparing four different meals for four different family members,” says McCord, 39, who lives in Los Angeles and is the author of the new cookbook Weelicious: One Family. One Meal.

McCord, a contributing editor at Parenting magazine, advises that one of the best ways to raise an adventurous eater is to involve children in all aspects of the meal-making process. Go food shopping with your kids. Farmers’ markets are a great place to take young ones to learn about smart food choices, she says, and there are plenty of healthy, free samples to savor.

Talk with your children, McCord says, about what food you’re buying: “What should we do with this sweet potato? Could we mash it?” And invite them into the kitchen to help. “My son loves peeling bananas and pouring frozen fruit and rice milk into the blender to make his own smoothies,” she says.

The former model, actress, and athlete credits her own family background for her healthy attitude towards cooking and eating. She grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, where her mom taught her the importance of eating nourishing food for well being. “I also learned from my grandparents about gardening, composting, and canning, and these are traditions I’m passing along to my own children,” says McCord who also contributes to Babble, which named her one of the top 100 food mom blogs of 2011.

And there’s one more: Eat together as a family. “I know it’s tough with everyone’s hectic schedules but if your kids see you eating and enjoying broccoli, then there’s a good chance they’ll learn to like it too,” she says.

Case in point: McCord recounts a story from a frustrated mother whose daughter wouldn’t eat much besides plain noodles with butter — except for something she calls “Nana juice” — a breakfast drink she makes with her grandmother that includes kale, fruit, and flax. A little girl who hates almost everything drinks raw green smoothies? “The fact that that drink is her favorite breakfast tells me that kids take their cues about food from their family.”

Catherine McCord shares her Quinoa Pudding recipe families can make together, below. Oh, and just a heads up: This is the sort of dish a toddler may enjoy but, in this writer’s experience, it’s also a hit with teens and makes a nice change from porridge for breakfast for any age.

Banana Quinoa Pudding. Photo: Catherine McCord

Recipe: Banana Quinoa Pudding

This light, creamy concoction is a play on a rice pudding, with quinoa — a grain-like seed rich in protein — taking the place of rice. Makes a flavorful and filling after-school snack, dessert, or special breakfast treat. Can be served warm or cold.

• Cook Time: 20 minutes
• Total Time: 1 hours, 20 minutes *(One hour for chilling pudding)
• Serves: 4-6

Ingredients
• 1 cup quinoa
• 1 14 oz can light coconut milk
• 1 cup milk (2 percent fat or higher)
• 2 ripe bananas, mashed
• 3 tablespoons honey
• 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Preparation
1. Place the quinoa in a fine-mesh strainer and rinse with water.
2. Put quinoa, coconut milk and milk in a medium saucepan and bring to a boil.
3. Cover and simmer for 15 minutes.
4. Stir in the remaining ingredients and cook over medium heat for 4-5 minutes stirring continuously until thickened.
5. Pour into individual ramekins and chill for at least one hour.*
   * The pudding can also be served warm.

Kids Turn: There’s lots of opportunity in this recipe for a child to lend a hand, says McCord. Young children can rinse quinoa in a strainer under running water, shake the coconut milk can (the fat and milk content sometimes separate on the shelf), and peel and mash bananas. Small children can also measure ingredients and pour them into the pot — and can stir the saucepan while cooking, with adult supervision. Older elementary age children may be comfortable making the whole dish — with some encouragement and under the watchful eye of a grown up. “Cooking in the kitchen with your child is an opportunity to talk about where food comes from, what’s in it, why it’s good for you, and what happens when you add heat, spice, fat, or liquid,” says McCord. “It’s also a chance to work in concepts like math, science, and geography. And it’s fun to taste test together, admire the fruits of your combined labor, and eat them too.”

Now, in time for the Thanksgiving feast ahead, comes The Meat Lover’s Meatless Celebrations: Recipes and Menus for Everything from New Year’s Eve to Summer Picnics, Birthday Bashes to Christmas. Got a holiday or special occasion dinner coming up? O’Donnel has it covered — there’s even an election night menu.

The omniverous O’Donnel swung through the Bay Area last weekend and was feted at a potluck where no flesh, let alone bird, featured in a spread that was flavor filled and satisfyingly lip-smacking, as if to drive home her point: Produce can shine at any celebration. The meatless maven talked everything but the turkey with Bay Area Bites and shared some of her favorite holiday recipes too. And, relax, there’s not a curd bird in the mix.

Kim O'Donnel. Photo: Clare Barboza

I had an epiphany one Thanksgiving several years ago, when the turkey and its tofu facsimile were fighting for real estate on the table. It was a tense experience, an us-versus-them dynamic with very little tasty chow to show for all the effort. I wanted to put together a fun, festive meal that eaters of all dietary stripes could enjoy.

How did you come up with a meatless menu for Thanksgiving and where’s the protein?

Thanksgiving is one of the easiest feasts to do meatless — it is a harvest meal after all.

We tend not to associate plants with protein — a medium potato has 2.7 grams, 1 cup of cooked broccoli nearly 7 grams, and 1 cup of cooked spinach 13 grams. And we haven’t even gotten to the legumes — 1 cup of cooked lentils has 18 grams of protein. A quarter cup of almonds nearly 4 grams.

Some of the meatless meals in the fall and winter chapters of my book include an eggplant timpano, roasted delicata squash with red rice stuffing [recipe below], black-eyed pea paella, potato-turnip gratin with a blue cheese sauce and Cajun blackened tofu – all of which contain protein. Remember, for all the protein in that Brontosaurus burger, it’s lacking in fiber (which in my opinion is the fountain of youth!)

In your new cookbook you describe your dishes as “delicious first, meatless second.” How do you enhance flavor in vegetarian recipes?

I discovered that there are lots of ingredients from the plant world that have major umami potential — mushrooms, soy sauce, smoked paprika, roasted vegetables, tahini, to name just a few. So when I say “delicious first,” I’m referring largely to umami. This is why the squash is roasted and there are pistachios in the red rice stuffing [recipe below], and why I coat the sweet potatoes with kale pesto [recipe below]. These little touches add layers of flavor and texture, which is absolutely critical when making the case to meat lovers that vegetarian food is not rabbit food.

What is your favorite meatless dish on the Thanksgiving table?

I love having something raw on the table — a salad of mixed greens with fruit (pomegranate seeds, clementine or grapefruit segments, apple or pear slices) or my raw kale salad to cleanse the palate, lighten up the meal and make sure there’s a wee bit of roughage. After all, it’s traditionally such a starch-heavy meal — mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potatoes, rolls (and that’s all before the pie)!

Cranberry sauce is a must for me. When I finally learned how to make it, I couldn’t believe how easy it was to throw fresh cranberries into a saucepan, sweeten them and watch them pop away and cook down, in just 25 minutes. These days, I like to sweeten them with good-quality maple syrup and the juice of a few oranges.

Is there anything from a traditional Thanksgiving that you miss?

The Thanksgiving feasts of my youth were pretty much pre-packaged affairs (think Stovetop stuffing, boil-in-a-bag vegetables, Parker house rolls, gravy out of a jar), but that’s what we knew, and that’s what felt wonderful. I remember the scenes more than the food — hanging the wishbone to dry, the men in the basement playing pinochle and drinking scotch, my great aunt’s enthusiastic use of Kitchen Bouquet, a brown liquid in a little brown bottle, to darken the gravy, watching my father carve the often overcooked turkey and begging him for a piece of skin and we kids always underfoot.

I don’t miss green bean casserole or creamed onions out of a can, but I do miss the noise and merriment of a big family gathering. There’s a lively kind of mayhem that comes when twenty people with the same gene pool gather under one roof. When I was in college, I made my first homemade cranberry sauce, which marked a turning point in Thanksgiving feasts to come. Every year, my brother Tim and I would replace one pre-packaged or processed dish with its homemade counterpart.

What’s on your menu Thursday?

For the first time in a handful of years, I’m not hosting Thanksgiving. It is one of my favorite feasts to prepare, but I’ve been traveling for the past month which made it easy to accept the invitation of a Seattle friend, who’s a good cook. We’ll bring a few dishes from the new book, including the lentil pate for cocktail hour, the raw kale sale to ensure there are some greens on the table (what is it about Thanksgiving and the dearth of greens?) and the apple-rosemary-walnut pie with my newfangled pie dough ( a 50-50 mix of olive oil and butter). Come to think of it, I need to make sure cranberries will be on the table. If not, I’m assigning myself another job.

Do you have advice for people hosting a meatless Thanksgiving with skeptics at the table?

Try not to work yourself into a lather, for starters. Then honor their concerns and have something meaty on your veg-heavy table: Let the turkey eaters bring the turkey, for example. We’re dining in mixed-diet company these days, and it’s important that everyone feel respected and acknowledged. Enlist some helpers and don’t carry the load of dinner prep, serving, and cleaning. That’s no fun, and that’s besides the point. Thanksgiving can be a hoot, as it should be. After all, we’re gathering at the table with the people we love — with food!

Recipe: SWEET POTATO–PESTO GRATIN

From “The Meat Lover’s Meatless Celebrations”
Excerpted by arrangement with Da Capo Lifelong, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright 2012.

This is such a nice change of pace from the iconic marshmallow engulfed variation that has graced Thanksgiving tables for decades. Imagine, a sweet potato dish that won’t give you a sugar high! Instead, the thinly sliced tubers are slathered up with my beloved kale pesto, a green spread with both gusto and all-purpose prowess.

Kale Pesto. Photo: Clare Barboza

KALE PESTO:
4 cups water
1 to 1 1⁄2 teaspoons salt
4 to 5 cups lacinato (a.k.a. dinosaur or Tuscan) kale that has been stemmed and chopped coarsely (1 large bunch)
2 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
1⁄4 cup unsalted walnuts,
coarsely chopped
1⁄2 cup olive oil
1⁄2 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese (optional)
Freshly ground black pepper

TOOLS: Blender or food processor

SWEET POTATO GRATIN:
Olive oil or oil spray, for greasing
2 pounds sweet potatoes, washed and peeled
1⁄2 cup kale pesto
1⁄8 to 1⁄4 cup grated Parmigiano-Reggiano or Pecorino cheese (optional)

TOOLS: 13 by 9-inch baking dish

HERE’S WHAT YOU DO:

Kale Pesto
1. Bring the water to a boil in a medium-size saucepan. Add 1 teaspoon of the salt, then add the kale. Cook uncovered until tender, about 10 minutes. Drain the kale under cold running water. With your hands, squeeze as much water out of the kale as possible; you’ll end up with a green ball about the size of a tennis ball.
2. In a blender or food processor, combine the garlic and walnuts, and whiz until pulverized and well mixed. Add the kale and process until well blended; the mixture may even look a little dry. Pour in the oil and blend. The mixture should be glistening and will have a consistency that is somewhat textured, somewhat loose. Taste and add the remaining 1⁄2 teaspoon of salt, if needed.
3. Transfer the pesto to a small bowl and stir in the cheese (if using) and the black pepper to taste.
4. The pesto keeps well in an airtight container in the refrigerator, for up to a week.

MAKES ABOUT 1 CUP PESTO

Sweet Potato Gratin
1. Preheat the oven to 400°F.
2. Grease the bottom of a 13 by 9-inch baking dish with the olive oil (using a brush) or with oil spray.
3. Cut the sweet potato into 1⁄4-inch-thick slices. Place in a medium-size bowl and add the pesto, stirring until the sweet potato slices are completely coated. If the coverage is light, add a wee bit more pesto, in 1-teaspoon increments.
4. Arrange the sweet potato slices in the prepared dish in overlapping fashion. You will have two or three layers when you’re done. If using the cheese, sprinkle evenly on top.
5. Cover the dish with foil and bake for 45 minutes. Remove the foil and bake for an additional 15 to 20 minutes, or until fork tender.
6. Serve hot.

MAKES 6 SIDE-DISH SERVINGS

KITCHEN NOTES: Sweet potatoes can be large and unwieldy and sometimes difficult to cut. Sharpen your knife and cut the sweet potato in half, both in length and width, if necessary.

Make the pesto first. In fact, you can make it in advance, as it keeps for several days in the refrigerator. On prepping the kale: Grab the thick fibrous stem running through the middle and simply pull off the leafy part. You can also run a knife along the middle and trim the leaf away from the stem.

Recipe: DELICATA BOATS WITH RED RICE STUFFING

From “The Meat Lover’s Meatless Celebrations”
Excerpted by arrangement with Da Capo Lifelong, a member of the Perseus Books Group. Copyright 2012.

Delicata Boats with Red Rice Stuffing. Photo: Clare Barboza

INGREDIENTS:

1 1/2 cups water
1 cup Bhutanese red rice (Plan B: long-grain Wehani; cooking times and liquid amounts may vary)
3 to 4 delicata squash (about 1 pound each)
1/8 cup olive oil, plus extra for brushing
1/4 teaspoon salt, plus more to taste
Freshly ground black pepper
1/2 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
1/4 cup unsalted shelled pistachios, chopped (Other options: walnuts, almonds, or pecans)
1/3 cup dried cranberries or cherries, chopped
1 teaspoon fennel seeds
1 teaspoon peeled and minced fresh ginger
Zest of 1/2 lemon or orange, plus 1 or 2 squeezes of the juice
1/8 teaspoon ground chile pepper of choice

TOOLS: Parchment paper

KITCHEN NOTES: There’s enough filling for eight servings (one squash half per person). For a party of six, you’ll have more than a cup of remaining filling, which you can bring to the table.

HERE’S WHAT YOU DO:
1. Bring the water and the rice to a boil in a medium-size saucepan. Lower the heat to low, cover, and cook at a simmer, 20 to 25 minutes. The rice will be done when water is absorbed and grains are tender to the bite.
2. Preheat the oven to 400°F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Trim both ends of each squash and slice in half lengthwise. Scoop out and discard the seeds and the attached pulp. Brush both sides of the squash with the olive oil, and season the inside to taste with salt and pepper.
3. Roast until easily pierced with a fork, about 30 minutes, and remove from the oven. Lower the oven heat to 350°F.
4. While the squash roasts, make the filling: Transfer the rice to a large mixing bowl and add the 1/8 cup of olive oil, and the parsley, nuts, dried fruit, fennel seeds, ginger, citrus zest, and chile pepper. Stir until the rice is coated with the oil and the mixture is well mixed. Add the 1/4 teaspoon of salt, stir, taste, and reseason if necessary.
5. Fill each squash half with about 1/4 cup of the filling. Return to the oven and heat for about 15 minutes, until the rice is warmed through.
6. Serve immediately, or lower the oven temperature to 225°F, cover with foil, and hold until ready to serve.

Food bank volunteers help get produce to people quickly. Photo: Courtesy Alameda County Community Food Bank

That mission is clear the minute you enter the ACCFB’s vast warehouse. Last Friday, one of the busiest days of the year for the local food bank, Corey Garmon, a nutrition education intern, was positioned at the entrance handing out samples of his sweet potato hash — made from scratch with a little heat and a lot of heart — using fresh produce available to food pantry members dashing in for their pre-Thanksgiving pick ups. Those paper cups of comfort food (a simple mix of onions, bell peppers, and bright orange tuber cubes seasoned with red pepper flakes) added a sweet note of tasty cheer on a dreary, cold day. They got snapped right up.

Meanwhile, warehouse workers deftly moved heavy pallets of chicken stock, cranberry sauce, and turkey stuffing in a flurry of activity, while other employees handed out boxes of turkey breasts and volunteers bagged a mountain of carrots.

ACCFB is considered a national leader in efforts to ensure that the neediest receive nourishment. Back in 2005 — well before the recent soda tax campaigns — the food bank banned carbonated drinks from its warehouse shelves. It’s been making strides to offer more healthy options ever since.

Now, as the biggest eating holiday of the year looms, comes word about the results of an initiative designed to improve the quality of edible offerings in food banks nationwide. ACCFB is one of 12 food banks around the country participating in a program dubbed Healthy Options, Healthy Meals, in collaboration with the nonprofit MAZON: A Jewish Response to Hunger, health care giant Kaiser Permanente, and the University of California, Berkeley’s Center for Weight & Health. The program, in place for two years, provides financial and other support to food banks who want to develop and implement formal nutrition policies.

That is not as splashy news as, say, the end of the Twinkie. But it’s significant in the food banking world. It may come as a surprise to learn that food banks typically don’t have nutritional guidelines in place — even the ACCFB’s soda ban isn’t part of a formal written policy. That’s because, in part, most people in the anti-hunger world are too busy trying to meet a growing need, and have had scant time for mulling over policy matters.

So taking small steps to assess what constitutes healthy food for clients is a big shift in food bank circles, say leaders in the fight against hunger, malnutrition, and obesity. “These food banks are setting a new standard within the food banking community, paving the way for their peers to be more proactive,” says Marla Feldman, director of the initiative at MAZON. “Formal, documented nutrition policies provide a concrete blueprint for how food providers can increase the nutritional quality of the foods and beverages they distribute.”

CHOP offers a quick reference for pantry members choosing food for their clients. Photo: Courtesy ACCFB

Here’s how the initiative’s work has played out in practice at the food bank: The organization, which has two nutritionists on staff, implemented a system on the warehouse floor known as the Choosing Healthy Options Program or CHOP for short — a simple traffic-light grading of goods (green represents healthy choices recommended any time, yellow foods are sometimes options, and red items, heavy on sugar, salt, and/or fats are rare treats.) In addition, notices like the one below are posted throughout the warehouse offering suggestions for more nutritious eating.

Food pantries served by ACCFB are also experimenting with a new distribution method known as client choice in place of a pre-packed bag of staples. Client choice recognizes the diverse range of dietary needs in a community, whether due to culture, religion, health preferences, or medical concerns. Tofu may be an everyday food for one family, while peanut butter more appropriate for another. Food bank staffers say that client choice decreases waste and increase dignity for clients — and volunteers enjoy the extra interaction they have with the people they’re helping. At the Oakland Food Pantry — located in a former liquor store in West Oakland — clients appreciate the chance to “go shopping” for fresh foods and kitchen staples in a so-called food desert. “Offering vegetables and fruits has made a big difference in the way people choose what they take home,” pantry executive director Greg Harland reports in an ACCFB newsletter. “At first, people didn’t grab broccoli, but now it’s all gone at the end of the day. With availability comes change.”

Clients at the Oakland Food Pantry report a preference for choosing the produce they take home. Photo: ACCFB

And the ACCFB now has a mobile produce hub program delivering fresh fruits and vegetables to small and medium-sized member agencies, saving them the trek out to the food bank’s warehouse near Oakland airport. These pop-up produce events take place in parking lots in Oakland, Berkeley, and Hayward and they save smaller agencies time and money. Most importantly, people they serve are now able to enjoy a lot more farm fresh strawberries and oranges.

The food bank is also in the early stages of developing formal, written nutritional guidelines and, as part of that process, is evaluating the contents of all the cans, boxes, and containers of products that are either donated or purchased for distribution to people in need, according to Justine Kaplan, the food bank’s director of food, agency, and nutrition services. This time-consuming process will likely have implications for purchasing decisions down the track, adds Kaplan, who notes that 60 percent of the food banks’ offerings are procured.

Such practices shift the focus from quantity to quality.

“The real opportunity here is to get beyond a pounds in/pounds out approach to food banking, and to take a careful look at the nutritional value of food on the shelves,” says Loel Solomon, vice president for community health at Kaiser Permanente. “Every family deserves access to healthy food, and that’s especially important for low-income people who are more likely to suffer from diabetes, heart disease and obesity.”